Page 158 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

she may assume, the very name Emmanuelle seems to have become a hallmark for a certain sort
of satisfaction, if not quality, among connoisseurs of softcore porn.' 31 Emmanuelles influence also
established various formulae for eroticism on-screen. Considering it is long list of sequels, leaving aside
the uncountable rip-offs, look-alikes, homage and copies, Jaeckin's now decades-old film is something
more than a popular phenomenon. It is a demonstration of shrewd notions about expressive freedom
and the exploitation of cast and setting to turn Emmanuelle into a brand carefully prepared for an
increasingly global culture trading on visible entertainment.
Notably, its cinematic practices and cultural values were quickly absorbed across the world,
but especially in Hollywood by the mid-1970s. In the intervening decades adult entertainment
has splintered along a range from prostitution through personal ads, with academic programmes,
pornographic movies, fashion magazines and phone sex ads in between. Focusing just on pornographic
movies, the splintering forks into softcore, non-penetrative, narrative-oriented entertainments and
more hardcore, penetrative, non-narrative-oriented stimulants.

CONCLUSION

Since its release in France on 26 June 1974, Emmanuelle has become a seminal text for contemporary
adult entertainment. To many viewers its success is astounding due to the consensus of negative
opinion about the film, roughly echoing one anonymous Variety writer:

Based on a bestselling book about the sexual liberation of a young woman, and with some
production dress and the exotic locale of Bangkok, this is still softcore in its lack of deeper
resonance of its characters, simulation, and a sorr of coy 1940s-rype under-the-counter affair
in contrast to today's outspoken hardcore pix Stateside. Also lacking a sense of humor, [the]
film is a series of glossy images and appears more a come-on for the civil service than for
femme lib. 32

Heedless of such criticism, the film was a hit and, in the case of its debut at the Parafrance Champs-
Elysees Theater, Paramount City, it ran for 552 consecutive weeks, served 3,268,875 spectators and
earned its producers their investment from just one screen.33
No matter detractors and supporters, an undeniable effect of Emmanuelle is its definitive model
for a new kind of on-screen erotica. Because it was produced using the high production values of
fashion photography, it appealed to cinephiles longing for new, more explicit content in movies but
who were still interested in well-made films. Within the French context it also reaped the benefits
of experiments in film content begun by the New Wave, although its emphasis was purposefully on
conventional formal elements than on any alienating innovations. Emmanuelle was also a trend-setter
and the beneficiary of relaxed standards of permissible imagery resulting from wide social upheaval in
the 1960s. One result, aside from a movement away from imagined sensuality and towards its detail in
the mass media, was a permanent, paradigmatic shift in the way French movies approached sex play.
Among the first films to capitalise on this new condition, Emmanuelle was a runaway hit, first
on booksellers' shelves and then in movie theatres. As noted above, Emmanuelle is a disorderly

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