THE LAST DOCUMENTARY YOU DID WAS ABOUT KUROSAWA.  NOW YOU'RE REPORTING ON SOFT-CORE PORNO.  ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?

ALEX:  Fine, thanks. 

TOD:  What's wrong with softcore porn?

WELL, I LIKE A BIT OF THE HARD STUFF, MYSELF.

TOD:  I like that too, but I don't think Channel 4 was going to hire us to do a documentary about hardcore.  Not yet, anyway.

ALEX:  I agree.  Hardcore pornography should be kept in the home, where it belongs.

BUT WHY EMMANUELLE?  WHY NOT RED SHOE DIARIES OR 9 1/2 WEEKS OR THE CARRY ON FILMS?

TOD:  Because EMMANUELLE was the first softcore porn film I ever saw, and I never forgot it.  It was just the sexiest movie I'd ever seen, except for THE MOONSPINNERS - and that had Hayley Mills in it.

ALEX:  I think the first EMMANUELLE films were a cut above most of the stuff that follows.  They were like the Sergio Leone Spaghetti Westerns - in a league of their own, very different from the rest of the genre, or sub-genre.  What's interesting is that Spaghetti Westerns have become critically acceptable, nay acclaimed -- while the sex genres are still treated as in some way inferior...

BUT THEY'RE NOT THAT GOOD - ALL VASELINE ON THE LENSES AND BAD DUBBING - RIGHT?

ALEX:  As with any genre, the majority of films with the name "Emmanuelle" in the title are rubbish.  Most of them aren't even "Emmanuelle" films - they just stole the tile in the same way as Spaghetti Westerns called LAST STAGE TO EL PASO would be rechristened DJANGO CHALLENGES SABATA. 

TOD:  There isn't even a consistent spelling.  The Sylvia Kristel films are spelled with two "m"s; the Laura Gemser films have only one "m"; CARRY ON EMMANNUELLE has two "m"s and two "n"s!

ALEX:  And yet amid all this dross and pathetic imitation there is some genuinely interesting stuff.  Consider EMMANUELLE II aka JOYS OF A WOMAN -- there are so many allusions, casting tropes, philosophical and filmic in-jokes, it's the ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST of seventies softcore movies!

Or the first third of EMMANUELLE 5, a film-within-a-film by the director of IMMORAL TALES.  Or the Brazilian bonking party from EMMANUELLE 4, which appears to be the work of Francis Giacobetti, director of EMMANUELLE 2... 

Or EMANUELLE'S REVENGE, in which she becomes Charles Bronson...

Or EMANUELLE VERSUS THE CANNIBALS, with the cigarette-smoking monkey!

WHO'S IN THE DOCUMENTARY?

ALEX: Sylvia Kristel, Laura Gemser, Just Jaeckin (director of EMMANUELLE 1), Patrick Bachau, Nadine Strossen (head of the American Civil Liberties Union), James Ferman (former British Film Censor), Laura Ruth Williams, Margi Clarke...

AND IS IT FUNNY?

TOD:  Not entirely.  We imagined it would have a fairly light tone but when we went out and got our interviews it became a bit more... serious.

IN WHAT WAY?

ALEX:  The documentary turned out to be about the issue of freedom.  Freedom to think whatever thoughts you like, to entertain notions that aren't officially approved, to commit what the state considers "victimless crimes."  That wasn't what we had in mind at the beginning.  But the more we shot, the more the issue of censorship, or moral guardianship, seemed to predominate.

TOD:  James Ferman - the retired head of the British Board of Film Censors (now retitled the British Board of Film Classification) - argues in favour of censorship.  He takes the preventative point of view.  He's familiar with Nadine Strossen's work but says she fails to take into account that men and women are different - that men must be prevented from certain images that may inspire them to commit sexual crimes.

ALEX:  Nadine's point of view is that there is no evidence anywhere that consumption of pornography leads to rape or violence or any criminal acts.  She is a trial lawyer and she makes her case very strongly. 

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

TOD:  I completely agree with Nadine.  Totally.  I think it's treating us like children to tell us what we can and can't watch. 

ALEX:  I don't think there should be any censorship of anything.  Especially not of  government or corporate or military papers.  Everything should be freely available.  Information is power.  The suppression of sexual and political material in Britain is very similar to Prohibition in the US in the 1920s, or to the "war on drugs" today.  They are wrong, they are unjust, they are doomed to failure - but somebody's benefiting from them.  Somebody's always benefiting from repressive structures.  It's why they don't disappear.