Sometimes they come back. Even though fifty years have passed and the common sense of decency has dramatically changed. It was June 26, 1974 when «Emmanuelle» was released in transalpine cinemas, the erotic film directed by Just Jaeckin and starring Sylvia Kristel, which caused great scandal, based on the novel of the same name by Emmanuelle Arsan and published in France in 1965 and then immediately reprinted: it appeared here in 1968 and was translated by Goffredo Fofi. In Italy, however, Cineriz distributed the film with numerous cuts and an editing that significantly changed the original plot only in November of the same year. On the pages of the newspapers of the time the posters appeared with a conspicuous “Forbidden to minors under 18”.
This year, on September 20th, at the 72nd edition of the San Sebastian Film Festival, the preview of the film «Emmanuelle» by Audrey Diwan, winner of the Golden Lion in Venice in 2021 with the film «The Choice by Anne-L’Événement”: protagonist Noémie Merlant, already appreciated in “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” by Céline Sciamma. Audrey Diwan’s new film is not technically a remake, but focuses on the figure of the writer herself and her erotic adventures during a business trip to Hong Kong.
But what is so compelling and scandalous about the novel and subsequently the film itself? The film, as mentioned starring the 22-year-old Dutch actress Sylvia Kristel, tells of the very libertine lifestyle of the young wife of a French diplomat in Thailand. It goes without saying that, in the Seventies, certain scenes went against common sense of decency and therefore there was an immediate scandal. Even in Italy, although a watered-down version of the original was released, the film did not escape censorship. «If in print – writes Paolo Mereghetti in his “Dictionary of Films” – the French adventuress had contributed significantly to the relaunch of licentious literature, on the big screen she legitimized as cultural a genre that had always been fatally hit by censorship. With “Emmanuelle” sex came out into the open and the difference between erotic cinema and pornographic cinema was coined. She was admitted into the first category, but undoubtedly also gave a fundamental impulse to the proliferation and diffusion of “red light” films in normal circuits”.
Sylvia Kristel – who died of disease at the age of 60 in 2012 – is the one and only Emmanuelle, the heroine created by Arsan: unfortunately, thanks to the fame she achieved, she remained trapped in this character. It is she who appears half naked, with lace and a pearl necklace, sitting on a wicker armchair, on the film’s poster: unforgettable, «l’histoire d’amour de Emmanuelle», as the film’s song said.
The first “Emmanuelle”, a box-office hit and cult movie of eroticism, which was shown in a theater in Paris for ten consecutive years, was followed by other films, again based on Arsan’s ideas, including “Emmanuelle the anti-virgin” (1975 ), «Goodbye, Emmanuelle» (1977), «Emmanuelle 4» (1983). Subsequently, both on the big screen and in television series, the character of Emmanuelle gave great impetus to erotic cinema.
Vanni Buttasi
