Erotikon & Ecstasy: Early Cinema’s Sexual Taboos

Erotikon was filmed between 1928 and 1929 by the film poet Gustav Machatý. He was to help the ambitious, then only twenty-seven-year-old director gain international fame. The intended cosmopolitan character of the film, with which its creator wanted to purposefully free it from the provincialism of domestic cinema at the time, was already anticipated by its international cast. Of the Czech actors, only Theodor Pištěk appeared in a prominent role.

The theme in the form of a twelve-page “film script” Virginity was written by Vítězslav Nezval. However, its outcome is different compared to the movie. The poet’s name is not mentioned in the subtitles, as he was afraid of a conflict with his colleagues from the avant-garde association Devětsil, which opposed the cooperation of its members with filmmakers.

The film, named after the name of a tantalizing perfume, thematically foreshadows the director’s most famous work, Extase (1932). Machatý has not yet dared such scandalous scenes in Erotikon as in Extasi, in which he had the actress Hedy Kiesler undressed. But already in it he touched on taboo topics with modernist means of expression and at the same time “with strong erotic ingenuity”. The film was anticipated with such interest that it was sold abroad even before its completion.

Bodies writhing in ecstasy

The melodrama about the infatuation of the innocent daughter of a track guard, whom he seduces during a rainy night, brings to a different state and immediately leaves a frivolous worldly man, exists in several versions. This year’s version tries to be as faithful as possible to the uncensored version that the audience could see during the night screening on February 27, 1929 at the Passage theater in Prague. However, the copy screened at the time differed somewhat from the later versions released for distribution.

The closed gala screening of the film was intended for a selected group of viewers. “They included film critics who mentioned a daring love scene in their reviews,” recalls National Film Archive curator Jeanne Pommeau, who primarily oversaw the restoration of the Eroticon: “However, a subsequent censorship report stated that such footage was missing from the copy that was submitted for censorship.”

The curator does not rule out that the incriminating scene, which was described by Národní listy as a “convulsive writhing of bodies in love ecstasy”, was cut out by Machatý himself before approval. Perhaps he was counting on the fact that the film would later be shown without the knowledge of censorship and with these shots, which undoubtedly would not have been allowed for public screening anyway.

Matěj Strnad, head of the NFA’s curatorial department, adds that it was a shocking and provocative film for its time, which outraged the censorship of the time by depicting a woman “lying in bed in labor pains”. The audience will see both of the mentioned controversial scenes in the restored version. Although some sequences are indeed unexpectedly sensual for their time, the director was not looking for a first-rate sensation, but rather a highly aestheticized depiction of uncontrollably raging passions and agonizing moral conflict within the heroine.

Václav Vích’s camera often captures the details of the faces, especially the yearning and pained gazes of the big, deep eyes of the erotically trembling girl, who was sensitively portrayed by the twenty-one-year-old Slovenian “baroquely pensive beauty” Ita Rina. Compositionally thought-out shots, dynamic montage, suggestive light contrasts and functional use of visual symbols (the most famous is the merging of two raindrops that run down the window glass after the physical connection of the lovers) are proof of directorial and cinematographic mastery.

Foreign archives helped

The new digitally restored version of Erotikon also differs from the one that was first presented in a restored form in June 1994 in Prague’s Archa Theater and was 400 meters longer than the copy available until then. Thanks to digital technologies, restoration procedures have moved forward significantly since then.

“Time has moved on, so we were able to restore several scenes to their original state,” he explains Matej Strnad. “Although these are more minor, but still interesting adjustments and corrections. Compared to the previous version, this is a big leap in quality, thanks to which we can once again admire the image and photographic qualities of the image.”

NFA collaborated with institutions from the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) on the digital restoration of the film. “We started from the reconstruction from 1994 and compared it with the original nitrate copies stored in the French CNC archive and the Belgian Royal Film Library,” explains Matěj Strnad. “Our partner archives were kind enough to scan them for us for this project, and we then, together with the UPP studio, took care of the digitization of the sources stored with us at the NFA.”

The new restoration of the film, during which some of its damaged parts were replaced, also brought additional knowledge about the original form, but also the history of Erotikon. According to the curators, “the analysis of preserved film material, archival sources, contemporary responses and other documents showed how the currently known version of the film was influenced by contemporary censorship and later distribution”.

Music inspired by pictorial beauty

Erno Košťál’s original music, which illustrated the additionally recorded version of Erotikon from 1933, has not survived. The premiere of the film in the Smetana Hall of the Municipal House will be accompanied by a new symphonic composition by the composer Jana Vöröšová. Its author values ​​Gustav Machaté’s films above all for their “immense visual beauty”. He also admires in them “the time that passes completely differently than in contemporary films – it does not attack, but allows the viewer to breathe and think.”

According to her, when composing the music for Erotikon, it was necessary to create a certain system of composition: “I worked a bit like an opera with motifs linked to individual protagonists and situations,” Jana Vöröšová describes. “So you can spot the theme of ‘Letter’, the theme of ‘Love’ and the like. However, the brain is an amazing thing and can process and react to all kinds of stimuli. And how many times it surprises you how it can find parallels and connections where they were not even intended.”

At the time of its release, Erotikon provoked the outrage of moralists, but received mostly enthusiastic reviews from domestic critics. “No director of ours has gone as far and as consistently as Machatý in portraying life, its twists and turns, sufferings and passions!” wrote the reviewer of the Czech film magazine. The German-language magazine Prager Film-Kurier even characterized the film as “an artistically high-value commercial hit at the European level, the best of all films produced in Prague to date.” They were prescient words.