Immoral Tales

Director: Walerian Borowczyk

1973 / 125min / DCP

“Borowczyk’s breakout, Immoral Tales both exploited the relaxation of film censorship in France and demonstrated the potential of the erotic genre as a means of blurring art and exploitation (Blood-drenched lesbian orgies! Incestuous papal group sex! Fellatio as cosmic ritual! A world in which anything and everything is a potential sex aid!), social/political/religious transgression, and baroque surrealist beauty. Rabelaisian in tone, the film takes a left turn into outright horror (pre-empting Salò when it comes to situating erotic spectacle in a concentration camp setting) whilst playfully exposing butts, breasts, and hypocrisies. Provocative intellectual cinema at its best, in the tradition of Eisenstein and Makavejev.”—Daniel Bird, series curator Screens with A Private Collection.