transgression film by tinto brass

Snack Bar Budapest (1988

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Tinto Brass (of 'that' Caligula fame) has a reputation for investing his erotica with an engagingly comic heart and satirical edge, while passing the pieces off with more cinematic flare than most titillation titles. Or so I'm told.
If that's your bag though, there's little evidence of it in Snack Bar Budapest.
It was made in 1988 and just reeks of it. Most of the stylising, from people's dodgy costumes, to the music and the neon-lit, graffiti-sprayed sets look as though they would be more at home in one of those pretentious 80s pop videos that tried hard to tell a 'story'.
The tale here involves a disbarred lawyer, Avvocato, recently out of prison, played by Giancarlo Giannini, the ill-fated Italian cop in Hannibal. He looks like he's aged well, to be honest and plays a pretty world-weary and grizzled geezer here too.
While supporting his girlfriend Milena (Raffaella Baracchi) to an overnight abortion clinic, Avvocato checks into the Snack Bar Budapest hotel. His partner Sapo (Philippe Leotard), who is also Milena's girlfriend, advises him to contact the local gang leader Molecola (Francois Negret) for some work. He agrees to help Molecao realise his plans to found a cash mountain super-casino in town, along with his horde of bovine prostitutes, by forcing the residents to move out. At the centre of the racket and development are the gentle family running the Snack Bar Budapest.
If that sounds intriguing, it's not. The plot is blatantly holey and wholly bland. Despite its wishy-washy efforts at European madcap action, this is bleak stuff. There's no warmth from or interest in the unanimously oddball characters and the gratuitous bum and boob shots thrown in for no more reason than bizarre titillation are, frankly, distasteful and disturbing. Where is the merit in the prolonged full frontal nudity shots of a female corpse being lugged around? I'd like to think Brass was having a deeply black poke at the demands of the audience as voyeur - but that just ain't the truth.
Sure, Brass can find a frame or two, but that is the only thing remotely positive that can be said about this bilge. Definitely a curio that some might want to spend the time to sitting through - but when there's clearly better films out there, would you really want to?
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nerosulbianco

Before directing "Salon Kitty" and moving into the erotic style of film making that he is more known for director Tinto Brass made a series of movies that can only be called "pop art" (these also include "L'urlo" and "Col cuore in gola"). This one, my personal favorite, follows a beautiful young woman (Anita Sanders) who, after being dropped off in the park by what seems to be her husband (I don't speak much Italian unfortunately!), spends the day wandering the city where she is sometimes pursued by a Black man who she seems to have an interest in despite her reluctance to confront him. On her trip Brass sneaks in statements on politics, racism, hippies, sexuality, conformity and other topical subjects through the use of disjointed editing, stock footage, psychedelia, and music from the UK rock group The Freedom (not the American group of the same name) who pop in and out performing the movie's groovy score. tinto and miss old goer of the year
This is certainly a movie for someone enjoying nonsensical, train-of-thought plot less counterculture type films and anyone not liking that kind of thing would probably wanna steer clear. Radley Metzger released the film in the US through his Audobon distributing group as "The Artful Penetration of Barbara". This version, in Italian language only with a small Italian TV logo in the corner, is the only copy I have ever been able to find!

ferma posta by tinto brass

monella2

Is it possible to make a film more appealing than this? I don’t think so. This is as warm, as friendly, as life-affirming, as infectiously enthusiastic, and as buoyant as anything can be. The story is simple: Lola won’t marry Masetto until they have sex, and Masetto won’t have sex until they’re married. After numerous adventures, she gets her way. Don’t worry about the story, just have fun watching everyone in the village having a blast. Guaranteed to bring a smile to your face.

In the Italian version, Tinto Brass dubs English-speaking Patrick Mower’s lines.EVERY CLOUD: A car accident led to this movie. One day Brass and his wife accidentally bumped into a bicyclist. Now, Brass had been looking for a bicyclist to play the lead, and so when the cyclist threw a fit, he asked her to audition. And there you go.

By the way, it was the coming of age of Brass’s 16-year-old niece Lulù that inspired this story—as well as Mrs Tinta Brass’s wistful memories of her youth.

WARNING: Most English-language video editions are cut — just a little bit, but enough to ruin everything. Avoid them! But if you insist on getting the English dub (in which Patrick Mower actually does speak English), get the Cult Epics edition, which is complete. The English-language Cult Epics edition is rather interesting, actually. The master tape of the English dialogue had gone missing, and after a long search it finally turned up — but for some reason it had been physically cut to match the censored export print! Some of the missing material had already been included in the Dutch DVD, and so this was pulled from that earlier release. But in order to shorten one particular scene to please the censors, the Dutch DVD distributors overlapped two lines of dialogue that actually occurred some seconds apart. Because one of those lines was now missing from the master dialogue tape, we hear the other of those two lines twice. And then a little bit of dialogue during the romp in the woods was also missing, and there was simply no way to re-create it. So the sound techie, Ray Soldiuk, at Point 360 Woodholly studio in Hollywood pulled some odds and ends from other parts of the movie to cover the gap. If you didn’t know something was missing, you might never guess! Ray also spent hours upon hours upon hours tweaking the sound, making it brighter than it had ever been before. He also resynchronized the dialogue to make it match better, moving syllables up and down by a few frames, stretching, squeezing, and performing all sorts of digital trickery to make it better than Gene Luotto’s original dubbing job. Congratulations Ray!