A Life in Dirty Movies

A Life in Dirty Movies

“A Life In Dirty Movies” attracts you with its title and then surprises you by adding a delightful look at the couple behind those dirty movies. Sweeter and more innocent than it has any right to be which isn’t to say that it’s clean Wictor Ericsson’s documentary is on sexploitation, with clips representing Joseph Sarno’s career as well as that of his wife and collaborator, Peggy Steffans. Before theatergoers smelled hardcore porn coming, the Sarnos were known for their erotic but still somewhat coyly female centric works; they showed enough to make you think you saw a lot more than you did.

Ericsson gives us the gist of Sarno’s films, but the best parts of “A Life in Dirty Movies” have to do with Joe and Peggy themselves. She fusses over him, he reciprocates her affections. Ericsson asks questions, but mostly just lets his camera linger on them as they interact. These moments reveal an unexpectedly beautiful love story (not least because Peggy tells us how her parents didn’t approve still don’t approve of her marrying what they considered a smut peddler). I was so invested in this romance that I gasped when Peggy’s mother appeared late in the film to talk to Ericsson.

But Joe and Peggy aren’t why we’re here, and Ericsson knows it. Sarno directed films whose titles gave no indication whatsoever of their artistic intentions. People going to see “Sin in the Suburbs” in 1964 weren’t expecting pristine black-and-white cinematography shot through with arty camerawork inspired by some Swedish master of angst; they came for the sin or rather not even because of it: There was always much more implied than shown. “I was allowed just a quick flash of naked breasts in that,” says Sarno as the clip rolls. It’s a pretty long quick flash.

Several black-and-white clips here show a filmmaker who put as much thought into his lighting, framing and composition as he did in choreographing the “good parts.” The craftsmanship was good enough to inspire a number of recent retrospectives of Sarno’s work; “A Life In Dirty Movies” attends one such event in London. Joe glows with pride; Peggy tells us how glad she is that he lived long enough to see these appreciations.

“For Joe, it wasn’t just about the sex,” Peggy says. “It was about the people and their situations.” For instance, “Sin in the Suburbs” has one hell of a climax: A mother and daughter both discover, mid orgy, that they’re members of the same sex club. The daughter freaks out accordingly; talk about a bucket of cold water being thrown on an audience’s overheating loins! The film worsens this effect by having someone describe how as they worked through all the townsfolk those two women would eventually come upon what must have been the worst possible combination of bodies. All this information is conveyed by scenes that are tame even by today’s standards.

Because the Europeans were already sending dirtier images to the US, nudity and sex could be smuggled into “art films” during the sexploitation era. Sweden was already famous for this eventually “I Am Curious: Yellow” would be confiscated for being dirty so Sarno went to Sweden with Peggy to make movies. After their 1968 film “Inga” is a hit, they split their time between New York City and Sweden.

The documentary opens on Joe planning a comeback to the softcore market with a new script. As he works on it and tries to get it made, people appear onscreen to praise his old movies. Film historians, former stars, his old editor and producer: these are just some of the talking heads that appear throughout the movie. John Waters describes Sarno’s effect on early moviegoing experiences as a ray of unpredictable sunshine. Annie Sprinkle speaks about working with him while looking exactly like she did in the ’80s.

One can see how he got dubbed “The Bergman of 42nd Street.” Patrons of those theaters were not necessarily impressed anymore. “The raincoat crowd would have been somewhat disappointed,” notes one talking head about Sarno’s early films. If you don’t know who “the raincoat crowd” is, this movie tells you more than you’ll ever want to know about them; eventually they drive him into harder fare, and then out of adult filmmaking altogether.

Once we learn all this (and I am so glad that it does come out), his latest movie takes on added importance; he’s a comeback kid for whom we root even more extremely now. There are setbacks and successes as usual, but when we finally learn what happens with Joe’s last script well it’s really bittersweet, let me tell you that much.

If there were a tagline for “A Life in Dirty Movies,” it would be “Come for the sex, stay for the love story.” It’s a deeper, more rewarding film than its title suggests.

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