Mata Hari

US version of Mata Hari is cut omitting all of the sex scenes.International version is much more longer.DVD version released by MGM features the cut end edited version.Original version contain much more sex and nudity.I don't recommend that version.It is a soft core movie and buying the censored version of this silly film will be funny. I am doubtful that Lady Chatterley is also cut or not.I am not sure about it but i is also "R" rated.And it may also be cut.Fifth Musketeer is also cut omitting all of the nudity.For example uncut version contains much more nudity from Sylvia Kristel and Ursula Andress.

Did some idiot actually give this pile of garbage a 10?

This movie represents further proof, as if we needed it, that Hollywood is better at promoting movies than at actually making them. The idea of casting one of the sex symbols of the 70s, Sylvia Kristel, as one of the most notorious women in history, Mata Hari, a women whose mere name implies seduction, betrayal and intrigue, would seem like a winning combination, but that's about as far as anybody thought it through.

Mata Hari herself comes off as uninteresting and not particularly sexy, and her exploits, far from impacting the fortunes of nations in the high stakes game of WWI espionage, seem trite and trivial. Perhaps this was the point - to demonstrate that the myth of Mata Hari far surpassed the actuality - and if so the creators succeeded. Somehow, I doubt this was the intent. I think we just got another example of incompetent film- making. The subject matter SHOULD have been fascinating, even if the myth went far beyond the real history and the story should have been interesting and instructive however it evolved. In this case, we just got painfully dull cinema, unerotic and even unglamorous to the point of seeming rather tawdry looking. Mata Hari's famous stage act is recreated without sufficient verve or visual style to really give the viewer a sense as to how she become an international sensation, and Kristel herself seemed to be sleepwalking her way through the role, not that the script ever gave her anything much of interest to do. As the picture (and Mata Hari herself) reached its end, I found myself wondering, Is this it? Was this all she did? And if so, how did she become a household name? Such questions should not remain unanswered at the end of a biopic. I wouldn't have minded an inaccurate or sensationalized biopic either, as that might at least have been passably entertaining. Yet, I was not convinced that this version did Mata Hari's story justice either. Maybe a remake is in order.

This film is a complete waste of time and celluloid. The actors (and I use that term lightly) wasted their time making this film. The people who went and saw this film (alas, I was one) wasted their time. Do you see a pattern here? This film STINKS, plain and simple. Don't waste your time on it. There are other sources of information about this famous woman. Utilize them instead of seeing this!

A film that takes advantage of two myths, Mata Hari and Sylvia Kristel, in a vain attempt to revive a third one, erotic cinema.

Regarding the first myth, the film is merely inspired by reality, as is usual in cinema, particularly in Hollywood. Sometimes it takes real facts and characters, such as Captain Ledoux, Mrs. MacLeod, living in Java, erotic dances in Paris and Berlin, counter-espionage, the trial and death by firing squad, sometimes fantasy, in love with Karl (in fact her lover was a Russian officer in the service of the French, named Maslov, whom she rescued from enemy lines), the relationship between Karl and Ledoux, the sinister Fraulein Schragmuller and her terrorist conspiracy, and many other aspects of the argument. A recurring criticism in pseudo-biographical fiction.

But where the film most fails is in its attempt to use Kristel, the actress of Emmanuelle and erotic cinema diva of the previous decade, to embody that other erotic myth that is Mata Hari.

Erotic cinema was itself a myth. It never constituted a true genre, but a simple use of the progressive lightening of censorship to sell more and more nudity in the cinema, to the lustful public.

But, in 1985, nudity was already common in most films, even in Hollywood, and it no longer surprised anyone. It is used here in a more abundant dose than usual, but nothing particularly shocking or innovative, even for the time.

This leaves a good production, but focused on Kristel's sex and nudity scenes, which gives what is expected of her, but nothing more than that, because she was never a particularly gifted actress. Just a beautiful and elegant face and body, which cinema used to sell eroticism.

The film is therefore a misconception. A generous production, but that came a decade late.

Mata Hari is a beautiful Dutch-born dancer, working in Paris. It is August 1914 and war between France and Germany seems imminent. However, she accepts an invitation to travel to Berlin as part of a show. On the train she meets a young German army officer but any thoughts of romance are cut short when a French agent is murdered on the train, while in her company. She is arrested in Germany but freed when the German officer intervenes. While in Germany war breaks out and she is recruited by German Intelligence to spy on France.

I was under no illusions regarding this film, figuring it was mostly made as a skin flick (it stars Sylvia Kristel) but hoping that it was at least historically accurate, thus making it sensual depiction of the life of Mata Hari. Despite my low expectations, however, it is still disappointing.

About the only historically accurate things about this movie are the facts that she was Dutch, lived in the Dutch East Indies for a while, was a dancer, was a German spy and was captured by the French and executed. Everything else is pretty much fiction, created for dramatic effect, and poor effect at that.

Her whole story gets turned into one of her being blackmailed into being a spy, doing it for all love and actually doing her best to undermine the Germans. The idea is to make this into a love-during- wartime drama, but it fails as a romantic drama too - quite unengaging.

It even fails at it primary purpose - as a skin flick. Quite tame in that regard, what there is. The topless female fencing duel was unintentionally quite hilarious though...

It's essentially a B-grade (at best) skin flick with pretensions of being a romantic biopic, but by trying to encompass so many genres and audiences it fails in all of them.