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Rating:
Since it is possible...
"The only porn movie worth watching", according to Paul Thomas Anderson, thus revealing his Catholic nature, and before doing so with the ensemble "Magnolia".
This 1976 film, directed under a pseudonym (Harry Paris), by New York director Radley Metzger, is still considered one of the (few) peaks of a cinematic language that, like no other, can baffle film archivists. For some, it is the ultimate peak, but that is not true, and here I will present my thesis.
A reinterpretation of the legend of Pygmalion, the film features Professor Love wandering around Paris searching for the most clumsy and inept prostitute to educate her in the erotic arts, in order to win the erotic contest that the wealthy Laurence Layman proposes every year.
Found Dolores in a brothel ("My real name is not Misty Beethoven but Dolores Beethoven") where, awkwardly made-up and wearing a shirt bearing the Mastercard logo, she reluctantly plies her trade, he takes her to America and, thanks to his assistant, educates her in the art of lovemaking, helping her overcome her aversion to the art of fellatio, which, as we know, is the "must" of classic pornography.
From the States, the group moves to Rome, a location coveted by all directors thanks to the work of Fellini; after passing the test (exciting a gay gallerist) Misty is ready for the great annual party, where she will triumph, becoming both the pride and the love of Professor Love's life.
After the failures of the sophisticated "Camille 2000" (ibid, 1969), a luxurious soft-porn version of Dumas's "The Lady of the Camellias," also shot in Rome and starring our own Nino Castelnuovo, the moderate success of "Erotika, Esotika Psikotica" (The Lickerish Quartet, 1970) and the tedious "Little Mother" (ibid, 1973), Metzger returns reluctantly to the newborn hard core, making the interesting "Score" (ibid, 1973) and the bizarre "Pamela Mann" ("The Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann, 1975), the latter a precursor to Misty but shot with his left hand.
Misty Beethoven is shot with a packaging and expertise rare in hard cinema. Luxurious camera movements, sparkling photography, curated music, good acting. Never have the merits and limits of the director emerged more fully than in this film; those unfamiliar with the world of hard core will find themselves amazed at such abundance and will see the actor-stallions navigating between the meshes of a well-defined screenplay and the luxuries of top-level camera work.
The card that "Misty" plays is that of humor, and often the jokes are funny. Furthermore, unlike 90 percent of hard core, there is a feeling of pagan freedom and joy of the senses that does not resemble at all the deadly content that hard cinema usually offers.
There are smiles, sometimes even laughter; we envy these characters for whom lovemaking is still a pleasure not to be missed, the ultimate goal of life, exercised with classical lightness. The ballet of bodies and the whirlwind of jokes are tied together by the music of George Craig, which paraphrases Jacques Loussier and the Swingle Singers, and by the overture of "William Tell".
The atmosphere of license even reaches homosexuality, already explored in "Score", viewed as one of the many sex experiences, without feathers and sequins or dramas.
The limit, in my opinion, lies in proposing a view of hard core that is stunningly dazzling and luxurious (those I show this film to are stupefied) but precisely because of this, less effective than that of Damiano, more acceptable, even if sex for Metzger always remains rough and physical. Paradoxically, you could almost show this film to your mother without her being horrified by her child's behavior.
In this film, the author partially addresses the dilemma that hard core consistently proposes: the limit of what can or cannot be filmed for a work to be defined as a film. Not that certain sexual relationships have the sole purpose of exciting the viewer (and thus leaving hard core as a product, like aspirin) but many times their representation becomes necessary for the economy of the work (and here we are in art).
The parallel editing of the gallery owner's seduction alternated with previously conducted tests in the Roman villa is masterful; one of the rare sexy moments in all of hard-core cinema.
I recommend viewing this successful work to those who do not know what the hard core of the roaring years could have been, when "Deep Throat" was earning as much as "Star Wars" and the Western world believed it had finally found the freedom of the senses and surpassed the limit of what could be spoken; drugs, capital, and AIDS, and the void following the great feast would stop all this, unfortunately, and man would not succeed in becoming the master of himself and his life.
Constance Money, then, is beautiful...
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