In 1969 the Italian director Massimo Dallamano released the erotic drama Venus in Furs (Italian title Venere in pelliccia). In German it is Venus im Pelz. The film comes from Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s novel of male masochism and female dominance, and it sits in a peculiar place in BDSM film history. It is known for the fur and the submission, and just as much for a long censorship fight and repeated recuts: a literary SM adaptation that turned into a legal and commercial argument over what could be shown.
Getting it out in Italy was a mess. At first the sex scenes were judged too rough, and the film failed the censorship exam. Different cut versions were submitted. None of them passed. In 1973 it was released as Venere nuda and confiscated after a few days for contempt of decency. In 1975 it finally reached Italian cinemas as Le malizie di Venere. That version was heavily cut, re-edited, and padded with new scenes shot by Paolo Heusch, bending the story toward giallo. The new title leaned on the box-office heat Laura Antonelli had from Malizia (1973). To survive in Italy, this literary masochism had to change clothes. The title changed, and so did the genre. The original erotic argument was watered down for local release.
The plot follows the novel: a young couple and their perverse passions. Severin watches the beautiful Wanda writhe naked among furs, and the looking stirs something deeper. The root is a childhood memory in which Severin was punished with pain for peeping. That memory is the hinge between voyeurism, desire, and submission. Looking, here, is already a way of being caught and punished. The fur and the body are not decoration. They are what turns that memory back into an erotic script. The childhood episode is a character’s recollection, used to connect peeping and submission. It is not a sexual scene involving a child.
Laura Antonelli plays Wanda de Dunaieff. Régis Vallée plays Severin. Loren Ewing plays Bruno. Renate Kasché plays Gracia. Werner Pochath plays Manfred. Mady Rahl plays Helga. Giacomo Furia plays the lawyer. Antonelli’s Wanda is the commercial and erotic center. In the 1975 retitling she is the face the film tries to sell, and Italian audiences were allowed to see that star only after years of board fights and plot surgery.
