The director was responsible for the 1974 erotic classic
French director Just Jaeckin, who directed the erotic classic ‘Emmanuelle’ (1974), died on Tuesday (6/9) at the age of 82 in France, due to a long illness.
“Emmanuelle” was the first film of her career. Shot in Thailand and the Seychelles, the film had a budget of $ 500,000 and grossed over $ 100 million at the box office.
Adapted from a 1959 pseudo-biographical novel written by Emmanuelle Arsan (pseudonym of Marayat Rollet-Andriane), the film transformed Dutch model Sylvia Kristel into the greatest sex symbol of the 1970s for the amount of adventures she led, both with men than with women. , during a vacation in Thailand. The repertoire was a real sex manual, starting with the “mile high club” (airplane sex).
It didn’t matter that Kristel looked nothing like the long-haired Eurasian woman described in the book. For better or for worse, she never failed to be mentioned again without the memory of “Emmanuelle”. Made when the actress was 22, the film became a cultural phenomenon. It has been seen by around 650 million people around the world, despite being banned in several countries – including Brazil – due to its strong sexual content.
Despite being a French production, “Emmanuelle” was banned for six months even in France itself. But with the death of French President Georges Pompidou, a new Secretary of State for Culture, Michel Guy, allowed the film to reach cinemas in its entirety, becoming the highest-grossing French film of all time, continuously in Paris. for 13 years. .
Producer Yves Rousset-Rouard decided to entrust the project to a young director and chose Just Jaeckin, a famous photographer with no experience as a director. The repercussion of the film marked him as a specialist in genre films. He brought other erotic classics to the screen, such as the literary adaptations of “The Story of O” (1975), with Corinne Cléry, and “The Lover of Lady Chatterley” (1981), also with Sylvia Kristel, among other films.
But her career was short, ending exactly ten years after “Emmanuelle”, with the adaptation of the erotic comic “Gwendoline’s Adventures in Heaven” (1984), when erotic cinema lost its audience due to sexually explicit videos. .
Having made adult films prevented him from diversifying at a much more uncompromising time than today. Even so, he directed an Elton John video, “Who Wears These Shoes?” in 1984.
In recent years, Just Jaeckin had been the owner, along with his wife, of an art gallery in Paris where the two essentially exhibited their sculptures and paintings.
He has maintained a friendship with Kristel over the years. And he was very sorry when she died in 2012 of cancer at the age of 60.
“Sylvia was a wonderful woman, very pure, very naive. She lived up to her last name, ‘Kristel’. She was swallowed up, like me, by the shock caused by ‘Emmanuelle’. She marked her, it was very difficult for her, “he said. she said at that time.
Check out the non-explicit trailer of the original “Emmanuelle” below.
Source: Terra
Camila Luna is a writer at Gossipify, where she covers the latest movies and television series. With a passion for all things entertainment, Camila brings her unique perspective to her writing and offers readers an inside look at the industry. Camila is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in English and is also a avid movie watcher.
