TV Cream

Films: E is for...

Emmanuelle

Lush cinematography, marvellous acting (in particular from Sylvia Kristel) and genuinely erotic scenes tastefully directed… Just Jaeckin! It’s the same badly dubbed, funny-for-about-five-minutes shite it’s always been, with ‘Ooh look! Fanny smoke rings! Chortle!’ tired businessman’s humour very much to the delapidated fore. Best bits of this sorry cash cow – sorry, ‘significant cultural event – were the original UK trailers, as voiced by Katie Boyle.

7 Comments

7 Comments

  1. Glenn A

    July 13, 2010 at 7:45 pm

    Also inspired the worst Carry On film ever, Carry On Emmanuelle, and numerous lame British imitators.

  2. THX Kling Klang

    October 16, 2011 at 11:10 pm

    Winner of the “Most grotesque misuse of a photograph of Paul Newman in a magazine” award 1974.

    There were about a hundred sequels, too, weren’t there? Most of them straight to video by the 80s. I say sequels, I don’t expect anyone was watching them for the story.

  3. Tom Ronson

    February 22, 2022 at 12:57 am

    Much better in just about every regard is the 1978 Australian film Felicity starring Glory Annen. Well, apart from that ‘Mama’s Little Girl’ song which is nice once, but unfortunately they play it about fifty bleedin’ times…

  4. Glenn Aylett

    June 7, 2022 at 11:10 am

    Sylvia Kristel was sadly typecast by this film. She wanted to try other roles, including that of Lois Lane in the Superman films and applied four times to be a Bond girl, but was overlooked due to being associated with Emmanuelle. However, among some real dross( a pornographic film about Mata Hari is probably her worst), the sex comedy Private Lessons was quite amusing.

  5. Sidney Balmoral James

    June 7, 2022 at 12:58 pm

    Quite how a rubbish sex film could attract an actor of the quality of Alain Cuny is anyone’s guess – it’s rather as if Alec Guinness appeared in Confessions of a Driving Instructor, but then great Italian and French actors didn’t seem to mind appearing in tripe now and again. Poor Sylvia Kristel might not have been quite as over-optimistic about the Bond role as one would think – Corinne Clery was in the Story of O (another Just Jaeckin sex film), and then Moonraker (and then nothing of any quality ever again, rather like Kristel.)

  6. Glenn Aylett

    June 7, 2022 at 2:18 pm

    @ Sidney Balmoral James, the French film industry was in decline in the seventies and more so than over here, they saw adult films as a way of saving the industry, although they never had a Confessions type series. Typically, Emmanuelle was seen as some kind of artistic pornography( this being France) and probably Cuny was involved to make Emmanuelle look more respectable. Also it made the amusingly named Just Jaeckin into a rich man, as it ran for years on the adult matinee circuit in the UK.

  7. Chris P Bacon

    June 7, 2022 at 10:26 pm

    Apparently there are 7 official films, Sylvia Kristel stars in the first 3, gets plastic surgery in the fourth to look younger (played by another actress), other ones for 5 & 5, then somehow reverts back to Sylvia Kristel for the 7th.

    The first 3-4 were shown on Channel 5 a few times in it’s early years.

Leave a Reply

Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

To Top