The Opening of Misty Beethoven

Director: Radley Metzger
Year Released: 1976
Rating: 2.5

Widely regarded as one of the best pornographic films ever made, it's certainly one of the most fully-realized, since it confiscates the plot of Pygmalion and replaces educating a low-class bumpkin to be a high-class socialite with educating a low-class whore to be a high-class whore (can you imagine this with Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn?) - oh, and the dialogue isn't bad, either. One of the factors that prevents hardcore porn from ever achieving the status of standard cinema, however, is the question of focus: how can the filmmakers remain faithful to the plot and character development when they have to constantly be aware that something of a sexual nature must resurface every so many minutes and that the exposed genitalia of the performers will always up-stage them? People are getting head all over the place (outside, inside, while drinking Cognac, while airborne - "Who wants to fuck a stewardess?") and fidelity is an undesirable: Casual Sex Before the Age of AIDS must have been nice.