Category Archives: gratuitous nudity

Gratuitous nudity #16

Gratuitous nudity #16

The Naked Venus by you.

The Naked Venus

The Naked Venus is a 1959 nudist film directed by American director Edgar G. Ulmer*. With Patricia Conelle, Don Roberts, Arianne Ulmer.

The current entry of gratuitous nudity does not even feature nudity … only hints at it (see innuendo). Can’t be careful enough these days! Ask the Undead Film Critic.

*Edgar G. Ulmer (19041972) was an AustrianAmerican film director. He is best remembered for the movies The Black Cat (1934) and Detour (1945). These stylish and eccentric works have achieved cult status, but Ulmer’s other films remain relatively unknown.

Egon Schiele, Jane Birkin and Brian Eno, or a cult item if there ever was one

Egon Schiele Excess & Punishment

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmOFvKmivxU&]

From the film “Egon Schiele Exzess und Bestrafung” (1981) starring Mathieu Carrière, Jane Birkin and Christine Kaufmann with an original score by Brian Eno. A cult item if there ever was one. Dedicated to Rafaela for her appreciation of sensualism and Esotika for his appreciation of European cinema.

For those of you with prurient interests (wink, wink), scrub to 3:00 and various subsequent points in time you will have to find for yourself.

Eno’s score is mesmerizing and blissful.

From my wiki:

Egon Schiele Exzess und Bestrafung, also known as Excess and Punishment(English) and Egon Schiele, enfer et passion (French) is a 1980 film based on the life of the Austrian artist Egon Schiele. It stars Mathieu Carriere as Schiele with Jane Birkin as his artist muse Wally and Christine Kaufmann as his wife Edith and Christina Van Eyck as her sister. The film is essentially a depiction of obsession and its constituents of sex, alcohol and uncontrolled emotions. Set in Austria during the Great War Schiele is depicted as the agent of social change leading to destruction of those he loves and ultimately of himself.

The film is an international co-production with actors of German, French, Dutch and English origin. It was directed by Herbert Vesely and produced by Dieter Geissler and Robert Hess. The cinematography is by Rudolf Blahacek and the haunting music is by Brian Eno. The English language version of the film is entitled Egon Schiele Excess & Punishment.

Introducing the late Tina Aumont

Tina Aumont in Frédéric Pardo‘s Home Movie

Male viewers pressed for time may want to scrub to 2.37

Tina Aumont (14 February 1946 – 28 October 2006) was an American actress of French, and Dominican descent.

Her parents

She was born in Hollywood, California, the daughter of actors Jean-Pierre Aumont and Maria Montez who he had met in Hollywood. Maria Montez was known as the Queen of Technicolor, an early camp icon and idol to American experimental filmmaker Jack Smith, whose Flaming Creatures (1963) is basically a travesty on Hollywood B movies and tribute to actress Maria Montez.

Back to Tina

Tina married actor and film director Christian Marquand in 1963, at the age of 17.

She made her debut as Tina Marquand in Joseph Losey‘s 1966 movie Modesty Blaise. She worked in Italian cinema with, among others, Alberto Sordi (Scusi, lei è favorevole o contrario?, 1966), Tinto Brass (L’urlo, 1968 and Salon Kitty, 1975), Mauro Bolognini (Fatti di gente perbene, 1974), Francesco Rosi (Cadaveri eccellenti, 1975), and Federico Fellini (Fellini’s Casanova, 1976).

In 2000 she retired from film work and died in France at age 60.

PS: Tina Aumont was brought to my attention via a Dutch blog. Moon in the Gutter was there[2] before me. Here[3] is a Tina Aumont photo taken by Frédéric Pardo from the site http://paris70.free.fr/ dedicated to French counterculture of the fashionable variety (as contrasted to the political variety). I discover Philippe Bone.

RIP Bill Landis (1959 – 2008)

Via Tim Lucas comes the news that Bill Landis is dead.

Bill Landis (1959 – 2008) created the Xeroxed fanzine Sleazoid Express in 1980. It featured reviews of the exploitation films playing New York City’s Times Square’s 42nd Street grindhouse and reports on the local scene. The later issues also featured reviews from acclaimed Jimmy McDonough.

Sleazoid Express (1980-1983, and later editions) was the house journal of the grindhouse movie scene in New York circa 1964-1984. Edited by Bill Landis, a projectionist and devotee of the crime-ridden sleaze houses, the magazine not only captured the genre affections but the whole Times Square milieu of drugs, violence and prostitution. Typical films shown in the movie houses, which centred around the city’s 42nd Street, included Bamboo House of Dolls, Blood Sucking Freaks, The Corpse Grinders, Mad Monkey Kung Fu, Miss Nymphet’s Zap-In and The Ultimate Degenerate.

Far from representing a marginal off-shoot of the movie business, the grindhouse films would be later plundered for ideas and imagery by mainstream cinema, while the trash ethic and aesthetic of the magazine itself would be effortlessly copied by many others.

Bill Landis co-wrote with his wife for 22 years Michelle Clifford, who is the principal author of Metasex.

Footnote: Bill Landis was fond of Alice Arno and Karin Schubert

Gratuitous nudity #15

Gratuitous nudity #15

Serena Grandi in Frivolous Lola

From the back (do you see the other man?)

Serena Grandi in Frivolous Lola front shot

From the front (see the other man and mind the mirror)

Since my musical activities have moved to Facebook, the only way I can put the popular in the title of the blog to credit is by introducing gratuitous nudity.

Today I started out with a still from a film by favourite Euro director Tinto Brass, a dream sequence in Frivolous Lola with generously bottomed Serena Grandi.

Researching Serena brings up this stupendous clip from a 1987 Lamberto Bava erotic thriller, Le foto di Gioia.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9XD778ntSU&]

Le foto di Gioia.

Other women of Brass who may be of interest to you:

Stefania Sandrelli, Serena Grandi, Anna Ammirati

Dedicated to b.

What the Butler Saw

I have received questions about the signification of What the Butler Saw in my post on the Düsseldorf erotic art exposition [1].

I’ve introduced two fictional characters on this blog. One has been rather active, Sholem Stein[2], another, Waloli has only done three posts[3]. The butler may be third character (although the only character I now feel comfortable with – in terms of what kind of message he can bring – is Sholem Stein.

But I sometimes feel it’s easier to express things in the third person, like Facebook invites you to do in their status updates.

What the butler saw

The butler is the voyeur, the ultimate peeping tom, the man who sees everything but whose duty it is to remain silent. Silence is golden, remember?

As for the encylopedic stuff:

What the Butler Saw first referred to an early mutoscope softcore series of erotic films.

Mutoscopes were a popular feature of amusement arcades and pleasure piers from the 1890s until the mid-20th century. The typical arcade installation included multiple machines offering a mixture of fare. Both in the early days and during the revival, that mixture usually included “girlie” reels which ran the gamut from risqué to outright soft-core pornography. It was, however, common for these reels to have suggestive titles that implied more than the reel actually delivered. The title of one such reel, What the Butler Saw, became a byword, and Mutoscopes are commonly known in England as “What-the-Butler-Saw machines.” (What the butler saw, presumably through a keyhole, was a woman partially disrobing.)

What the Butler Saw by Joe Orton

English playwright Joe Orton appropriated the title What the Butler Saw to make a theatrical farce of the same name, first staged in London on 5 March 1969. Cinema-goers recognised situations used by Orton’s contemporaries, the Carry On comedians of the late 1960s. For example, Carry On Doctor was showing whilst the play was being written in 1967.

What the Swedish Butler Saw

An early 1970s reference is the title of the film What the Swedish Butler Saw, also known as Champagnegalopp, a Swedish film from 1975 directed by Vernon P. Becker. The story is based on the Victorian anonymous novel The Way of a Man with a Maid. This sex comedy, in English known as What the Swedish Butler Saw or Confessions of a Swedish Butler, the film starred Ole Søltoft and Diana Dors.

Peepint Gom

As of the 2000s, the expression What the Butler Saw has functioned as a byword for voyeurism in general, much like peeping tom before it.

A lovely surprise. I am spinning at a party, so it seems. Dear me.

Jahsonic

Gratuitous nudity #14

My previous post provides me with an opportunity to provide you with a new instance of gratuitous nudity: a beautiful still from Africa Addio.

Africa Addio (1966) – Gualtiero Jacopetti, Franco Prosperi
Image sourced here. [Dec 2005]

Africa Addio is a 1966 Italian documentary film about the decolonization in Africa. It was shot over a period of three years, by Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi, two Italian filmmakers who had gained fame a few years earlier (with co-director Paolo Cavara) as the directors of Mondo Cane in 1962. The image was taken from the Captain Trash[1] site somewhere in 2005. This site is a treasure trove of “trash culture“. See its Google gallery here. See for example this image, of which I do not know the provenance.

Introducing Henri/y Gerbault

Introducing Henri Gerbault

Henri Gerbault

I’m just a jealous guy

Henry Gerbault (June 24, 1863October 19 1930), also spelled Henri Gerbault was a French illustrator and poster artist. He was a student of Henri Gervex. He was the nephew of Sully Prudhomme.

Le théatre libre by Gerbault

Poster for the Théatre Libre

The Théâtre Libre (French, Free Theater) was a theater founded by André Antoine that operated from 1887 to 1896 in Paris, France. Théâtre Libre was also the name of a European theatrical movement which celebrated Naturalist theatre and defied theatre censorship by founding subscription-based theatres. In London there was the Independent Theatre Society, which debuted the plays of George Bernard Shaw; and Germany had the Freie Bühne. Henrik Ibsen‘s Ghosts was the landmark play for all of these theatres.  —Sholem Stein

His œuvre was dedicated to humourist drawings and illustrations. He illustrated authors such as Félicien Champsaur, Charles Perrault and Marcel Prévost.

Henry Gerbault

He worked for numerous illustrated journals of the Belle Époque: La Vie Parisienne, Le Journal amusant, Le Rire, L’Amour, where he was noted for his voluptuous women.

From assiette au beurre