Walerian Borowczyk
Encyclopedia
Walerian Borowczyk was a Polish
film director
. He directed 40 films between 1946 and 1988. His career as a film director was mainly in France.
, he studied painting
at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków
, then devoted himself to painting and lithography
http://www.desa.art.pl/aukcje/aukcja_sztuka_wspolczesna_2/img_high/asw2_8.jpg, including the creation of posters for the cinema
http://www.cinemaposter.com/FBorowczyk.html, which earned him a national prize in 1953. In 1959, he settled in Paris.
His early films were surreal
animations, some only a few seconds long, including several comic abecedaria
. His most acclaimed early films were Był sobie raz (Time Upon a Once) (1957) and Dom (House) (1958, with Jan Lenica
). In 1959, he worked with Chris Marker
for Les Astronautes. Major works of this period include the stop motion
film Renaissance (1963), which uses reverse motion to depict various destroyed objects (a prayer book, a stuffed toy, etc.) re-assembling themselves, only to be destroyed again when the last object (a bomb) is complete, and the nightmarish Jeux des anges (1964), selected by Terry Gilliam
as one of the ten best animated films of all time. In 1967, he directed his first animated feature film
, Théâtre de Monsieur & Madame Kabal: un film dessiné pour les adultes (Mr. and Mrs. Kabal's Theatre
).
Borowczyk moved into live-action feature film with Goto, l'île d'amour
(Goto, Isle of Love) (1968) and Blanche (1971), both tales of illicit love thwarted by jealous husbands, and both starring his own wife, Ligia Branice. One of his most appreciated films of this period, Dzieje grzechu (A Story of Sin) (1975), which was nominated for Palme d'or
, is an adaptation of a Polish literary classic by Stefan Żeromski
. Like his 1966 short film Rosalie (a Guy de Maupassant
adaptation and a Silver Bear winner), Dzieje grzechu had successfully rendered the themes of seduction and infanticide
. Contes immoraux (Immoral Tales
) (1974) and his later work, including Interno di un convento (Behind Convent Walls) (1977) (inspired by Promenades dans Rome of Stendhal
) and Cérémonie d'amour (Rites of Love) (1988) have been controversial, lauded by some for their unique surrealist vision and derided by others as contentless pornography
. Especially, La bête
(The Beast, 1975) (based on the novel Lokis by Prosper Mérimée
and originally conceived in 1972 as a film on its own, but then in 1974 as the fifth story in Contes immoraux) was seen by many as a decline in the director's career after Dzieje grzechu, except in France, where it was hailed by prominent critics such as Ado Kyrou. His 1980 film Lulu was based on the eponymous character created by Frank Wedekind
.
In 1981, he made Docteur Jekyll et les femmes (Blood of Dr Jekyll), a version of the Jekyll and Hyde story starring Udo Kier
and Patrick Magee
and depicting Jekyll's transformation as a violent rebellion against the Victorian morality
. In his 1988 book Nightmare Movies, Kim Newman
described the film as "dark, misanthropic and interestingly offensive". He made a brief return to animation with his 1984 short film Scherzo infernal. In 1987, he directed Emmanuelle 5
, an installment of the Emmanuelle
series, that was also released in a hardcore video-only version. He was unhappy with the project due to a dispute concerning the casting of lead actress Monique Gabrielle
. In 1988 and 1990, he directed four episodes for the series Série rose: Les Chefs d’œuvre de la littérature érotique on M6
.
Many of Borowczyk's films use historical settings, including Ars Amandi: l'arte di amare (The Art of Love) (1983), set in the time of Ovid
(and featuring the poet as a character); Blanche, set during the Middle Ages
; and three of the four episodes in Contes immoraux, set respectively in the nineteenth century, the sixteenth century, and the Borgia papacy.
A number of his films (like the "tale" La Marée (The Tide) in Contes immoraux, the 1976 La Marge (The Streetwalker), the episode Marceline in Les Héroïnes du mal: Margherita, Marceline, Marie (Immoral Women) (1979), and Cérémonie d'amour were based on stories by André Pieyre de Mandiargues
. A less usual product of this cooperation was Une collection particulière of 1973, a representation of Borowczyk's collection of pornographic items, with Mandiargues having written (and read) the narration.
Borowczyk was the author of two books; Anatomia diabła (Anatomy of Devil) (1992) and Moje polskie lata (My Polish Years) (2002).
He died of heart failure in Paris in 2006. He was 82 years old.
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
. He directed 40 films between 1946 and 1988. His career as a film director was mainly in France.
Biography
Born in KwilczKwilcz
Kwilcz is a village in Międzychód County, Greater Poland Voivodeship, in west-central Poland. It is the seat of the gmina called Gmina Kwilcz. It lies approximately east of Międzychód and west of the regional capital Poznań....
, he studied painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków
Kraków
Kraków also Krakow, or Cracow , is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. Kraków has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, cultural, and artistic life...
, then devoted himself to painting and lithography
Lithography
Lithography is a method for printing using a stone or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface...
http://www.desa.art.pl/aukcje/aukcja_sztuka_wspolczesna_2/img_high/asw2_8.jpg, including the creation of posters for the cinema
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
http://www.cinemaposter.com/FBorowczyk.html, which earned him a national prize in 1953. In 1959, he settled in Paris.
His early films were surreal
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
animations, some only a few seconds long, including several comic abecedaria
Abecedarium
An abecedarium is an inscription consisting of the letters of an alphabet, almost always listed in order. Typically, abecedaria are practice exercises....
. His most acclaimed early films were Był sobie raz (Time Upon a Once) (1957) and Dom (House) (1958, with Jan Lenica
Jan Lenica
Jan Lenica was a Polish graphic designer and cartoonist.A graduate of the Architecture Department of Warsaw Polytechnic, Lenica became a poster illustrator and a collaborator on the early animation films of Walerian Borowczyk. From 1963 - 1986 he lived and worked in France, while from 1987 he...
). In 1959, he worked with Chris Marker
Chris Marker
Chris Marker is a French writer, photographer, documentary film director, multimedia artist and film essayist. His best known films are La jetée , A Grin Without a Cat , Sans Soleil and AK , an essay film on the Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa...
for Les Astronautes. Major works of this period include the stop motion
Stop motion
Stop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence...
film Renaissance (1963), which uses reverse motion to depict various destroyed objects (a prayer book, a stuffed toy, etc.) re-assembling themselves, only to be destroyed again when the last object (a bomb) is complete, and the nightmarish Jeux des anges (1964), selected by Terry Gilliam
Terry Gilliam
Terrence Vance "Terry" Gilliam is an American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam is also known for directing several films, including Brazil , The Adventures of Baron Munchausen , The Fisher King , and 12 Monkeys...
as one of the ten best animated films of all time. In 1967, he directed his first animated feature film
Feature film
In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...
, Théâtre de Monsieur & Madame Kabal: un film dessiné pour les adultes (Mr. and Mrs. Kabal's Theatre
Mr. and Mrs. Kabal's Theatre
Mr. and Mrs. Kabal's Theatre is a 1967 French animated film directed by Walerian Borowczyk. It is Borowczyk's first feature-length film and his last animated film. It consists of a sequence of loosely connected scenes, much like a vaudeville program, in which Mr. and Mrs. Kabal perform absurd,...
).
Borowczyk moved into live-action feature film with Goto, l'île d'amour
Goto, Island of Love
Goto, Island of Love is a 1968 drama film directed by Walerian Borowczyk and starring Pierre Brasseur.-Cast:* Pierre Brasseur - Goto* Ligia Branice - Glossia* Jean-Pierre Andréani - Gono* Ginette Leclerc - Gonasta...
(Goto, Isle of Love) (1968) and Blanche (1971), both tales of illicit love thwarted by jealous husbands, and both starring his own wife, Ligia Branice. One of his most appreciated films of this period, Dzieje grzechu (A Story of Sin) (1975), which was nominated for Palme d'or
Palme d'Or
The Palme d'Or is the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival and is presented to the director of the best feature film of the official competition. It was introduced in 1955 by the organising committee. From 1939 to 1954, the highest prize was the Grand Prix du Festival International du...
, is an adaptation of a Polish literary classic by Stefan Żeromski
Stefan Zeromski
Stefan Żeromski was a Polish novelist and dramatist. He was called the "conscience of Polish literature". He also wrote under the pen names: Maurycy Zych, Józef Katerla and Stefan Iksmoreż.- Life :...
. Like his 1966 short film Rosalie (a Guy de Maupassant
Guy de Maupassant
Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was a popular 19th-century French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form's finest exponents....
adaptation and a Silver Bear winner), Dzieje grzechu had successfully rendered the themes of seduction and infanticide
Infanticide
Infanticide or infant homicide is the killing of a human infant. Neonaticide, a killing within 24 hours of a baby's birth, is most commonly done by the mother.In many past societies, certain forms of infanticide were considered permissible...
. Contes immoraux (Immoral Tales
Immoral Tales (film)
Immoral Tales is a 1974 French anthology film directed by Walerian Borowczyk. The film was Borowczyk's most sexually explicit at the time. The film is split into four erotic themed stories that involve the loss of virginity, masturbation, bloodlust and incest.After the release of Immoral Tales,...
) (1974) and his later work, including Interno di un convento (Behind Convent Walls) (1977) (inspired by Promenades dans Rome of Stendhal
Stendhal
Marie-Henri Beyle , better known by his pen name Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. Known for his acute analysis of his characters' psychology, he is considered one of the earliest and foremost practitioners of realism in his two novels Le Rouge et le Noir and La Chartreuse de Parme...
) and Cérémonie d'amour (Rites of Love) (1988) have been controversial, lauded by some for their unique surrealist vision and derided by others as contentless pornography
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
. Especially, La bête
La bête
The Beast is a French erotic comedy-horror-drama film directed by Walerian Borowczyk. Although sometimes compared with Beauty and the Beast, there are no parallels in the plot except that it features the relationship between a beast and a woman....
(The Beast, 1975) (based on the novel Lokis by Prosper Mérimée
Prosper Mérimée
Prosper Mérimée was a French dramatist, historian, archaeologist, and short story writer. He is perhaps best known for his novella Carmen, which became the basis of Bizet's opera Carmen.-Life:...
and originally conceived in 1972 as a film on its own, but then in 1974 as the fifth story in Contes immoraux) was seen by many as a decline in the director's career after Dzieje grzechu, except in France, where it was hailed by prominent critics such as Ado Kyrou. His 1980 film Lulu was based on the eponymous character created by Frank Wedekind
Frank Wedekind
Benjamin Franklin Wedekind , usually known as Frank Wedekind, was a German playwright...
.
In 1981, he made Docteur Jekyll et les femmes (Blood of Dr Jekyll), a version of the Jekyll and Hyde story starring Udo Kier
Udo Kier
Udo Kier is a German actor, known primarily for his work in horror and exploitation movies.-Early life:...
and Patrick Magee
Patrick Magee (actor)
Patrick Magee was a Northern Irish actor best known for his collaborations with Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, as well as his appearances in horror films and in Stanley Kubrick's films A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon.-Early life:He was born Patrick McGee in Armagh, County Armagh, Northern...
and depicting Jekyll's transformation as a violent rebellion against the Victorian morality
Victorian morality
Victorian morality is a distillation of the moral views of people living at the time of Queen Victoria's reign and of the moral climate of the United Kingdom throughout the 19th century in general, which contrasted greatly with the morality of the previous Georgian period...
. In his 1988 book Nightmare Movies, Kim Newman
Kim Newman
Kim Newman is an English journalist, film critic, and fiction writer. Recurring interests visible in his work include film history and horror fiction—both of which he attributes to seeing Tod Browning's Dracula at the age of eleven—and alternate fictional versions of history...
described the film as "dark, misanthropic and interestingly offensive". He made a brief return to animation with his 1984 short film Scherzo infernal. In 1987, he directed Emmanuelle 5
Emmanuelle 5
-Overview:In 1985, ASP films approached Polish director Borowczyk to helm the latest Emmanuelle feature, and he accepted, intrigued by the idea of giving a new spin to the series and character...
, an installment of the Emmanuelle
Emmanuelle
Emmanuelle is the lead character in a series of French softcore erotic movies based on a character created by Emmanuelle Arsan in the novel Emmanuelle...
series, that was also released in a hardcore video-only version. He was unhappy with the project due to a dispute concerning the casting of lead actress Monique Gabrielle
Monique Gabrielle
Monique Gabrielle is an American model and actress.Gabrielle was the Penthouse Pet of the Month for December 1982 and appeared in Bachelor Party in 1984. Since then, she has had a career as a B-movie actress. Many of Gabrielle's films have had overtly erotic overtones...
. In 1988 and 1990, he directed four episodes for the series Série rose: Les Chefs d’œuvre de la littérature érotique on M6
Métropole 6
M6, also known as Metropole television, is the most profitable private national French TV channel and the third most watched television network in the French-speaking world...
.
Many of Borowczyk's films use historical settings, including Ars Amandi: l'arte di amare (The Art of Love) (1983), set in the time of Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
(and featuring the poet as a character); Blanche, set during the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
; and three of the four episodes in Contes immoraux, set respectively in the nineteenth century, the sixteenth century, and the Borgia papacy.
A number of his films (like the "tale" La Marée (The Tide) in Contes immoraux, the 1976 La Marge (The Streetwalker), the episode Marceline in Les Héroïnes du mal: Margherita, Marceline, Marie (Immoral Women) (1979), and Cérémonie d'amour were based on stories by André Pieyre de Mandiargues
André Pieyre de Mandiargues
André Pieyre de Mandiargues was a French writer born in Paris. He became an associate of the Surrealists and married the Italian painter Bona Tibertelli de Pisis...
. A less usual product of this cooperation was Une collection particulière of 1973, a representation of Borowczyk's collection of pornographic items, with Mandiargues having written (and read) the narration.
Borowczyk was the author of two books; Anatomia diabła (Anatomy of Devil) (1992) and Moje polskie lata (My Polish Years) (2002).
He died of heart failure in Paris in 2006. He was 82 years old.
Further reading
- Immoral Tales: European Sex & Horror Movies 1956-1984Immoral Tales: European Sex & Horror Movies 1956-1984Immoral Tales: European Sex & Horror Movies 1956-1984 is the title of a 1994 non fiction book by Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs, that won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Non-Fiction....
(1994) by Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs (with a chapter dedicated to Borowczyk). ISBN 0-312-13519-X - Nightmare Movies (1988) by Kim Newman. ISBN 0-517-57366-0
- Walerian Borowczyk: Cinema of Erotic Dreams, by Jeremy Mark Robinson, Crescent Moon Publisher 2008, ISBN 1861712308
External links
- Walerian Borowczyk's Heroines of Desire A review of the film Les Héroïnes du mal, in relation with Borowczyk cinema
- Walerian Borowczyk On Razor Reel