Festivity, Revels, and Nocturnal Dalliances
On Diabolique, I’m exploring the sultry wicker-heavy world of the legendary erotic film Emmanuelle, starting with the original book and the woman who wrote, or at least inspired it all.
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A fan of silent serials and a precursor to the French Nouvelle Vague, Georges Franju was inspired by the early thrillers of Louis Feuillade when he made the haunting, at times shocking, story of a disfigured woman, a driven scientist, and the horror of physical beauty.
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Francoise Hardy may have been the most stereotypically French of the Yē-Yē girls: Aloof, sophisticated and beautifully melancholy. Nevertheless, her sound was one that was largely made in England.
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The decision to film The Great Silence in Spain’s snowy Pyrenees was the result of Sergio Corbucci wanting to take a skiing trip. Whatever the case, it’s a decision responsible for giving the film a unique and visually striking character.
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At the height of the Yeh Yeh Girl craze, here were many girls compelled by external forces to seek fame. Yet, as the brief and quite odd career of Clothilde demonstrates, the results were not always bad.
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France Gall might not have had the sophisticated mystique of Francoise Hardy, the it girl “oomph” of Sylvie Vartan, or the continental sensuality of Bardot, but she was nonetheless an integral part of the Yeh Yeh Girl pantheon.
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