Because of the 5th anniversary of this blog, we will re-run a few legendary postings:
The French adult cinema of the 70s was about carnal excess as well as about hedonism, politics, and libertinage. For a brief moment, especially in the key year 1978, movies like Perversion d’une jeune mariée or Je suis à prendre transcended smut and sleaze into an art form – particularly due to the spellbinding presence of the young Brigitte Lahaie who managed to fill even the lewdest scenes with a kind of radiant innocence.
Her only single, Caresse Tendresse, recorded in 1987 for the Clever label, regrettably doesn’t emanate quite the same sensual poetry and magic – Brigitte’s voice clearly wasn’t her strongest physical asset, and the song itself sounds like a dancefloor collaboration between the „Vu de l’extérieur“ Gainsbourg and a sedated church organist. So what? As for Brigitte, it was a labor of love anyway.
Bonus: The title track from the 1980 Lahaie movie „Secrets d’adolescentes“ (a.k.a. „Le Porno esperienze di Luca e Fanny“), a voluptuous soundscape by the great Roberto Pregadio that was also used in Franco Prosperi’s nunploitation shocker „La Settima Donna“. Ethereal moaning not by Brigitte, but by the similarly magnificent Edda Dell’Orso, better known for her teamworks with Ennio Morricone – the queen of wordless erotic vocals of Italian cinema.
Brigitte Lahaie – Caresse tendresse
Roberto Pregadio – Secrets d’adolescentes
In addition to our original post: Pregadio’s super-sleazoid reprise of his gorgeous theme, including a funk guitar with a porn star moustache.
Roberto Pregadio – La Settima Donna (Ripresa)
L’armée des ombres, filmed in 1969, was Jean-Pierre Melville’s gloomy and highly gripping account of the Résistance featuring Lino Ventura (see right) in one of his finest roles – a sombre, sober movie with one of the most hopeless endings in French cinema history. The film was scored by the relatively unknown Éric Demarsan who also wrote the music for the TV series Belle et Sébastien (which obviously quite impressed some British folk popsters), and Melville’s bleak caper movie Le cercle rouge. Demarsan’s intricately crafted, highly accomplished bande originale for L’armée des ombres culminates in his Thème de Gerbier, evolving from a painfully melancholic piano melody into a heartbreakingly beautiful landscape of the French soul.
