Original subtitles

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.

- I grew up with Walt Disney as my hero.

And then along comes Borowczyk with a very different style.

You could argue that, yes, that Disney was too lifelike,

too real that it didn't make that...

that sort of artistic leap that Borowczyk did.

- Blue angel's wings.

Okay. I wish I had thought of that.

I really wish I had.

I really wish I had thought of an angel bleeding blood

that was the color blue.

Yeah, it's like...

it's like a piece of art

that you'd see in the Tate Modern now, isn't it?

- What really stuck with me is that

the sound of the (imitates crunching).

(crunching)

And sounds like (imitates fluttering).

(fluttering)

From the beginning you would feel

this guy has gotten a great deal of sensuality,

sexuality, all of that.

- This is the stuff I love about this guy,

because I can see somebody in a room with objects,

with kind of...

almost kind of fetishized objects,

making them serve another purpose.

I'm not even sure it's a narrative purpose,

but it is something to do with life and death and decay.

- You have to submit, ultimately, to Borowczyk.

You can fight him for a while,

but he's pretty good at winning.

- I have to say, I found this film quite terrifying

because I don't know what it means.

- And that's what's important for me with Borowczyk.

I can't explain what he's doing half the time.

I just know it's having an effect on me.

And now it's gone quiet, but it's still happening.

Oh God.

That's the moment.

Then suddenly the black blood comes pouring out

and it's the timing on that is just extraordinary.

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.

I remember at the time when his films started coming out,

he was getting such press, he was really hot, as it were.

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!

- "Goto, Isle of Love" was very interesting

because that was his first live action film really.

How do you make the leap?

'Cause it's a...

It's a big leap.

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?"

I think that's what was difficult

because, as an animator, you're God,

you have complete control of everything

that's there on the screen.

And then you've got to step out of that role,

which is very isolated and egocentric and all that.

And now you've got to go into a world of other people

'cause to make a film, you need a lot of people around you.

- My great frustration of making films is that

the entire world seems to be there

to prevent you from actually realizing what's in your brain.

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.

All those weird little prompts,

even those things in...

the fly catcher in "Goto,"

with the pipes and the little bits of hair at the end.

I can't think of another medium in which an object like that

would play play a kind of a vital part.

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.

Well, I made a movie called "Interview with the Vampire"

that's based on a novel by Anne rice.

Maybe there was even,

I had to design this little thumb kind of...

thumb thing for Tom Cruise.

I used to call it Tom's thumb thing. It's very hard to say.

But it was...

it was a mechanism whereby he could drink blood

without having to use his teeth.

He could stick it into people.

The building of that little thing

and getting it correct is...

is, I suppose, similar to what Borowczyk did at times.

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.

- In many ways, you'd say "Goto" was very important

in us setting out to do "Monty Python and the Holy Grail,"

trying to create a world that you believe in.

No matter how absurd it is, no matter how limited it is,

it's complete in itself.

- I mean, this is the world of "Goto,"

Is this strange world of a dictatorship.

But it's not clear what kind of dictatorship it is.

Is it fascism? Is it communism?

Most famously, "Goto" was banned both in Spain and Poland,

so it could be either.

- In "Goto, Island of Love," there's this weird facade

of a society full of these rituals.

And it's almost as if society is more comfortable

with cruelty...

with hanging people, or punishing people,

or death than it is with the sexual encounter.

- I think the so-called sexual liberation, in general,

were a very ambiguous phenomenon.

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.

- Before the 1970s,

cinema was mature about a number of things,

about psychology, about transcendence.

It was incredibly immature about sex and the body

and how to film it.

The upheavals of '68

formed several new political battlefields,

but also reshaped us on a personal level:

sexuality, free love...

- An explosion had to happen, a new wave of filmmakers

who we were dealing with sex had to come about

and Borowczyk was part of that,

where Bertolucci and Oshima in Japan, et cetera,

these filmmakers who said. "Enough already.

"We're going to blast open the doors of the sexual citadel

"and actually show real bodies."

Censorship became much less strict,

giving authors an opportunity

to create more sensual and erotic works.

He could spread his wings and fly.

- He had that generic historic opportunity

to bring, in a way, the happenstance of his talent

into the mainstream,

and he could make the beast and immoral tales

In a way he was created by this very, I think, specific

and, sadly, short-lived era in cinema.

- In more traditional times, still the '60s,

you had, for example, a boy who felt,

who had certain desires, but because of his education,

he experienced these desires as ethically unacceptable.

And then the task was to free him

from the internalized oppressive rules so that he was able,

it become possible for him or her to freely enjoy sexuality.

- I went to see his movies when I was 15, 16, 17 years old.

And of course I went, I think I went with a friend of mine.

We were very guilty and excited.

We were going to see a dirty movie. Isn't this exciting?

And then we were baffled and intrigued

to see that, actually, quite a lot of this movie

was not in fact, very explicit.

There was something strange and transgressive

and difficult about it.

We loved transgressive films,

even extremely iconoclastic ones.

Even - should I say - immoral ones.

- All right, here we go.

Go on.

I mean, here we go.

- It is quite strange.

The girl's lashes flutter like butterfly wings. It's wonderful.

It's very strange.

I often wonder what it was like filming this.

- That's fantastic.

That's the famous...

That's Borowczyk.

This ass and the road rolling back.

The image detaches from the background.

- Only time I had 50 girls with me in a bed.

The bed went out, and I went down with all the girls

with my camera, and it was fantastic.

You are alone with 50 girls on a bed, in a bed.

Did you have that in your life?

Naked? All naked.

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.

- His interest on eroticism wasn't a kind of quick-fire

wham, bam, thank you ma'am.

Borowczyk eroticism was a vocation for him.

- I think there's always been some sexuality in his stuff.

When you see Renaissance, I think it's just the textures,

the way it moves, it's sensual.

If it isn't just...

It's very soft and delicate.

You can see the stuff is being embraced.

And he's always got this fetishist quality with him

and you can see him working that stuff, you feel it,

and it becomes a kind of sexual thing.

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.

- The scene of her being immersed in the vat of blood.

I mean, I can still remember that scene. It's amazing.

- Oh, the blood, the blood.

Yes. And that's a startling image, extraordinary actually.

Has that clingy, kind of a sticky nature

that doesn't let you know.

The sequence is remarkable.

And I can accept the eroticism of it,

'cause there's a violence behind it as well.

I don't know what that says about me.

Something horrible, I'm sure.

But to me, the combination of...

blood and nakedness is very pleasing.

It makes me a terrible person, I'm sure.

- Enjoyment is always transgressive

in the sense that what accounts for your enjoyment,

it's not simply that you enjoy what you want,

but that in this way you violate the prohibition.

- You can mainline a kind of thrill.

You can isolate, almost distill, a particular kind of thrill

and plug it into your filmmaking.

And Polanski did it with "Rosemary's Baby,"

with horror and Satanism,

and Borowczyk did it with sex and porn.

He was able to kind of mainline it.

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!

- Opening at the Prince Charles Cinema next Thursday

is Walerian Borowczyk's "The Beast."

It's not a picture for all the family.

Indeed, there will be many who consider it unsuitable

for any member of the family.

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!

- I had some problems with the scene

with the rose, obviously,

because it was...

it was...

exaggerated.

I knew what he wanted, obviously.

I knew what he wanted, but...

doing it, I think it wasn't in my ease at all.

So...

But it was very nice, because when I had the

scene with the rose it was just a cameraman,

and he was in the room, so it was what it was.

When I was in the in the situation...

I thought about acting...

but I didn't see the rest of it.

He didn't talk so much, but we understood each other.

It was something in his mind that he really wanted to show.

I closed my eyes when it happened.

So I couldn't say it how he posed the rose in front of me

and the way he did it with his hands, it was beautiful.

With a lot of the other scenes,

he wasn't that meticulous, but there he was.

He wanted it exactly as he wanted.

- This is fascinating,

because it was clearly obsessing him,

but all of his obsessions don't interest me

as much as they did him, ultimately.

- I hope I did it...

as he wanted it, but I think so.

It's a fairytale of the beauty and the beast...

which it has been done so many times,

because it's an eternal thing in the human being.

He choose to make the beast in that way

that nobody before had done.

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.

- I think it was much more a male fantasy

of female sexuality than it was

a woman's own experience of their sexuality,

as if that's what women want.

It's a bit naive as far as my understanding

of sexuality is concerned.

- And when you see the beast now,

it's like seeing the shark in "Jaws."

Actually, it was a little bit absurd.

(chuckling)

(woman screams)

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.

- There's this rather ridiculous erection,

rather small erection, I think, in a way.

- When I first saw it 40 years ago, it was just,

I started laughing 'cause this is a joke.

This is a really bad costume. What are we doing here?

- I think it may have been regarded as farce then.

And now we can see more clearly it's subversive qualities.

The Beast's spurting sperm,

Scarlatti, the forest, the death of the Beast. It's extraordinary!

- Now you watch it now and you can see it

as a kind of bad dream.

As not erotic or pornographic at all

but something very disturbing and Freudian.

Something that's so candid, so on the nose,

there is a kind of fascination, in a way, in its directness.

- Come on. There's this wooden dong.

And then the endless ejaculations.

I mean, what are you doing, Walerian?

What is the point you're making here?

I don't know at that point.

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.

- Something changed quite a lot for me

when I saw his later films.

I think his...

visual aesthetic changed, and the...

way he perceived women seemed different

in the later films than the earlier films.

The pictures in "Goto"...

That's just a very powerful image.

This is very Borowczyk, isn't it?

I mean, look at the...

the feeling in that image of this trapped woman

in this frightening place where she can't escape.

I find that really powerful just looking at that again

after all these years.

I see the portrayal of women in the later films

as lacking in the compassion...

and sadness of the earlier film.

- I think they thought of themselves as being liberated.

If you look at these movies now,

of course, they're very male.

And I think it's a point that bears saying

that they are gendered in a way that

people didn't quite grasp at the time.

They thought it was a liberated thing.

And it was more liberating for men, certainly,

because men were the people who were making it,

and men were the people who by and large were consuming it..

- That's where all these radical sexual revelation movement,

I claim, was even all too naive.

They didn't see in what way, again,

the system requires a certain amount of transgression

to reproduce itself.

- You can ask me if I regret it.

I don't think...

you should regret anything you do in your life.

Surely, I have had moments in my life

where I said to myself...

that...

the film...

had made me harm.

Sure. Surely.

I think also it stopped a lot of things.

I think it did.

Because he was a labeled film.

So, no doubt about it.

No doubt about it, because it was understood as pornography.

"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.

So it was the beginning and actually the end.

(frenetic percussive music)

- I'm not a traditional radical leftist

who claims that what happened after the sexual revolution

is just that all achievements there

were fully integrated into our bourgeois

or whatever society.

No, there are real results.

Nonetheless, what we should be very attentive to

is new forms of oppression

that the very sexual liberation brought with it,

namely the permission you can do whatever you want...

you can enjoy whatever way you want.

This permission imperceptibly changed into

a superego injunction, an order: you have to enjoy.

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 very hard to stay avant garde

because you've got so many systems out there

that want to make money from it,

and you, as the avant gardist,

likes to make money occasionally,

so you end up agreeing probably

whether or not to certain things being done.

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.

Okay. What compromise will I do to get the next one?

And you find yourself doing little compromises.

I will never compromise on anything

that is the essence of something, the heart of it.

I will never do that, but okay,

we'll slide it, we'll get that actor in, rather than that.

Those are the kinds of things you do.

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.

- I think the whole entire world

fell in love with Sylvia Kristel.

And that's a reason for anybody

to make a movie with her at the time.

It would have been, yeah.

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."

- When he did the "Le Marge" for the Hakim brothers,

they were very prestigious producers in France.

They were constantly pressuring him

to have more sex in the film:

"We want to see more of Sylvia Kristel naked," or whatever.

And certainly in some of the later films,

you do wonder how much is coming from Borowczyk

and how much is coming from the producer?

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?

- After a while...

I guess the...

Explosion, as it were, of freedom...

backfired on itself, because the films became

less and less interesting.

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.

I think in the world of cinema,

it's very difficult because you've got

a very specific market

and that market is very, very hard to manage.

And in the case of Borowczyk,

he clearly hit the market big time

with the "Immoral Tales" and "The Beast,"

but that also created a kind of trap for him, I think.

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.

- He had a desire to make cinema

like the great cineastes.

It wasn't a choice. If you don't do this, will you die?

The answer is yes.

- I mean, I know he's a man who had many, many projects.

Like a lot of people, he never stopped thinking

about what he might be doing next

and how he might be doing it and creating things.

And obviously, as an animator,

as someone who worked very much alone,

he probably dreamt that he could achieve these things.

- All right.

Yes. This is a letter I wrote to...

Borowczyk in 1983.

"Dear, Walerian Borowczyk,

You will find enclosed the script of "Ancestral Mansion"

and a short statement about the script

which I wrote for the British Film Institute

when I applied for their financial assistance.

I'm sending the script to you

because I would dearly like you to direct the film.

Your film "Goto, Island of Love"

was a major liberating influence on me

when I wrote this script.

"Ancestral Mansion" is my "Goto," my microcosm.

The production board,

the British Film Institute production board,

had changed their mind about financing the film.

There was a problem with Borowczyk:

he wasn't English, he was Polish,

and it was the British Film Institute,

and there was a problem about him being a pornographer.

Obviously we were very upset, Borowczyk was very upset.

Everyone was very upset.

And it was...

It all fell apart.

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.

(lively trumpet music)

- And it was just that he ended up doing "Emmanuelle 5,"

because that's what he was kind of competing with

along the way.

- I haven't seen the "Emmanuelle" film he did.

Should I have?

No? Okay.

(chuckles)

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!

- Emmanuelle! I know you are in there.

I'm very disappointed with you.

I thought that we had an understanding.

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.

(helicopter buffeting)

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.