A History of the Blue Movie
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
A History of the Blue Movie is a 1970 Graffiti Productions/Sherpix, Inc. documentary pornographic movie.
Directed by Alex de Renzy, this compilation of early shorts combines blue movies, dating from 1915 to 1970, with an uncredited narrator.
One of the first attempts to compile some of the oldest available American porn movies for a theater audience, A History of the Blue Movie includes scenes from Grass Sandwich (1915), which is one of the earliest known blue movies in existence, along with several classics in their entirety, such as the controversial The None Story, Ever Ready, The Janitor, Peeping Tom, and Smart Alec (1951) with legendary stripper Candy Barr.
Amos Vogel in Film as a Subversive Art commented that "perhaps the most startling thing about this film -- prototype of a genre -- is its legal and widespread presentation to packed student audiences at American colleges. An excellent compilation of old and new hardcore "stag" films (with an intelligent narration stressing historical aspects), its production was probably inevitable the moment it was realized that no one held a copyright of these illegal, anonymous works."
In France
- "In April 1975, a leftist government took hold in France and abolished censorship. [see X rating in France] This momentous occasion was celebrated by a showing of American Alex De Renzy's History of the Blue Movie [1970], which broke French boxoffice records by selling a quarter million tickets. Seeing there was money to be made, France then began making its own hardcore films in earnest, paralleling the rise of porno chic in the United States." --Bill Landis and Michelle Clifford via [1]
