Now, le Hard Core

The whip snaps and the woman on the receiving end screams--but with pleasure. Her lover brands his initials on her backside, and she looks at him even more longingly. The climax of the story, as it were, comes when she takes the whip to another woman and discovers that love really does mean not having to say you're sorry.

The Story of O is, in a word, trash, as almost any Parisian who has seen it will quickly say. "It's zero, zero, as in 0," said one man as he walked out of the theater. "It's a giggle," said another. It is, however, the kind of giggle the French apparently have been waiting for. Half of Paris seems to be queuing up to see it --and the other half is talking about it. After the puritanical regimes of Charles de Gaulle and Georges Pompidou, sex has at last returned to Paris.

Onscreen, at least, the trend actually started last year with a soft-core flick, Emmanuelle (TIME, Jan. 6), which quickly became the top-grossing movie in French history. Emmanuelle's French director, Just Jaeckin, then promptly adapted The Story of O from the famous whips-and-chains novel of the '50s. Since the movie opened last month, O has become a major news story in France. Radio and TV programs endlessly debate the film's merits. The weekly L'Express featured Actress Corinne Clery, who plays the film's tortured protagonist, on its cover, nude above the waist, and inside printed six graphic full-color stills from the movie.

The real dirt--what the French call le hard core--has come from the U.S. One American import, History of the Blue Movie (seductively retitled Anthologie du Plaisir), recently played at 14 theaters in Paris. French distributors are now fighting for the rights to such American porn "classics" as Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door.

The new pornography is not confined to the movies. In the Place Pigalle and along the Rue St. Denis, there are now dozens of dirty book stores, sex shops and theatres erotiques. A full leather-and-whip set sells for $125, and there are inflatable plastic dolls with all the proper--or improper--accouter-ments that go for $70.

Gallic Subtlety. Although President Valery Giscard d'Estaing virtually abolished censorship six months ago, Secretary of State for Culture Michel Guy still has authority to ban anything on stage or screen that goes too far. Guy, however, is more concerned about violence and drugs than explicit sex. If he had been in office at the time, Guy says he might well have banned Stanley Kubrick's chilling A Clockwork Orange, which anyone over 18 could see, while letting Last Tango in Paris sail through. Another branch of government, however, may give the porn purveyors some anxiety. Seeking new sources of income, Finance Minister Jean-Pierre Fourcade last week suggested a tax on "this outburst of pornography."

Meanwhile the outburst continues. Emmanuelle's producer, Yves Rousset Rouard, now has a sequel before the cameras, Emmanuelle 2--The Anti-Virgin. It, too, will probably be soft core.

When producers do get around to turning out something like Throat, they promise to add Gallic subtlety to what they think is crude American formula. The radicals used to complain that French life was a dull blend of "Metro, Boulot and Dodo"--subway, work and sleep. Now, says the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchalne, the slogan is "Metro, Boulot, Dodo et Porno."

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