Forbidden Paris (1970)

 

Director: Jean-Louis van Belle

Screenplay: Jean-Louis van Belle

Ethereal Waves

 

Built from stories not used in a documentary Jean-Louis van Belle was staff on, Paris Secret (1965), van Belle's Forbidden Paris is not one of the more shocking or notorious mondo films in existence, and is fact ultra obscure. It is not even one of the most ambitious of this genre of documentaries, a subjective term of they were notorious for elaborated and controversially set up moments, but this has its interesting side to itself. Innovated by Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi, mondo documentaries are controversial in the modern day to as many can be challenged for their offensive and politically incorrect content, but they can also be upon reflection more complicated and deliberately provocative in ways that are challenging upon reflection; Jacopetti and Prosperi themselves reached a zenith, of this moral complexity and controversy, with Goodbye Uncle Tom (1971), a docu-drama about North America’s history of slavery. Mondo Cane (1962), the film they created which innovated the "mondo" documentary, also led to a lot of films trying to follow in its success in lurid "documentaries" which were about showing titillation and shocking content, whether they were actually transgressive or not, and Forbidden Paris belongs to this category among many of this ilk.

Forbidden Paris however offers a fascinating spectrum, set within Paris, of how many unconventional and diverse viewpoints exist hidden within the city, set up immediately with one who has planned to deal with the upcoming apocalypse. With his family, his wife and infant son, they have shaved off their hair, and he has set up the precaution of acquiring an anti-radiation suit and radiation proof moped he rides to work even before the bombs have dropped. He is not the only one preparing for the apocalypses either in this film, as the Great, Great, Great, Great, Great grandson of Noah hosts a doomsday orgy rejecting Earthly wealth. It is a reminder that human beings are strange, a species capable of abstract thought but also vastly different from each other entirely even within one single metropolis. In this snapshot, even if exaggerated in sexploitation sexual content, you see how diverse and different they can be. In contrast to the conformity that likely existed in the world at the time in Paris, there is also a man who encourages human polygamy and openly kissing everyone, regardless of gender, reaching God through love and getting pestered by the Parisian cops for being a nuisance on the streets. Fakir classes are transpiring as seen here for women, to learn to be able to lie on beds of nails or pierce one’s cheeks with needles without pain. The exploitation edge is seeing the male teacher sticking a real pointed tool across his throat, but the reality more fascinating in imagining that in late sixties France, as this material was being collected, this would have been just one pocket of culture happening at the time next to other curious outsider communities hidden between apartments.

“Regular uniformity” as is spoken by the narrator at one point, and how it has led to these tangents and exceptions from its subjects is what the theme is and can be found in other mondo documentaries at the times, even the deeply problematic ones which took authoritarian roles whilst lusting after the material they condemned. Even if sold on titillation and the lurid, a work like Forbidden Paris, more obscure, feels instead more interesting as a document of the period even if any of the material is fictionalized. It envisions a more realistic reality that, even if people have day to day jobs and are expected to behave a certain way, you learn they have secret lives. It is salacious in a tame way here, but one can imagine that housewives have hired a male teacher, who also sells them sexy lingerie, who teaches them how to striptease. Naturally both sex and death, two taboos in most societies, become centre of this underground side to ordinary life, such as with the male hairdresser who expanded his work out to the recently deceased. Arguably one of the grimmest moments is a woman having her late pet dog taxidermied, if only because the process is shown, and even that adds a sick punch line which emphasizes this taboo– how, using a vinyl collection of dog barks for the initial choice, your taxidermied dog can bark with a voice box inserted inside among the sawdust, like in a singing Christmas decoration, if requiring AA batteries.

And it can be progressive here even of the language is politically incorrect, such as a marriage between two trans people, at least two people (a man and a woman who dress and perform in a different gender to their birth together on stage) who are shown in a positive light as figures who are gender fliod. The narration of how the abnormal is actually normal in context becomes pertinent to all these subjects in the documentary, even if the film is not one of the most elaborate or startling from this notorious exploitation genre. Likewise, this emphasizes that even if something may have been lost in translation old rituals still linger in a metropolis, the pagan and heretical finding itself still flourishing in the likes of the worshippers of the flame, who cremate the dead to liberate their souls, unlike burial which traps it longer. Their only concessions to the modern day, alongside having to work around the law, is that even when it comes to mock cremations with mannequins, they have found it cheaper and more effective to use Shell brand petrol in them. That is not even a joke on my part, found in the narration, and it is as funny as it reflects, for what is a period of the late sixties now of the past, how these secret sects and groups have had to adapt and improvise even in the little details, even if they are hilarious to learn of.

If there is one reoccurring theme in Forbidden Paris which is not progressive, but unfortunately is more timeless than one presumes, it is how a lot of the communities we see here involve a lot of older men with cult of personalities around them and involve younger women around him as students and helpers, a reminder that a form of charisma can make a lot of men dangerous in taking advantage of people. One example here is not actually dangerous, but he still finds himself falling into the stereotype even if he is entirely innocuous – Gen Fenn the American photographer who is a photographer who puts wanted ads for female models who have masochistic tendencies and are happy to participate in New Age photography rituals involving nudity, most of which could be exaggerated as performance for this film. Considering the likes of Charles Manson from this era, however, it does raise concerns of how among the lot we see here – the Fakir teacher, our Noah great grandson et all – even those here that are harmless do show anyone can acquire a circle of likeminded figures who will follow their advise. Fenn’s only sin is a narrow view of female sensuality and women not all conforming to what he views them to be, old fashioned sexism, but unfortunately more dangerous figures, the least likely to win over people, could exist and have won too many people over. Into the Millennium onwards with the likes of incels you get cult of personalities which are far more dangerous, and do not have the innocence of most of these in this film.

One such example which is not innocent at all, and the one certain trend older than one presumed, is the Nazi club we see the rites of. Unfortunately we have this section, whether staged, with people allowed to be shown onscreen, but alongside rightly being called a “cut price SS group”, they have to be included for a reminder of how even corrupt pockets of community also exist. Even if nowadays you should not give them space on cinema to voice their opinions, and there is a lurid sexploitation edge to filming their rituals, it is poignant in Forbidden Paris to know not all this underground series of community are wholesome. This has the one moment which feels uncomfortable with their existence already stinging, in one of their female members being stripped naked and painted with Stars of David and swastikas to be “persecuted” briefly, but with the image of a few motley Neo-Nazis trying to march up Champs-Élysées, only to scamper off, their appearance here is to be mocked. It is sadly pertinent to have this section; even in mind that, only three decades earlier, Nazi Germany invaded France in World War II, we learn there were Nazi sympathizers even in France itself, the narration holding them as ugly but an unfortunate truth, the unfortunate other side of the coin.

Thankfully this is the one group who are complete villains. Even if some of the subjects are more lurid in their depiction, they stand out as eccentricities, outsider and those who cannot be defined in conservative values. Conservative values really cannot apply to the “last vampire”, even if his life as talked of offers almost a sitcom I wished had existed, merely going about his day, occasionally getting a nice blood supper from a freshly killed horse, one scene that needs a warning even if the animal is humanely killed onscreen, and talking of being pestered by one of the older women in a store who clearly is smitten with him. His cameo in The Sadist with Red Teeth (1970), Jean-Louis van Belle's weird pastiche of Euro horror cinema, about a man who is effectively brainwashed into becoming a vampire, really means a lot more as van Belle blurred the mondo reality with the fictional film with this figure having a key role as a turner of vampires.  In vast contrast, what could be seen as the most exploitative moment, as it deals with the disabled, becomes the best and the sweetest moment in what, contextually, is a minor film in this sub genre. That of a ballet school for the disabled where they embrace dance as much a physically possible per person, to discard their false limbs outside and even drink champagne after the sessions.

Films like Forbidden Paris are fascinating to see, these obscure titles from exploitation cinema time capsules where for all their dated content and the fact they were greatly sold on sex, show a lot still of these types of figures, those on the fringes of society who lived hidden lives. Even in mind to these films knowingly fictionalizing their content, and unsavory content like exoticising non-European cultures, there was also a streak that could be found of seeing the underbelly of cultures, the maligned and that rarely talked of. It was unsubtle in a lot of the films made by Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi, and others taking advantage of their success, and rightly they can be difficult films in whether all their content was justifiable, but this minor effort from Jean-Louis van Belle even shows these can be rebellious films forcing those rarely given a voice, and subjects rarely done as well, their stand onscreen. Those I have talked of with the most positive voice, even the eccentrics, have been immortalized thanks to the film, which in itself is a subversive act which is worth the film's existence.