Why so much hype?

The Age of Commercialism

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Here's a splendid restoration work from the original film's vaults, colorful, lavish, and always sexy, erotic, as only Brass could make movies, a bit art house, extremely stylized, over all infused of that slight sensational sophisticated comedies' feel in perfect 1930s style, yet with wildly turns into graphic and/or erotic story telling that's always (almost) been handled with the talent only Tinto Brass is capable of, and believe it or not, with again, a certain sophisticated eye capable always to 'see' beyond the nudity, and, discovering the souls of his principle cast with some outstanding expressionistic visual style of sort that has been truly Brass' trademark since the beginning of his admirable career: he can manage to make you believe the most uncomfortable circumstances photographed beautifully but also extremely realistically with vivid glares and rapid ironic smiles of provocation, and, staying yet completely free of any judgment, but again, so realistic in the representation of their own depiction, composing at the end quite the piece! Here, thanks to a simple, but clear, and, clever narrative, we have John Cleland's heroine 'Fanny Hill' who becomes a young 'Mimma' (gorgeous to look at Deborah Caprioglio) from Trieste, east of Venice, Italy, an almost under age beautiful Bambie not educated, she is initially naive, badly betrayed by an abusive boyfriend, and, she ends up having no other choice than becoming a prostitute. The film does follow her throughout her own journey and her version of the story that is taking place in prude and puritan 1950s Italy, and, in what seems to be a carefree, endless riot of an existence that does never embitter the now re-named (after a series of fun and powerful make overs) "Paprika", but, actually, she at the contrary seems to make always the best for herself, becoming quite a very sweet, but smart and very sexually skilled young lady, capable also to gain her own respect, and at the right moment also to change her faith for the best, becoming as in a fairy tale, a Countess, with yachts and marvelous huge Villa on Lake Como, while, at the same time, keeping herself intact with her good heart, as she is still managing to gain social influence, power, money (the original 18 years old heir is put back to his place right away), but also helping some ex colleagues and their lives, now harshly facing the streets, and its dangers, after the laws prohibiting brothels in Italy since after 1958, leaving all the workers to despair and apparently without a roof in the merge of worse pimps abusing them! What could have become either the same old, trite tale of the poor demoniac young prostitute, or just a trip into the mere and most exploitative depiction of all sex and morbid curiosity over the vulgar aspects of such hard life now changes drastically direction and flavor with Brass in top form taking the helm with class, also with the help of always exceptional (often Federico Fellini's co-writer, too) screen writer Bernardino Zapponi, who opts to tell the story instead like a wild comedy with great dialogs that truly feels like one of those movies released before the Hollywood code of censorship, by doing so, Brass and Zapponi leave the narration as linear as possible pushing instead the envelope over all the eccentric, and, the truly lavish visuals designed with phenomenal gusto and greatness by Academy award winners art director Bruno Cesari, and production designer Paolo Biagetti, with the help of the almost surrealistic gowns, wonderfully tailored by fantastic costume designer Jost Jakob, and, with an over all general key visual extravaganza highly accomplished with the help of a big budgeted International co-production, but, also by the exquisite use of the colorful palette offered by the sizzling cinematography put together by masters Silvano Ippoliti, and Massimo Di Venanzo. A movie i highly enjoyed watching again, and that i have appreciated being so well re-presented and restored. The supporting cast is here also another treat to look for, composed as it is, by some of the most well known cult Euro actors of the time, all wonderfully placed, composing a myriad of faces, cameos, and little yet very poignant roles, such as John Steiner, Petra Sharback, Nina Soldano, Luca Lionello, Riccardo Garrone, Valentine Demy, Andrea Aureli, Luigi Laezza, Stephane Bonnet, Stephane Ferrara, Elizabeth Kaza, Deborah Cali, Paul Muller, Martine Brochard, Luciana Cirenei, and, last but not least, Domiziano Arcangeli as 18years old Gualtiero who's brought to celebrate his birthday, in the fabulous looking brothel "Gli Specchi" in Milan, by his father, wealthy, eccentric, and wild Count Bastiano Rosasco (burly Renzo Rinaldi, an actor very dear to the late Brass) who later ends up inviting Paprika in high society, and he finally introduces her to his own family disrupted in disbelief when he decides to announce he's to marry her, apparently keeping extremely blasé about the whole social scandal. But, this will end up being at once the originally unique happy ending of a good, gorgeous, young girl who has always been thankful for what life had presented to her no matter what, smiling always like an eternal sunshine, and leaving tears and melodrama out of her (wild) path, mainly never embittered by the circumstances, as she is now rewarded by a twist of fate, when she would end up crossing the line, and by famous young prostitute of elegant brothels, we get to see her toward the end of the picture, transforming yet again and becoming a famed and respected young blue blood Italian countess. A true smash at the time of its release, very successful indeed at the International box offices of that time, this movie holds its own still very well, with its genius and crazy director, fun and light script, lavish sets, and elegant exterior work, its great technical contributions, "Paprika"certainly manages to successfully and glittering appearing almost as a brand new show, just 25 years past its original release!

There have been some decent and even thoughtful movies made about hookers -- "Belle de Jour", "Never on Sunday," "Scandal," for instance -- but this isn't one of them. The screen is filled with bouncing breasts, all of them the size and shape of watermelons, hefty behinds, and hirsute pundenda, male as well as female. Only the close ups have been eliminated to protect the guilty.Debora Caprioglio is Paprika, a hooker in modern Italy with the face of an adolescent and the body of a female specimen of Homo sapiens that has brought the concept of reproduction and nurturance to its finest degree, divine in its generosity. Here she is, with her cute little innocent face and chirrupy voice, starting out in a Roman whorehouse inhabited by cheerfully naked girls, and with walls straight out of the red light district of Pompeii. This isn't hard-core pornography but it gets just as boring just as quickly.Paprika is coopted by a pimp who mistreats her. It's no tragedy though. She's a sassy babe and gives as good as she gets. There's not a sad moment in the film, or an enlightening one. She falls for a sailor but before the affair can develop he's off to sea, promising he'll return.He does in fact return at the end of the movie and by this time Paprika has married an elderly Count who drops dead at once, enabling Paprika to buy her sailor the cruise boat he's always wanted.The intent of the director, Tinto Brass, seems not to merely entertain the audience, because this is anything other than entertaining, but to keep the viewer agape in his seat at the vulgarity.An example? An attractive and likable whore is on her death bed in the brothel. A crowd has gathered around the dying woman and someone calls for a doctor. He emerges from the crowd in his underwear and claims it's too late to help her. "I want a priest," she croaks. A priest in black underwear, wearing a crucifix around his neck, pushes his way out of the crowd and takes her confession. The moribund young woman is completely naked and uncovered on the bed, her legs spread apart. And the director places the camera between her feet an shoots upward so that the wiry curls of her pubic symphisis in prominently featured in the shot. What is the point?A poem by Oscar Williams we read in high school drifted into my consciousness."What lewd, naked and revolting shape is this? A frozen oxtail in the butcher's shop. Long and lifeless upon the huge block of wood On which the ogre's ax begins chop chop."In the end, Paprika and a friend sit on a balcony and watch the sailor's cruise boat puffing along a river or lake, enjoying themselves no end. The camera drifts over and fixes on the cold, unyielding, marmorial glutes of a nude statue -- and stays there while the end credits roll. It's a fitting conclusion.

Tinto Brass has made some things worth watching in my mind. He chooses to make erotic films, which is fine by me.I'm interested in erotic films. Naturally, they are enjoyable, the good ones that avoid the damages associated with porn. But they are something deep in us too, something having to do with performance.In a real erotic film, you'll have an actress (at the very least an actress) who is performing as a character who is performing for us. In porn, there is no difference; in erotic art, there is. Tinto in his better works understands this, and plays with it — sometimes — in effective ways.This film is worse in the way it works, and is better in how the story bends to the purpose. The story is about another layer of performing. Our heroine not only performs for our pleasure, but for also (as a prostitute) for a seemingly endless series of men.So the setup is fine.Making something that is erotic requires that the artist in charge decide what is erotic. Now that's a matter purely of style and not art. The choices he's made this time are different than the ones he's known for, though they seem superficially similar. But this woman is genuinely fat, thickwaisted. She has bad teeth and (the only thing that really matters) she carries herself gracelessly.You'll want to pass on this one, I think.Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

Highly atypical of Brass' movies, this one is a potpourri of whorehouse scenes, loosely connected.(His best movies are, on the contrary, quite unified pictures in the shape of a bourgeois or rural drama/sex satire, and rather _intimist also, exploiting the sense of intimacy, secret, privacy unveiled ,etc..)This one is more like a whorehouse almanac, with some camp Fellinian dizziness and cold vertigo. On the other hand, it represents well Brass' gynecological approach, and Mme. Caprioglio's exposed genitalia are intensely fondled a couple of times during some medical exams. PAPRIKA might also be conspicuous for a note of meanness that supplements the shameless cynicism characteristic of Brass' products. Here there is a certain meanness and aggressiveness in the satire. The paradox is the obvious injustice done to Mme. Caprioglio's breasts—while everybody in the film—her chiefs in the brothel, her uncle, etc.—keep praising, touching, fondling her considerable ass, as the most exciting part of her body, it is nonetheless very evident that this place belongs to her tits. Her most extraordinary endowment, and especially at such young an age, are her tits. No one mentions them in the movie, and barely touches them ….Mme. Caprioglio illustrates Brass' view of the colossally exciting woman—like Grandi,like Vassilissa, like Koll ….Brass exalts women whose sexuality and appeal are over-explicit and very tangible.Since I was 15, Deborah is on my list of favorite soft—core actresses (with Grandi, Miti, Sandrelli, Tweed, and,more newly, Sinclair—the Hungarian one).Can you believe that no one in PAPRIKA praises her tits or at least notices their size, appeal, etc.? PAPRIKA is an brothel album comprising several shameless, sulfurous ,even angry, nihilist aqua-fortes. Brass pretends it wanted it a joyful celebration, a cheerful feast.But the movie looks sometimes angry and mean,as I said.It has not the enormous beauty to be found in LA CHIAVE or MIRANDA.Brass was usually keen in filming the masculine answer, the erection, the natural masculine reaction to physical feminine beauty.