The controversial Italia-Franco-German production Salon Kitty was released in the United
States in 1977 under the title Madam
Kitty (because we Yanks do need to have things spelled out for us), but
I honestly have no direct memory of its original theatrical run, nor can I recall ever reading anything
about it at the time. Which is really weird given: a) It stars dreamboat #1, Helmut Berger, going full-frontal (why
hadn’t my friends told me about this?!!?); b) It’s an X-rated, European
art-house exploitation flick, which, if you knew me in my film-school days, was practically catnip;
c) It’s a semi-musical with Ingmar Bergman star Ingrid Thulin channeling Cabaret and doing her best
Sally Bowles impersonation as the singing proprietress of a decadent, high-class
Berlin bordello in 1939; e) It reunites the stars of Luchino Visconti’s 1969
opus The Damned (Thulin &
Berger) in an over-the-top, trash/camp vision of Nazi Germany worthy of
Ken Russell.
How is it that I somehow missed the release of Salon Kitty, a film of almost operatic poor taste and visual excess?
With so much about Salon Kitty so perfectly suited to my oddball tastes, I really am at a loss for understanding how this film failed to capture my attention back in 1977. Except to note that when I Googled the original US release poster, what I found was a poster so tacky and cheap-looking, with "X-rated" plastered all over it, there's a pretty good chance that I mistook Madam Kitty (Salon Kitty) for a run-of-the-mill porn film and never even bothered to read the credits. In the end, perhaps it was all for the best because, as I understand, the US version was severely edited, and I'm happy that my first exposure to Salon Kitty (just last month!) was through the restored director's edit (Italian director Tinto Brass, of Caligula infamy) currently available on DVD.
How is it that I somehow missed the release of Salon Kitty, a film of almost operatic poor taste and visual excess?
With so much about Salon Kitty so perfectly suited to my oddball tastes, I really am at a loss for understanding how this film failed to capture my attention back in 1977. Except to note that when I Googled the original US release poster, what I found was a poster so tacky and cheap-looking, with "X-rated" plastered all over it, there's a pretty good chance that I mistook Madam Kitty (Salon Kitty) for a run-of-the-mill porn film and never even bothered to read the credits. In the end, perhaps it was all for the best because, as I understand, the US version was severely edited, and I'm happy that my first exposure to Salon Kitty (just last month!) was through the restored director's edit (Italian director Tinto Brass, of Caligula infamy) currently available on DVD.
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| Helmut Berger as Helmut Wallenberg |
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| Ingrid Thulin as Madame Kitty Kellerman |
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| Teresa Ann Savoy as Margherita |
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| Bekim Fehmiu as Hans Reiter |
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| John Ireland (!) as Cliff |
Inspired by a true story (movie-speak for “outside of the
basic premise, we essentially made everything up”) Salon Kitty is about an apolitical madam (Thulin) who runs the most
popular whorehouse in Berlin during the early days of WW II. Salon Kitty is a
luxurious bordello/nightclub democratically catering to an international
clientele of foreign dignitaries and high-ranking members of the Nazi Party (“Himmler…Von Ribbentrop…they are all my
clients!”).
Under the orders of icy SS General Biondo (John Steiner),
ambitious secret security officer Helmut Wallenberg (Berger) closes down Kitty’s
Berlin brothel and sets her up in a new location in the more remote Grünewald
district. Only instead of being allowed to keep her stable of multi-ethnic call girls, (who he deports, kills, or sends to prison camps), Kitty is obliged to accept and train a specially selected all-German cadre of prostitutes-in-training
chosen for their devout National Socialist loyalty. Kitty thinks she is doing her part for the morale of the German army, but unbeknownst to her, each
of the rooms of her new bordello has been outfitted with bugging devices
intended to secure information leaked by German military officers during pillow-talk sessions. Information that might prove useful for blackmail or the unearthing of treasonous behavior.
What ultimately happens when Kitty discovers she is being used as a
pawn in Nazi espionage, or what revenge an otherwise reprehensibly unsympathetic recruit (Teresa Ann Savoy) plots after falling in love with a disillusioned Luftwaffe Lieutenant (Yugoslav heartthrob
Bekim Fehmiu, whose US career sank without a trace after appearing in the flop Harold Robbins sudser The Adventurers
in 1970), serve as mere backdrop for Salon Kitty's most pressing concerns: the wholesale depiction of sexual depravity, the display of naked male and female flesh as often as possible, and allowing for Helmut Berger to strut around like Norma Shearer in one
outlandish fetish uniform after another.
Although it all sounds positively
loony in synopsis, as stated, Salon Kitty
is based on actual events culled from a 1972 book by Peter Norden about a madam (Kitty Schmidt, name changed to Kellerman for the film) whose
brothel was indeed used for the purpose of spying by SS agents. The chief
difference being that in real life, Kitty was aware of the wiretapping but was
threatened with the non-option of either cooperating or being sent to a POW camp. But in a Tinto Brass
film, the prurient always takes precedence over the political, so, much like one
of Ken Russell’s fervently overheated biographies of famous composers (The Music Lovers, Lisztomania), Salon Kitty
is less a look at civilian-coerced Nazi espionage, than a full-tilt wallow in
the kind of “divine decadence” that Cabaret could only hint at.
Salon Kitty attempts to dramatize the rise of National Socialism in Germany by equating the decadent conduct of aristocratic culture with the gradual erosion of individual morality that was at the center of the dehumanizing, sadomasochistic recruitment practices of the SS. It shows, rather effectively, that the only way to turn people into obedient drones is through the dismantling of self. And undeniably, much of what is on display is in accord with what we’ve come to learn about the controlling, brainwashing techniques of cults, religions, extremist groups, and most recently in the U.S., unscrupulous political parties
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| Does this swastika make me look fat? |
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| The controversial "recruitment" scene |
Salon Kitty was
recommended to me by Netflix on the strength of the 5-star rating I gave Visconti’s
The Damned after I watched it for the
first time last year. I’m not a big fan of films about Nazi Germany; in fact, I
tend to go out of my way to avoid them. but Visconti’s film was like The Godfather to me: a nihilistic epic
of evil couched in a cutthroat family saga. I liked its scope and visual
opulence, and I particularly liked Visconti’s artful way of distilling an epoch
of unspeakable inhumanity down to an emotional scale which didn’t allow the
watchful observer the easy-out of being able to say, “That could never happen
here.”
Alas, while Salon Kitty
feels and looks on the surface like a companion-piece to Visconti’s The Damned, in truth it’s more a well-heeled example of a
(mercifully) short-lived cinematic sub-genre known as Il Sadiconazista (or Nazi
exploitation film). These were films that, in the wake of controversial arthouse
successes The Night Porter (1974)
and Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975),
sought to capitalize more on the sensationalistic depiction of the sexual/sadomasochistic
side of Nazism with only superficial, contextual attention paid to the political.
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| SS Commander Biondo leads Wallenberg through a gymnasium of bottomless fencing students |
Salon Kitty attempts to dramatize the rise of National Socialism in Germany by equating the decadent conduct of aristocratic culture with the gradual erosion of individual morality that was at the center of the dehumanizing, sadomasochistic recruitment practices of the SS. It shows, rather effectively, that the only way to turn people into obedient drones is through the dismantling of self. And undeniably, much of what is on display is in accord with what we’ve come to learn about the controlling, brainwashing techniques of cults, religions, extremist groups, and most recently in the U.S., unscrupulous political parties
But in placing so much emphasis on all things sexual, and in taking
events so far over the top as to appear stylized, Italian director Brass not
only weakens the seriousness of these themes, but makes it all too easy to focus exclusively on the downright bizarre set-pieces and often hilariously clumsy dialogue: “A soldier also wants to shoot his
bullets, not just those the army gives him!”
Or perhaps this exchange:
Wallenberg- “You have to close your nightclub.” Kitty- “What a pain in the ass!”
What, for example, is the appropriate response to a scene in which a prostitute literally goes mad and starts foaming at the mouth after a German official, upon placing a loaf of bread shaped like an enormous phallus between her thighs, bites off its head?
Or perhaps this exchange:
Wallenberg- “You have to close your nightclub.” Kitty- “What a pain in the ass!”
What, for example, is the appropriate response to a scene in which a prostitute literally goes mad and starts foaming at the mouth after a German official, upon placing a loaf of bread shaped like an enormous phallus between her thighs, bites off its head?
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| One of Madam Kitty's girls with a client |
In The Damned, a character attributed the following quote to Hitler: “Personal morals are dead. We are an elite
society where everything is permissible.” I have no idea if Hitler actually
said this, but if the wall-to-wall debauchery depicted in Salon Kitty could be said to exist in service of anything beyond
cheap exploitation, I’d say it serves to decry the basic criminal degeneracy of
the Nazi movement and the moral decay fueling their particular brand of fascism.
Too bad that point has to wade through a lot of laugh-inducing absurdity in order to be made.
People (myself included) often use the phrase, “Only in the '70s” when referring to a certain unbridled, anything-goes lunacy characteristic
of movies of that decade. In most instances it’s said in a pejorative way; but
when I say it it’s with an almost proprietary, boastful pride. I’m
happy to have discovered film in an era when filmmakers, giddy with the
newfound freedom of relaxed censorship and permissiveness, took chances and
were allowed to cater to adult tastes, not required to pander to adolescent fads.
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| John Steiner as Commander Biondo |
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| Fascism as Fetish |
PERFORMANCES
While I tend to be of a mind to say a bad performance is a
bad performance in any language; European films with international casts pose a
unique problem, what with the widespread practice of post-production dubbing. In
Salon Kitty I can’t tell if the often
disembodied-sounding voices are due to dubbing, poor sound recording, or simply poor performances. But outside
of the leads (and just what is Joan Crawford's Queen Bee and I Saw What You Did co-star, John Ireland [fully clothed, thankfully] doing here?), I think it’s fair to assume most of the cast was selected for their willingness
to appear in various states of undress first, for their acting
ability second.
The beauteous Helmut Berger is certainly easy on the eyes, but
I’ve always considered him to be more a presence than an actor. He has a kind of
brittle intensity that I like, but mostly I just regard him as a kind of male
Garbo…just looking at him is enough. He has undeniable star quality, and the camera clearly loves him. When he's onscreen it's often difficult to watch anyone else.
By far, the best and most entertaining performance in Salon Kitty is given by Kitty herself, Swedish actress Ingrid Thulin. (Thulin began her career as a star in several Ingmar Bergman films. The same year Salon Kitty was released in the US, Bergman's own Nazi-themed film, The Serpent's Egg was also released.)
By far, the best and most entertaining performance in Salon Kitty is given by Kitty herself, Swedish actress Ingrid Thulin. (Thulin began her career as a star in several Ingmar Bergman films. The same year Salon Kitty was released in the US, Bergman's own Nazi-themed film, The Serpent's Egg was also released.)
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| Kitty & Wallenberg attempt to make beautiful Teutonic music together |
As
the resilient, pragmatic whorehouse madam, Thulin is like a character out of
Isherwood’s Berlin Stories. With her expressive, wry mouth, and that
magnificent face that can look both masculine and feminine at the same time,
Thulin plays her role to the hilt, cannily never really letting on whether she’s
playing it straight or playing to the camp, melodramatic heights of the material. The earthy zeal with which she attacks the role breathes vibrant life into Salon Kitty's austere, unerotic eroticism.
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| Life is a cabaret at Salon Kitty |
THE STUFF OF FANTASY
While Salon Kitty at
times makes a pretty persuasive case against the perils of fascism and the abuse
of power, I have to say, after sitting through the entire 133-minute director’s
cut, the strongest images I come away with are those depicting decorous depravity,
and those highlighting the visual splendor of the sumptuous art nouveau décor
and the eye-catching costumes.
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| Not since the excesses of Lucille Ball's Mame (1974) has the drag queen aesthetic been given such full rein in costume design. Credit Jost Jacob & Ugo Percoli |
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| Always dressed for the occasion, Kitty attempts to enlist the aid of a client (Stefano Satta Flores) in a plot to turn the tables on Wallenberg |
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| You know it's a high-class whorehouse when the girls wear gowns inspired by Hollywood designer, Adrian. In this instance, a black and white number worn by Joan Crawford in Letty Lynton (1932) |
Salon
Kitty features scenes of orgies, whippings, sadomasochism,
lesbianism, homoeroticism, voyeurism, animal slaughter, and some things I could
only look at through the fingers covering my eyes. Although
unpleasant at times, none of it ever feels purposeless. Indeed, when Salon
Kitty is at its best--that is to say, when it stops to take itself and its themes seriously--the explicit barbarism depicted feels calculated precisely to prevent the viewer from “enjoying” the film’s eroticism independent of its monstrous
context of impending death camps and genocide.
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| Humanity Reclaimed "Man belongs to mankind...not to a country, or to a race or religion." |
But for
all the baroque displays of violence, degeneracy, and depravity, Salon Kitty’s most chilling moment and most powerful anti-Nazi
indictment comes in a quiet sequence that takes place in an aquarium. A Jewish
family encounters a group of Hitler Youth girls, and as the family attempts to
avoid a confrontation, their small son accidentally drops a small wind-up toy
at the feet of one of the girls. A tense moment transpires as the child stares
innocently into the face of one of the sternest girls (later to become one of
Wallenberg’s recruits) who proceeds to methodically crush the toy under her foot
without once breaking her gaze from the child’s confused eyes.
This scene, played without dialogue, packs a serious wallop and should clue those who would dismiss this film out of hand for its excesses, that there is perhaps a method to Tinto Brass' madness, and the whole of Salon Kitty is likely greater than the sum of its outrageous parts.
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| Salon Kitty bid you Willkommen |
Copyright © Ken Anderson 2009 - 2014
