The Story of O (1975)

This one is surely the most interesting(and probably even the most intelligent)adult movie I´ve seen.The plot is very boring on some places,but the psychological aspects of the characters and the locations are stunning.It´s really a movie you can think about afterwards.Besides of that it´s really erotic.The atmosphere is very intense and the nude scenes have a great photography.Bondage and torture of naked women surely was a bit too hard in people´s stomach back in 1975 and it was banned in several countries.But believe it or not:You can see it in German TV from time to time(uncut)...this is unpossible with a X-rated film in other countries.

Fmovies: I admit I know little about the S+M/B+D lifestyle, but if this is any indication, it must be kind of like being in a bad European "art" film. This is one movie that truly does not deserve its notorious reputation(either in the negative or positive sense). It's just your typical silly and pretentious 70's Eurotrash. It is slightly less boring than the director's previous "Emmannuelle" (1974) but only slightly. The lead (and only conceivable reason to watch this nonsense) is Corrine Clery,who was later a second-string Bond girl eaten by vicious dobermans in "Moonraker". Clery spends most of the movie naked and being whipped by various men and women. This certainly sounds pretty sordid, but the movie (tastefully?) never shows the whip actually hitting her. And though she is almost constantly being flogged, there never seems to be a mark on her on her perpetually on-display body. She is also passed around by various men, but the sex scenes are even more circumspect than the whipping scenes. I'd enjoy watching Clery doing anything naked(mowing the lawn, painting a fence, digging a garden), but there's just nothing especially exciting here. Mostly, the movie consists of cheesy dialogue and idiotic libertine philosophizing. I don't know if you have to be a sadist to enjoy it, but you definitely have to be a masochist to sit through it.

Adapted from a famous erotic novel – with Sadean overtones – by Dominique Aury (writing as Pauline Reage), this came hot on the heels of director Jaeckin’s box-office smash EMMANUELLE (1974), and was itself followed by Shuji Terayama’s FRUITS OF PASSION (1981). I would also like to watch Jess Franco’s reworking of the same source material, THE SEXUAL STORY OF O (1981) – recently released on DVD through Severin.

Anyway, easily the best things about the film are the pleasing soft-focus photography and Pierre Bachelet’s haunting score. The stunning-looking Corinne Clery is ideally cast in the enigmatic title role – not so her male co-stars, stolid Udo Kier and a rather bemused Anthony Steel (Jaeckin originally wanted Christopher Lee who had actually played a similar role, briefly but effectively, in Franco’s superior EUGENIE...THE STORY OF HER JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION [1969]).

With too many characters involved but not enough explanation as to their particular motives, the film winds up being mostly uninvolving as a result: the female ‘victims’ are too easily willed into participating into the clandestine and degrading goings-on, as if they – and the viewing audience with them – are supposed to take all of this twaddle for granted (not to say seriously)! However, the finale – in which Clery is seen to have mastered her skills in playing the game and now matches her ‘superiors’ in every way – is a nice touch.

The Arrow R2 DVD I watched presents the film in an English-dubbed re-edited version prepared by Jaeckin himself (though the erotic content is said to be intact). Incidentally, I followed this with Radley Metzger’s similar but even more disturbing and explicit THE IMAGE (1976).

The Story of O fmovies. Just Jaeckin's film version of the celebrated novel by Pauline Reage manages to completely miss the point of her work (by changing the ending, specifically), but taken purely as a movie has a certain amount of interest.

Corrine Clery plays 'O', a photographer who is taken by her boyfriend Rene (Udo Kier) to a sado-masochistic den where she willingly submits to physical and sexual abuse. 'O's motivation was much more obvious within the novel, but here it is secondary to the titallating spectacle of soft porn. Clery is not really the ideal 'O', either, her looks being too idealistic and her acting just too bad.

After a spell in the academy which serves to turn her into a total submissive she is practically sold on to Sir Stephen (50s pin-up Anthony Steel, of all people!) who is even more depraved and dominating than anyone else she has met. Perhaps the strongest sections of the film concern 'O's relationship with Sir S, but I wasn't convinced by the changed ending (powerful though it was from a movie standpoint). The cinematography is also attractive, particularly in its use of colour, and the French language version adds a certain mystique to the story.

I caught this film on a German satellite channel a few months ago. The locations and characters are sophisticated (no tattoos body piercing or lewd behaviour). There is a story line but the way in this is filmed is incredibly stunning and highly erotic. Corinne Clery a remarkably beautiful women, must be very pleased at the Playboy quality of the production. I rate this in the top 5 of any erotic film I have ever seen and recommend you to buy a copy if you can find one to keep. This is the benchmark against which all directors of this film genre should aspire to.

Following his spectacular commercial as well as begrudging critical success with the landmark EMMANUELLE, photographer turned filmmaker Just Jaeckin tried his hand at another erotic literature adaptation. Published in 1954, "Histoire d'O" caused an immediate scandal – which drove the curious to the book stores – with its single-minded first person account of a young woman's voluntary debasement to please her insecure lover, evolving into a more equally based power relationship with the sophisticated elderly mentor to whom she is passed on. Its author "Pauline Réage" was clearly pseudonymous and who was really responsible proved a fertile source for speculation, a particularly persistent possibility being idiosyncratic director Alain Robbe-Grillet who would dabble (with wife Catherine, under the joint "nom de plume" Jean de Berg) in the S&M field with "L'Image", ironically also filmed that year in a beautiful borderline hardcore version by Radley Metzger. Finally, the culprit came clean herself – for, yes, it indeed was a woman – in 1992, revealing herself to be respected writer and translator Dominique Aury (whose real name was Anne Desclos), who had penned the novel as an angst-ridden love letter to her considerably older paramour Jean Paulhan, an esteemed member of the Academie Française, whose sophistication both overwhelmed and terrified her. Retaining much of the book's matter of fact prose through effective voice over, supplying the voice "O" willingly surrenders, HISTOIRE D'O proves Jaeckin's high watermark as an erotic entrepreneur.

Never given a proper character name beyond the single letter she adopts with implications of both nothingness and infinity, "O" (engagingly portrayed by exquisite Corinne Cléry, memorably ripped apart by Dobermanns in minor Bond MOONRAKER) humors lover René (cult favorite Udo Kier) by accepting an extended stay at the Château of Roissy, a secluded environment designed for the education of women – by their own volition, stressed at every turn – into a life of submission as the ultimate expression of love. Dressed in flowing robes that allow easy entry to whoever feels so inclined, "O" becomes part of a silent sisterhood whose utter servitude instills them with innate strength, available to all men yet belonging to none. Her personal manservant Pierre (longtime character actor Jean Gaven, impressive as one of the assumed villains in Jean Becker's masterpiece L'ETE MEURTRIER, coincidentally another film relying on extensive narration to get its point across) doles out daily punishment but relinquishes his power when he falls in love with his charge.

Her training complete, "O" returns to her real world occupation as fashion photographer, grooming stuck up model Jacqueline (gorgeous Li Sellgren, also in Jaeckin's MADAME CLAUDE) for René's benefit and a subsequent stay at Roissy. It soon becomes clear that "O" has already outgrown her only outwardly unconventional lover, summoned by his "tutor" Sir Stephen (former British matinée idol Anthony Steel, no stranger to "naughty" credits as he appeared in both of James Kenelm Clarke's Fiona Richmond vehicles HARDCORE and LET'S GET LAID) who has become intrigued by this strangely subservient girl wielding power over his pupil. Equipped with fearsome black housekeeper Norah (imposing Laure Moutoussamy, star of occasional gay pornographer Norbert Terry's COUCHE-MOI DANS