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Released by: Pink Flamingo Entertainment
Released on: 11/17/2009
Director: Ole Ege
Cast: Various/Bodil
Year: 1971
The Movie:
Pornografi was apparently the first musical to premiere in Danish cinema, according to the introductory text scrawl that precedes this collection of ten short films compiled together. All shot by Ole Ege, who would go on to become one of the biggest figures in Danish pornography before presiding over the Museum Erotica which closed its doors a year or two ago.
The ten shorts that are collected here are Crazy Strip (1970), Dream Girl (1966), Three Lively Girls (1964), A Jolly Shave (1964), Harem (1968), The American Girl (1970), Ilse (1969), Spanking (1970), Group Sex (1969) and Springtime In Tivoli (1969). Combined, the shorts that make up Pornografi run 53:53.
Parts of the free jazz style soundtrack that graces this collection were composed by Dexter Gordon, while other parts of the film get it on to classical music. With the exception of Spanking, most of this material is very playful and free spirited. It very much seems like a celebration of the sexual revolution that was taking place around the world in the sixties and all involved seem to be having a good time. There are plenty of clichés here to giggle over - the harem sequence, the shaving bit, the scene where the two girls team up on one guy and the bit where two ladies experiment with some sex toys, all of which are or have been standards of modern pornography.
Spanking takes place in a dungeon and shows a blonde girl in leather boots whipping a bound brunette. It's obviously kinkier and set to a much more aggressive score than the other material. Once the whipping is done the caning ensues but you can see the brunette giggling in spots and it's not hard to tell that none of this is being done to hurt anyone but instead to play to the camera and get a rise out of the audience.
That obviously staged BDSM session aside, this is about as joyful and playful as pornography can get. Everyone here seems really into what they're doing, there's a really nice atmosphere of pleasantry to it all the complete lack of surgically augmented performers is a nice touch compared to today's silicone infested smut films. Ege obviously cared about the look of the movies he was making and so there's some nice detail in the background. The costumes are fairly fancy and plenty colorful and everything is reasonably well shot. Don't get me wrong, you're not going to spend hours psychoanalyzing the material or marveling over the set design - these are fuck films first and foremost - but they're nicely made and, dare I say it, charming.
Pornografi was often shown as the first part of a double bill when it played theatrically. The second part? None other than the notorious documentary A Summer Day, the short film about the life of Bodil Joensen (usually referred to simply as Bodil) co-directed by Ole Ege and Japanese filmmaker/artist Shinkichi Tajiri. Amazingly enough, this short took home the Grand Prize at The Wet Dream, which was the first ever erotic film festival to be held in Amsterdam in 1971. At the 53:54 mark, A Summer Day starts to play, right at the end of Pornografi, just as we can probably assume it would have done during its theatrical double billing. Set to Beethoven's 6th Symphony Pastoral, this silent film shows us what it's like on the farm that Bodil calls home. Intercutting with pictures of her as a young girl, we see her frolic in the grass, ride a horse in the buff, and take care of the daily chores her life requires she perform.
From there, it gets… odd. We see she wears a pendent with a picture of a dog around her neck. Then we see her try to help a male horse mount a female horse, showing no qualms whatsoever about guiding the stallion's erection into the hole it needs to find. We see her inside a barn playing with a horse, and then we see her fellate it. We see Bodil, calm as calm can be, lay down in the hay with a pig and fellate it as well before actually letting it penetrate her. From there, we see her in her bedroom where she lets her dog perform cunnilingus before she returns the favor and then lets it penetrate her just as the pig did earlier.
The subject of a UK Channel 4 documentary in 2005 as part of its Dark Side Of Porn series, A Summer Day has a bizarre sadness to it. Yes, we willing gawk at a fully mature woman engaging in some genuinely disturbing sex acts with animals and so the freak show factor certainly plays a huge part in the film's appeal, but Bodil has a loneliness to her and a sadness in her eyes that you can't ignore. When you learn what happened to her after this film made her a 'celebrity' and she later struggled with addiction, you can't help but feel bad for her. This in no way justifies her actions, but it does remind us that she was a living, breathing, feeling human being, albeit one with some serious issues. A Summer Day provides a really and truly bizarre contrast to the more celebrative Pornografi.
It should go without saying that both of the features included here on this disc are presented entirely uncut, and while that might not be such a big deal in the case of the first movie, in the case of A Summer Day it means that, yes, there are full on bestiality scenes included in the film.
When A Summer Day ends, there's one more short from Ole Ege tacked on - Den Kinesiske Maske, made in 1964. Here a woman with a strange Kabuki mask on takes off her kimono to the sounds of some cliché sounding oriental style music. She shakes her ass as the red gels bath her in colored light and then she takes off her lingerie and wiggles around a bit. It's tame by any standards but when it follows A Summer Day, it almost seems like something you'd see in church.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Pink Flamingo Entertainment should be commended for the surprisingly strong transfer that is on this disc. The 1.33.1 fullframe transfer, which is properly flagged for progressive scan playback, was obviously taken from film elements that were in very good condition as aside from some really mild print damage here and there, it's hard to complain. Yes specks do appear throughout playback but it's never distracting, rather, it adds to the atmosphere somehow. Anyone who has ever seen this material by way of some of the grey market copies and bootlegs that have made the rounds over the years will be very, very impressed with the quality of the image.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono soundtrack is made up entirely of music, there's no dialogue or narration here at all. Regardless, the music sounds great. It's nice and clear and very succinct and detailed sounding. It's all well balanced and free of any hiss or distortion. It may be a bit limited in range but that's just from the fact that that's how it was originally recorded. Nothing to complain about here!
On the disc, aside from some nice animated menus, there's a slide show which contains a reproduction of the film's original cinema program (in Danish only) which includes some great full color pictures and which is set to some of the jazz from the soundtrack, and a still gallery of nudie shots taken from the movie, again set to a jazz score. Ole Ege himself contributes two pages of liners notes included as an insert booklet, but they're in Danish so I've no idea what they say though they appear to give a breakdown for each of the shorts that makes up Pornografi and for A Summer Day.
The Final Word:
Some very esoteric and in many ways historically important pieces of European adult filmmaking are preserved on this disc in fine form thanks to the efforts of Pink Flamingo Entertainment. The disc might be short on extras but the content is fascinating and the A/V quality far better than anyone probably expected.