Emmanuelle

Whether you like it or not this is a milestone in the history of cinema. Like the James Bond movie Thunderball set new standards for violence in mainstream cinema, Emmanuel set new standards for sexual content.

Certainly the film was an amazing hit and box office records quickly tumbled. It is the most seen French film of all time and holds the record for the longest run at a single non-multiplex cinema (18 months in Paris, France). After this film sex on film was a completely different beast and many directors (new and old) used part of the template.

Anyone one wanting a dirty movie will be sadly disappointed. Here sex is treated as natural, rarely earth shattering and almost matter-of-fact. The bedroom is only one of the locations where the act takes place - in fact I am surprised the participants weren't arrested!

Sylvia Kristel plays a newly married wife of 22 (19 in reality) with no previous film experience (this is no accident). Previously she had only appeared in commercials. She is the innocent who becomes corrupted, but it is a journey of corruption she is happy to take. Her nice-but-cold older husband is also all for it. The circumstances behind their marriage are not even touched upon - but maybe it was a marriage of convenience as he is a world travelling diplomat?

For a film aimed at men, men are rarely shown in a great light. Emmanuel finds she is bisexual and looks happier with women than with men - who commonly treat her as a sex object. If she appeared brighter she could even be viewed as a feminist icon, but even the high queen of feminism Germaine Greer says she is a "bimbo."

Lot of things are dated in this movie. The view of casual unprotected sex certainly. There is even a casual rape. But its use of third-world locations is a treat on the eye (on the big screen especially) and there is nothing substandard about the production. Even the music is first class and still does the rounds on its own.

The photography is as good as you would see in a big budget epic. The film moves along at a slow but steady pace and you do look forward to finding out what happens next or how a situation is resolved.

The film is nothing but a study of an open marriage from the female perspective. The fact that she yields to the experiences and becomes more sexual bold is clearly pleasing to the male viewer. No doubt this was a date movie for males those that wanted their partners to follow her lead.

This is a clever erotic movie. It stays in the mind long after seeing it and Kristel looks comfortable with or without her clothes. She is far from a great actress, but she does have poise and dignity. The sequels that followed are nothing more than attempts to extract more money from a franchise and are merely routine entertainment.

Pac-Man is the grand old man of video games, Hulk Hogan is the grand old man of pro wrestling; Sylvia Kristel is the great dame of the softcore porn industry, and even today is still revered for her role as Emmanuelle.

Emmanuelle came out in the swinging seventies and still stands as one of the finest films of the genre. The Emmanuelle series features great scenery from exotic parts of the world, superb sensuality, and the fact that man-made babes are disallowed here.

22 year-old Kristel plays Emmanuelle (based on author Emmanuelle Arsan's erotica), a recently married young woman who is quite new to the world of sensuality. Married to a much older man, and free to explore her sexuality without any consequence, we see her going from place to place, yearning to learn more.

There's a lot to like here. Steamy settings in Thailand, lust on a squash court, a great fight scene in which the victor would get to have a "philosophical discussion" with Emmanuelle, skinny dipping, and a neat trick that a showgirl can do with a cigarette are some of the attractions. Miss Kristel is absolutely gorgeous and plays the innocent beautifully. The acting is a lot better than the usual American softcore film is. A film worth a look; you'll look at these films at a different light after this one.

BTW, I've seen both the original and English-dubbed versions; in the latter, the voices for Emmanuelle and Marie-Ange (played by 17 year-old Christine Boisson) are whack and cute at the same time. Especially in their conversations.

This film is loosely based on the erotic art novel by Emmanuelle Arsan.

The fact that it was directed by Just Jaeckin means that it is the best of the Emmanuelle series, and makes the others look like mere skin flicks, which I think they probably are anyway.

Sadly, in Britain, the censors, in an effort to save the British public from themselves, have hacked a few scenes out of it, including a "smoking" scene in a nightclub and a rape scene towards the end of the film.

Sylvia Kristel seems ideally cast as the protagoniste. Others have called her innocent, but this is not the case: she is not so innocent, but becomes even less so, as her adventures increase her learning and experience.

Compared with the novel, the sam-lo scenes are not so well done, and the Mario character is a bit tacky, otherwise the film is well done. Emmanuelle's encounter with Bee is better than the book. Not so good are one or two of the simulated sex scenes; they look pretty phony.

This film was exceedingly popular at the time it was released, and has lasted the test of time, even if some of the clothes have not.

One of films like a box with memories. I saw it when I was teenager and the fascination remains intact after decades, more than the sexual impulses. Because , in bizarre way, it remains a manifesto about opened marriage, bisexuality, manner to expose sex scenes and bitter poetry of a story representing a frame or , in happy perspective, a sketch. And, no doubts, for the way to propose to viewer her Emmmanuelle by Sylvia Kristel. Short, seductive for late poetry and, sure, it sounds very wrong, innocence.

The biggest cinema surprise hit of 1975, based on a book by Emmanuelle Arsan, made Dutch model Sylvia Kristel a famous actress. The first thing you'll notice is that over 30 years later, the fascination with the exotic is still strong. It was worth going to Thailand and present the real thing instead of shooting "Asian" scenes in a park in Spain or Italy like many other European film crews did at the time. And it surely is one of the very few erotic films where you have to pay attention to the dialogs. It was important to explain the bizarre idea of "freedom" which the scandalous novel had introduced - arguably a two-edged sword. It is said that dependency is humiliating, but aren't scenes like when Emmanuelle is given as a "prize" to the Thai boxer even more humiliating? Easy to see why the movie stirred up discussions - which made even more people want to watch it. The ambiguity of this "freedom" in "Emmanuelle" thus was used for marketing. In her autobiography "Undressing Emmanuelle", Kristel recalls one scene with real horror: near the end, when she is raped by the opium smoker. The young man didn't understand a word of what she or the director said, so he just grabbed her. Sylvia's disgust is visible, and if the sequels hadn't been softer, she probably wouldn't have made them. The first Emmanuelle film still was experimenting with both visual style and a provocative attitude; it may have created a certain formula even though it didn't completely obey its rules, since it was rather the more gentle and glossy second Emmanuelle film which perfected the formula. I voted 7/8/6/4/6/7 for the six cinema films of the series.