SYNOPSICS
Cruel Passion (1977) is a English movie. Chris Boger has directed this movie. Koo Stark,Martin Potter,Lydia Lisle,Katherine Kath are the starring of this movie. It was released in 1977. Cruel Passion (1977) is considered one of the best Drama movie in India and around the world.
Justine (Koo Stark) wishes to remain innocent and virginal, but instead slips into a life of debauchery, torture, whipping, slavery and salaciousness. Meanwhile, her brazen, flirtatious and liberated sister Juliette ironically receives nothing but happiness and reward for her wanton behavior. Justine's only possible hope of true love and salvation is one of her sister's former lovers, the suave and elegant Lord Carlisle (Martin Potter). But is he as virtuous as he seems?
Cruel Passion (1977) Reviews
For Koo Stark fans only
The version I own is the unrated De Sade's Justine, proudly displaying Kook Stark's name on the cover. While she's tender and lovely in this movie, there is room for an exciting and tantalizing plot which never develops. The acting is mediocre, sets/scenery are good but the dialog is contrived making the whole thing a bit of a disappointment. There's not even enough nudity/debauchery to excite much more than a 12 year old male.
Surprisingly faithful adaptation...
"Justine: Cruel Passion" is much better than expected. This 1977 film version turns out to be very faithful to it's source material, in this case the writings of the Marquis De Sade. His tale of a young innocent, cast into the cruel, corrupt World when her parents die, is certainly a grim one. Koo Stark does surprisingly well at portraying virginal innocence, disgusted by the violence and vice surrounding her. The more she resists, the harder she is pursued by the corrupt people in her midst. Stark really is good here; she doesn't overplay it, she never comes across as unbelievably naive and innocent. Overdoing it might have made it seem silly to care for Justine. I was rather expecting a trashy excuse to show wall to wall soft core sex, but "Cruel Passion" turns out to be rather tame in that regard, which probably explains the low ratings here. Any viewer looking to get a lot of nudity and sex out of this production might be a bit disappointed. What we have instead is a very handsomely filmed, Gothic/Victorian "bodice ripper," only with a surprisingly bleak and grim conclusion, that I was not expecting. Beautiful sets and costumes, mist shrouded countrysides, and a fine utilization of it's classical soundtrack, all come together to make an above average film that is essentially about the loss of innocence. Entire passages are taken verbatim from the Marquis De Sade, resulting in dialog that is at times poetic. The story of Justine was filmed several times, but this 1977 version remains the most faithful to the original writings. Recommended for anyone interested in the writings of Sade, as well as fans of Gothic and erotic films.
Stark looks nice, but that's it.
Yes, there was some really, really bad acting in this film, but it wasn't done by Koo Stark. She was beautiful, demure, and a pretty decent Justine. (It's often hard to judge an actor in a really bad movie.) i have never seen Stark elsewhere, and would need to do so before deciding if she were a hack. About the material itself, I have read some Sade, (although not "Justine") and it is some really vile stuff. Someone mentioned that the sex scenes were depressing and un-erotic. That describes Sade's stuff on a very mild day. He was a fanatical atheist, and took great delight in portraying sex as sacrilege, and all religion as hypocritical.
Gets to Sade in the end, but only after a plod
Loosely based upon the notorious novel Justine by the Marquis de Sade, and made eight years after Jess Franco made his big budget version Marquis de Sade's Justine and just two years after Pasolini's rather more radical revisioning of The 120 Days of Sodom as Salo, Cruel Passion aka Marquis de Sade's Justine is a rather toned-down version of divine Marquis, with mere hints of his Satanic philosophising and nods towards his all-encompassing sexual depravity. The film is nearer to being a low-grade Barry Lyndon or Tony Richardson's contemporaneous Joseph Andrews than other 60s and 70s screen versions of Sade. As ever, two young sisters are orphaned and left at the mercy of a morally corrupt universe. Juliette, the older sister, is pragmatic; Justine, her younger sibling, is full of notions of purity and virtue. In this version, we meet the sisters in the care of a local nunnery, Juliette giving herself sexually to a hypocritical lesbian sister but Justine refusing the advances of the frantically groping Mother Abbess. Juliette's residual protectiveness towards Justine causes them both to be thrown out, and they make their way to London and a brothel where a saucy relative works. In the carriage on the way they meet a young nobleman, Lord Carlisle, who falls in lust with Juliette. An extended brothel sequence shows Juliette being inducted into the ways of whoredom, all of which repulse Justine so that she runs back home. Taking up the offer of the local Pastor of a roof over her head, she find that her beauty inflames the old lecher; Justine flees to the roof, and in pursuing her the Pastor falls to his death. Justine flees once more, into the arms of a gang of cut-throats. Meanwhile, Carlisle has taken Juliette as his mistress and is sent to recover Justine. As ill-luck would have it, the cut-throats attack the coach that Carlisle is travelling on, kill his fellow passengers (including a child) and holding him to ransom. Up until this point in the film, there have been the odd effective moment in between some poor acting, atrocious editing and rather lacklustre pace. But the final fifteen minutes plunge us into a world without a moral anchor. Justine helps Carlisle escape and is rewarded with him raping her; the cut-throats catch up with them both, set the dogs on them, gang rape her and murder him. This is all done in a nicely frenzied sequence beautifully filmed at a swan-haunted lake. Our final vision is of the cut-throats triumphant, Carlisle dead and Justine's body floating Ophelia-like down the river. Virtue, purity and hope are all down the swannee, and the film raises itself to some kind of effectively Sadeian level. The performances range from the adequate to the hammy, with Koo Stark as a nubile Justine and Martin Potter as a hunky Carlisle pleasant on the eye if not giving masterclasses; a nod should be given to Barry McGinn's crazed brothel trainer George, who at least does something pretty barmy with his part. As a product of the 70s British film industry, Cruel Passion gets marks for offering some alternative to the usual sniggering, smutty sex romp; it's a shame that apart from the odd moment, the dizzying ending and an effective integration of classical music on the soundtrack, the film falls short of its ambitions.
Not worth the rental fee
I have read de Sade and read about him and so was a little excited when I saw the title but couldn't wait for the end, fast forwarding through the last 15 minutes. The acting is not even second rate, the script poorly conceived and written, the direction is amateurish and the production values almost non-existent. The story line is convoluted and doesn't follow any rhyme or reason as far as script writing techniques. Characters are not clearly introduced nor is their relation to each other and it's hard to care about the characters much less sympathize or empathize with them. A difficult book to translate into even a watch able movie, this fails in every aspect.