It was the birthday of Tinto Brass this week, Italian film-maker and sexual provocateur. Tinto Brass is famous for his soft-core porn movies, from Salon Kitty in 1983 through to Mon Amour in 2005. Though he is now 76, Mr Brass is hard at work on a new film Ziva, about a lonely light-house keeper’s wife. A very happy birthday to Mr Brass, with my best wishes for many more.

I first encountered Tinto Brass when his movie The Key was released in England (1984). The Key was set in wartime Italy in the 1940s and is the story of an older man who has lost his passion for his younger, very sexy wife (the wife is played by the beautiful and sensual Stefania Sandrelli). By chance his lust is re-ignited by seeing his wife dance with their son-law to be and he begins to fantasise about an affair between the younger man and his wife. Invigorated by this idea, he starts to plot an affair on their behalf, with lust and total mischief in mind. Of course nothing works out as planned. All of Tinto Brass’s interests are there, passion and lust and the impossibility of controlling it, voyeurism, the innocent sexuality of beautiful women, a lust for life against the cold embrace of death.

So there was a lot more to a Tinto Brass movie than I had expected. More than just porn, he had something to say, real characters to say it with.

Stefania Sandrelli in The Key

Tinto Brass started out as an avant-garde filmmaker, making surreal, impressionistic movies. Sometime around 1970, he decided he really wanted to make erotic movies. It turned out that he was good at it. In 1975 he made the controversial and sexy Salon Kitty, loosely based on a true story about Nazi sex orgies. It was a huge success in Europe.

Salon Kitty gave Brass the chance to explore one of his favourite themes, passion, lust, life resisting death. The Nazis, being the personification of death, served as the perfect metaphor. For Brass, sex and lust is the energy of life and war, fascism is the death force. For Brass, Salon Kitty is about the insanity of the army of the dead trying to control life. Brass returns to this theme again in later movies like the Black Angel, an obsessive affair between an Italian noblewoman and an amoral SS captain. Brass makes his movies lusty, virile and a celebration of sex and a denial of evil.

But not to make this piece too serious. Tinto Brass is mostly about fun, pleasure and sex. In fact most of his movies are works of mischief and lots of fun. In his movie Cheeky the beautiful Yulia Mayarchuk is the innocent abroad, the irresistible nymph who upsets everyone’s orderly lives.

Yulia Mayarchuk in Cheeky

In All Ladies Do It, Claudia Koll bursts out of being a stuffy housewife to become a temptress and drives her husband to distraction in the process. In his most recent film Mon Amour, a beautiful wife watches as her husband loses his passion for her and her response kicks off a chain of events that are sexy as they are funny.

Anna Jimskaia in Mon Amour

And this is Tinto Brass’s biggest gift. Sex and lust (and he deliberately mixes the two up) are uncontrollable, he says. Many of his protagonists start out from the same place, they think they have sex under control, it’s a minor activity, a decorous arrangement with a partner. Suddenly, a little lust creeps into their lives and Bam! The whole applecart is upset and in the process beautiful sexy women lose their clothes.

Brass’s heroes are the men who know that sex is important, to be celebrated and lust is to be given full rein to. There are the lovers, as Italian and studly as you might expect. Casual, powerful, elegant and hungry, the lovers are Brass’s alter-ego in every movie. There are the husbands, who Brass looks on favourably. They may start out confused and behind the curve but when they discover their manly sexy selves, everything ends well.

But you have got to watch Brass’s movies for the women. Brass adores women. In fact he can hardly bear to wrench the camera away from them. The camera lingers over these beautiful women, clothed, unclothed, talking, walking, making love, throwing crockery. I really enjoy the way Brass films women getting dressed. He knows that women dress to look sexy and he catches every bit of that primping and sexiness on film. It’s a reverse strip-tease that he never tires of showing us. And everything he does in his movies conspires to celebrate women’s beauty.

In a way, it’s not quite porn, or at least not as we know it, Jim. Porn often conspires to rush past women’s bodies. Somehow it becomes flick the camera past the face, breast, bottom, leg, start the action. Porn often races to the vagina because it thinks that is all we want. One of the ironies of porn is that some of its women are truly beautiful but the camera never stops to look at them or ask them their story.

Tinto Brass is the movie poet of women’s bodies. He lingers on their mouths, their lips, lets us see their breasts, bottoms, legs. Critics say that Tinto Brass is obsessed with bottoms and there is no movie of his that does not have a cavalcade of beautiful bottoms. But it is more than that. Colour, composition and lighting are all used to make his actresses’ skin look luminous, their bodies irresistible. Every part of them is revered. In Brass’s movies women are lush, yielding and sexy.

And he does it all for men, so he tells us. He celebrates lust on our behalf. Tinto Brass knows that lots of men like to look. And he is unashamedly a voyeur. So his movies become stories of catch-and-release, women preening in mirrors, lovers peeking round doors, forbidden photographs that turn up at the wrong moment, an errant gust of wind that lifts a skirt to show long legs, seamed stockings and a suspender belt. And no-one does sexy underwear on beautiful girls as well as Tinto Brass. God Bless him.

Serena Grandi, promoshot for Miranda by Tinto Brass

I also like Tinto Brass because he respects men’s fantasies. Often movies (apart from porn) seem unable to just show men and women enjoying each other. Sex in movies is pretty much politically correct these days. Tinto Brass is happy to tell all the stories, the guy who gets lucky with the French maid, the party that turns into an orgy, the student who just cannot resist her mature professor. However what makes these movies so interesting (and enduring) is that they have real characters. For Tinto Brass, sex and eroticism is a way of revealing character. When lust and love enters the life of a Brass character, he or she acts in ways that show us who they really are.

And Tinto Brass is happy, these are fun movies. Mostly, Tinto Brass movies are sexy, sophisticated farces. He is a very smart man and there is always more to had, in the story and the show. The movies are filed with visual tricks, clever references to other movies, an artist’s love of colour and light (Brass is in love with water, it is his most-used metaphor). But the message of the movies is clear, being clever is trivial, sex is all-important.

As usual, Mr Brass sums it up best himself. Here are some pictures of Tinto Brass presenting his philosophy of life.

Tinto and Cast

Director on set

It may be that this man has the best job in the world…….

Happy Birthday Mr Brass.

Further viewing:
Here are my five favourite Tinto Brass movies and one compilation set:

Improper Liaisons

Improper Liaisons is a series of shorts which includes one of my absolute Brass favourites, The Last Subway (La Dernier Metro? Really? I know…..). A beautiful young woman, a young man and a striptease, but not quite what you might expect. Marvellous, life-enhancing and very sexy.

Get it in the UK here and in the US here

The Key

Stefania Sandrelli is beautiful and tempted by her son-in-law, Frank Finley is her satyr of a husband. How much trouble can you start by taking polaroids of your sleeping nude wife? Answer. A lot.

Get it in the UK here and in the US here

Cheeky

Julia Mayarchuk is the blonde innocent who, between losing her clothes and accidentally construing double-entendres, is pursued by men and women intent on making love to her. My wife likes this one, says it is funny and sexy, and I second that recommendation.

Get it in the UK here and in the US here

P.O. Box

As Tinto Brass became more famous, many Italian men mailed their fantasies to him, asking him to turn their stories into film. Being the egalitarian that he is, Tinto Brass did just that. This is Brass at his most voyeuristic but with a kindness about sex that other moviemakers cannot seem to find.

Get it in the UK here and the US here

Mon Amour

Dario is a writer with a commission, a chic flat and a beautiful wife, played by Anna Jimskaia. However Dario has neglected his wife, the passion is gone and Marta (his wife) finally snaps. Mon Amour has a sort of breakneck comic pace, some acid humour and girls gone wild. If Mon Amour has a moral I guess it is that if you have a beautiful wife, you gotta make love to her at every opportunity.

Get it in the UK here and in the US here

The Tinto Brass collection

This is a good compilation to start your Tinto Brass collection. The eight movies in the collection are Paprika, Private, Cheeky, Black Angel, The Key, Miranda, All Ladies do it, Frivolous Lola.

Get it in the UK here and the US here