Art or pornography? Well, if it's pornography certainly no pornographer in cinema as come as close to art as Borowczyk does here. The five "Immoral Tales" that make up this movie deal exclusively with sex in its various forms with a great emphasis on female nudity. Borowczyk deals with an almost fetishistic relish on the woman's body while almost totally ignoring the man's. With the exception of the first story, 'The Tide', the others are all taken from history or the past. We get St. Therese, she who was raped rather than give up her virginity; Elisabeth Bathory, she who liked to bathe, so they say, in the blood of virgins and Lucrezia Borgia, who apparently liked it whatever way she could get it. We also get a mini version of what became "The Beast" whose engorged phallus is one of the very few 'male' organs we see.
Visually the film's palette changes to suit the story at hand and this is very much a sex movie for the intelligentsia, which isn't to say that the 'dirty mac' brigade won't have a field day as well. Of course, since "Immoral Tales" first appeared movies have become a lot more sexually explicit and yet I happy to say this is a movie that can still provoke outrage today...of one kind or another.
