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Thursday, June 17, 2021

Extase (aka Ecstasy) (1933)

A young girl (Hedy Lamarr) marries a much older man (Zvonimir Rogoz) but on her honeymoon she discovers to her dismay that her husband has no interest in sex. Not able to exist in a loveless marriage, she divorces him and goes to the country to stay with her father (Leopold Kramer) and it is there she meets a handsome engineer (Aribert Mog) working on road construction. Directed by Gustav Machaty, the film's notorious reputation is the result of Lamarr's nude swimming scene and the depiction of sexual intercourse (discreetly, we only see their faces). Those aware of the film's "erotic" reputation are bound to be disappointed. It's all actually quite tasteful although the movie's sexual symbolism gets to be a bit too much. Example: when the heroine is being deflowered, her strand of pearls break and the movie ends on an orgy of work tools used for their phallic imagery. Dialogue is kept to a minimum, so much so that it seems you're watching a silent film, only to be jarred when someone speaks a line. Reputedly, Lamarr's first husband spent thousands trying to buy up all the copies of the film after they married. Definitely a film of interest though I wouldn't call it great. 

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