Saga Erotica - The Emmanuelle Collection

Severotica Arsan

Saga Erotica - 
The Emmanuelle Collection
11 Disc Boxed Edition

Hi all, much like I did with my entry on Severin’s beautiful Al Adamson The Masterpiece Collection Blu Ray set (right here), I thought I’d finish up my recent season of Emmanuelle Arsan at NUTS4R2 reviews with a quick breakdown of some of the extras found on Severin Films’ beautiful Blu Ray collection, with links back to the reviews of the films in the set on the blog, a couple of lines about a few of the extras I’ve actually got around to watching plus, if you like, an index review at the end of all my reviews in this season. So you can use this page as a link page to some stuff and also maybe to understand why you might maybe want to pick up a copy of this set for yourself, while it’s still available.



EMMANUELLE
Disc 1 
UHD in two cuts with an audio commentary With film historian Elizabeth Purchell (Director's Cut Only)
French Trailer


Disc 2: Blu Ray contents as the above disc but also with the following special features.
A Slightly Scandalous Character – Interview With Actress Marika Green
Producing EMMANUELLE – Interview With Producer Yves Rousset-Rouard
Filming EMMANUELLE – Interview With Camera Operator Robert Fraisse
Fabric & Fantasy: Costume As Character Development – Video Essay By Fashion And Costume Historian Elissa Rose
The Channel – Actress Liane Curtis On Her Mother, Dubbing Artist Paulette Rubinstein
    
Interview With Marayat Rollet-Andriane (aka Emmanuelle Arsan) On The Set Of THE SAND PEBBLES (1966)
This is a short, black and white, fairly standard interview with the lady herself doing promotion for the The Sand Pebbles (which I reviewed here). She reveals she has been signed to Fox for a number of pictures and she’s looking forward to making another film soon. Sadly, the only other Fox project she was involved in was an episode of The Big Valley and it was not until her role in Laure (reviewed by me here in another Severin edition) that she had any other experiences on a movie set.

The Joys Of Emmanuelle, Part 1 – Interviews With Star Sylvia Kristel, Director Just Jaeckin And Producer Yves Rousset-Rouard
This is the first of a three part documentary directed by Severin co-owner, the great David Gregory and reveals all about the making of the film. How Kristel got involved almost by accident and then went for it because her boyfriend said nobody would be able to see it as, if they were doing the book, it would be uncertifiable. Also, the director of the movie tells about the day they all got arrested and spent a day in a Thai prison for filming in the wrong place at the wrong time. Also, just why he didn’t want the ‘cigar smoking’ scene in the film, feeling that it would turn it into cheap, softcore pornography which is what he didn’t want for the movie. Also, the producer tells a story which I’ve heard a number of times on a number of movies in that, the film was so succesful that there weren’t enough prints to cope with the demand and so motorcyle couriers had to rush back and forth between cinemas, delivering each reel as it became free, from one cinema to another. 

French Trailer
U.S. Trailer

Disc 3: Blu-ray (Special Features)
Signed, Emmanuelle Arsan – Interview With Camille Moreau, Author Of Emmanuelle Arsan: Biography of a Pseudonym
Very much on the same page as me on my best guesses on who Emmanuelle Arsan really was, Arsan biographer Camille Moreau talks about the combined pseuedonym of their collaborative creation and also the use of the name by other writers, by the time they were putting the Emmanuelle magazine out in France (much like, I suspect, Michael Moorcock’s loan to many New Worlds writers of his Eternal Champion variant jerry Cornelius for a time). Not only is Moreau convinced the pseudonym was a collaboration by the wife and the husband (who was in the French resistance during the war, it turns out) but she also gives us her opinion that the rumours of Arsan’s alleged involvement with Steve McQueen while the two were making The Sand Pebbles were just that... a rumour (I’m still unsure myself, now I know what McQueen did directly after finishing that film... if anyone was running from somethign it was surely him at that point?). She also gives vent on her hatred of the use of the famous wicker chair to sell the movie versions as their iconography.

Interview With Director Just Jaeckin For FILMO TV
    
A Hard Look (2000) – TV Documentary By Filmmaker Alex Cox
Well it’s hard not to recommend anything directed by ALex Cox and this critical look at the first Emamanulle film, its impact on popular culture and the various cinematic strands it spawned is no exception. It also takes a very ‘ask the public’ approach to both the films and the sexuality it inspired in its audience. My one criticism is that, at some point, it must have had some captions explaining who the various talking heads were but, unfortunately, this print of the documentary has none. 

Emmanuelle In Ontario – Video Essay On The Canadian Censorship Battle By Journalist Eric Veillette
A short 'does what it says on the tin' documentary listing the banning, then unbanning but severely mutilated screenings of the film in Ontario in Canada. These censors are, like all of them seem to be, completely evil and should probably be destroyed. 



EMMANUELLE 2 (1975)
Disc 4: UHD (Film + Special Features) 
Audio Commentary With Film Historian Elizabeth Purchell And Filmmaker Gillian Wallace Horvat
International Trailer
U.S. Trailer

Disc 5: Blu-ray (Film + Special Features)
Audio Commentary With Film Historian Elizabeth Purchell And Filmmaker Gillian Wallace Horvat
Audio Interview With Director Francis Giacobetti
Producing EMMANUELLE 2 – Interview With Producer Yves Rousset-Rouard
Filming EMMANUELLE 2 – Interview With Cinematographer Robert Fraisse

Mondo Emmanuelle – Ethnography And Softcore With Dr. Jennifer Moorman, Assistant Professor Of Communication And Media Studies
One of the best extras in the set, for my money, Dr. Moorman looks at ethnography and anthropology and talks about what she calls the ‘porno-ethnographic colonising gaze’ of the Emmanuelle films and the way various peoples and cultures have been depicted in American and European cinema... starting off with Nanook Of The North from 1922 and taking us through with films like Mondo Cane in 1962 until she gets to the films featured in this set. This look starts off with The Great Exhibition in London’s Hyde Park in 1851 and the Chicago Worlds Fair from 1893 to demonstrate how the various cultures are represented in a posed way to live up to certain Western expectations.

Filming Report For Swiss TV

The Joys Of Emmanuelle, Part 2 – Interviews With Star Sylvia Kristel And Producer Yves Rousset-Rouard
David Gregory’s second featurette covers Emmanuelle 2 and tells how the producer was told by the French board of censors that his film was definitely not pornographic. However, they wanted to make an example of it so they slapped it with an X certificate anyway. In response, the producer held a press conference and told the French people that he would not screen the film in its home country of France until that censorship decision was overturned... and he proceeded to release it to much success internationally instead. It took two years for the censorship decision to be overturned and so the release was delayed for two years in France. 

International Trailer
U.S. Trailer
Radio Spots

Disc 6: Soundtrack CD


GOODBYE EMMANUELLE (1977)
Disc 7: UHD (Film + Special Features)
Audio Commentary With Film Writer/Professor Of Modern Culture And Media Dr. Veronica Fitzpatrick
International Trailer
U.S. Trailer

Disc 8: Blu-ray (Film + Special Features)
Audio Commentary With Film Writer/Professor Of Modern Culture And Media Dr. Veronica Fitzpatrick
 Beyond Emmanuelle: Sylvia Kristel's Life And Career – Interviews With Jeremy Richey, Author Of Sylvia Kristel: From Emmanuelle To Chabrol, And Leila Wimmer, Senior Lecturer In Film Studies At London Metropolitan University

Audio Erotica – The Music Of The Emmanuelle Series With Soundtrack Journalist Daniel Schweiger
A nice little extra. All I’m saying is... as always... if you want somebody to come in and talk about soundtracks, get Daniel Schweiger.


The Joys Of Emmanuelle, Part 3 – Interviews With Star Sylvia Kristel And Producer Yves Rousset-Rouard
The third part of Gregory’s documentary comments on the third movie plus some of the bandwagon films which came out. Also, a lovely moment in one of the interviews where Sylvia Kristel shows us some of her paintings, which she exhibited in her gallery in Amsterdam. Nice to see.

International Trailer
U.S. Trailer
Radio Spots



I, EMMANUELLE (1969) 
The best film in the set I reckon but I just haven't had the time to watch any of the extras... sorry folks.

Disc 9: UHD (Film + Special Features)
Audio Commentary With Film Historian Dr. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
Trailer

Disc 10: Blu-ray (Film + Special Features)
Introduction By Kier-La Janisse, Author Of House Of Psychotic Women
Audio Commentary With Film Historian Dr. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
A Director À La Française – Interview With Director Cesare Canevari
Memoirs Of Emmanuelle – Interview With Actress Erika Blanc
A Man For Emmanuelle – Interview With Actor Sandro Pizzochero
Protagonist And Subject – Video Essay By Filmmaker Carl Elsaesser
Concerning Emmanuelle – Archival Interview With Cesare Canevari
Trailer

Disc 11: Soundtrack CD

 

EMMANUELLE ARSAN AT NUTS4R2

Novels
Emmanuelle
Emmanuelle L’Anti-Vierge
Laure

Movies
The Sand Pebbles 
I, Emmanuelle
Emmanuelle (1974)
Emmanuelle 2 
Good Bye Emmanuelle
Laure
Emmanuelle (2024)

Saga Erotica - The Emmanuelle Collection