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Friday, April 17, 2015

Le Vice Et La Vertu (aka Vice And Virtue) (1963)

In the waning days of Nazi occupied France in WWII, two French sisters find themselves leading different lives. The older (Annie Girardot) is an amoral whore who sleeps with Germans, each more powerful than the last one, in an attempt to assure herself a life of comfort. Her younger sister (Catherine Deneuve) marries a member of the resistance and has contempt for the Germans. Directed by Roger Vadim (AND GOD CREATED WOMAN), the first half of the film is very good as it explores the moral rot of the Third Reich as well as surviving however one has to as one's world (literally) comes crashing all around them. However, the second half of the film is another story. It's a ludicrous, often silly, piece of softcore S&M titillation. Michel Magne's piano underscore thunders away as nubile lovelies are submitted to the brutal lust of Nazi leaders in a private castle brothel. Apparently based on De Sade's JUSTINE (which I've never read), it's as if Vadim switched boats in mid-river and going from a serious look at Paris under Nazi occupation to an erotic S&M fantasy with its heroines in diaphanous gowns! With Luciana Paluzzi, Robert Hossein, O.E. Hasse (Hitchcock's I CONFESS) and Georges Poujouly.

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