Wider Screenings film review - Deep Throat (1972: d. Gerard Damiano)

CENSORSHIP HISTORY

* Banned in half of the United States, this film was the test-case in "obscenity" standards. It's eventual screening throughout much of the US (though not without protest) paved the way for the brief flowering of "porno chic" and the cultural legitimization of hardcore pornography.

* Andrea Dworkin and Catherine McKinnon pressured Lovelace into renouncing her participation in the book Ordeal, which all responsible journalists claim as misrepresentative and fabricated.

* In Australia, the DVD is modified so that instead of showing Ms. Lovelace's oral abilities, the film shows a protracted shot of her forehead and the bridge of her nose. Only in the special features can one see Lovelace perform the act: the message is clear - Australians cannot see sex performed for pleasure in a context meant to arouse the viewer: a de facto Christian moral imposition.

* Harry Reems was prosecuted for his role in making an obscene film but in a victory for free speech was found not guilty.

* In September 2000, the film was passed uncut by the BBFC in the UK as part of a policy shift requiring less censorship of adult films and more attention to children's films.

* In February 2008, the uncut film played on TV in the Netherlands.

WHAT LINDA LOVELACE HAD TO SAY ABOUT IT

* "I can't describe how great it felt to have brought the big scene about in the first take. If I looked happy with that gob of thick come all over my face, it was true. I loved it, wallowed in it, savoured it. It was the crowning achievement of my sexual life." (Linda Lovelace, Inside Linda Lovelace, Oceana Press, 1973).

DEEP THROAT (1972)
UMBRELLA DVD (region 4)
d. Gerard Damiano; pr. Louis Peraino (as Lou Perry); scr. Gerard Damiano; ph. Joao Fernandez (as Harry Flecks); m. Gerard Damiano; ed. Gerard Damiano; cast. Linda Lovelace, Harry Reems, Dolly Sharp, Bill Harrison, Carol Connors, William Love, Bob Phillips, Gerard Damiano (61 mins)

In the thirty years since its release Deep Throat has become in terms of cost to profit ratio the most successful film ever made.

Made for some $25,000 in 1972, it has since grossed over $1 billion dollars worldwide and continues to sell regularly. In that it legitimized the adult feature film, it birthed an industry that today is a global enterprise. Banned and protested wherever it was screened, Deep Throat was the social phenomenon of an America reeling from the permissive liberties of the 1960s counter-culture sexual revolution and ready to confront the search for sexual fulfilment in the explicit film terms of a forbidden erotic art: pornography.

In Deep Throat what had previously been confined to peep shows and brothels went mainstream: critics and audiences flocked to it, feminists protested it and the Church condemned it.

Decades later, when critics acknowledged it as one of the top ten most influential films of all time, many were aghast. Others, however, embraced the irony: the most infamous piece of film pornography ever made had become demonstrably essential viewing. Indeed, no historical appreciation of American film culture is complete without seeing Deep Throat.

Umbrella DVD, in their admirable concentration on vintage erotica, have released Deep Throat on DVD in an R-rated version, ideal viewing for those curious about it’s reputation but reluctant to be confronted by explicit sexual imagery, which is scrupulously concealed in this release. The film is complete, but the sex scenes have been digitally altered to focus on non-explicit parts of the image, obscuring the sex out of frame. The documentary Inside Deep Throat on American television elevated the film to the status of cultural icon, legitimizing the curiosity that many had about the origins of the porno movie. In the wake of this nostalgic evocation, the seminal porno films of the 1970s are no longer disreputable “pornography”. Enough time has passed to view Deep Throat as artefact: however, apparently enough time has not yet passed to release the film with the sex intact - so unlike the UK, where the film was passed uncut in 2010 and in the scandinavian countires where it is even shown on television. In Australia, this content is still effectively "obscene".

Deep Throat was directed in 1972 by Gerard Damiano under the pseudonym Jerry Gerard. Damiano was a hairdresser who filmed porno loops for a little extra cash, intrigued by the prospect of bringing the stag loop into feature format.

He was delighted when he was contacted by Chuck Traynor. Traynor was married to Linda Marciano. Marciano enjoyed performing oral sex and, much to Traynor’s delight, had perfected a technique known in stag loops as “sword swallowing” whereby a woman takes the entire length of a man’s penis into her mouth and throat without gagging. Traynor felt that a film about his wife’s talent would be a turn-on for many and brought her to Damiano’s attention: initially they planned to make a loop called The Sword Swallower but re-titled it Deep Throat and expanded it. Marciano used the alias Linda Lovelace and responded with an enthusiasm that made Traynor jealous: he had to be forcibly removed during filming so as to free her from inhibition.

Deep Throat made Lovelace an instant celebrity. She appeared on TV talk shows, wrote out in favour of her experience and even starred in the comedy Linda Lovelace for President (also released now by Umbrella DVD).

To Hustler magazine, she was America’s most famous “cocksucker”. However, Lovelace had not had the foresight to secure any of the financial profits and soon found herself on the rocks. She left Traynor, who by then had taken an interest in actress Marilyn Chambers (who, for her debut in Behind the Green Door released the same year as Deep Throat, had the foresight to secure a percentage deal from filmmakers The Mitchell Brothers) and was swept up by the feminist movement. There, she was cajoled into denouncing pornography in the book Ordeal. In this book, Lovelace claimed that she was forced and coerced into making Deep Throat. Although her sexual performance in the film was apparently willing, due to her later denouncement of it after meeting with the Women Against Pornography movement and feminists Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, watching Lovelace perform the film’s title act became synonymous with her exploitation, her rape.

Lovelace brought porn to the mainstream in 1973 but by denouncing it sent it back underground by the end of the decade. Shortly before her death, Lovelace appeared in an adult magazine in a tribute to the fans of her famous film: her hypocrisy here led Hustler to denounce her in its “asshole of the month” column.

Whilst Lovelace sadly perished, Reems introduced Damiano to Georgina Spelvin, an actress and former dancer who was looking to make sex films. Spelvin and Damiano then made The Devil in Miss Jones, in which the jovial, happy tone of Deep Throat was replaced by a stark religious allegory. It’s in The Devil in Miss Jones that porn’s transgressive nature was truly pioneered and time has proven it, rather than Deep Throat, the most influential porn film of all time. But: Deep Throat’s innocence endures in its sense of showcased sexual pleasure and its over-riding concern for women’s freedom of sexual expression. Although Lovelace’s denouncement demonized pornography as the male oppression and objectification of women, Deep Throat itself is concerned with, above all else, women finding their own sexual expression.

This was what pornography was about for Damiano – the sexual liberation of women, not their abuse.

Lovelace plays a young woman who has yet to find orgasmic pleasure in straight sex. Longing to “see fireworks and hear bells” she goes to a doctor (Harry Reems) for an examination. Reems asks her what about sex she enjoys the most and she tells him that she likes giving head. He examines her genitalia and discovers that she has no clitoris. However, as she opens her mouth, he finds that her clitoris is in her throat. Reems then teaches her the sexual technique she needs – deep throat. Lovelace is so thrilled that she gets a job as a sex therapist, finally meeting the well-endowed man of her dreams.

The Fantasy of Emancipation

Deep Throat is a fantasy: though it is a fantasy of women’s sexual emancipation more so than about Lovelace’s oral abilities – which are not detailed in this Umbrella release anyway.

Indeed, Damiano begins the film with Lovelace walking in on her friend, a liberated woman being orally serviced by a man who has no other function than to provide her with pleasure. It is on the advice of the sexually liberated woman that Lovelace seeks to improve her sex life and find what works for her - fellatio. Damiano is interested in musical accompaniments to sex scenes (once trying to secure permission from Simon & Garfunkel to use the classic song “Bridge over Troubled Water” in the suicide scene in The Devil in Miss Jones) and the sex scenes are set to stoner rock. With music and jokes like “what’s a nice joint like this doing in a girl like you”, Deep Throat was a sexual emancipation fantasy for the sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll generation.

In premise sophisticated enough to be meaningful and in execution skilful enough to be well-paced and even subtly satiric about American sexual attitudes, Deep Throat is a unique film experience.

It is full of enthusiasm for sexual discovery and sexual freedom, concerned with gender emancipation in America and with a genuine sense of humour thanks to Reems’ performance. The music adds to the comedy and Lovelace is engaging enough, even though the absence of her oral ability from the R-rated release perhaps robs the movie of at least part of its essence – the celebration of a woman’s orality. And celebration it is, as Damiano seeks to stylize the experience of the title sexual act in dreamily edited sequences and scoring which carry the viewer into an abandon to pleasure. And yet Damiano finds time to assess expectations of marriage and monogamy as options facing sexually emancipated women, themes he would return to in The Devil in Miss Joned.

If you truly want to see the film as intended, then you would need the X-version sold in sex shops.

However, if you would prefer to avoid the explicit sex and see an intriguing cultural document, this Umbrella DVD release is solid. Ultimately though, removing the sex from a sex film denies it a part of its art: the sex scenes here have been edited into an un-erotic mess of barely visible details turning what was intended as sexual turn-on into sheer boredom. The cost of being accepted as cultural artefact is loss of erotic appeal and every penetrative view has been removed for mass consumption. The bonus documentary does, however, contain footage of oral sex from the movie. Apparently here in r4 land, it is okay to show Lovelace performing deep throat for a few seconds in a documentary special feature, but not okay to show her performing it in the context of the movie itself. Hence, the only possible pornhound interest is in the too brief documentary hosted by porn veteran Eric Edwards. But for people who don’t generally like porn but are curious as to this film’s fame (or infamy), this is a safe shopping-mall sale general release of a porn masterpiece.

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