''Salon Kitty'' is a 1976
erotic-war
War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...
-
drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been ...
film directed by
Tinto Brass
Giovanni "Tinto" Brass (born 26 March 1933) is an Italian film director and screenwriter. In the 1960s and 1970s, he directed many critically acclaimed avant-garde films of various genres. Today, he is mainly known for his later work in the er ...
. The film was coproduced by Italy, France and
West Germany
West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...
. It is based on the novel of the same name by
Peter Norden
Peter may refer to:
People
* List of people named Peter, a list of people and fictional characters with the given name
* Peter (given name)
** Saint Peter (died 60s), apostle of Jesus, leader of the early Christian Church
* Peter (surname), a su ...
, covering the real life events of the
Salon Kitty operation, under which the ''
Sicherheitsdienst
' (, ''Security Service''), full title ' (Security Service of the ''Reichsführer-SS''), or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. Established in 1931, the SD was the first Nazi intelligence organization ...
'' took over an expensive
brothel
A brothel, bordello, ranch, or whorehouse is a place where people engage in sexual activity with prostitutes. However, for legal or cultural reasons, establishments often describe themselves as massage parlors, bars, strip clubs, body rub par ...
in
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
, had the place
wire tapped, and replaced all the prostitutes with trained spies, in order to gather information on various members of the
Nazi party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...
and foreign dignitaries.
It is considered among the progenitors of
Nazisploitation
Nazi exploitation (also Nazisploitation) is a subgenre of exploitation film and sexploitation film that involves Nazis committing sex crimes, often as camp or prison overseers during World War II. Most follow the women in prison formula, only r ...
genre.
In the U.S., the film was edited to lighten the political overtones for an easier marketing as a
sexploitation film
A sexploitation film (or sex-exploitation film) is a class of independently produced, low-budget feature film that is generally associated with the 1960s and early 1970s, and that serves largely as a vehicle for the exhibition of non-explicit sex ...
and released under the title ''Madam Kitty'' with an
X rating
An X rating is a rating used in various countries to classify films that have content deemed suitable only for adults. It is used when the violent or sexual content of a film is considered to be potentially disturbing to general audiences.
Aust ...
. Blue Underground Video, for the uncut version, has surrendered the X rating for an unrated DVD and Blu-ray release.
Plot
Wallenberg (Helmut Berger), an ambitious Nazi SS commandant, devises a plan to select a special group of female informants in order to plant them as prostitutes in a high class brothel on the eve of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
in order to collect intelligence on various important members of the Nazi party and foreign dignitaries who frequent the establishment. The selected SS auxiliaries are then group tested with SS men to assess their suitability. The brothel is then purged of its regular girls and Kitty (
Ingrid Thulin
Ingrid Lilian Thulin (; 27 January 1926 – 7 January 2004) was a Swedish actress and director who collaborated with filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. She was often cast as harrowing and desperate characters, and earned acclaim from both Swedish a ...
), the owner and Madam of the brothel, is forced to comply and allows her original girls to be deported as the building gets wiretapped with listening devices and other surveillance equipment, after which the new girls proceed to spy on their illustrious clients. However, when one of the informants named Margherita (
Teresa Ann Savoy
Teresa Ann Savoy, FRSA (18 July 1955 – 9 January 2017) was a British actress who appeared in a number of Italian films.
Biography
Savoy was 18 years old when she appeared in the Italian adult magazine ''Playmen'' (October 1973), using an al ...
) discovers that the surveillance project resulted in the execution of her lover, Luftwaffe pilot, Hans Reiter (
Bekim Fehmiu
Bekim Fehmiu (; ; 1 June 1936 – 15 June 2010) was a Yugoslavian theater and film actor of Albanian ethnicity. He was the first Eastern European actor to star in Hollywood during the Cold War.
Biography
Early life
Fehmiu was born in Sa ...
), she enlists Kitty to help her take down Wallenberg. Margherita entraps Wallenberg via a recording where he tells her that he has the dirt on all the top Nazi hierarchy and intends to bring them all down. As a consequence, Wallenberg is executed for treason.
Cast
The film also includes a large number of uncredited actors.
Production
''Salon Kitty'' was filmed mostly at Dear Studios in Rome, with some additional location filming in Germany. Production designer
Ken Adam
Sir Kenneth Adam (born Klaus Hugo George Fritz Adam; 5 February 1921 – 10 March 2016) was a German-British movie production designer, best known for his set designs for the James Bond films of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as for ''Dr. Stran ...
had recently suffered a nervous breakdown while working on ''
Barry Lyndon
''Barry Lyndon'' is a 1975 period drama film written, directed, and produced by Stanley Kubrick, based on the 1844 novel ''The Luck of Barry Lyndon'' by William Makepeace Thackeray. Starring Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Leonard ...
'', and he described his participation in this film as creatively regenerative. He has stated that the production was enjoyable, and that he feels ''Salon Kitty'' is "underrated."
Adam based his design of Wallenberg's apartment on his own memories of his family's apartment in World War II-era Berlin. Wallenberg's enormous office, though a set, allegedly features a real marble floor, as it was cheaper to use real marble than create a mock-up version.
[Frayling, p 205.]
Costumes and uniforms for the film were designed by Ugo Pericoli and Jost Jacob, and were constructed by
Tirelli Costumi of Rome. Adam credited Jacob with the design of the 'kinky' uniforms that Wallenberg wears throughout the film.
[
]
Release and reception
''Salon Kitty'' was released in Italy on March 2, 1976.
In a review at the time of the UK release, the ''Monthly Film Bulletin
''The Monthly Film Bulletin'' was a periodical of the British Film Institute published monthly from February 1934 to April 1991, when it merged with ''Sight & Sound''. It reviewed all films on release in the United Kingdom, including those with a ...
'' found the film to contain "a script that does nothing more than pile up the perversions as fast as possible (the characterisation hardly rises above the stock Nazi heavy while the motivation is consistently, and laughably, crude)" and hoped that "Italian directors will soon examine their recent track record of the atrocities of Nazi Germany ('' The Damned'', ''The Night Porter
''The Night Porter'' ( it, Il portiere di notte) is a 1974 English-language Italian erotic psychological war drama film. Directed and co-written by Liliana Cavani, the film stars Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling, with Philippe Leroy, Gabriel ...
'', and now ''Salon Kitty'') and abandon the subject for a long while to come."
See also
* List of Italian films of 1976
A list of films produced in Italy in 1976 (see 1976 in film):
References
Footnotes
Sources
*
*
External linksItalian films of 1976at the Internet Movie Database
{{DEFAULTSORT:Italian Films Of 1976
1976
Films
A film ...
References
External links
*
{{Tinto Brass
1976 films
1970s erotic drama films
1970s spy drama films
1976 LGBT-related films
Italian erotic drama films
French erotic drama films
German erotic drama films
Italian spy drama films
French spy drama films
German spy drama films
West German films
1970s Italian-language films
English-language Italian films
English-language French films
English-language German films
Nazi exploitation films
Films directed by Tinto Brass
Films set in Berlin
Films set in the 1940s
Films about Nazi Germany
World War II films based on actual events
Films about prostitution in Germany
1970s war drama films
French war drama films
German war drama films
Italian war drama films
1976 drama films
French World War II films
German World War II films
Italian World War II films
Films scored by Fiorenzo Carpi
1970s Italian films
1970s French films
1970s German films