Coming Soon
THE IMAGE
1975
Director
Radley Metzger
Starring
Mary Medum
Marilyn Parker
Carl Parker
Runtime
89 minutes
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“Like a piss on a rose.”
American independent film pioneer Radley Metzger emerged in the mid-1960s as the master of art house erotica. It was a genre and a market that Metzger practically invented when he distributed the Danish shocker I, A WOMAN in the U.S. in 1965, using the proceeds to produce and direct his own films. With a cinematic sensibility influenced by Max Ophuls and Orson Welles, Metzger turned to literary classics for his inspiration—Pirandello, Dumas, Mérimée—updating their themes of desire and seduction for contemporary audiences and bringing them to sensual life with opulent production design and exquisite photography.
After encountering a mysterious blonde at a literary party, Jean (Carl Parker) finds himself drawn into a world of sadomasochism and domination. The silent siren who leads him there is Anne (Rebecca Brooke), the beautiful sex slave of a middle-aged procuress, Claire (Marilyn Roberts). From the famed rose gardens of Paris’ Bagatelle gardens to Claire’s own gothic dungeon, Metzger punctuates his usual high style with hardcore imagery in adapting Jean de Berg’s (a.k.a. Catherine Robbe-Grillet’s) infamous S&M novel to the screen.
“The most beautiful, heartbreaking film ever made to feature closely photographed and eroticized urination. This plays out like Marquis DeSade by way of French New Wave. Wonderful.” - Justin LaLiberty
American independent film pioneer Radley Metzger emerged in the mid-1960s as the master of art house erotica. It was a genre and a market that Metzger practically invented when he distributed the Danish shocker I, A WOMAN in the U.S. in 1965, using the proceeds to produce and direct his own films. With a cinematic sensibility influenced by Max Ophuls and Orson Welles, Metzger turned to literary classics for his inspiration—Pirandello, Dumas, Mérimée—updating their themes of desire and seduction for contemporary audiences and bringing them to sensual life with opulent production design and exquisite photography.
After encountering a mysterious blonde at a literary party, Jean (Carl Parker) finds himself drawn into a world of sadomasochism and domination. The silent siren who leads him there is Anne (Rebecca Brooke), the beautiful sex slave of a middle-aged procuress, Claire (Marilyn Roberts). From the famed rose gardens of Paris’ Bagatelle gardens to Claire’s own gothic dungeon, Metzger punctuates his usual high style with hardcore imagery in adapting Jean de Berg’s (a.k.a. Catherine Robbe-Grillet’s) infamous S&M novel to the screen.
“The most beautiful, heartbreaking film ever made to feature closely photographed and eroticized urination. This plays out like Marquis DeSade by way of French New Wave. Wonderful.” - Justin LaLiberty