Directed by Jesús Franco
Without a family, penniless and separated from her sister, a beautiful chaste woman will have to cope with an endless parade of villains, perverts and degenerates who will claim not only her treasured virtue but also her life.
Жюстина маркиза Де Сада, Deadly Sanctuary, Justine de Sade, Santuário Mortal, Marqués de Sade: Justine, Justine, Justine ou les infortunes de la vertu, Les Deux beautés, Marquis de Sade's Justine, 萨德侯爵：贾丝廷, 萨德侯爵：朱斯蒂娜, Justine ovvero le disavventure della virtù, Justine del Marqués de Sade, 贾丝廷, 마퀴 드 사드의 쥐스틴, マルキ・ド・サドのジュスティーヌ, 賈絲廷
Italy 
USAR 
Germany 
France France Germany Italy USA 
It turns out that Jess Franco with lots and lots of money means a movie that looks great but is completely empty, inexplicably padded to run a frankly offensive 124 minutes, and big name stars either gleefully being parodies of themselves or just wandering in, sitting around for a bit, picking up a check, and leaving. (With both Jack Palance and Mercedes McCambridge in the cast, I think we can all guess who was doing what.)
In other words, Marquis de Sade's Justine is a completely waste of time, almost entirely without Franco's usual intensity, curiosity, and discomfort, all of which has been replaced by shiny things, a fucking HAPPY ENDING (!??!?!!), and periodic, faux philosophical lines that are stuck…
I spoke to someone tonight via a podcast that I do with a friend about Jess Franco and how his work is oddly endearing, She spoke yet more passionately about his oeuvre, citing his predilections for certain focuses (her blunt way of putting it was "zooming in on bush") and his weirdness. This film isn't remotely his weirdest work, but there's still the random framing device with Klaus Kinski as de Sade and the curiously restrained nature of the film. Despite being blatantly exploitative, it fails to delve into complete pornography, which is startling from Franco.
Perhaps that's why I liked it so much. I can't remember the story to Justine well enough to say how it relates to the…
"Don't you agree with me now that vice can be a marvelous source of enjoyment?"
Mini-Collab w/ Rock
Contrary to what you may expect from Jess Franco taking on an adaptation of Sadean proportions, this take on the Marquis' scandalous novel Justine barely seems equipped to replicate its source material, staying remarkably tame and practically sexless for the indulgent 124-minute running time. Our adolescent protagonist is rendered far more virtuous than on the page, but I can't detract from sixteen-year-old Romina Power's performance for that change; she's led a life ripe for a documentary overview - the daughter of Tyrone Power and Linda Christian, an actor in her own right, a European pop superstar with husband Al Bano (who could…
Franco can complain all he likes that being forced to cast 17-year-old ingenue Romina Power defanged his adaptation, but he's done more with much less, and for whatever reason he's obviously checked out here, never engaged with Sade's paradoxical idea that a benevolent God could inflict such pain on the virtuous, nor that such torment could be ecstatic. Still there's plenty of pleasure in this. Franco had one of his biggest budgets and produced a moddish, vaguely (i.e. bogus) feminist rake's progress that occasionally prefigures the stately pace and precise painterly framing of, no shit, BARRY LYNDON. Plus you get Jack Palance, totally crocked, yukking it up as the leader of a sex cult.
Doesn't really feel like a Jess Franco movie without an extreme closeup of a woman's bush. What Romina Power had in looks she lacked in acting ability, while Jack Palance was overacting his ass off like somebody bet him he couldn't.
“Does our cruelty amaze you?”
Franco found himself thwarted, his name stamped on a movie that trivialized its source.
— Stephen Thrower, Murderous Passions
Franco says fuck it. It’s easy to forget that for a brief moment in the mid-1960s it looked like Jess Franco might become the new, favored son of Spanish cinema. 1968’s Succubus, an erotically charged, psychosexual dream, was early proof that this Franco guy was going to march to the beat of his own jazz-drum, but Justine is the outright middle finger up the arse of the homeland. There was no going back now.
Justine is important for being Franco’s first literal adaptation of the Marquis de Sade, but maybe more significant was that the film’s…
Hooptober X(-Rated)
#40 - X(tra) sleaze
A refined Kinski, bare skin, blood, hair, Jack Palance, the eternally youthful Rosalba Neri and indiscriminate boobs at every opportunity, Uncle Jess is back in the house. In Marquis de Sade: Justine, he tells a tale of fractured morality and a desire to be good, even while surrounded by the crud of the earth.
Two very different sisters are orphaned, and no longer with access to their parent's riches are unceremoniously booted from the convent in which they live. Now homeless and without access to a steady income, they must work for their money.
Summer days wrapped in floral bouquets provide a foil for the terrors that occur behind the walls of this beautiful…
This was weirdly tame, considering it's a Jess Franco film based on a novel by the Marquis de Sade. But hey, at least I got to see Jack Palance play a sex monk.
Watched with Jozlyn
Two sisters, Justine (Romina Powers) and Juliette (Maria Rohm) are kicked out of the convent when their father dies. Juliette signs up for the local brothel, and lives a happy life founded on debauchery, thieving, and murder. Justine, on the other hand, refuses to work in the brothel, and ends up penniless. She refuses the advances of a slovenly aristocrat and ends up in prison. She refuses to fall in with a gang of thieves and to be shared among them, and so she ends up being branded a murderer. And so on. The message is: just be a slut, girl, you'll be happier! Or is it? In a late film philosophical twist, Jack Palance, in the most insane, over…
While this had woefully less Kinski than I’d hoped, it did have gorgeous sets and locations, great music and lighting, the usual Jessisms (out of focus artsy shots, nude zooms), Jack Palance hilariously chewing the scenery in all of his scenes, and Mercedes McCambridge giving my favourite performance in the film. The 2 hr+ running time and the not-so-great performance by Romina Power (Tyrone’s daughter) in the lead role were the biggest downsides, but it’s still my favourite of the few Franco sexploitation films I’ve seen.
Franco's Oscar moment.
The Passion of the Franco.
It's more misery porn than sexploitation or erotica, showcasing how Justine's innocence and virtue only leads her through a life of suffering, while other wicked people prosper. It's a bit cheesy and campy in parts, and I love how Klaus Kinski plays as the Marquis de Sade but doesn't ever say an entire word in the film. He just painstakingly writes the novel while a different guy narrates for him.
