Les Nuits chaudes de Berlin

A visually impressive movie, very arty and with many subtle undertones. Packed full of pulchritudinous young females in various stages of undress and very risque in its day, the film is, however, very ponderous in places, particularly during the first hour.

Basic plot summary: In 1939 Berlin, the Nazi authorities take over the famous Salon Kitty brothel and pack it with new girls of good Aryan stock and impeccable National Socialist credentials. Their mission is to spy on their military officer clients and report back to their controllers about anyone who seems to be wavering from the Party line. All goes well until one of the girls, Marguerite, falls in love with a Luftwaffe pilot who has turned his back on Hitler and all he stands for.

Outrageous, unsettling, exploitative and courageous, it is also slightly overlong. The current running time at well over two hours is due to the more contentious material being put back in but maybe some other scenes might have been cut to compensate. I love the film, the scenes of debauchery and nudity, male and female, the decadent singing and dancing and the glorious sets by Ken Adam but it is a slight story and as the end draws near it begins to stumble and repeat itself. Always preferable to the much lauded Cabaret there is a real sense of foreboding, of a major calamity and despite the roars and champagne popping at news of the invasion of Poland and later the fall of Paris, we can't help waiting for the biggest crash when the nasty, ugly men in the wonderful costumes get their comeuppance.

I'm not really sure what I was hoping for when I rented this movie, but I know I certainly wasn't hoping for what I got here. To be sure, the art direction is extremely good. And sure, there is gobs of nudity and sex almost bordering on hard-core. But despite all this, the movie is BORING, especially at the almost ungodly length of over 2 hours with the recently issued director's cut! While there is an interesting idea with the plot premise, it goes all over the place. Characters come then go offscreen for long periods of time so they aren't really developed, and the little plot there is would probably (at best) barely cover an hour if all the redundant footage was cut out. All the same, pretty amazing Germany would get involved in a coproduction of this nature, and I guess it might be considered an interesting footnote in that it served as a warm-up for Brass' equally bizarre later film CALIGULA.

Sometimes when a film relaxes and you relax into it, you can really feel that you are touching the filmmaker. That he is slightly drunk and comfortable and you are experiencing him (or her).

That's one place you want to be in your life in films, and it is the basis for many of the film experiences I rate as "must have."

But it has all sorts of dangers. The filmmaker must be more than skilled enough to connect, he must be actually interesting, worthwhile, engaged in life in ways that impregnate. There are few films that are well enough sculpted to be entered. And of those, there are few that reward your investing wet parts of your soul to it. You know who the good ones are.

Even then, often you'll get what you have here, equal parts of fine wine and flat cola. I suppose it is impossible to be otherwise with Nazi-centered soft porn, but Jess Franco (when not drunk) can do pretty well.

The good here is that once in a while, you'll encounter some staging with some stark, clear composition and elements that are every bit in the class with Lang or Greenaway. These have ordinary camera positions: non-human in character but human in position. Its the creation of a staged imagination, of dramatic nuance not placed in the actor but in the cinematic frame. (The actors aren't bad, by the way; its just that the weight of the thing isn't on their shoulders — or other body parts.)

Some day, commentors like me will be able to provide bookmarks to these scenes so you can experience them without wading through the rotted soup in between. Oh, and that is a ghastly experience, a walk in the dark through greasy fog from one brilliant view through a window to the next.

Hey, there's a story, but never mind. Its as irrelevant, stupid and disposable as its sisters, like "Schindler's List," which this resembles in a few ways. And there's some nudity, though in most cases one wonders why. The chief actress is pretty and very German, different from Brasses usual big-bottomed Italian tigresses.

I'd really like you to see some of the good stuff here. But like much of Bertolucci, you would curse me for sending you there.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

"Salon Kitty" is an exploitation and a serious study of Nazi atrocities...

Kitty Kellermann runs a brothel that provides entertainment to the German elite… Unknown to her, it has been annoyed by a top SS officer to gain incriminating evidence against some of Germany's top general… One of the girls, Margherita, falls in love with a German officer who wants to defect to the Allies… The plot is discovered, and Margherita is used as an informer, but when she tells Madam Kitty about the goings-on in her house, she is outraged and plots revenge…

The film indulges in many of the perversions and sexual humiliations the Germans inflicted on the whores of Salon Kitty...

Tinto Brass directs the film with a heavy hand, focusing continually during the ending sequence to create a hypnotic effect… He doesn't shy away from the atrocities, and often takes intense pleasure in them... The characterizations are very firm and realistic, but the movie's harsh portrayal of much of the sexual activity has kept it out of the mainstream