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I've seen a lot of your films and I think you're a huge pervert.
Well, who isn't?
My fantasies are identical to the viewers'.
I only show what everybody dreams about.
Listen. We're going to hear Borowczyk's voice.
I wanted to make a film about love.
But what kind of love?
Love of power,
fully independent physical love,
love of objects,
love of freedom.
All of these can be loved.
He loved freedom.
Borowczyk fled from Poland to France because he loved freedom.
He saw France as a place of freedom,
particularly artistic freedom.
In all of his movies love leads to death.
Love - that is, a desire for freedom.
This desire for freedom ends in death in many of his films:
"The Beast," "Blanche," "Goto," "The Margin"...
It's quite strange.
For me Borowczyk was a world that suddenly vanished.
I can't pinpoint the date of its disappearance. There you go.
May 1968.
A great French revolution begins. Paris stands still,
students are being brutalized, workers clash with police,
a general strike begins
and I'm invited to shoot "Goto, Isle of Love".
The film will be shot in Pierre and Marie Curie's old factory,
the site of their experiments with radioactivity.
We are whisked from the frenzy of Paris
to the calm of a small factory with an incomprehensible director
who built a fantasy world:
a remote island that no outsider set foot on in 100 years.
Each morning I drove across Paris filled with cops and students
to spend the day in Borowczyk's weird, crazy world.
We thought he was completely bonkers.
- Is this the Marie Curie parking lot? - Yes, right there.
So, we're shooting in this historical factory,
our director is completely detached from reality,
and each evening we go back to Paris
where cops fight students and workers.
May 1968 reminds me of 3 things:
the revolution,
my first film with Borowczyk -
"Goto, Isle of Love," and my first marriage.
When I met him in 1968,
I think he'd lived in France for 10 years or so.
I think he arrived in France in 1959.
I met Walerian Borowczyk in 1946 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow.
Borowczyk was open about the fact that he, the son of a railway worker,
only went there because he wanted to teach drawing in middle school.
His art would take him far - but in a completely different direction.
Professor Radnicki gathered us students when the first year had ended.
He looked us over and said:
"I see one very talented person in this group."
Everyone puffed up a little...
But the professor quickly added: "It's Walerian Borowczyk."
The fact that he switched to filmmaking was unusual.
I can't recall any of our sculptor or painter colleagues
who'd picked up a movie camera.
We were talking about Poland and someone said to Borowczyk:
"Well, Poland is a free country!"
Borowczyk just exploded with rage:
"So go there if you want, I moved here precisely
because I've experienced the Communist regime!"
THE HOUSE (1958)
The hair that devours everything
could've been seen as an allegory of the political situation at the time.
I never thought he'd go there!
It was amazing. Whatever gave him the idea?
Why did he do it? He must've felt compelled somehow.
It was a portent of things to come.
'Polish film "The House" took first place
and a $10000 prize...' Well, well!
'At the international film festival in Brussels."
This success launched him into a whole different world.
French cinema was rather insular - they didn't need us,
Polish directors had nothing to say to them...
Before "Goto" I had no idea that he even existed.
Later on they showed us
a few of his animated films by way of introduction.
That's how I discovered his world.
Watching Borowczyk's wonderful,
minimalist animations
we get the feeling that he did everything himself,
sitting alone in his studio, drawing frame after frame...
A truly solitary endeavor.
Disney, Pixar or Dreamworks animations
make a completely different impression -
you just feel the effort of 300 or so people behind them.
That's when I realized that every director carries a world inside:
Borowczyk had a whole world in his head.
THE ACTION OF THE FILM IS SET IN OUR TIME ON THE ISLAND OF GOTO
IN THE FORTRESS-RESIDENCE OF ITS GOVERNOR - GOTO I II.
Name - Grozo!
All movies are essentially animation.
Live-action cinema is animated photography -
a reel of tape is just a row of pictures.
It's the same thing if you replace the photos with drawings.
We were surprised by Borowczyk's behavior on the set of "Goto".
We all thought he was shooting an animated film.
Boro did things that directors didn't usually do -
he made props, painted decorations,
fixed costumes... He did everything!
Every time he did something like this we asked ourselves:
"What is he doing? Why is he doing it? What will he do next?"
On the first day, he looks at the set and shouts:
"It's much too clean! How awful!
Get me some paint and a brush!"
He repainted all the decorations that very day, all by himself.
I've never seen a director do anything like this before!
Almost on his own.
We were only accessories to his meticulousness.
He used the word "character" a lot:
"charrracterrr walk in, charrracterrr walk out."
He used his actors in an unusual way
and talked to them as they worked.
The first scenes with Pierre Brasseur were incredible.
We rehearsed several times,
Brasseur repeated Boro's instructions,
we said "action", cameras started rolling...
And Borowczyk starts giving orders: "Go in, sit, leave, stand..."
Brasseur stops: "Is he going to talk like this all the time?!"
And Boro replies: "It normal, I direct actor!"
Goto I II,
Goto I,
Goto I I.
Borowczyk did everything himself.
The opening of each little funnel
is designed to be inviting to flies.
The fly doesn't realize it won't be able to leave once it's inside.
When Borowczyk said "I want this", I did what he told me to.
I gave him what he asked for.
We had a bond because he knew I understood what he wanted.
I worked with a number of directors
and I wasn't Borowczyk's slave.
I was his servant - but with medals.
I knew that he'd call me if he wanted to make another movie.
And I never would've even thought to refuse.
I'd never tell him "No". Once, I don't remember which film it was,
I was away shooting with Borowczyk,
and Polański asked for me. I had to refuse Polański.
Borowczyk was like family.
And I have to admit that I didn't understand that film at all,
but once I watched it,
I realized we made a masterpiece.
The Simon report from a few months ago,
the French equivalent of the Kinsey report,
was a controversial success.
The statistics overturned a number of stereotypes.
Here's a question for today:
are the French a nation of prudes?
The majority of the French refuse to acknowledge sexuality.
80 make love in the dark.
Sex shops aren't popular,
erotic films don't attract a wide audience.
The upheavals of '68
formed several new political battlefields,
but also reshaped us on a personal level:
sexuality, free love...
Censorship became much less strict,
giving authors an opportunity
to create more sensual and erotic works.
He could spread his wings and fly.
We loved transgressive films,
even extremely iconoclastic ones.
Even - should I say - immoral ones.
The girl's lashes flutter like butterfly wings. It's wonderful.
That's the famous...
That's Borowczyk.
This ass and the road rolling back.
The image detaches from the background.
This is Borowczyk!
This is freedom! Absolute freedom!
Erotic freedom, all kinds of freedom.
Is it an erotic and libertine film
or a libertine and erotic film?
I think it's both. But most of all
it's aesthetic.
It takes images that could be called pornographic and transforms them
into works of almost libertine art.
This film showed me eroticism
in the language of cinema,
an eroticism that permeates the whole world,
not just a few stolen sex scenes.
"Immoral Tales" make you feel like
the whole world throbs with eroticism.
There is an eroticization of objects in Borowczyk's films.
His eroticism involves
the juxtaposition of bodies and objects -
objects that can penetrate the body
and objects completely unrelated to the body.
His eroticism is linked with desire
and - at times - cruelty.
Boro wasn't widely known when he worked on his earlier films.
Then the erotic "Immoral Tales" suddenly catapulted him to fame.
"Emmanuelle" was the only film that could've rivaled
the eroticism of "Immoral Tales" -
but its eroticism
wasn't liberating or revolutionary,
it was just sex for bourgeois viewers wanting to jack off
in a movie theater on Boulevard de Sébastopol.
It didn't make sense.
I was impressed by the courage of this man
who dared to show the joys and pleasures
of eroticism without trying to
normalize it,
make it useful,
or justify it in the name of love or some other cause.
Our sound engineer in the first chapter
of "Immoral Tales", one Gerard Delaguarde,
was extremely Catholic, very Christian,
very fundamentalist, almost as holy as the Pope.
At the end of the shoot he comes up to Borowczyk and says:
"My dear Boro, it's a waste of your talent! You're making porn!
This isn't right. You're becoming a pornographer
and I refuse to work with you."
Boro flew into a rage.
He was being pigeonholed - and he hated being pigeonholed.
"I'm not a pornographer! I'm a revolutionary
who uses sex to express the idea of freedom,
the right to freedom!"
Each film is a trip, an adventure.
The end result is always a surprise.
We work around the clock with no downtime;
our eagerness
to see the end result is truly fascinating.
That's real creativity!
I've always felt that
the most transgressive movies are those that weren't intended as such -
where the filmmakers just did what came to them naturally.
Many scandalizing films weren't meant to scandalize.
Oh, Lisbeth... Fabulous!
The movie "The Beast"
is a fantasy film as well as an erotic film,
but most of all and above all
it's a film about the mechanics of dreams.
This scene is pretty funny.
And the Beast resembles a giant rat rather than a bear.
It's clear that it's really a man in a monster suit.
The Beast's spurting sperm,
Scarlatti, the forest, the death of the Beast. It's extraordinary!
One small detail: who did the squirting?
Borowczyk himself! He used a pump.
No one could squirt as good as Borowczyk. Naturally!
He always liked to do everything himself.
Nice to meet you.
What an incredible place!
This is the temporary warehouse of the Swiss Film Archive.
We'll discover it together.
Incredible.
The head...
- Are you alright? - Yes.
The testicles, the penis...
The tongue moves...
The actor went inside.
Face to face with the Beast.
The hair of the beast, it's amazing.
"The Beast" was a bit of a divorce with critics.
They reproached him for making a coarse,
overly violent film.
Is it porn or is it overdone erotica?
It's classic sophisticated porn!
I think it's scandalous.
The scene where the woman
pleasures herself with the rose is the worst.
The fact that this film is also scandalous
doesn't make me reject it.
Take a painting by Vermeer.
It looks interesting from a distance,
even if it was only painted on commission for a rich merchant.
But get up close and examine it carefully,
like you would a Rembrandt, and you'll see
the suffering, the brush strokes, the texture...
It's extraordinary!
It's a very disappointing work by an inconsistent filmmaker.
I think Borowczyk is at his lowest in this film.
It's naturalist,
which never was Borowczyk's strong point,
the acting is flat
and the erotic scenes are awful.
It doesn't make any sense.
In this movie Borowczyk was working with two icons of erotica -
Joe Dallesandro, the star of Morrissey's films,
and Sylvia Kristel, famous for "Emmanuelle".
He gave them magnificent roles.
Here's a quote from Sylvia Kristel's autobiography.
"Walerian Borowczyk, the director of "Immoral Tales,"
offers me a part in "The Margin,"
an adaptation of Pieyre De Mandiargues' award-winning novel.
It's a powerful role. Maybe even my favorite.
Walerian seems haunted by his erotic fantasies
and fetishistic tastes.
I play a prostitute."
But it had to happen. Sylvia Kristel signed a contract.
The Japanese had already bought the film.
We simply had to shoot it.
It's very bad. Do you agree?
No, it's not very bad.
Let's just ignore it.
No, it's important, because it concerns Borowczyk,
who's quite an eminent artist.
Maybe the fault isn't entirely his own,
but the movie is just plain stupid!
Walerian Borowczyk has his own world, Mandiargues
and maybe Dallesandro have theirs too,
but all we see here is the world of Sylvia Kristel!
It's only fit for hairdressers,
it's like a glossy magazine!
"The film is a flop.
It's only screened in 'arthouse' cinemas.
A nice name with low viewership - a pity."
Borowczyk gradually limits himself to -
or is limited to - erotica.
Mr Borowczyk, are you still interested in sex?
How much longer will it remain an inspiration?
Excuse me, it's not just me -
everyone's interested in sex! That's always been the case!
He became more famous once he started
making erotic films.
It became easier for him to start new erotic projects,
because his producers kept saying
"Go on, make another erotic flick, you're great at it,
people love them!"
Seriously, contrary to popular opinion I'm not an erotic filmmaker.
I think Disney is more erotic!
The man eschewed labels -
this used to confuse film critics.
"What shall we do about Boro?
He makes animations, medieval dramas, all sorts of odd films..."
They didn't know how to categorize him.
But when he started shooting erotica in his own style,
they suddenly found a label that fit:
Borowczyk makes erotic cinema!
Whenever someone says "erotic movie" or "a film about sex",
the expression is always either sarcastic or derogatory.
I understand why he was annoyed -
it was like they'd shoved him into a small box
labeled "erotica" and told him to stay there.
I'm sorry, but I always have to emphasize
that I don't specialize in any particular thing.
I'm just a filmmaker.
If there's anything I specialize in, it's filmmaking.
Borowczyk wanted to do other projects,
like Harry Dickson stories,
but the producers didn't support him.
They didn't support him.
They wanted him to keep making erotica.
I don't remember shooting this.
I've never filmed that! What's this scene doing here?
Oh, they added an orgy?
Damn.
Borowczyk never directed that!
They pornified this film afterwards.
Here you go. Two drawings
based on stills from "Immoral Tales"
that have absolutely nothing to do
with the plot of the film.
The cover image of this tape of "Goto, Isle of Love"
shows a scene completely unrelated to the movie as well.
Here's a particularly egregious example:
"The Margin," based on an important novel
by André Pieyre de Mandiargues,
was retitled "Emmanuelle 77".
As you can see, the unfortunate director
is listed dead last,
far below
Sylvia Kristel and Joe Dallesandro.
The actors aren't as important as the director and the writer!
And "Emmanuelle 77" sounds like a porn flick.
From one scandal to another, from "Blow-Up" to "Last Tango in Paris,"
cinema finally vanquished censorship.
Seeing the plethora of porn that came out this year
it's hard to imagine that only 6 years ago
it would've been unthinkable to show any pubic hair.
Around 150 pornographic
and erotic films come out every year.
Given 6.5 million views in Paris alone
one gets the idea of the surge of erotic cinema
and why 50 of film budget is spent on erotic films.
Is it liberation or profit?
10 years later eroticism was no longer
an expression of freedom, a tool of revolution.
We have ideas and desires
precisely because some boundaries exist.
Absolute freedom can be quite terrifying.
What does it say to Borowczyk when he has to put up with a producer
who changes his posters and adds sex scenes?
It says to him that he's no longer God.
That must've been hard.
I made around 10 films with Walerian Borowczyk,
8 of them feature length.
We worked together,
saw each other a lot on set and never interacted outside of work.
I had him over for lunch once.
Once in 20 years of collaboration!
I told my dear wife Zoe:
We have to make potatoes.
We fixed him a dish of potatoes with quark and chives.
Borowczyk said:
"That's one of the best meals I've ever had!"
I knew he usually ate potatoes with quark and chives.
I think that was the last time I saw Borowczyk.
I often say that the end of the 1970s was the end of an era
and our modern times began in 1980.
It was a period of huge changes all over the world -
intellectual, political, economic transformation.
The 1980s are seen as the peak of hedonism,
a time of lightness, insouciance, and money,
of ideas that heralded the decline of profound thought.
How is Emmanuelle doing now? She's fine!
She lives in Réunion and enjoys the landscapes of our island.
Today is the last day of filming; here's some footage from the set.
We're in Domaine de la Confiance in Saint-Benojt
during the last rehearsal of the final scene.
Is this an adventure film with a dash of eroticism?
No, it's just an adventure film.
The eroticism is imparted by the director: Walerian Borowczyk,
a great filmmaker,
sculptor, and painter of women.
The budget of "Emmanuelle 5" is 23 million francs.
- Yes? - Good morning.
- Thierry Bazin? - Speaking.
This is Noël Very. Glad to meet you.
It's interesting that we remember Borowczyk differently.
Of course we do.
- I worked with him in 1986. - I did in 1968.
We made "Emmanuelle 5".
I have to say it's a 'great' film.
- And you didn't shoot it. - No, I didn't.
It was in the era of "Indiana Jones",
an unbelievably successful film.
Siritzky bought "Emmanuelle"
and added a lot of adventure tropes
and a protagonist reminiscent of Indy.
Yeah, it wasn't particularly creative.
I guess hiring Borowczyk
gave Siritzky an artistic alibi.
I was one of the few people who liked being around Borowczyk
during the preliminary stages.
I listened to him, watched him,
lunched with him every day.
I was the only person that had lunch with him every day.
We always ate at that place on rue Berri.
They served fondue.
He didn't eat cheese...
Yeah, he only ate the boiled potatoes.
Boiled potatoes! Remember the boiled potatoes?
- Of course! - Sure, he only ate potatoes.
- Like a proper Pole. - Yes, like a proper Pole, it's logical.
During the preparations
I always felt like he was in his own world.
The assistant director must ask the director
to justify certain choices or make certain decisions.
Walerian had a very hard time answering my questions.
He gave me no input about casting - it didn't interest him at all.
I think he had no choice in the matter,
he was just given these actors.
For me, there's a lot of technical work.
We went to Réunion to shoot on location.
After 3 shooting days we were already 2 days behind schedule.
Or even more.
I think most people on that set didn't realize what we were making.
We weren't shooting according to plan.
We had a 35BL - a fairly hefty camera.
He carried it on his shoulder, swaying slightly under the weight,
and shuffled actors around. They didn't understand him.
He didn't get angry,
but the American actors found him incomprehensible and insufferable.
Until that moment
when the 'famous' American actress... I think she slapped him.
When she slapped him, Walerian just walked off.
We realized
he took the first plane back to Paris.
In the absence of Borowicz, the film's director,
his assistant directs the actors.
The producer said
he wanted me to take over and finish the film.
Finish the film?! We barely started shooting!
Action!
Cut!
No, the end result was not a good film.
This film is...
I don't think it's a Borowczyk film.
It's not even the producer's film.
I think it's an object
available in different languages
depending on the country it's screened in,
which makes it the distributor's film.
I always felt like he needed solitude,
he needed to be all by himself.
That made working in the film industry somewhat of a challenge.
Did you feel like "Emmanuelle" was supposed to buy him this solitude?
Yes, I think that's the only reason he took this job.
It felt like it was his last movie.
I really got this impression.
It was supposed to be his last work, a means to make some money
to afford the solitude he required.
I'll tell you quite honestly - a director will do everything
they can to achieve freedom in making a live-action film,
but it's an impossible goal.
Immense strength is needed to avoid getting crushed
by all the non-artistic things involved in filmmaking.
From financing to ordering decorations,
you can't do it without a large crew.
Animation, like painting,
is my safety valve -
it lets me be alone and work on things totally on my own.
I'll show you a piece I just finished editing.
I won't spoil the ending,
you'll see the whole thing when it's done.
I'll show you the beginning,
maybe it'll pique your curiosity.