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A Landmark in Early Sinema
“When Scorpio Rising was — we’ve forgotten, in a sense, that it was a groundbreaker, legally. Because there are only a few flashes of nudity, genitalia, whatever in the film, I mean, they’re very, very short and, if you blink, you won’t even see them. At any rate, when it was shown, at the Cinema — it was called the Cinema on Western Avenue in Hollywood — the premiere run, someone denounced it to the Hollywood vice squad and they raided the theater and took the print. And the case had to go to the California Supreme Court to be freed and then it became, like, a landmark case of redeeming social merit. That was the phrase that was used to justify that it wasn’t pornography. And, indeed, there’s nothing pornographic about it. Somebody had to break the ice and have that kind of case at that time to establish the freedom, because, before then, the police could seize anything they wanted to…” – Kenneth Anger (Excerpt from Interview with Pam Grady)
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This film is not for Judges
“It’s a different world in which one must forget the world one inhabits. Villa Santo-Sospir belongs to Madame Alec Weissweiller. It dominates Cape Santo-Sospir, the last point on the map before arriving at Cape Ferrat. The villa is situated on the road to the lighthouse, and its rocks descend to the sea. It looks out on Antibes, Cannes, Nice, and to the right, Villefranche…When I stayed in Santo-Sospir in the summer of 1950 I hastily decorated a wall. Matisse told me that if you decorate one wall, you should do the others as well. He was right. Picasso opened and closed all the doors. All that was left to do was to paint the door.”
