Review by Gary Tooze

Production:

Disc:

Video (both):

Audio (both):

• Introduction by Borowczyk expert Daniel Bird (5:14)

• Immoral Tales (L'Age D'or Cut) (1974) (2:05:25)
• Love Reveals Itself, a new interview programme featuring production manager Dominique Duvergé-Ségrétin and cinematographer Noël Véry (16:43)
• A Private Collection (1973) (12:12), presented in the commercially released version and the more explicit Oberhausen cut (14:37)
• Boro Brunch, a reunion meal recorded in February 2014 reuniting members of Borowczyk s crew (7:37)
• Theatrical trailer (2:12)
• Reversible sleeve featuring original poster designs
• Collector's booklet

• Immoral Tales (L'Age D'or Cut) (1974) (2:05:25)
• Love Reveals Itself, a new interview programme featuring production manager Dominique Duvergé-Ségrétin and cinematographer Noël Véry (16:43)

• Obscure Pleasures: A Portrait of Walerian Borowczyk, a newly edited archival interview in which Borowczyk discusses painting, cinema and sex (1:03:15)

• Blow Ups - a look at Walerian Borowczyk's fine art, including his prize-winning lithographs and poster designs (4:44)

• Theatrical trailer (2:18)

Bitrates:

It tells four stories revolving around particular taboos (virginity, female masturbation, bloodlust, incest), each delving further back in time, as if to suggest that the same issues recur constantly throughout human history and in all walks of life, whether it s Lucrezia Borgia (Florence Bellamy) or Erzsébet Báthory (Paloma Picasso in her only screen role) or the anonymous teenagers of the earlier episodes.

This high-definition restoration by Argos Films is being released on Blu-ray with English subtitles for the first time. The film is presented in two versions: the familiar four-part edition, and the original five-part conception, including the short film The True Story of the Beast of Gévaudan that was later expanded into Borowczyk's later feature The Beast. The disc also includes both cuts of A Private Collection (1973), the short film that scandalised film festival audiences with its witty and often graphic study of vintage erotica.

 

 

IMMORAL TALES presents a relatively more commercial outing for Walerian Borowczyk by way of producer Anatole Dauman (preceding his ventures into arthouse hardcore with Nagisa Ôshima's IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES and Shûji Terayama's STORY OF O sequel FRUITS OF PASSION) in the form of an portmanteau film of sexual hypocrisy disguised as erotica. In The Tide, based on a story by André Pieyre de Mandiargues (whose novels would provide the source material for Borowcyzk's later LA MARGE/THE STREETWALKER and LOVE RITES), twenty-year-old André (Fabrice Luchini, IN THE HOUSE and BICYCLING WITH MOLIÈRE) takes advantage of his mother's overnight trip to teach virginal sixteen-year-old cousin Julie (Lise Danvers) about the mysteries of the tides. The act of oral sex between literal "kissing cousins" is not so much a sexual initiation as exploitation with André describing the synchronization of his orgasm proclaiming as an exercise in self-control and telling Julie afterward that it was not meant to be fun (for her) but educational. Although the second episode takes its title from the 1748 pornographic novel "Thérèse Philosophe", Borowczyk's slight tale actually features the novel itself as a prop and the events within only vaguely related to the novel's set-up. When Thérèse M. (Charlotte Alexandra, Catherine Breillat's titular A REAL YOUNG GIRL) is late in returning home after Sunday services, her grandmother punishes her by locking her in the attic for three days even though the girl swears that she had remained in the church after mass (which she did, fondling various phallic objects including the bishop's crosier, the base of a statue, and the vibrating pipes of the organ). Left alone with her Stations of the Cross and three ripe cucumbers intended for sustenance, Thérèse soon takes an interest in the military regalia, the broken male doll, and the trunk of corsets which hides a series of erotic photographs. When she stumbles upon a copy of the titular novel, she realizes that near brushes with ecstasy are more carnal than spiritual and undertakes her own deflowering with the help of those cucumbers. Escaping the attic, she rushes headlong towards her fate. Unjustly punished for sexual curiosity, Thérèse M. is put up for beatification when she is raped and murdered by a tramp.

The film's third story was originally The True Story of the Beast of Gévaudan, but Borowczyk would cut that episode to reduce the running time and expand upon the following year as THE BEAST. Instead, the third episode becomes Bathory, the most ambitious and well-realized of the quartet. The pastoral idyll of the Hungarian village of Nyitra is violently disrupted by the arrival of Countess Erzsébet Bathory (Paloma Picasso), her page Istvan (Pascale Christophe, IMMORAL WOMEN), and her guards in search of "simple and honest" young women who the countess will reward on Sunday with the opportunity to experience "eternal joy" in touching her lace and pearl-strewn gown. Bringing the girls (or chattel) back to the castle – which almost resembles a dormitory with group showers upon which the chattering girls scrawl sexual graffiti – Bathory does not have to inflict upon them the tortures documented and exaggerated in historical accounts and fiction. Instead, she lets them rip her lace and pearl gown asunder and then tear each other to pieces to fill her youth-restoring bath; but masculine authority will soon reassert itself through feminine betrayal. The final story, Lucrezia Borgia, is set in 1498 when the very soon-to-be-martyred Dominican friar Savonarola (Philippe Desboeuf, GERMINAL) takes to the pulpit and accuses the church authority of dissolution, which is simultaneously illustrated – with a bit of historical license – when Pope Alexander VI (filmmaker Mario Ruspoli, billed as "Jacopo Berinizi") declares his daughter Lucrezia's (Florence Bellamy, HOLY YEAR) new husband Giovanni Sforza impotent and disposes of him (in real life, the marriage was annulled a few years after the setting of the story and Sforza did accuse his wife of fraternal and paternal incest and his father-in-law and brother-in-law of plotting to kill him once he proved to be less of an asset than thought from his previous marriage to the daughter of Federico I of Mantua). The family line is ensured in a threesome between father, daughter, and son Cesare (Ruspoli's real son Fabrizio). The pope baptizes the child and Savonarola burns at the stake.

CLICK EACH BLU-RAY CAPTURE TO SEE ALL IMAGES IN FULL 1920X1080 RESOLUTION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Audio :

The feature is presented in two versions via seamless branching, the standard cut (1:43:08) – X-rated upon release stateside by New Line Cinema – and The Age d'Or Cut (2:05:25), which featured The Beast of Gévaudan as the film's third story. In the introduction by Daniel Bird – a visual and text essay rather than a talking head piece – he explains that the longer cut won the award named after the early Bunuel film and that Borowczyk cut the third story to reduce the running time (it was shown separately in other film festivals before becoming part of THE BEAST). Bird's essay also describes the splash that the screening of the unconnected prologue A Private Collection, The Tide, and The Beast of Gévaudan episodes made at the London Film Festival and the outrage of conservative papers at the time.

The "Love Reveals Itself: Making IMMORAL TALES" featurette includes commentary by cameraman Noël Véry (THE ART OF LOVE) and assistant director Dominique Duvergé (BLANCHE) who recall how the project resulted from a meeting between Borowczyk, producer Dauman, and writer de Mandiargues. Véry describes how shooting was initially behind schedule due to rough weather and the shooting style of Guy Durban (who also shot BLANCHE), as well as how it sped up when Durban had to return to Paris to shoot commercials and Véry started shooting hand-held (years later Véry would be one of the first cameramen to use the Steadicam in France). When production shifted to Sweden for Bathory and Lucrezia Borgia, Véry would work more hands on with replacement cinematographer Bernard Daillencourt (who would shoot Borowczyk's subsequent films up through IMMORAL WOMEN with Véry, as well as the French features of British photographer David Hamilton). Duvergé discusses the casting, including Borowczyk approaching Isabelle Adjani for the role of Julie in The Tide, then-unknown Luchini in The Tide, Picasso (who proved frustrating for a director not accustomed to being contradicted), and filmmaker Ruspoli and his son in the Borgia segment (no mention is made of IMDb's claim that the body double for the girl in the Bathory segment who hides a pearl in her vagina is supposedly Swedish softcore/hardcore actress Marie Forså). Also included is " Boro Brunch: Crew Reunion ", informal 2007 video of cameraman Véry's reunion with Borowczyk crew members including Duvergé, producer Anatole Dauman's daughter Florence, BLANCHE producer Philippe d'Argila (Z) who was also the husband of Borowczyk costume designer Piet Bolscher (LA BELLE CAPTIVE), and THE ART OF LOVE script supervisor Zoe Zurstrassen (who later became a collaborator with Claire Denis from CHOCOLAT to 35 SHOTS OF RUM).

Originally included as a prologue to the feature, A Private Collection, a documentary about erotica from drawings to period mechanical amusements, narrated by André Pieyre de Mandiargues, is included here in two cuts: the version more familiar to festival audiences (12:12), and what has been titled The Oberhausen Version which runs about two minutes longer at 14:31 (it features a brief moment of actual bestiality, but that has been blacked out here in accordance with BBFC regulations and with the approval of producer Duvergé). While The Beast of Gévaudan cut only exists as a 16mm copy (the 35mm negative recut for the feature expansion), the Oberhausen version was preserved as the original camera negative while the standard cut was derived from a 35mm internegative source. The booklet that comes with the individual releases was not included for review, but the three-hundred-page-plus tête-bêche-bound book that came with the limited set featured a six-page essay by Daniel Bird and a reprint of a 1976 Philip Strick review on the film (presumably that was filled out with some of the other content from the book which also included short stories by Borowczyk, film-specific essays, and more general essays about Borowczyk's style and themes.

Arrow US - Region 'A' + 'B' - Blu-ray

BOTTOM LINE:
More Borowczyk, partially 'taboo-level' erotic, partially arthouse - filmmaking glory. There is something very 'fresh' about his work. And I mean that in a very positive sense. The Arrow Blu-ray provides an excellent a/v presentation with very appreciated supplements. Like the others in this package Immoral Tales is easy to recommend - most notably the director's following!