Big Picture Big Sound

The Film

Originally published as a novel in France in 1954 under the pen name Pauline Réage, Story of O was an erotic novel written by Anne Desclos who later revealed that she wrote the novel as a series of love letters to her lover, the French writer and literary critic Jean Paulhan, an admirer of the works of the Marquis de Sade. In many ways, Desclos' novel resembles that of the Marquis de Sade's early work, Justine, echoing many of its themes of dominance, submission, sadism and masochism, even reworking some of the scenes from Justine into similar circumstances for the protagonist, O.

Like the Marquis' work from centuries earlier, The Story of O ran afoul of the censors, facing obscenity charges in France, which were eventually dismissed by the courts, but the novel would have to endure a publicity ban for many years after publication. Despite the furor, the novel was met with much literary acclaim, even managing to win the Prix des Deux Magots.

  In 1975, French director Just Jaeckin adapted the book to the screen, creating yet more controversy. Many would label the film pornographic. The British Board of Film Censors would go as far as to ban the film in the U.K., only lifting the ban in February 2000. Is The Story of O pornography? Hardly. By today's standards, The Story of O won't even raise an eyebrow, coming in far behind what viewers can readily tune into to see on a nightly basis on Cinemax. Even by the standards of 1975, The Story of O was not pornography, containing no unsimulated sexual acts whatsoever.

The unashamed sexuality of O and the puritanical views on sexuality that pervades much of Western society, particularly in the US, is probably what makes an erotic film like The Story of O have such an uphill climb towards acceptability. With that said, director Just Jaeckin failed to capture the subtleties of Desclos' novel, leaving the film as a mere glimpse into a world of deviant sexual exploits; a series of erotic vignettes, rather than anything powerful.

O tells of a woman who gives herself over completely to her lover, allowing him to send her to an exclusive estate where she is trained to be sexually submissive, allowing any man to use her at his fancy. She is tied up, she is whipped, and she is not allowed to speak or to look any man in the face. But, at every step she asked to make a choice, of whether she would like to continue, and she agrees willingly. Through giving herself away completely, O finds her true self.

The Story of O is often looked upon as a masterpiece of erotic cinema, and perhaps it is. It is a film from a time when erotic cinema actually meant something more than just films with erotic content. They sought to, not necessarily put forth explicit portrayals of sexual acts, but, rather, to explore what human sexuality meant. Today, with actual sex acts infiltrating mainstream cinema, particularly in "art house" films, and porn available at the click of a mouse wherever and whenever, this particular niche of film-making seems almost quaint by comparison. It is a style and a period that many directors in the mainstream today owe a huge debt to, whether they will admit it or not.

The Picture

O will probably never look very crisp and sharp on any format. The film was purposely shot heavily-filtered to look soft, with diffuse textures and blurred lighting. Still, the low-bitrate AVC/MPEG-4 encoding at ~15Mbps certainly doesn't do the film any favors, and the fact that they obviously did not do much to clean up the source only makes matters worse. Story of O shows obvious wear in scratches and specks of dirt popping up throughout the presentation.

Contrast is relatively low, giving the film a quite dull appearance and blacks are washed out. To its credit, Story of O has good flesh tones and colors are stable, even if they are not vibrant. In the end, however, The Story of O does not offer up much eye candy and its transfer certainly could have been handled much better for a catalogue title.

The Sound

The Story of O is offered up only in its original language French Mono (Dolby 2.0) and English and Spanish Mono (Dolby 2.0) dubbed versions with no subtitles. It is again evident that as little effort as possible was put into bringing this release to Blu-ray. The few extended scenes that have been added back into the film appear in their original French with subtitles, which is quite jarring as one is forced to watch the rest of the film dubbed if one does not understand French.

The soundmix is nothing spectacular either. The musical score often distorts and gets in the way of the dialogue, there's little in the way of dynamics, and certainly nothing beyond the upper-midrange in frequencies. One might as well be listening to this mix over the telephone, because that's how bad it sounds at times. I'm sure the Dolby compression doesn't help any either.  This soundmix, just like its video transfer, does not make a good argument for upgrading to BD.

The Extras

Fittingly for this obviously low-budget release, not much effort went into the supplemental materials for this Blu-ray Disc release either, so unless you happen to parles français, you won’t have much use for the extras offered on this release.

The extras available on this release are:

• Photo Gallery (1.78:1/AVC/high definition) -- Slideshow of still captures from the film.
• Trailer (4:3/AVC/high definition) -- Original theatrical trailer
• Biography -- Actor and director bios all written in French.
• Director's Commentary -- Director Just Jaekin's audio commentary in French with no subtitles offered.

Final Thoughts

If you're looking for pornography in The Story of O, then look elsewhere. What you'll find here is a tastefully done erotic film that tells of a young woman's journey toward finding love and finding herself, by giving up control. The film doesn't do justice to the subtleties of the original novel, but as an erotic film it is a strong blueprint for many others from that era and beyond. This Blu-ray release is hardly spectacular and is obviously low budget all around, with no subtitles, supplements offered only in French, below average picture and poor sound. Worth a rental if you're curious but probably not one for the permanent collection.

Where to Buy

• The Story of O on Blu-ray Disc (Amazon.com)

Product Details

• Actors: Jean-Pierre Andréani, Gabriel Cattand, Corinne Clery, Jean Gaven, Martine Kelly
• Language:  French, English, and Spanish Mono (Dolby 2.0)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: NC-17
• Studio: Somerville House
• Blu-ray Disc Release Date: November 11, 2008
• Run Time: 105 minutes
• List Price: $29.98
  
• Extras:
• Original Trailers in English and French
• Previously Unreleased Scenes
• Photo Gallery
• Cast Bios (French)
  
• director's commentary (French)