Customer Reviews

The Libertine

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a surprisingly entertaining movie. It is almost quaint.
Catherine Spaak, one of the most beautiful actresses of the 1960's is at her most beautiful as a widow who discovers her late husnband had an apartment that he used for kinky sexual escapades. She then decides to use that apartment for similar purposes and to live a more carefree sexual lifestyle.
Movie is full of typical 1960's touches, from the art direction to the music. This is not, though, an explicit sex movie or even one of those late night Cinemax flicks. This is a fine, sexy, very entertaining movie.
The VHS version of this movie was missing several minutes of the more naughty scenes. Luckily they have been restored for the DVD version. The print quality of those scenes is not up to par, but it is still nice to see a complete version. The DVD also features some "Deleted Scenes" and some amazing 1960's trailers from the Audubon Collection. They are truly fun to watch.

I saw this movie when it first came out in 1969. I had fond memories of a movie that was sexually interesting and funny. However the video is of poor quality for the price. Also, the editing seems to have cut out substantial parts of the original. I would not recommend this video for purchase.

A good cast and an interesting script have good possibilities to have as result a good film. You have to watch this film concidering that is a film of the 60s. Is not bad but we have seen J.L. Tredigniand in better films. The unrated version is supposed to be uncut...he , he, ..i don't think so!The version i have seen some 25 years ago in my neighbourhood's cinema was somehow more daring..

A 1970's SEXPLORATION FILM INTO THE MADONNA/WHORE SYNDROME

The Libertine explores the adventures of a recently widowed young wife (Catherine Spaak) who finds out her deceased husband Franco kept an apartment where he explored his interest in sadism. In the apartment, Spaak finds evidence that she was nicknamed "the saint" and a book rating his sexual partners on areas such as "imagination, compliance, adventure, experience". Absent from the book is her own name. Admitting that she was bored with her husband's attempts to make love with her, Spaak sets out to become the sort of woman whose name would be in that book. Along the way to becoming a sexual experienced temptress she encounters "the madonna/whore syndrome"- the men who might have married her when she wasn't sexually satisfying herself are not interested in her when she is exploring her sexuality. In her adventures, Spaak explores bestiality with a beetle and sadism-declaring eventually that she doesn't like being hit and hates having her expensive seventies era clown pant suit ripped. Eventually she meets a level headed and sexy scientist type who declares that "a husband should be his wife's most exciting lover" while carrying Spaak around their home on his back so that she can sexually stimulate herself like Aristotle.


A 1970's era low budget film, The Libertine is full of sort-core sex scenes and poor editing. Some parts of the film are misssing, and some of the sex scenes are oddly cut, making it less of a sexy film than the title implies. In one scene, Spaak picks up a man on the street and they go to have sex in a car and you see the car-framed from several miles away-parked by a lake. No steamy details are illuminated. Suddenly Spaak is back by the curbside getting paid. That being said, in this day and age of plastic everything, it's actually refreshing to see actresses who pose before a camera au naturel. I actually think I'd forgotten what natural breasts on film look like until I saw this movie. There are some incredibly interesting hair styles which Spaak attempts to maintain for her sex scenes. The movie is labeled a French film, but Spaak's deceased husband was apparently Italian and most of the film seems shot in Italy. Still, the film is an interesting and charming exploration of female sexual liberation and one of the only films I've seen address the madonna/whore syndrome. Ultimately, a lot tamer and more interesting than the Story of O, The Story of O-a similar 70's style sexploration film.

Spanking enthusiasts take note, this legendary sex comedy of 1969 concludes with one of the holy grails of spanking scenes in a mainstream film, the famous spanking on the long line panty girdle/marriage proposal scene. The other reviews have told the story, I will only reiterate that Catherine Spaak is adorably naughty, wears the best clothes ever and her sternly handsome love interest, Jean Louis Tringinant, is everything one desires in a masterful leading man.The scene where Mimi strips off her clothes in public to get attention from her boyfriend and how he reacts sets up the dominant/ submissive dynamic of this sophisticated little gem with great wit and style. This provocative French sex farce is a treasure to connoisseurs of fetish romance as well as anyone nostalgic for that era when women were just becoming able to express their sexual desires without apology but were still blushing about it.

A comedy with the theme that everyone is entitled to their own perversions, so long as "no one scares the horses." Trintignant plays a mildly befuddled medical school professor, and Spaak is a youthful and appealing widow who learns more and more about the secret life her recently deceased husband led on the side. She is not outraged by his perversions, only hurt that he did not think she would join in them. And, she sets out to discover what he found so exciting about them. Compare this comedic approach to sex with the dour, serious Swedish "I Am Curious Yellow" of the same period.

This is obviously a rated version where all the "juicy bits" have been cut off by some prude censors probably all belonging to some born again christian associations . Pity !

THE STAR OF THIS MOVIE IS ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL AND IF I FIND ANY MORE MOVIES WITH HER IN THEM, I WILL SURELY BUY THEM!!