"Anyone Can Play" with Netflix!

One of the lost movies of Marisa Mell, never having had an official VHS or DVD release, made in 1968 with other Eurostars Ursula Andress, Virna Lisi and Claudine Auger is the movie "Le Dolci Signore" or "Anyone Can Play". This comedy has been hardly ever seen since those days except on some local television stations during the red eye broadcast hours and mostly in a cut version.
So I was very pleased to hear from Marisa Mell fan "Dan" from Chicago that the movie-on-demand "Netflix" in the USA made this movie avalaible in her catalogue for the American audience. Knowing the quality of the prints and mostly the uncut versions of a movie they use this is really a treat for all Marisa Mell fans to see this movie for the first time in more than 40 years as it should been!

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Thanks Dan from Chicage for pointing this one out!

The Golden Girls

1968 was a very good year in the career of Marisa Mell, not only did she make the cult classic Mario Bava's "Danger: Diabolik!" , a movie called "Stuntman" but also "Le Dolci Signore" or in English "Anyone Can play". The movie was directed by Luigi Zampa and co-written by the famous Italian director Ettore Scola and his writing partner Ruggero Maccari.

In this movie Marisa Mell plays the role of "Paola" together with some of the best known female stars in European cinema at that moment: Claudine Auger, Virna Lisi and Ursula Andress.

Ursula Andress has top billing on this movie and does not really need any introduction because she was the first Bond girl as "Honey Rider" in the first James Bond movie "Dr. No". Another Bond girl is also part of this team of liberated women, Claudine Auger from France. She was Bond's inside girl "Dominique - Domino - Derval" in the movie "Thunderball". And finally Lisi Virna from Italy, famous from euuuhhhh..., maybe from the Richard Burton starrer "Bluebeard" in 1972.

The movie is build as a comedy around these four ladies with their stories involving the men in their lives played by Jean-Pierre Cassel, Frank Wolff, Mario Adorf and Lando Buzzanca. Although the movie has these four beautiful women as stars, the movie itself did not make any headlines. As a publicity vehicle it did do its job. The four sirens got tons of media attention in the latino world ranging from France, Italy, Spain to all the countries in Central and South America. Each and every magazine got them on the cover and had some kind of articles about them in their editions. For Marisa Mell the movie will be remembered for her sensual striptease. In the movie she is addicted to do stripteases and in the end her husband agrees with it and stimulates her.

Forty years later, the stars have matured into golden girls with a golden movie memory. Although the movie has some of the 60's best loved female stars, the movie was never, by my knowledge, released on DVD, officially or unofficially. Maybe the time is right to do so!

Le dolci signore - Belgian poster anyone?

Before the existence of the internet, production companies had to promote their movies with the means of that time at their disposal. In the 60's and 70's it was mainly through the printed media with posters, flyers, leaflets, pressbooks, lobby-cards... Each movie had several versions of their posters mostly painted or drawn with the most alluring scene's of the movie as a focus. In the mid '80's the production companies used more and more movie stills to compose their posters and the art of movie poster drawing disappeared in the background. Using stills was much cheaper then appointing and paying an artist to draw the posters. Who doesn't know the stunning drawings of Robert McGinnis with his posters for the James Bond movies with Sean Connery which are etched in our subconcious for ever. So having an eye catching poster was of the utmost importance and could often make or break a movie. Therefore almost always the production company told the foreign distributors what kind of movie poster they were allowed to produce in their home markets to sell the movie to the audience. Most American layouts were re-styled to fit the needs of the local foreign market. It was often the American poster with the foreign title and a re-arranging of the eye-catchers of the original American poster. Although this was true for most countries in the world there was one country that had it's own policy of promoting a movie: Belgium. Since the beginning of the movie history Belgium had a front runners role with people like Pierre Plateau and his Fenakistiscoop in 1831 which became the basis for the movie industry or a first showing of a movie by the brothers Lumière in Brussels, the capital of Belgium in 1896. Belgium was also in the centre of the Art Nouveau movement at that time with Victor Horta so when the two art forms, movies and art movement, found each other they produced some stunning examples of movie poster art. This tradition was carried over to the 60's and 70's and was never questioned by American production companies. For the Belgian market a new layout was drawn by mostly Belgian artists whom became masters in their craft. The Belgian poster is mostly in a horizontal style and has two titles, one in Flemish, the language of the majority of the Belgian people and French. Because most American production companies had their European seat in Paris (France) the translations of the (American) titles of the movies was often literally which often didn't correspond with the Flemish language and had a funny meaning to the Flemish people. A classic example is the Garry Cooper movie "High Noon" which becomes "De Trein Zal Drie Maal Fluiten" in Flemish or "The Train Will Whistle Three Times". So the Italian title "Le dolce signore" meaning "The Sweet Gentlemen" referring to the adulterous affaires of the married women in the movie becomes in English "Anyone can play", in French "Pas folles les mignonnes" and in Flemish "Niet gek de schatjes" meaning "Not crazy the cute ones". Nevertless the Belgian poster for "Le dolci signore" with Marisa Mell is one of the best Belgian posters with the stunning faces of Marisa Mell, Ursula Andress, Virna Lisi and Claudine Auger. The faces are life like drawn and have a realistic feel to it. Most of the faces and figures on other Belgian posters are drawn in a cartoon kind of way and not very realistic. Because the movie has no real action scenes, they are missing on the poster so you get only the four faces of the main actresses, their names, the director and color process and titles in the two languages and that's it. Plain and simple! Maybe to simple because the film was not a hit and got lost in the depth of oblivion!

In contrast to this poster is the poster of the French movie "Angelique" with French cult star Michèle Mercier as the heroine. In my opinion this is one of the most beautiful erotic and attractive Belgian movie posters ever made.