cart
this book is fabulously researched and makes for stimulating reading
The title is more telling than the subtitle. The latter reads "Adult Cinema from the Victorian Age to the VCR." This suggests a broader scope than the book actually has. The main title is closer to the truth: "Black and White and Blue."
"Blue," of course, is a classic term for adult fare. "Black and white" points to the cinematic hues of the bulk of the movies under discussion here. Front and center is the stag film, with loops as well as moving picture predecessors of, indeed, the late Victorian era hovering in orbit.
The modern porn film era, beginning in earnest with Deep Throat, is little more than a postscript in Dave Thompson's book.
All that aside, however, this book is fabulously researched and makes for stimulating reading. It's not a trashathon - prurient page-turning masquerading as documentary material. It is a serious but not stuffy look at erotic filmmaking's history in America and abroad.
The book concludes, as hinted above, with the explosion into the mainstream of adult cinematic fare, leaving off before the world of the VCR hits (though this gets epilogue mention). The book excels by telling us how the film world got to that point.
While I'm sure the modern pornographic film isn't as well-documented as, say, Vietnam, I feel sure there is sufficient information on tap for the curious armchair history-of-cinema-skin buff. Black and White and Blue provides us a real service by diving into the true underground of erotic filmmaking. What is left merely touched-upon or entirely un-dealt-with is the "mainstream" of sex cinema. What is explored thoroughly and academically (but without academia's dryness) is the massive timeline of naughty films up to that point.
The noting of the Victorian era in the book's subtitle is, perhaps, startling, but moving picture technology was arising in the late 19th century and, as this book mentions, no sooner was the capability for such available than somebody got some pheromone-riddled ideas about just what kind of movements they'd like captured.
Of course, initially, it was sexy dancing - and not always with nudity - that was filmed. Out-and-out sex crept its way in, however, and has been around much longer than many might guess. But given societal and legal boundaries, such things were relegated to the underground until relatively recently.
Thompson's book goes a long way to helping unearth the hidden history of grown-up movies and its important because this is the vital ground-laying for the sexual movies we take for granted in this day and age.
Black and White and Blue is a valuable book for anybody interested in cinema on the fringe, most especially those whose fringe flick tastes center around the arousing.
Score: 4 1/2 stars
