Marquis de Sade's Justine

On paper, this looks like THE greatest exploitation idea ever! The vicious writings of Marquis de Sade brought to the screen by no less a person then the Godfather of sleaze: Jess Franco! And starring the fabulously outrageous Klaus Kinski as the Marquis. And there are several other aspects about this film that indicate that you're about to see a triumph in the euro-exploitation field. Like the rather big budget. Franco normally makes the most out of small budgets but here he actually had the chance to work with decent set pieces, costumes and actors. The cast is more than decent with Jack Palance, Howard Vernon (Franco regular) and the ravishing Maria Rohm and Romina Power. This latter one plays the title role and – as well as the entire film – disappoints. The movie is a series of unspectacular events and I never saw Franco this tame! Marquis de Sade: Justine is low on violence, low on nudity and extremely low surprises. Kinski is dreadfully underused and the whole thing is just too correct! Which is NOT Franco's trademark…

Of course, it's very stylish and guided by brilliant music. The sets are gorgeous and the two leading ladies remain a joy to stare (preferably when they keep their mouths shut). This certainly isn't Franco's finest film but I'll still prefer it over 99% of the amateurish crap that is brought out nowadays. Franco rules, but he had a bad day here!

I watched this last week, my sixth Jess Franco movie. After the relative disappointment with EUGENIE DE SADE (1970), I had hoped that the next Franco would relight my initial admiration for his work. In this respect, I was not a little wary of trying JUSTINE, as its reception on the Internet since its DVD release has not been exactly positive! But since it was the only thing available at the moment… Well, I wasn't wrong about my reservations regarding this film, as I must say that I found it truly abysmal! Not so much a waste of time as a wasted opportunity: as Rod Barnett had said in the recent FEMALE VAMPIRE (1973; a film I haven't watched yet, by the way) thread, I think that Franco fails even here to bring out the full potential of the definitely intriguing plot - despite having the biggest budget of his entire career to work with!

Still, what I find most disconcerting about the film is the ongoing parade of embarrassing performances from some interesting (i.e. formerly respectable) actors: Akim Tamiroff, Mercedes McCambridge and, worst of all, Jack Palance. The other notables from the cast - Klaus Kinski, Sylva Koscina and Howard Vernon – acquit themselves far better, also because they were already practiced at this sort of thing. McCambridge's raspy voice is given a thorough work-out here, as though she were already attempting to 'find' the demon voice for THE EXORCIST (1973)! Palance, on the other hand, gives new meaning to the expression 'chewing up the scenery' - the fact that he was drunk all through the shooting of the picture could hardly bode well for some form of coherence in his performance – and, while I couldn't help (or indeed stop) laughing when he was on screen, deep down I felt really sorry for him as he clearly did not belong there!!

Despite his brief and silent appearance, Klaus Kinksi makes for an appropriately moody Marquis De Sade, who grows increasingly paranoid as the story he is writing unfolds on the screen; actually this linking sequence is quite atmospheric: one online review even compares it to the Gothic horror films of Mario Bava, and I can certainly see where he is coming from with such an argument. Maria Rohm again proves to be an asset to the film (though she isn't nearly as effective here as she was in EUGENIE…THE STORY OF HER JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION [1969]): a clearly intelligent woman who possesses both great charisma and genuine sex appeal. Perhaps the film's best sequence is her heartless drowning of the Rosemary Dexter character, formerly her mentor and lover (needless to say, the fact that both women go through the scene stark naked made it all the more memorable!).

As for Romina Power, this may come as a surprise to you but I didn't think she was as bad as most online reviews would have it. Of course, apart from her constant innocent demeanor, she never really captures Justine's essential personality (especially her gradual acceptance of masochism). However, you may remember that in my review of EUGENIE, I had similar reservations about Marie Liljedahl - though, to be fair to her, she certainly came off as less 'wooden'; then again, most of the performances in JUSTINE are terrible anyway, so it really doesn't matter! Perhaps, for someone like Francesco and me, we are more responsive to her 'acting' because we are used to watching her on Italian TV – whereas the rest of you will probably have to make do with this single, admittedly unimpressive performance! Still, echoing another review I read of the film, I'm not sure that Rosemary Dexter (apparently Franco's personal choice) could have done much better with the title role, though one cannot really judge her talent from the thankless role she was relegated to playing!

(Useless bit of trivia: Romina Power regularly comes to Malta on holiday – perhaps the world's largest collection of her father Tyrone's ephemera resides in our country, believe it or not! - and it is said that she often takes a villa at Naxxar to live in; Naxxar, of course, is the village in Malta where I live!)

For me, the best thing about the entire film is Bruno Nicolai's masterful score, which is perhaps wasted here! At the very least, however, one could say that JUSTINE is good to look at and that it is packed with incident, so it does not really feel slow (like EUGENIE, for instance) throughout its lengthy duration…if only what was on screen were more genuinely compelling!

As of now, I stand about 50/50 on Franco (from the very few titles that I have sampled) and, in all honesty, I'm beginning to despair of ever finding another film to equal EUGENIE or THE DIABOLICAL DOCTOR Z (1965). Still, I have high hopes for SUCCUBUS (1967) – which will be my next venture into Franco's endless canon – as well as VENUS IN FURS (1968) and LORNA THE EXORCIST (1974), though I'll only be able to watch the last two if the local censors deign to release them from their clutches!

I went into this film expecting lots of nudity and bad acting, as it turned out I got the opposite of both. The star of the film Romina Power is wonderful as well as beautiful. Some other reviewers have said she appeared dull and uninterested, but I don't think that is the case. I think her spaced out look was a cunning ploy to take advantage of situations when needed. Of course she was a virgin and untrusting of men which also lead to her innocence.

The beautiful setting and costumes should have won the Academy Award. :) Look for Jack Palance over-acting as a sexual deviant monk, who attempts to free young Justine. Jack and his fellow monks are studying the power of PLEASURE!!! They should have shown this at the Academy Awards the year after Palance won for City Slickers, and the whole place would have fell down laughing. I liked this movie, the uncut version runs 2 hours on DVD and is well worth it. I never got bored with the film. 5/10 Average, but better than I thought it would be.

'Marquis de Sade's 'Justine'' (1968) is easily Jess Franco's most accomplished film, esp. from a technical standpoint, backed by the biggest budget he would ever have. Rich, brilliant colors, skin aplenty, a few perversities, and strange performances from Klaus Kinski, Jack Palance and Mercedes Mccambridge make for an entertaining but relatively tame Franco outing. To boot, Jack Palance's performance ranks as possibly the most bizarre ever seen on film. The dvd includes a revealing 20-minute 'making of' documentary featuring an extensive, contemporary interview with director Franco, and he doesn't hold back. Franco states that Palance was sauced during the entire shoot, drinking red wine all day, each day, starting around 7a.m.

Kinski's role (as de Sade) was originally handed to Orson Welles, but once Welles read the script, he claimed that he simply could not play the part because it included scenes of erotica. In reality, Welles would have had to do a scene with several totally naked women, and this may have made him uncomfortable and nervous. Interestingly, the de Sade character has no lines, and Kinski's scenes are just a bunch of cutaways of him sitting/pacing in a prison cell, mentally tortured, trying to write 'Justine'.

Franco intended to create an explicitly nasty, masochistic film faithful to de Sade's writing; however, according to Franco, he was forced into a watered-down, `Snow-White-lost-in-the-woods' direction because of the producer's decision to cast Tyrone Power's daughter, Romina Power, in the title role. `She was a passenger, wandering around,' Franco scoffed. `She was like a piece of furniture. It was as if I was making Bambi 2'. The role was intended for Rosemary Dexter, who appears in the film in a lesser role.

Franco's version of 'Justine' is not as grim or as depressing as Chris Boger's 'Cruel Passion' (1977), starring Koo Stark, but it's also not as nasty or as perverse. Too bad for Franco fans. --- david ross smith

This is one of the ultra-prolific Spanish director Jesus Franco's biggest budget movies, from a period in his career where he took an actual bit of care (i.e. There is actual editing in this one). It's a story based on the notorious 18th century novel by the Marquis de Sade, it tells the story of a couple of Parisian orphan girls. Juliette becomes a prostitute and marries a rich noble, while Justine goes down a purer path but winds up sent to prison for a murder she didn't commit, ends up escaping and encountering a succession of shady characters. There's not a bad cast in this one, with everyone's favourite German with a personality disorder, Klaus Kinski as de Sade (I am guessing this role suited Kinski down to the ground as I don't think he had any lines to learn), Eurotrash babes Maria Rohm, Sylva Koscina and Rosalba Neri appear in various parts, with Jack Palance also appearing in a very strange role indeed. While this is a very uneven movie, it does benefit from its episodic nature, meaning its pacing is not too bad. It could be described under the specific grouping known as literary sexploitation, i.e. Sexploitation for people who read books.