Paradisio

An eccentric English professor travels around European cities, pursued by Russian agents, sporting a magic pair of sunglasses which enable him to see women naked. That's about it. The film is shot in black-and-white, but the view through the sunglasses is in lurid colour. Our hero stumbles across the wonderful lenses when a scientist friend of his is killed. The rest of the story is a feeble comedy-thriller as he blunderingly stays one step ahead of the sinister Russians. Girls are all voluptuous and compliant, and they obligingly pose for our hero to ogle them. However, this being 1961, they all carry strategically-placed bags, trays etc. Don't expect to see candid groin shots! The film is largely dialogue-free: possible so that it could be distributed around Europe with a minimum of local-language dubbing. It's a sort of Jacques Tati Meets The Female Breast. One interesting side observation: our modern fad for super-thin models is thrown into stark relief by these buxom babes, who were obviously the taste of the time. The mixture of black-and-white with colour is odd but appealing. We see post-austerity Europe in harsh grisaille (Berlin still has bomb craters) but we view the women in a warm reddish haze. Not a masterpiece, but worth sitting through once.

I saw this film about three years ago, late at night after a session at the pub, so my perceptions at the time, and my recollections now, might not be exactly razor sharp. I have to say, though, that I found it strangely compelling. Arthur Howard, the much put-upon Pettigrew in the "Whack-O" TV series (which also starred the dark genius of 50s/60s British comedy, Jimmy Edwards), is in "Paradisio" a similarly likeable, self-effacing individual this time thrust bemusedly into the role of Everyman in the midst of Cold War intrigue. Michael Coy is quite right to point out the fascination of its Continental location footage, which reminds us how recent an event WW2 was at the time. The sparseness of dialogue rather contributes to the film's "ambient" quality, and the almost dream-like visual texture gently seduces the eye.

"Hurrah for buxom babes!" I say, the taste of most of us men even today, I would aver. It's probably true to say that films like "Paradisio" serve as useful benchmarks for the gradual post-war shift in sexual attitudes from repression to frankness. Seen from our perspective, as Michael Coy hints, "Paradisio" seems laughably inhibited and prim (rather like Arthur Howard himself, or at any rate his on-screen persona), but today's unflinching treatment of sexuality would not have been possible without such earlier, less candid treatments. I'd gladly watch it a second time.

Paradisio is the single film co-written and directed by the obscure Jacques Henrici. As such some of it falls within a contemporary wave of films called 'nudie-cuties' of which better-known examples today are Russ Meyer's Immoral Mr Teas (1959), and Herschell Gordon Lewis' The Adventures Of Lucky Pierre (also 1961). Nudie-cuties were a fairly short lived phenomenon, combining the characteristics of the burlesque and nudist films which sprang out of the changing market for on-screen titillation. It lasted for five or six years before in turn being rendered obsolete, at least in the US, by the growing hardcore market.

The new, more sophisticated type of adult film offered an easy variant of previous grind-house material, and became a genre that often featured playful or whimsical content. Thus Meyer's Immoral Mr Teas featured a hero who, being previously anaesthetised, is suddenly able to see women naked. Paradisio's sunglasses offer similar advantages to the professor. Via this device he gains special licence to ogle - if not to touch, as nudie cuties were always naughty rather than explicit, a coyness which these days makes a film like Paradisio quaint, almost family, entertainment.

At the centre of Paradisio is Arthur Howard, brother to Leslie, Britain's late, gentlemanly star who appeared as The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), another character who also acts one thing but is secretly another. Obviously a modest success in its own terms (or perhaps just an idea too good not to repeat), Paradisio was remade shortly afterwards, as Mr Peek-A-Boo's Playmates, 1962). Whoever Mr Peek-A-Boo was, one doubts he would have the same impact today. Besides having brother Leslie, Arthur's son is the respectable Shakespearian Alan Howard - a fact that, for British viewers at least, adds to the ironic pleasure which Howard senior's mugging, reminiscent of a mildly depraved Alistair Sim, brings to the film.

When, two years later, Roger Corman made X: The Man With The X-Ray Eyes, he gave an ability to 'see through' things some interesting overtones; his hero eventually tore out his own organs of sight in philosophical anguish. More recently still, John Carpenter's They Live!, offered its own sunglasses, which revealed to shocked wearers an alien presence on Earth. In such films the heroes find changed perceptions upset their world vision, provoking critical, drastic response. By contrast, Henrici's film is nowhere so ambitious, focusing instead on a generally comfortable world full of near adolescent fantasy, in which pleasure, not danger, is ultimately reaffirmed. Its supporting plot is endearingly ramshackle, a peg upon which to hang chaste visions of nudity, even though whose internationally based, glamorous, espionage action reminds one that the genre-setting Dr No was just around the corner.

Boasting no less than six directors of photography, Paradisio was clearly parceled out, and then assembled, for the wider international market - leading one to wonder if stronger versions exist. Sections of the film were shot by turn in Oxford, Berlin, Munich, Paris, Venice and the Riviera. Overdubbed throughout, and with extensive narration by the professor, such a vehicle would have ideal for re-tracking for continental distribution. More interestingly, while the film's normal scenes are shot in black and white, those seen through the famous glasses are always colour tinted. Originally issued in 3D, this is one of the few remaining indications of the process, which is barely exploited in composition elsewhere. Still, such a striking device handily partitions 'reality' from the mild fantasy in view. Specifically, the visual warmth of these glamour sections sets them apart from the grey, world in which the professor finds himself, either in Oxford or later, in postwar Berlin. At the start, the professor regrets being stuck "in the austerity of our British universities" and later again talks of Oxford's "stultifying atmosphere." There's a report that Paradisio has since been colourised. One hopes not, as such tampering would undoubtedly reduce the impact of moments displaying liberating sensuality in such useful visual shorthand.

As a British nudie-cutie Paradisio succeeds well enough, a little more tentative than its American cousins perhaps but, despite or because of this, possessing an endearing quality of its own. It also contains some fairly surreal moments: for instance in the cabaret club when a nude lights the professor's long cigar using a pair of extendable hands (a rare 3-D inspiration), or later when he drunkenly contemplates another woman, this time to discover she has three breasts. The professor is also able to use his glasses to detect contraband, spot chastity belts and, most oddly to 'disrobe' famous paintings in The Louvre such as the Mona Lisa ("so that's why she's smiling!"). When we first see the hero he is photographing a different kind of 'bird', using mathematics to achieve the best results. His skills in calculation, the only indications of his academic specialisation, will later prove useful during a gondolier chase in Venice. His contemplation of more seductive nature is the point of the piece, one that the spy plot - growing more and more predominant, until it concludes with a chase round the Brandenburg Gate - only serves to interrupt. Thus, as the professor is confronted by a succession of corpses those colleagues murdered by the pursuing agents so he and the audience also contemplate, with more enthusiasm, the persuasive charms of warmer bodies elsewhere.

Paradisio today remains a curio, a relic of a time when the modern adult industry was still finding its feet. A British co-produced film from this date, that combines elements of a espionage drama, nudie-cutie, as well as a couple of mild burlesque acts among its attractions remains an interesting experience. In the UK at least Naked As Nature Intended, made the same year, was more significant but I'd argue Henrici's film is the more interesting.

Within the course of this solidly carpentered work, six colleagues of the film's protagonist, Professor Sims of Oxford (Arthur Howard, brother of Leslie) are murdered. These dire acts afford no complications for lighthearted Sims, as this is not a mystery story, but rather an international and mildly racy travelogue, with its focus upon European scenic beauty, and also upon a raft of partially undressed young women. These latter serve to classify the film as one among that briefly popular "nudie cutie" cinema phenomenon of 1959/60. Obviously straitened by a small budget, the picture's producers decided that attractive scenery of the film's many geographic locales was of more significance than a plot that is handicapped by thin writing and acting. Professor Sims fortunately retains possession of a pair of sunglasses that were willed to him by the initial murder victim, and he seldom misses an opportunity to scrutinise a pretty damsel through them, because the spectacles magically enable their wearer to ogle people beneath their clothing. The nudity seen therein is not what has become accepted as "explicit" (full-frontal), but the employment of what are obviously hand-held cameras throughout the film results in a mode of cinematic resolution that was lapped up by audiences of the period. Although most of the action is shot in black and white, the unclothed portions are seen through the use of vibrant coloured stock. This was originally issued in "3D", but the only spectacles required for viewers are those that vicariously rest upon the face of Professor Sims. The mentioned six homicides are lost amidst the resplendent scenic attractions of, respectively, Oxford, Berlin, Munich, Paris, Venice, and the French Riviera, with each site notable for its artificial energy, used here by Howard in an attempt to bolster wretched material. Finally, in spite of the diversity offered by appealing locations and ladies, and the mystifying nature of the sunglasses, we are left, with what shall be considered to many viewers a rather silly affair, and Howard at his silliest, a film wherein female beauty and captivating scenery cannot effectively substitute for a plot line.

I was one of the authors of this little soft porn film-making conceit. It had its genesis in the film writer's strike of 1959-60. Hollywood studios were shut down. While the stars and executives didn't suffer, most of the film making trades, paid by the picture, were out of work. Low budge nudie films such as "The Immoral Mr. Teas" were cleaning up as second acts in burlesque houses. A couple of movie studio friends and I, having a lot of time on our hands, felt that we could make a sleazy picture as good as those currently being shown. In Hollywood that was the only game in town.

I sketched out the basic story of a professor with x-ray glasses that would let him see through fabric. The writer/director Henri Haile fleshed it out into a screen play. Henri Haile was, in fact, Haile Chase, a B film director and a dialog coach for independent studios. Jacques Henrici was Michael Baumhole, a studio publicist. I was the only one naive enough to put my real name on the film. In a couple of days we had an 80 page script, originally titled "Around the World in Eighty Ways." The budget was what we had in our bank accounts. We decided to film in Europe, both to avoid union rates and to get scenery unavailable in California. Besides, it was a good excuse for a vacation.

Our original choice for the lead actor was Alastaire Sims, but he was unavailable. We settled on Arthur Howard, a fortuitous choice, since he worked for less money and obviously relished the opportunity for getting a starring role. We filmed all over Europe, hiring local independent camera men, many who had filmed prize winning short subjects. The film making industry was undergoing a technical revolution at the time. Hand held Arriflex cameras could produce image quality as good as studio Bell and Howell equipment. All scenes were filmed on location because we couldn't afford sound stages. Local actors took all the secondary roles. Nudity wasn't a big deal in European films and we had no difficulty getting full exposure. We enjoyed the experience, Arthur enjoyed the experience. And then the writer's strike was over. Real jobs called. We returned to the USA with 10,000 feet of exposed film and no contract for theatrical release.

On our return we sold the largely unedited footage to Jack Harris, a distributor of second bill (and soft porn) films. Harris had the theatrical contacts to get the film shown. He is the one who spliced in the color segments when Professor Sims put on his glasses and added the 3- D effects. The film was released in the US to modest success but made a big hit in Japan. I understand that it became a minor cult favorite during the 80s.

Haile Chase went on to direct a number of unexceptional studio potboilers. Michael Baumhole returned to the publicity department. I took a teaching position at a New York university. We had a ball making this crummy nudie flick.

Lawrence Zeitlin