The Golden Decade of Pornographic Cinema in Paris
This paper outlines the rise and decline of Parisian adult cinema in the 70s and early 80s and includes analysis of the era-defining films Simone Barbès ou la vertu and La chatte à deux têtes.
The Louxor Cinema, Paris.Wikimedia mbzt 2015.
“France experienced an explosion in the production of hardcore pornography in the mid-1970s. At the opening of the decade, French companies produced around twenty-two erotic (or softcore) films; by 1978 the number of erotic and pornographic films produced reached over two hundred, not counting imported titles.” (Callwood 26-27).
This level of production was continued until the early 1980s (Rakovsky 17). “From 1973-1975, there developed, for better or worse, a sort of golden age which continued up until 1981, the year in which a significant part of French directors left the genre; Francis Leroi, Gérard Kikoïne, Claude Mulot” (Lahaye, my trans.).[1]
The relative ease of distribution and public access to pornographic[2] films in this period can be attributed to legislative and fiscal changes in France under the Presidency of Giscard D’Estaing (1974-1981) (Callwood 31-35; Rakovsky, “Le bref apogée” 15), and more generally to the production of high-quality narrative features shot in 16 or 35mm (Church 13).[3] Under the liberal tutelage of Michel Guy, Secretary of State at the Ministry of Culture from 1974 to 1976, censorship of pornographic films as well as ‘soft’ erotic films such as Emmanuelle (1974) effectively ceased with a resulting dramatic increase in cinema attendances for both categories of film (Rakovsky, “Le bref apogee” 15). However, following a political backlash to this liberalisation, the 1976 Law of Finances (known as the Loi X) imposed a 20% tax on pornographic films and required the complete segregation of cinemas screening pornographic films from those screening non-pornographic (Trachman 447-48). The decline of cinematic distribution of pornographic films in the early 1980s can be traced to the advent of the VHS which facilitated production of pornography destined for home consumption,[4] as well as the emergence of AIDS as a public health crisis (Callwood 51).
Paris was the dominant market for the distribution of pornographic films, with the majority of X-rated cinemas clustered around “the train stations (Gare du Nord, Gare de l’Est, Montparnasse, Saint Lazare) Clichy, Pigalle, on the Boulevards and the Halles, the Parisian centres of prostitution” (Rakovsky “Même à Paris” 20; my trans.). Neige (1981), a film by Juliet Berto (1947-1990) and Jean-Henri Roger 1949-2012), was shot in “a cosmopolitan and criminal underworld Paris in the heart of the red-light districts of Pigalle, Anvers, Barbès, Belleville, La Goutte d’Or or even Montreuil” (Seknadje; my trans.) and captures the subversive and volatile social structures in these districts where the local cinemas provided a focal point of social interaction. Parisian cinemas showing porn films in this period included the Beverley at 14 rue de la Ville Neuve (2e), the Louxor at 170 boulevard de Magenta (10e), the Cigale at 120 boulevard de Rochechouart (18e), the Cinevog Lazare at 101 rue Saint Lazare (9e), the Cinevog Montparnasse at 20bis rue de la Gaité (14e), the Scala at 13 boulevard de Strasbourg (10e), the Marais at 20 rue du Temple (4e) and the Méry at 7 place du Clichy.[5] In addition, a number of cinemas specialised in gay porno films,[6] including the Dragon at 24 rue du Dragon (6e), the Marotte at 49 rue Vivienne (2e), both managed by the film-maker Norbert Terry,[7] and the TCB at 42 rue Fontaine (9e) (Hexagone Gay; Callwood 34-36).
Two films captured the ambience of the Parisian sex cinema in this period: Simone Barbès ou la vertu (1980) and La chatte à deux têtes (2002).
‘… Simon Barbès ou la vertu and La chatte à deux têtes are extremely valuable documents for our study, not so much for their presumed veracity but for the subject they address, namely life in an X film auditorium. Whether in the former Cinévog Montparnasse, rue de la Gaîté or in the existing cinema le Méry, place de Clichy, the cinematic medium allows us to observe practices until then more or less fantasised and doubly clandestine: firstly, because they take place in a neighbourhood cinema – a place that has disappeared – and secondly, they present programmes aimed at a more focused category of the population. (Lahaye, my trans.)
Simone Barbès was directed by Marie-Claude Treilhou (b.1948) and is set in the four screen Cinevog Montparnasse at 20 rue de la Gaîté. Ingrid Bourgoin plays the role of Simone Barbès, an usherette who guides clients to their seats in the selected screen, although, unlike in La chatte à deux têtes, the interior of the screening is never shown but evidenced on the film’s soundtrack.
Part one of the film takes place in the theater’s lobby as the leatherclad Simone and another usher (Martine Simonet) alternately argue and buck up each other’s spirits between taking tickets and escorting the male patrons to one of the theater’s three different auditoriums. Among their customers is a philosophical old gentleman they call the Marquis, another fellow who hangs around the lobby and furtively eyes the two ushers, and another man, who identifies himself as the director of one of the features being shown and who has a loud fit about the quality of the projection and sound equipment and the condition of the print. (Canby)
Matthew Macheret wrote an enthusiastic review of the film in Le Monde.
In this closed space, Marie-Claude Treilhou constructs out of limited means, refined changes of point of view and travelling shots, a stunning scenography of telescoped movements and words. The film is filled with unforgettable secondary characters, who manage to exist for the time of a scene, a passage, a passing word, or a studied silence. (Macheret, my trans.)
La chatte à deux têtes (Glowing Eyes/Porn Theatre) was directed by Jacques Nolot (b.1943) and filmed at the Méry cinema, 7 Place de Clichy. The film details the complex ballet of explicit sexual interactions between the clients during the screening of a porno eponymously named La chatte à deux têtes. Vittoria Scognamiglio plays the role of the astute cinema cashier who acts as go-between in the burgeoning relationship between the naïve young male projectionist, played by Sébastien Viala, and the charming middle-aged seducer, played by Jacques Nolot in a semi-autobiographical role.
The audience who take a seat after having ensured by the light of their lighter, that their seat is clean, are, in the main, heteros. But the sordid images on the screen and the female orgasmic screams provide an alibi for furtive contacts (masturbation, fellatio) with the homosexuals scattered around the screening. There are also the coming and goings of transvestites – of which only one, in a yellow dress (Olivier Torres), is seductive, the others being simply pathetic caricatures – who try and make their “favours” pay. It is sordid, even if the director stays neutral. Jacques Nolot has established a circulation between the closed word inside and the outside. (Sotinel 34, my trans.)
The decade from 1975 to 1985 saw the rapid rise and decline in the production, theatrical distribution and viewing of 35mm pornographic films in France, and in particular Paris. After the Loi X of 1976 required strict separation from mainstream and art house cinemas, the local adult cinema became not only a place to view pornographic films but also a place for sexual encounters. The rapid decline in the theatrical distribution of pornographic films from 1980 onwards meant this was a brief but significant period in the history of French cinema and Parisian underground culture, captured memorably in films such as Neige, La chatte à deux têtes and Simone Barbès.
Works Cited
Bier, Chrisophe. Dictionnaire des films français pornographiques et érotoques de longs métrages en 16 et 35mm. Serious Publishing, 2011.
Callwood, Dan. “Anxiety and Desire in France's Gay Pornographic Film Boom, 1974-1983.” Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 26, no. 1, 2017, pp. 26–52. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44862344.
Canby, Vincent. “The Screen: ‘Simone Barbes.’ An Unsentimental Education.” The New York Times: Weekend, 24 April 1981, section C10.
Church, David. Disposable Passions: Vintage Pornography and the Legacies of Adult Cinema. Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.
Hexagone Gay. Les Annees 70. hexagonegay.com/region/paris70.html
Lahaye, Nicholas. “Enquête sur le film pornographique: mythologies et representations d’un certain cinéma d’exploitation.” Circé. Histoires, Cultures et Sociétés, no. 2. 2013. http://www.revue-circe.uvsq.fr/enquete-sur-le-film-pornographique-mythologies-et-representations-dun-certain-cinema-dexploitation/. Accessed 29April 2021.
Macheret, Mathieu. “Reprise: << Simone Barbès ou la vertu>>, l’amour a la dérive dans la solitude du Paris interlope.” Le Monde: Cinéma, 13 June 2018.
Rakovsky, Antoine. “Le bref apogée et le long déclin du cinéma pornographique français.” Les Dessous du Cinéma Porno. Edited by Guy Hennebelle, Corlet, 1991, pp. 14-17.
Rakovsky Antoine. “Même à Paris.” Les Dessous du Cinéma Porno. Edited by Guy Hennebelle, Corlet, 1991, pp. 18-21.
Sekdje, Enrique. “’Neige’ de HJuliet Berto et Jean-Henri- Roger – Des anges mordent la poussière.” Nouveautés Sales, December 2012.
Sotinel, Thomas. “Sur et sous l’écran, le chassé-croisé des désirs interdits.” Le Monde, 20 November 2002.
Trachman, Mathieu. “Le Métier De Pornographe: Rhétorique, Contrôle Et Savoirs D'un Groupe Professionnel Discrédité / The Pornographer's Trade: A Discredited Professional Group's Rhetoric, Control and Know-How.” Sociologie Du Travail, vol. 53, no. 4, 2011, pp. 444–59. JSTOR, jstor.org/stable/41931678.
Williams, Linda. Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the “Frenzy of the Visible”. U. of California Press, 1999.
[1] “In the 1970s, the directors and producers of pornographic films had started their career in [main-stream] cinema, and utilised their acquired skills; such as Francis Mischkind, the directors Gérard Kikoïne and Burd Tranbaree” (Trachman 448).
[2] A widely-adopted definition of pornography is given by Linda Williams in her pioneering study, Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the “Frenzy of the Visible: “visual (and sometimes aural) representation of living, moving bodies engaged in explicit. usually unfaked. sexual acts with the primary intent of arousing viewers”, p. 30.
[3] For a detailed catalogue of such films, see Chrisophe Bier, Dictionnaire des films français pornographiques et érotoques de longs métrages en 16 et 35mm.
[4] On the role of the film-maker Jean-Danie Cadinot, prolific in the period 1980-84 producing gay pornographic films shot on VHS expressly for the “home-viewing experience”, see: Callwood, at pp. 45-46.
[5] The website Paris-Louxor.fr provides valuable information on the history of the Louxor, the Scala and the Méry.
[6] For a study of gay pornographic film in this period, see Don Callwood, “Anxiety and Desire in France’s Gay Pornographic Film Boom, 1974-1983”.
[7] Norbert Terry co-produced with Anne-Marie Tensi, Et Dieu créa les hommes (And God Created Man) (1978), directed by Jean-Étienne Siry, which “plays out like a tour of Paris’s gay commercial premises” (Callwood 41).