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Borowczyk and Pasolini have very, very little in common except on the most superficial level - they tend to get lumped together because they were probably the most "serious" directors who jumped on the 1970s Eurotica bandwagon, but they're poles apart in terms of style and sensibility. Pasolini's roots are strongly in the Italian neo-realist tradition, which he never really abandoned, while Borowczyk was primarily a surrealist - certainly throughout his first decade and a half when he worked mainly in animation, but also throughout the 1970s and 80s. Luis Buñuel, Jan Švankmajer and the Quay Brothers (who revere Borowczyk and consider him their primary inspiration) are probably the filmmakers closest to him.

That said, I think La Bête is some distance from Borowczyk's best work - I can certainly appreciate its satirical/erotic intentions, but for me it never really transcended its origins. It started out as an outrageous short about bestiality, originally made for the six-part Immoral Tales, but cut, screened separately at the London Film Festival, and then rather awkwardly expanded into a feature, with the short film forming the dream that dominates the last third. There are sublime moments (no-one has an eye quite like Borowczyk, and the equine horse porn made me laugh out loud), but it's not a patch on Goto, Blanche or Docteur Jekyll et les femmes, Borowczyk's most wholly successful live-action features.

The horse sex scene that opens the film didn't seem too out of place to me - if you breed horses what else are you going to do? It also foreshadows and contrasts well with the central hilarious bestial attack. I find that the best way to approach The Beast is as an amped up fantasy version of a Renoir film like Rules of the Game. As well as featuring Marcel Dalio it takes all the class, religious, gender and generational clashes and just makes them, if you'll pardon the pun, more explicit!

MichaelB wrote:Borowczyk and Pasolini have very, very little in common except on the most superficial level - they tend to get lumped together because they were probably the most "serious" directors who jumped on the 1970s Eurotica bandwagon, but they're poles apart in terms of style and sensibility. Pasolini's roots are strongly in the Italian neo-realist tradition, which he never really abandoned, while Borowczyk was primarily a surrealist - certainly throughout his first decade and a half when he worked mainly in animation, but also throughout the 1970s and 80s. Luis Buñuel, Jan Švankmajer and the Quay Brothers (who revere Borowczyk and consider him their primary inspiration) are probably the filmmakers closest to him.

That said, I think La Bête is some distance from Borowczyk's best work - I can certainly appreciate its satirical/erotic intentions, but for me it never really transcended its origins. It started out as an outrageous short about bestiality, originally made for the six-part Immoral Tales, but cut, screened separately at the London Film Festival, and then rather awkwardly expanded into a feature, with the short film forming the dream that dominates the last third. There are sublime moments (no-one has an eye quite like Borowczyk, and the equine horse porn made me laugh out loud), but it's not a patch on Goto, Blanche or Docteur Jekyll et les femmes, Borowczyk's most wholly successful live-action features.

I love 'Blanche' - the film Peter Greenaway always wanted to make?, - Goto less so, although its a different type of film, - but I've always been wary of exploring films such as 'La Bete', as I have suspected it features far too little of what I loved about the other films

Well it always depends on what you loved about the other film. :^o