La Bête

Director: Walerian Borowczyk

1975 / 103min / DCP

“La Bête does for ejaculation in cinema what Monty Python’s Mr. Creosote did for on-screen vomiting—it goes up to eleven, and then some. It’s also one of the great films about the mechanism of dreams, not to mention a thoroughly wicked black comedy. La Bête began life as an episode of Immoral Tales. Having excised the tale, Borowczyk refashioned it as a recurring dream sequence in a filthy comedy of manners. Borowczyk has much to say about horny American heiresses, venal French aristocrats, the oppression of the Black working classes, not to mention the pornographic spectacle of horse husbandry, and the exploratory tendencies of snails, both in the wild and the kitchen. Love it or loathe it, one thing is certain—you’ll never listen to Scarlatti the same way again.”—Daniel Bird, series curator Screens with Venus on the Half-Shell.