France
America probably made the most stag films, followed by France, where the genre originated and flourished until Gaullist repression. Becoming so adept at making stags that the term "French film" became synonymous with porn, French pornographers developed many of the genre's basic plots.The highest grossing French film of all time is 1974's softcore Emmanuelle.
Hardcore features first appeared in France in 1972. "In Marseilles, wiht its large shifting population of immigrant workers and sailors, local distributors had begun to cut short hardcore segments into otherwise 'soft' films to attract an audience. At the Cannes festival the following year, films were offered to potential buyers with a whole series of optional 'inserts' that they could choose from to spice up the final product. Soon French producers were making films to order, puching things as far as was legally allowed. Both Jess Franco and Jean Rollin were early producers of these 'chop suey' pornos. Many of the actors and actresses who featured in the additional scenes were later to become bona fide stars of the homegrown porno industry." (Immoral Tales, p. 53)
The first hardcore feature opened in Paris in April, 1975 - Alex deRenzy's History of the Blue Movie. It sold over 200,000 tickets that year. Later in 1975, the first domestic hardcore feature appeared - Jean-Francois Davy's Exhibition.
Large distributors backed such films as Emmanuelle, Exhibition and Story of O and the large cinemas in the Champs Elysees, in the heart of Paris, openly showed hardcore, mixed in with mainstream hits like Jaws.
"In a two week period in 1972 only six films showing in Paris could be classed as broadly 'adult'; by 1975 in the same two week period this had risen to an astonishing 75." (Ibid)
Most of the pornographers creating product for France came from the horror genre - Jess Franco, Jean Rollin, Francis Leroi, Claude Mulot, Michel Lemoine, Jean-Francois Davy. Late in 1975, Mulot and Leroi gave France its first hardcore classic, Pussy Talk.
Lemoine, an actor in horror films, organized the First (and last) Festival of Pornographic Films in Paris. He handed out Golden Willy awards to locals Claudine Beccarie and Americans like Jim Buckley (for SOS). It was seven years from the student riots of May 1968. "Everywhere there was talk of liberation - but sexual, this time, not political. Even though there were plenty with memories long enough to say that they were the same thing. The political had become the personal. And the personal meant sex." (Immoral Tales, p. 54)
French sex magazines on the sophisticated end of the spectrum included Absolu and Sexpol, and lower down there was Sex Stars System, Sex Hebdo and Cine Girl. "There was much talk of 'The Pornocrats,' this new breed of young, iconoclastic film-makers who suddenly seemed to have everything going for them. Leroi and Davy were its leading lights but it was a broad definition that also included actresses like Beatrice Harnois and Sylvia Bourdon and actors liek Richard Allan (nick-named 'Concrete Cock') and Thierry de Brem. If Benazeraf and Borowczyk were its eminences grises, it also included well-respected critics like Noel Simsolo and 'straight' film-makers like Paul Vecchiali."
A strong press campaign led the government to crack down, crippling the industry with new laws at the end of 1976.
French pornos today are made for about 20,000 francs, compared to their 1975 budgets of close to one million francs. Marc Dorcel is a leading porn producer and distributor. French porn stars include Rebecca Lord and Liza Harper.
David Tosi writes on RAME 4/00: After Laure Sainclair's shocking decision (for Marc Dorcel in particular) to leave the adult business, another major french starlet announced her retirement.
This time taking that step it's Fovea, probably the worldwide top natural redhead of the last couple of years. She said that she's not receiving the big productions offers that she expected (and that I think she deserved) and so her career can't progress anymore. The add more damage to the french hard scene, Karen Lancaume seems vanished in nothingness. The source of all this is italian magazine, VideoImpulse, usually highly reliable about that kind of news.
This is probably the worst moment for french adult biz since when Tabitha Cash, Julia Chanel and Beatrice Valle retired almost at the same time about 6 years ago.
The Hollywood Reporter
wrote 4/22/99 about Catherine Breillat's new French film, Romance:
The film - the biggest opener in Paris last week - tells the story of
Marie (Caroline Ducey) who is in love with her boyfriend Paul (Sagaore
Stevenin), who refuses to sleep with her. She decides to cheat on him
in order to make him desire her.
A simple enough plot, perhaps, but Breillat's no-holds-barred direction has resulted in a film that contains the most explicit material ever seen on general release in France.
Amazingly, Romance managed to earn a rating allowing viewers as young as 16 to attend.
The French press has had a field day, every paper filled with discussions on the film and the nature of pornography.
The controversy is not surprising, since the film contains ejaculation scenes, oral sex, bondage and whatever else you care to imagine, including a very graphic birth scene. Marie's personal quest to find physical satisfaction with no strings attached is certainly successful - this is a woman who wants to go all the way, and does.
Several times.
Most of the fuss has centred on one of the film's co-stars, Italian porn king Rocco Siffredi, who claims to have bedded more than 4,000 women.
But putting aside the press uproar, Romance has little in common with a typical porn movie.
It has no tinny background music, no overdubbed moans, and it has a story line that is actually compelling.
Known rather delightfully as films de charme, more than 90 porn movies are shown on French TV every month.
Whether Romance is tapping into the same audience is unclear, but the film got off to a good start, with 17,000 admissions on its first day.
Romance's promotion has been pitched to play on the mystery: Posters on Paris metro stations show a close-up of a woman masturbating, with a red X splashed across it.
The producers are hoping for similar success in foreign markets, with sales under negotiation in Britain and a distributor, Trimark, set to release the film this fall in North America.