Back out of hell!

On november 10th, it will be 45 years ago that the 1965 movie "Train D'Enfer" had its French première. The film is directed by Gilles Grangier starring Jean Marais, best known for his Fantomas trilogy with Louis de Funès, as Antoine Donadieu, a French secret agent à la James Bond and Marisa Mell as Frieda his counterpart in this espionage story. Outside of some rare tv broadcasts, this movie has been rarely seen and never had an official DVD release. So I was very pleased to see that a clip from this movie appeared on the Net yesterday giving me a glimpse for the first time of this rare Marisa Mell movie. In this version of the movie Marisa Mell has been horriblely dubbed with a high pitch French voice while her own voice was very husky and seductive.

Thanks to "Drayton64" for uploading this clip!

Annette Who???

After having filmed several movies in German speaking countries of Europe like Germany and Austria, Marisa Mell was ready to spread her wings in the movie business. She longed to film abroad. In 1964 her wish was granted when she got a phone call from England with the request to appear in the first feature film of then TV-director Ken Russell called "French Dressing". Marisa Mell got the leading female part of Françoise Fayol. The movie is a slight comedy about a stodgy British resort. Gormleigh-by-the-Sea is a holiday community besotted with dullness. To liven up, Jim, a young deck-chair attendant, convinces the local entertainment director and mayor into starting a film festival. The town convinces an ambitious French actress Françoise Fayol to be the star of the festival. What happens after that is a series of near disasters, including the failure of a Nudist Beach and a riot at a film premiere. It is left to Jim's American journalist girlfriend to save the situation and the reputation of the town.

It is not known if Marisa Mell was aware of the fact that, unfortunately, she was not the first choice by director Ken Russell to cast her as the French actress visiting the sea side resort. Nope, his first choice was actress Annette Vadim, ex-wife of French director Roger Vadim. Roger Vadim was known during the 60's as the man who made French actress and then wife Brigitte Bardot, a mega-star in Europe, when he filmed her in his cult movie "Et Dieu...créa la femme" (1956). After his relationship with Brigitte Bardot, Roger Vadim hoped to strike gold again by starting a relationship with a little known actress called "Annette Susanne Strøyberg" from Denmark.

The beautiful Strøyberg was born on the island of Fyn, in Denmark, on December 12th, 1934. Her father was a physician who died when she was quite young. She and her sister then moved to Copenhagen where she was raised. She found her way to Paris (France) in her late teens where she worked at couture houses as a model, later finding employment with such fashion notables as Chanel.Annette hooked up with Vadim during the filming of his legendary first feature "Et Dieu...créa la femme". Possessing Bardot's similar erotic balance of melancholy and fragility within her Lolita-like stunning looks, Vadim was immediately attracted to her, when Brigitte Bardot started up a heated affair with young co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant. Vadim moved in with Annette, who subsequently gave birth to their daughter Nadine in 1957. The couple married in June '58. Vadim then proceeded to build and groom a replica of Brigitte Bardot with Stroyberg. Her biggest chance for fame was when he put her on display in the film of the classic novel "Les liaisons dangereuses" (1959) as Marianne de Tourvel, the virtuous victim of the evil Jeanne Moreau and Gérard Philipe. Making her debut, Annette was stunning, of course but found herself quite outclassed by her cast, hardly ready for such a demanding role. And then came the role which gave her a cult status among Eurocult fans and vampire movie lovers.

She earned far more recognition when Roger Vadim cast her in his next movie as a society girl-cum-lesbian vampire Carmilla von Karnstein, falling in love with Elsa Martinelli, in "Et mourir de plaisir" (1960). The same Elsa Martinelli who seduces Marisa Mell in the Lucio Fulci movie "Una Sull'Altra".

By the time of the film's release, however, her marriage to Vadim was history. He had moved on to try and conquer up-and-coming actress Catherine Deneuve. Annette subsequently packed her bags for Italy where she made a few unmemorable pictures, reverting to her maiden name of Strøyberg on marquee boards. In between she managed to amass a number of love affairs with such available playboy actors like Vittorio Grassman, Roberto Rossellini, Alain Delon, Omar Sharif and Warren Beatty. Her last film was "Lo scippo" (1965). Giving up on her career, she turned socialite and married a French Moroccan, dividing her time between Paris (France) and Africa. When that marriage failed, she married a Greek shipping magnate, Gregory Callimanopulos, and settled for a time in America. She returned to Europe after their divorce. Strøyberg died at age 71 of cancer in 2005, and was survived by her three children, one from each of her marriages.

As often written on this blog, Marisa Mell refused to color her dark brown hair into another color so the only solution was to wear a wig like she did in this movie "French Dressing". When you compare the style of the hair of both women you can clearly see that Marisa Mell's wig is copying the hair style of Annette Vadim for her role as Carmilla von Karnstein. So one can assume that Ken Russell was a huge fan of the actress Annette Vadim and her role in that movie from 1960 and had her in mind to play the part in his first movie for the French actress Françoise Fayol. When Annette Vadim fell ill during the pre-production of this movie, he must have been very disappointed and started to look for another European actress to play the role! So it is quite remarkable that he asked Marisa Mell to accept the part because she had only played in a few German speaking movies.

It is not known how Ken Russell got to know the work of Marisa Mell and I wonder if Marisa Mell was aware that she was a copy (and I must say a very bad one with the horrible blond wig) in this movie of another actress. And being a copy of Annette Vadim could explain why she had to wear that wig instead of her beautiful thick brown hair for the role. French Dressing was a big box office disaster and gave the director for several years a trauma. It also ended the British career of Marisa Mell. The next year she relocated to Italy and starred in the cult movie "Casanova 70".

A "Stuntman" in Japan!

In 1968, Marisa Mell starred as "Gloria Hall" in an Italian-French co-production "Stuntman" were she tried to lure a stuntman into stealing an Indian artifact. This is the Japanese poster for the movie! Japanese movie posters, like the Belgian ones, are specially made for their market. Most movie markets in the world are rather lazy in the promotion of American and/or non American movies. They just copy the template of the movie posters and put a font on it in the language of their country. Work done! Japan and Belgium on the other hand are very inventive and have a long tradition of making their own posters combining several eye catchers from the movie they are going to promote. In other words, most posters from Japan and Belgium are original creations. While the domestic movie poster for this film mainly focusses on the stunts with big crashing cars in front of the poster and the actors in the back ground, this poster has the main focus on the actors and the spy aspect of the film like the chrono watch, gas mask, the remote control, wrestling women and a nude Marisa Mell. Hence the poster has a very strong James Bond feel to it.

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.