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hi there,
i've been an adult movie fan since i was 18, but only recently discovered (i'm 27) the quality of french/italian movies.
here's what i think seperates good european xxx movies from their american counterparts:
lots of tease/lingerie and seduction and sex with clothes on
a story that hangs together and is about sex
interesting camera angles and music
perhaps most importantly: little preoccupation with the actual sex act and more interest in creating a sexy sensual mood.
here are a few of the films i've seen that fit the bill: (sorry, i don't have the director or actors off hand)
sex kitten
fantasy weekend
lusty business
seduce me tonight
12 strokes to midnight (marc dorcel)
all american girls (an american movie that looks french)
violences (a good italian film)
dressage (excellent perverted french softcore)


a few questions:
why aren't american films like their european counterparts?
why is it so hard to find good european porn?
what are considered the best studios/directors/actresses?

i'm in the san francisco bay area. if this resonates with anyone, please e-mail me.

Have you never seen Barbara Broadcast, The Devil In Miss Jones, Let My Puppets Come, Water Power, ... The Fashionistas ?

American films used to be like that in the 70s and early 80s (where all bu one of the titles mentioned by Joe date from), with a revival around 1990 with directors like John Leslie, John Stagliano and some of Paul Thomas's stuff, before the first two went gonzo.

I think video, then gonzo, reduced costs and increased competion as they enabled so many people to make porn that it became a production line. Each title sells less as there are more titles; so a producer has to produce more titles in order to make a living, and so the downward spiral continues.

There are also many European porn videos that suffer from the same faults, i.e. lack of build up and so on, but the other stuff seemes to have survived better, partly perhaps because of a difference in tastes and maybe factors like hardcore satellite TV channels which enable the likes of Marc Dorcel to recoup some of the costs of making high budget porn films.

But satellite can also reinforce the effects of gonzo. One of its effects is that producers and performers tend to think in terms of scenes, not in terms of films. In Britain the soft core satellite channels show a lot of British produced stuff, but in 20-25 minute slots. Even if these are also shot hard, they get released on video or DVD in bundles of four or five scenes. This makes for a very formulaic 'film'. Compare to the Golden Age films or modern Salieri films.

In a film like Clinique des fantasmes (1980, G?rard Kiko?ne) there were about a dozen sex 'scenes' crammed into 75 minutes. In a modern porn film, feature or gonzo, you usually get five scenes in 2 hrs 20 minutes. And most of this is showing the sex from all possible angles and positions. So even though there is more time overall, there is less time for build up - and you can't really tell a story in the brief build up to five scenes. The 'stories' in such films are just a device to get males and females in the same room so that they can have sex - for the flimsiest of reasons, usually not invovling much, if any, seduction.

Moreover, a film like Clinique would dramatically increase costs in these days where performers are paid by the scene, as the director would get about 8 minutes or less of footage, compared to 25 minutes for the same money and time. The result is that people who want eroticism - and eroticism comes from situation (context) and situation has to be established - are not well served by most modern American porn. Unfortunately we do not seem to be the largest market niche.

In Italy they continued to shoot on film for longer - but others who contribute to this forum are better qualified than me to talk about Italian porn.