Note
The Interactive Distortion Tool allows the user to distort the object in a number of ways, creating thereby a number of realistic effects that cleverly mask their provenance.
“About that other torrid love scene [in Ecstasy]. This, we shot indoors.
I was told to lie down with my hands above my head while Aribert Mog whispered in my ear, and then kissed me in the most uninhibited fashion. I was not sure what my reactions would be, so when Aribert slipped down and out of camera, I just closed my eyes.
“Nein, nein,” the director yelled. “A passionate expression on the face.” He threw his hands up and slapped them against his sides. He mumbled about the stupidity of youth.
He looked around and found a safety pin on a table. He picked it up, bent it almost straight, and approached.
“You will lie here,” he said. “I will be underneath, out of camera range. When I prick you a little on your backside, you will bring your elbows together and you will react!”
I shrugged. Aribert took his place over me, and the scene began again. Aribert slipped down out of range on one side. From down out of range on the other side, the director jabbed that pin into my buttocks “a little” and I reacted!”
“Nein, nein.” I had reacted in the wrong way. “Elbows!” he yelled.
So, several takes and jabs later, we were getting nowhere.
Some of those pinpricks shot pain through my body until it was vibrating in every nerve. I remember one shot when the close-up camera caught my face in a distortion of real agony…and the director yelled happily, “Ya, goot!’” (from Ecstasy)
Jouissance?
“Thus, Ecstasy allows for female jouissance and a ‘sex which is not one.’ It also represents female desire as a driving force with the natural schema: hence the film intercuts Eva’s affair with shots of horses mating, bees pollinating, and flowers dripping dew (images worthy of Georgia O’Keefe)’” (Fischer 134).
“Eva is a new woman who feels a right to sexual fulfillment” (Fischer 136).
…OR SOMETHING ELSE?
“….If you have ever seen Ecstasy, I can only say that in the close-up section, you may have seen me agonizing over pinpricks! And I have seen that section once myself in which the emotion on my face was pure exhaustion. Because there were takes when I just had nothing left, and could hardly focus my eyes. Meyer Auerback discovered a new production technique!”
Prick and All
“What her narrative, at least, imagines is that the iconic pose of female ecstasy was not only staged…but performed as a transposition of pain—her face masking her agony. Hence, the sequence that shocked the world for its claims to female jouissance may have been derived from familiar patterns of patriarchal subjugation—’prick’ and all.” (Fischer 138)
A FINAL IRONY
Originally entitled “Symphony of Love,” during the film’s premiere this scene elicited cries of “Ecstasy! Ecstasy!” from the enraptured audience. Their enthusiastic response caused the director to change the film’s title for its release.
Meyer Auerbach’s new production technique offered a double dose of faked pleasure!
COREL KIT FUNCTIONS
- FUNCTION #1. ZOOM: Up Close and Too Personal
- FUNCTION #2. CLONE: “Creating a Goddess”
- FUNCTION #3. DISTORT: Pins
- FUNCTION #4. SELECT & SAY: Off the Record
- FUNCTION #5. SCRIPT/UNDO: Director’s Cut
- FUNCTION #6. RENAME: Pseudonymously Yours
- FUNCTION #7. ROTATE & SKEW: Axis of Evil
- FUNCTION #8. RECONFIGURE: White Cargo
- FUNCTION #9. CUT-UP
- FUNCTION#10. TRAPS: Mandl / Hollywood
