The following is a list of texts (be it books, articles, essays, magazines, documentaries, etc.) that relate to Emmanuelle, Black Emanuelle, and related film research and scholarship. Each text listed as a brief annotation to summarize what the source is about. This page will be constantly updated while the Emmanuelle legacy book is in progress, but if you have a text/source you do not see on the list and want me to add it, shoot me an email. I hope researchers and essayists find this resource invaluable.
Babylon Blue: An Illustrated History of Adult Cinema
Publisher: Creation Books
Year Published: 1999
Publisher Location: USA
Pages: xxx
Author: David Flint
Behind the Pink Curtain
tbd
The Canon Film Guide Volume I: 1980-1984
Publisher: BearManor Media
Year Published: 2020
Publisher Location: Orlando, FL
Pages: 121-130
Author: Austin Trunick
The Canon Film Guide Volume II: 1985-1987
Publisher: BearManor Media
Year Published: 2021
Publisher Location: Orlando, FL
Pages: 231-238
Author: Austin Trunick
Cinema Sex Sirens
Publisher: Omnibus Press
Year Published: 2011
Publisher Location: London, UK
Pages: 90-93, 114
Authors: Dave Worrall and Lee Pfeiffer
A photo-centric book with biographies of cinematic actresses who are regarded with great sex appeal. Lots of full page images of actresses from promotional photos with many in pinup style.
Sylvia Kristel is documented on pages 90-93. Page 91 is all the textual information about her while the other three pages are promotional images for Emmanuelle and Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
Main points from the biography:
- Her, her mother, and her siblings were all thrown out of their home by her father who divorced Kristel’s mom and married his mistress.
- Regarding Emmanuelle she played “a free-spirited young woman, who travels to exotic locations and engages in equally exotic sexual encounters with both men and women…”
- Emmanuelle “played in regular theaters, attracting an audience who would never have been seen entering a porn grindhouse”
- “It became one of the first sexually driven films to appeal to women as much to as it did to men” due to its lush cinematography and music.
- In the post-Goodbye Emmanuelle films where Kristel appears as a cameo, her appearances gave “each film an air of authenticity.”
- However, Kristel went through turbulent relationships, got addicted to cocaine, kicked her habit but still drank and smoked heavily. Her star power faded and she turned to living a quiet life in an apartment in Holland.
Page 114 contains a condensed two paragraph biography of Laura Gemser (plus a movie poster from Eva Negra) that recaps her career. Because of her many Black Emanuelle films, the authors dub her “The Queen of the Sequels.” Gemser appeared in 57 movies in a 20 year period before retiring in the 90s to live in Italy.
Claude Challe Present Emmanuelle: The Private Collection
Label: Chall’o Music
Year Released: 2004
The Complete Crepax: Erotic Stories, Part 1
Cult Movies: The Classics, the Sleepers, the Weird, and the Wonderful
Publisher: Gramercy Books
Year Published: 1998 (this edition)
Publisher Location: New York, NY
Author: Danny Peary
Pages: 78-81
Delirium #31
Published: 2022
“Look Back in Ecstasy: An in-depth examination of Sylvia Kristel and the making of the softcore classic Emmanuelle”
Pages: 6-13
Author: Jeremy R. Richey
Article is an excerpt from Richey’s book, Sylvia Kristel: From Emmanuelle to Chabrol.
Diva Blue
Publisher: Glittering Images
Year Published: 1986
Publisher Location: Florence, Italy
Edited by: Roberto Guidotti and Stefano Piselli
Emmanuelle 1
Emmanuelle II: The Joys of a Woman
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Year Published: 1974
Publisher Location: New York, NY
Author: Emmanuelle Arsan
Emmanuelle 3
Eroticism in the Fantasy Cinema
Exploitation Poster Art
Publisher: Aurum Press
Year Published: 2005
Publisher Location: London, UK
Editors: Tony Nourmand and Graham Marsh
Pages: 158-159
A large, Taschen-esque picture book of movie posters from cult and exploitation films. The book contains two Emmanuelle posters: the US one by Steve Frankfurt and the Japanese one with Richard Suzuki’s photo. Main points of the supplemental text:
- 1970s were a golden decade of soft porn, seeing lots of monetary investment and increase in sophistication
- Movies like Deep Throat, Behind the Green Door, and Emmanuelle were seen as trendy for couples to see together and were getting acclaim. This led to the term “porno-chic”
- The posters that promoted the film reflected the films glamorous, sophisticated style
- Suzuki’s iconic photo of Sylvia Kristel in the chair became the “respectable face of the X-rated film industry”
- Frankfurt’s background in film poster design provided even more credibility to the film
Femme Fatales Vol 11 No 1
Published: January 2002
“The Criminally Beautiful Holly Sampson”
Pages: 54-60
Author: Dan Scapperotti
Immoral Tales: Sex and Horror Cinema in Europe 1956-1984
Keeping the British End Up: Four Decades of Saucy Cinema
Publisher: Reynolds & Hearn Ltd.
Year Published: 2007
Publisher Location: Richmond, Surrey, UK
Author: Simon Sheridan
Perverse Titillation: The Exploitation Cinema of Italy, Spain and France 1960-1980
Playboy vol 24 no 11
Year Published: November 1977
“Sex in Cinema – 1977”
Pages: 156-167
Author: Arthur Knight
An article that is mostly frames from erotic films released in 1977, grouped together with captions. The article does begin with the following observation about the reduction of sex scenes in films:
Under tremendous fire from church groups, their own Motion Picture Association of America and, especially, from local politicos out to make a name for themselves, Hollywood studios in 1977 beat a noticeable retreat from the rampant nudity and semiexplicit sex scenes that had adorned their movies for almost a decade.
Arthur Knight
A scene from Goodbye Emmanuelle (Emmanuelle 3) showing Emmanuelle and her paramour Grégory rolling around with each other on the beach spreads across pages 164 and 165 with the caption:
Europe’s Soft Touch: Films from overseas, which used to be racier than American ones, aren’t anymore – but they’re still lushly erotic. Samples include Goodbye Emmanuelle with Sylvia Kristel and Jean-Pierre Bouvier…”
Arthur Knight
Playboy vol 25 no 12
Year Published: December 1978
“Sex Stars of 1978”
Pages: 236-248, 369-370
Author: Jim Harwood
A pictorial essay of film stars of the year who have appeared in sexy and/or erotic roles. Page 247 has a caption that speaks of Laura Gemser:
“Foreign Bodies: There’s always something exciting about an import – especially when it’s a beautiful woman, like […] Italy’s Laura Gemser of Emmanuelle’s Holiday and The Bushido Blade.”
Jim Harwood
The photo referenced for the caption:
The Emmanuelle’s Holiday referenced here is an alternate title for Bitto Albertini’s Black Emanuelle (1975). Though this issue was published in 1978, The Bushido Blade being referenced is the 1981 one directed by Tsugunobu Kotani.
Playboy vol 26 no 5
Published: May 1979
“Foreign Sex Stars”
Pages: 163-170, 242-244
Author: Bruce Williamson
Playboy vol 34 no 11
Published: November 1987
“Sex in Cinema – 1987”
Pages: 134-146, 166-168
Author: Bruce Williamson
An article with frames from erotic films released in 1987, grouped together with captions. Williams talks about the rise of British erotica in films before giving examples of other romantic/erotic films from other countries.
In the pictorial section of the article, on page 137, there is a small note of Sylvia Kristel:
“Sylvia (Emmanuelle) Kristel is the count’s bloodthirsty ex in Dracula’s Widow”.
Bruce Williamson
The text is accompanied with the following photo from Dracula’s Widow (1988):
Psychedelic Sex Vampires: Jean Rollin Cinema
Edited by: Jack Hunter
Publisher: Glitter Books
Year Published: 2012
“An Interview with Jean Rollin”
Pages: 73 – 90
Author: Andy Black
This OOP picture book contains an interview with Jean Rollin that was originally published in 1996. Only one question about Emmanuelle 6 is asked. It is located on page 85 and this is it in its entirety:
“How did you get involved with Emmanuelle 6 and was it an enjoyable/rewarding experience?“
“In Emmanuelle 6, I like the character of the little savage girl. I was thinking of Yoko, the girl in Bangkok for that, but she had disappeared at that moment. I directed a part of the film in France. It was a job with no problems. I like to shoot “erotic softcore films,” it’s a rest for me.”
Note: Rollin is referring to the mononymous Yoko who played Eva in The Sidewalks of Bangkok (1984).
Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People
Screem #39
Published: 2021
“I Eat Cannibals: Italian Cinema’s Insatiable Appetite for Human Flesh”
Pages: 11-13
Author: Adrian Smith
Article that lays out the rules for Italian cannibal films and uses Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (1977) as one of the examples. These rules are:
- Cannibal films claim authenticity and accomplish this by replicating the documentary style found in the Mondo filone (11)
- Nick’s Note – See Petley’s essay on the movie Snuff in Unruly Pleasures (see below) with complimentary scholarship on using documentary style filmmaking
- These movies main protagonist is someone from the Occident who travels to the jungle for a specific goal (11)
- Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals is used as an example for this: Emanuelle meets a cannibal in a New York hospital and travels to the jungle to locate her tribe (11)
- Contains real onscreen animal deaths (11)
- “..nudity and sex amongst the natives is presented as something innocent and natural: a throwback to colonial notions of the primitive lands as a sexual utopia” (12)
- Sex usually happens between a Westerner and a tribesperson and attractive Western women are often viewed with religious reverence (12)
- Emanuelle paints her body to fool the tribe that she is a goddess (12)
- Sex (rape) can be punished or used as a form of punishment (12)
- Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals is stated to have encountered censorship issues due to its depiction of sexual organs being “dismembered and cannibalized” (12)
- Colonialism is a theme in these films and “can be viewed as Italy shamefully revisiting this history; they depict the jungle and its inhabitants as superstitious and backward, and the white people who visited them were either ‘Good Colonialists’ who reinforce the official policies, or the bad ‘Colonial Other,’ often Americans, who exploit the locals and their resources.” (13)
- Final rule is that cannibalism – humans eating other humans – is the big draw for these films, where all preceding action (especially animal death) cumulates to a cannibal act.
Sylvia Kristel: From Emmanuelle to Chabrol
Publisher: Cult Epics
Year Published: 2021
Publisher Location: Los Angeles, CA
Author: Jeremy Richey
I’ve done a review on this book which can be read here.
I’ll revisit and proper annotate down the road.
Undressing Emmanuelle: A Life Stripped Bare
Unruly Pleasures: The Cult Film and its Critics
Edited by: Xaver Mendik and Graeme Harper
Publisher: FAB Press
Year Published: 2000
Publisher Location: Guildford, UK
“‘Snuffed Out’: Nightmares in a Trading Standards Officer’s Brain”
Pages: 204 – 219
Author: Julian Petley
Petley’s essay focuses on the movie Snuff (1976), but mentions that both Emanuelle in America and Cannibal Holocaust use snuff-like elements in a documentary-style on page 207.
Video Watchdog #128
Video Watchdog #174
Video World
Published: December 1993
“Kristel Gazing” (the TOC mispells the title as “Kristal Gazing”Pages: 68-72
Author: Martyn Clayden
The cover boasts “Emmanuelle Returns Sylvia Kristel is Back” which suggests the article in Video World would be focused on the two Emmanuelle titles in production she had roles in: Emmanuelle 7 (1993) and the made for TV Emmanuelle series (“Emmanuelle Forever,” “Emmanuelle’s Revenge,” “Emmanuelle in Venice,” “Emmanuelle’ Love,” “Emmanuelle’s Magic” and “Emmanuelle’s Perfume” all 1993). Only the last paragraph mentions the titles in that they are upcoming and don’t provide any information or critique on them. Instead the short article recaps Sylvia Kristel’s personal and professional life up to that point. There’s quite a few quotations in the article but no sources listed for any of them. The article mentions the following:
- Emmanuelle “stood out from the crowd because it had glossy photography and exotic locations.” (68) and of course its unknown actress
- The movie “opened at the Paramount City cinema in Paris on 26 June 1974” play for eleven years, went to the Paramount Montmartre where it was still being shown (at least when the issue was published in 1993)
- The movie was a hit because of its high production and the “utterly natural performance” of Sylvia Kristel (70)
- Kristel got a job as a secretary, who had a boss who encouraged her to become an actress and find a director (70)
- After her first movie, Kristel got into an affair with Hugo Claus, had a son named Arthur (70)
- Kristel was cast in Emmanuelle by accident: she lost her glasses and wandered into the wrong audition and got the part (70)
- After Emmanuelle 2 Kristel got into a turbulent relationship with Ian McShane (71) and then into other relationships and marriages: Alan Turner (American millionaire), Andre Djaoui (co-producer of Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1981) which starred Kristel), and Philippe Blot (French film producer) (72)
- After these failed relationships, Kristel moved to the states and took up alcohol and cocaine but cleaned herself up cold turkey, moved to Brussels and is now starring in Emmanuelle 7 and the TV series (72)
Walerian Borowczyk: Cinema of Erotic Dreams
Publisher: Crescent Moon Publishing
Year Published: 2008
Publisher Location: Kent, UK
Pages: 136-145, 160-161
Author: Jeremy Mark Robinson