Calling on ITALIAN 70' s Porn Experts!!

[stratagakis]

hey there ...

I'm after a little information about filming and distributing porn/adult movies in ITALY during the 70's? Was it legal for most of that decade? When was it made legal? How were the local people's initial reaction to it? did many local filmmakers have to shoot outside of Italy if they wanted to make a porno movie, or did they just shoot it and leave the hardcore scenes for a different market (ie ... French and German markets)? Any information would be greatly appreciated ... Feel free to elaborate as much as you want/can.

Thanks

Stratagakis

[alpha7]

Sometimes they shoot the H/C scenes, and leave them only for foreign markets.
e.g. Le calde notti di Caligola (English title: The Hot nights of Caligola, directed by Roberto Bianchi Montero) which - as far as I know - doesn't exist uncut in the italian release.

[stratagakis]

hey alpha 7 ... hows things, man?

i figured that's what it was like. but, does that mean it was illegal to show porn in Italy during the 70's? was it still okay to shoot it there?

is that why directors like joe d'amato went to the carribean to shoot porno holocaust, erotic nights of the living dead, hard sensation, etc, etc ...?

how was the public's reaction in italy? did people care? it seems that only in america was porn (for some time) cool in the 70's. otherwise known as, porno chic.

on the other hand, i always thought that in europe people were more relaxed about it. porn wasn't such a big deal. was that the case in italy?

[Len801]

From what I hear, a number of directors like Joe D'amato essentially made hc inserts for the foreign market, and occasionally such prints (originally intended for foreign countries) got exhibited here and there in Italy in the late 1970's (after they would submit a print for public cinema exhibition). Nobody would be the wiser if no one complained.
Explicit hard-core cinema exhibition did not start in the USA until 1970 or so with De Renzy and others showing pseudo-documentaries at first and then fiction feature-length hc films (MONA, DEEP THROAT, etc). Hard-core explicit exhibition did not start in France until mid 1975, and was quickly curtailed after that due to heavy tax burden cinema theaters were burdened with with a scared government. I do not know when hc films began to be shown in Germany.

[stratagakis]

wow. that's interesting.

i got the feeling that it would have been pretty relaxed in certain parts of europe by the late 70's. perhaps, it was on video where most of these films made their profit. but that wouldn't have been until the 80's. still, movies were probably re-cut and re-dustributed several times over throughout europe during the mid to late 70's, trying to meet the requirements of uncertain censorship laws in the cinema circuit. i guess porn mania wasn't as "in your face" in europe as it was in the USA, namely new york and san francisco. i would imagine if you were thinking of putting hardcore in your movie, there were places like scandinavia that would distribute your movie in its entirity. perhaps, even the US. (dubbed into english, or what-not) i don't know. this is a tough one.

Len801, thanks for the little info.

stratagakis

[boa]

1) FRANCE
two "first-hand" sources about production, distribution, economy, law, police, figure of exploitation and rating, which are the ones that all French writers have been usign when writing on that subject (especially the writers too young - like C. Bier - who were not yet born on that time and who have found all that they write in them and in memories of people who lived that time, or who were active in that field) :
- LE FILM FRANCAIS n?1592 - ("Sp?cial porno : dossier porno" 19 septembre 1975) pp. 28 to 79 including testimonies of Jos? B?naz?raf, Michel Lemoine, Sylvia Kristel, Jacques Duda, Jean-Fran?ois Davy, Fran?ois Jouffa, Pierre-Claude Garnier, Pierre Kalfon, Fr?d?ric Lansac (alias Claude Mulot), Guy Maria, Jacques Otmezguine, Jean-Marie Pallardy, Alain Payet (alias John Love), Max Pecas, Patrice Rhomm, Jean Rollin (alias Michel Gentil, etc.), Norbert Terry, Paul Vecchiali, Francis Leroi, etc.
- LE FILM FRANCAIS n?1685 ("Dossier X" 15 juillet 1977) pp. 13-38 including many interviews of producers, directors, actresses
and also the very remarkable little book:
- Pat Delbe, CINE-X, collection EroScore, Paris 1978 including interviews with Francis Leroi, 2 "ordinary viewers", and an exclusive reportage on the shooting on "LE SEXE QUI PARLE n?2 - TRIPLE INTRODUCTION"
- all the issues of the following French magazines published on 1975-1985 : STAR SYSTEM, SEX STAR SYSTEM, CINE EROSCORE, CINE-FILMS, VEDETTES FEMININES INCOGNITO...

ITALY
It is very well know that Italy was a very great producer from 1980... [The first Italian porno movie came to Paris theaters in 1981 : it was a beautiful movie starring Marina Frajese / Marina Hedman, directed by "Angel Valery"] and already a great distributor before that. What I know is that any Italian judge could complain about porno in any part of Italy if he wanted : sometime they did, sometime not. Where they did not, everything was allright : you could buy in Italy, for example, many magazines and movies forbidden in Paris at the same time because there was less censorhip (in fact no censorship at all) than in Paris. Another example : around 1990 in Milano, you could buy in the streets - in the little street of newspapers where children were buying there chocolates and granmothers were buying the TV program - the last C.C.C. magazines, including SEX BIZARRE, ANIMAL ORGY, etc !!! (laugh) Incredible but true...


One point : it was common, in France as well as in other porno producing and distributing countries, to present "rich" porno movies - with a story line, real acting, many locations - in two versions : on the same tape, you had first the comedy scenes, and then, at the end of the tape, the hardcore scenes. And so, the professionnal buyer or seller was able to get an idea whether he would cut or not the hardcore, to keep it as only erotic. It was a way that still existed quite long time, even when it dealed with almost 80% porno movies impossible to cut in "respectable piece + hard piece". You follow me till that point ?
Anyway, of course, many hard were shown to professionnals as plain porn stuff. Of course. But the first way was so amusing that I wanted to mention it too...

Another funny point about Italy : when French producers sold their movies to Italian distributors, they were almost sure that the movies would be exploited in Italian theaters with "caviarded" bestiality sequences. Italian have the fantasy of woman exciting animals, etc...

Many French actresses and actors went to shoot in Italy, even French directors came there too around 1985-1995, and after... as well as they came to Germany too... but opposite way was rare. Not many Italian actresses came to France, nor directors. Same for Germany by the way.

Hope all that will help you

[stratagakis]

boa, that's a great help.

so, i guess during the 70's you had only a couple Italian directors bold enough to shoot hardcore in their movies, to which, it was probably only sold (in its full integral version) to a couple distributors in europe, for a short release. directors like Polselli, D'Amato, perhaps Cavallone. maybe these films were only realised come the dawn of the video age, which is around 1980 onward.

i have read that there was contraversy surrounding Polselli for some time. that he could not actually release films like "Rivelazioni di uno pschiatra ..." and "Oscenita" until 1980. i'm a little confused there.

so, was it around 1980 that Italy relaxed its laws about making and distributing porn within the country? .... i guess that may explain why polselli could finally release a film like Oscenita.

anyway, thanks again Boa. this has been a great help.

more opinions/facts/blurbs are welcome.

stratagakis

[alpha7]

"... they were almost sure that the movies would be exploited in Italian theaters with "caviarded" bestiality sequences...".

Let's not lump everything together. That was true mostly from mid 80s on. Italian h/c movies downgraded so much, after that age.

"Rivelazioni di uno psichiatra... " was a real exception for the late 70s, in Italy, and I think it belongs more to the stream of those weird documentary-movies, rather than a sound hardcore flick.

Btw... You know for sure that scene with donkey on "Rivelazioni..." was a fake, just as much as all the animal scenes that Marina Hedmann herself shot.

[fromitaly]

I can say when i was a teenager (I mean early 80's!) in my town (not that big) you could find porn magazines in any bookstall and watch hardcore (uncut) almost every night in some channels of my area (after 2 am) or at cinema during the week without problems and watch action/drama films on sunday in the same place.
I think this happened because of the strange way of approaching the law in italy...especially in the south.
italian style.

[alpha7]

I think this happened because at that age there were no rule, for as it concerns the general view of private channels, which were -on the whole- like a wild wild west...