I'm sure that Off Broadway, this Jean Genet play was fascinating, especially with Nancy Marchand and later Grayson Hall in the role of Irma, the madam, here played by Shelley Winters. As a film, it's a strange little black and white movie that looks like it was made for TV but rejected because of its subject matter. It's far from a perfect film but once you get into with, it's difficult not to be memorized mainly because of the fascinating cast.
"The world is full of loose women", Winters tells her very close business associate Lee Grant in a paraphrased quote. "What it needs is a good bookkeeper." In 1963, Winters says this line matter of factly where had she said it a decade later, it would now be considered camp.
There's plenty camp here, but that's mainly because of its obvious theatricality, and the presents of actors like Leonard Nimoy and Peter Falk in smaller parts. There's also Ruby Dee as one of the girls, barking orders at a man dressed as a judge to lick her high heel shoe. Her lengthy single scene is marvelous because it is played with the large photo of a jury in the background, and Dee (along with Peter Brocco) is excellent.
You definitely have to be in the mood for something like this or it will come off as a pretentious piece of convoluted new wave theater that got a quickly shot movie version on an obvious soundstage. Seeing the future Columbo and Spock together is also worth it.
But the plot is really bizarre (the circumstances surrounding a country's revolution unfold in a bordello), even if the performances are fascinating. The undertones of Winters and Grant's relationship is never confirmed but fairly obvious, and they are great. Be prepared for the jaw dropping finale, not quite "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" but a scene that should be part of every Shelley Winters career retrospective.
"The world is full of loose women", Winters tells her very close business associate Lee Grant in a paraphrased quote. "What it needs is a good bookkeeper." In 1963, Winters says this line matter of factly where had she said it a decade later, it would now be considered camp.
There's plenty camp here, but that's mainly because of its obvious theatricality, and the presents of actors like Leonard Nimoy and Peter Falk in smaller parts. There's also Ruby Dee as one of the girls, barking orders at a man dressed as a judge to lick her high heel shoe. Her lengthy single scene is marvelous because it is played with the large photo of a jury in the background, and Dee (along with Peter Brocco) is excellent.
You definitely have to be in the mood for something like this or it will come off as a pretentious piece of convoluted new wave theater that got a quickly shot movie version on an obvious soundstage. Seeing the future Columbo and Spock together is also worth it.
But the plot is really bizarre (the circumstances surrounding a country's revolution unfold in a bordello), even if the performances are fascinating. The undertones of Winters and Grant's relationship is never confirmed but fairly obvious, and they are great. Be prepared for the jaw dropping finale, not quite "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" but a scene that should be part of every Shelley Winters career retrospective.