Immoral Tales
France 1974

France 1974, “Contes immoraux” (original title), 103 min, colour, French dir Walerian Borowczyk sc Walerian Borowczyk; segment ‘La Maree’ based on a short story by André Pieyre de Mandiargues, Maurice le Roux / Lise Danvers, cam Guy Durban, Bernard Daillencourt, Noël Véry, Michel Zolat ed Walerian Borowczyk mus Maurice Leroux cast Fabrice Luchini, Lisa Danvers, Charlotte Alexandra, Paloma Picasso, Florence Bellamy prod Anatole Dauman pc Argos Films sales Argos Films aw Brussels 1974: L’Age d’or Award

A youth sets about climaxing in his cousin’s mouth at the moment the tide comes in. A pious young Victorian girl works herself into a religious frenzy with the help of a pornographic novel and a fist full of cucumbers. A Hungarian countess keeps herself eternally young by bathing in virgin’s blood. The Pope and his son have their way with the former’s daughter and the latter’s sister. Four episodes, each rolling back further into the annals history, bound only by a maxim by La Rochefoucauld: Love pleases more by the ways in which it shows itself. A veritable cavalcade of depravity, Immoral Tales features cosmic fellatio, transcendental masturbation, bloody drenched lesbianism and papal incest. Max Ernst was on the jury that awarded Immoral Tales the Prix L’Age d’Or. A box office smash in France, the film spent much of the 1970s embroiled in censorship problems around the world.