Whether you wish to go to all this trouble for an uncertain outcome is for you to judge.
I think our view has to be that we will only consider this film with a letter from Borowczyk and/or Dauman to the effect that this is their re-edited version of the film presented as a new submission, in which case we will judge it on its merits. At one time, I might have suggested that some local authorities would probably be prepared to take a more lenient view, but recent GLC decisions indicate a hardening of local authority attitudes in this respect, and I would not wish to make any predictions in this particular regard. I am not sure that, even with all the above cuts, the theme would be considered acceptable to most local authorities, which leaves you in a considerable difficulty.
Ferman went on to list a large number of problem areas with the film, namely (i) sight of horses copulating in explicit detail (ii) a line drawing of a woman being mounted by an animal (iii) close shots of masturbation, (iv) close shots of genital detail (v) the more explicit moments in the 'dream sequence', including the 'beast' rubbing his penis against a tree, the 'beast' masturbating and placing his head between a woman's legs, and sight of the beast's semen flowing over the woman's buttocks, breasts and stomach.įerman then continued: "This, however, leaves us with the theme itself, the most explicit treatment of bestiality we have ever had, even given that in this case it is treated as a fantasy. The problem is that, with a director of Borowczyk's stature, the cutting required might be such as to damage the film artistically, and I do not think the Board would want to become involved in a war of attrition on a film of such consequence". Certainly, there are still a great many shots which we feel might be vulnerable at law, and beyond that, there is also much footage which we feel vastly exceeds the standards accepted by the vast majority of local authorities. In a letter to the film's distributor, dated 22 March 1977, James Ferman set out the Board's difficulties: "As I mentioned to you on the telephone, we see considerable problems in passing this film as it stands, although I realise you have made a few cuts of the most extreme sexual material. However, a more serious problem was whether the central 'dream sequence' might raise legal issues because of its suggestion of bestiality. Part of the problem was the film's sexual explicitness, even in the reduced version, which exceeded the standards then accepted for the X category. In spite of the reductions already made, the BBFC was sceptical about whether the film would be acceptable to the majority of local authorities, on whose behalf the BBFC classified films. These cuts reduced the length of a masturbation scene and removed some of the more explicit shots from the dream sequence, in which the heroine imagines having intercourse with 'the beast'.
The resulting feature, La Bete ( The Beast), was first submitted to the BBFC in March 1977.Īware of the controversial nature of the film and the difficulties Borowczyk's previous feature had caused ( Immoral Tales was turned away by the BBFC but was classified X by the GLC), the distributor had chosen to make some cuts to La Bete before submitting it to the BBFC. Borowczyk's French producer persuaded him to remove the sequence in question, a bizarre and explicit variant on the Beauty and the Beast story, and to utilise it as a 'dream sequence' as part of a new feature on the same theme. Walerian Borowczyk's 1975 fantasy began life as one of the five segments of his critically acclaimed portmanteau film, Immoral Tales (1974).
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