Les infortunes de la vertu

On paper, this looks like THE greatest exploitation idea ever! The vicious writings of Marquis de Sade brought to the screen by no less a person then the Godfather of sleaze: Jess Franco! And starring the fabulously outrageous Klaus Kinski as the Marquis. And there are several other aspects about this film that indicate that you're about to see a triumph in the euro-exploitation field. Like the rather big budget. Franco normally makes the most out of small budgets but here he actually had the chance to work with decent set pieces, costumes and actors. The cast is more than decent with Jack Palance, Howard Vernon (Franco regular) and the ravishing Maria Rohm and Romina Power. This latter one plays the title role and – as well as the entire film – disappoints. The movie is a series of unspectacular events and I never saw Franco this tame! Marquis de Sade: Justine is low on violence, low on nudity and extremely low surprises. Kinski is dreadfully underused and the whole thing is just too correct! Which is NOT Franco's trademark…

Of course, it's very stylish and guided by brilliant music. The sets are gorgeous and the two leading ladies remain a joy to stare (preferably when they keep their mouths shut). This certainly isn't Franco's finest film but I'll still prefer it over 99% of the amateurish crap that is brought out nowadays. Franco rules, but he had a bad day here!

Sorry to disappoint, but Justine is by no means the welter of non-stop gore and perversion you might expect from a confluence of Franco, de Sade and producer Harry Alan Towers. Adapted from the Marquis's sublimely immoral 'moral tale,' it plays for much of its length as a bawdy 18th century romp in the style of Tom Jones. Naturally, with the added joys of cut-rate production values and dodgy acting.

We only hit familiar Franco territory when our heroine (a bland Romina Power - yes, Tyrone's daughter) is ravished by a coven of depraved monks. Cue for lots of naked Eurotrash starlets, trussed up in chains. Gee, it's good to be home!

So Justine is not quite your typical Franco production. For a start, it has something approaching a budget. That means a lot of semi-big names (most of whom have seen better days) show up as 'guest stars.' Indeed, the film is best watched as a vast costume party, whose guests have been invited to Come-As-Your-Most-Embarrassing-Moment.

Hence we get Akim Tamiroff as a drunken pimp, Mercedes McCambridge as a lesbian brigand, Sylva Koscina as a cross-dressing noblewoman and Klaus Kinski as the Marquis de Sade himself. The grand prize must go to Jack Palance as Brother Antonin, spiritual leader of the above-mentioned depraved monks. His may be the most deranged performance in the annals of screen acting.

Weighed down by the baggage of an international tax-shelter epic, Justine never comes close to the dreamlike delirium of Succubus or Virgin Among the Living Dead or any of Franco's more extreme, smaller-scale works. Still, it's a lot of fun - in its utterly reprehensible way.

Franco himself even crops up as the ringmaster of a grotesque peepshow, where Justine is forced to appear after she survives any number of Fates-Worse-Than-Death. Now that's what I call typecasting!

This is one of the ultra-prolific Spanish director Jesus Franco's biggest budget movies, from a period in his career where he took an actual bit of care (i.e. There is actual editing in this one). It's a story based on the notorious 18th century novel by the Marquis de Sade, it tells the story of a couple of Parisian orphan girls. Juliette becomes a prostitute and marries a rich noble, while Justine goes down a purer path but winds up sent to prison for a murder she didn't commit, ends up escaping and encountering a succession of shady characters. There's not a bad cast in this one, with everyone's favourite German with a personality disorder, Klaus Kinski as de Sade (I am guessing this role suited Kinski down to the ground as I don't think he had any lines to learn), Eurotrash babes Maria Rohm, Sylva Koscina and Rosalba Neri appear in various parts, with Jack Palance also appearing in a very strange role indeed. While this is a very uneven movie, it does benefit from its episodic nature, meaning its pacing is not too bad. It could be described under the specific grouping known as literary sexploitation, i.e. Sexploitation for people who read books.

Marquis De Sade: Justine is a long way from being unwatchable as there are a number of things that are good. It is however a very strange film and not a very easy one to rate.

Starting with what is good about Marquis De Sade: Justine, coming off best is the music score which is outstanding, if on occasions overpowering, very stirring and rich in sound and it fits the film very well. The film also looks good, the sets are simply gorgeous, the plentiful costumes are certainly attractive and a lot of care was clearly put into the cinematography which is beautiful. The crowd scenes are tense and rousing and while he sometimes overdoes with the fading in and out Jesse Franco does give some of his most competent directing ever, though it does feel very different for him. While I was not very impressed with the acting generally, the charming Maria Rohm makes the most out of her brief role and Mercedes Mccambridge is an absolute hoot.

Romina Power is very wooden in the lead role on the other hand, while Klaus Kinski is criminally underused and pretty much wasted, spending his entire screen looking remote, and Jack Palance is embarrassingly over-the-top and out of place. I like Palance but not here, he's not as bad as he was in Che! and Outlaw of Gor but this is one of his worst performances. While the film is undeniably fun there are too many times where the story is episodically disjointed and lethargically paced, sometimes not as cohesive as it could be. It also feels very tame and toned down by today's standards and not sleazy or sensual enough, the story is one where those qualities are necessary and it just felt bland and agreed too correct. The ending is very heavy-handed when you can actually hear the dialogue when it's not being drowned out the stilted way it's written and uninvolved line delivery from most makes it not really worth listening to.

In conclusion, not unwatchable but very strange and not easy to make of. 5/10 Bethany Cox

I watched this last week, my sixth Jess Franco movie. After the relative disappointment with EUGENIE DE SADE (1970), I had hoped that the next Franco would relight my initial admiration for his work. In this respect, I was not a little wary of trying JUSTINE, as its reception on the Internet since its DVD release has not been exactly positive! But since it was the only thing available at the moment… Well, I wasn't wrong about my reservations regarding this film, as I must say that I found it truly abysmal! Not so much a waste of time as a wasted opportunity: as Rod Barnett had said in the recent FEMALE VAMPIRE (1973; a film I haven't watched yet, by the way) thread, I think that Franco fails even here to bring out the full potential of the definitely intriguing plot - despite having the biggest budget of his entire career to work with!

Still, what I find most disconcerting about the film is the ongoing parade of embarrassing performances from some interesting (i.e. formerly respectable) actors: Akim Tamiroff, Mercedes McCambridge and, worst of all, Jack Palance. The other notables from the cast - Klaus Kinski, Sylva Koscina and Howard Vernon – acquit themselves far better, also because they were already practiced at this sort of thing. McCambridge's raspy voice is given a thorough work-out here, as though she were already attempting to 'find' the demon voice for THE EXORCIST (1973)! Palance, on the other hand, gives new meaning to the expression 'chewing up the scenery' - the fact that he was drunk all through the shooting of the picture could hardly bode well for some form of coherence in his performance – and, while I couldn't help (or indeed stop) laughing when he was on screen, deep down I felt really sorry for him as he clearly did not belong there!!

Despite his brief and silent appearance, Klaus Kinksi makes for an appropriately moody Marquis De Sade, who grows increasingly paranoid as the story he is writing unfolds on the screen; actually this linking sequence is quite atmospheric: one online review even compares it to the Gothic horror films of Mario Bava, and I can certainly see where he is coming from with such an argument. Maria Rohm again proves to be an asset to the film (though she isn't nearly as effective here as she was in EUGENIE…THE STORY OF HER JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION [1969]): a clearly intelligent woman who possesses both great charisma and genuine sex appeal. Perhaps the film's best sequence is her heartless drowning of the Rosemary Dexter character, formerly her mentor and lover (needless to say, the fact that both women go through the scene stark naked made it all the more memorable!).

As for Romina Power, this may come as a surprise to you but I didn't think she was as bad as most online reviews would have it. Of course, apart from her constant innocent demeanor, she never really captures Justine's essential personality (especially her gradual acceptance of masochism). However, you may remember that in my review of EUGENIE, I had similar reservations about Marie Liljedahl - though, to be fair to her, she certainly came off as less 'wooden'; then again, most of the performances in JUSTINE are terrible anyway, so it really doesn't matter! Perhaps, for someone like Francesco and me, we are more responsive to her 'acting' because we are used to watching her on Italian TV – whereas the rest of you will probably have to make do with this single, admittedly unimpressive performance! Still, echoing another review I read of the film, I'm not sure that Rosemary Dexter (apparently Franco's personal choice) could have done much better with the title role, though one cannot really judge her talent from the thankless role she was relegated to playing!

(Useless bit of trivia: Romina Power regularly comes to Malta on holiday – perhaps the world's largest collection of her father Tyrone's ephemera resides in our country, believe it or not! - and it is said that she often takes a villa at Naxxar to live in; Naxxar, of course, is the village in Malta where I live!)

For me, the best thing about the entire film is Bruno Nicolai's masterful score, which is perhaps wasted here! At the very least, however, one could say that JUSTINE is good to look at and that it is packed with incident, so it does not really feel slow (like EUGENIE, for instance) throughout its lengthy duration…if only what was on screen were more genuinely compelling!

As of now, I stand about 50/50 on Franco (from the very few titles that I have sampled) and, in all honesty, I'm beginning to despair of ever finding another film to equal EUGENIE or THE DIABOLICAL DOCTOR Z (1965). Still, I have high hopes for SUCCUBUS (1967) – which will be my next venture into Franco's endless canon – as well as VENUS IN FURS (1968) and LORNA THE EXORCIST (1974), though I'll only be able to watch the last two if the local censors deign to release them from their clutches!