Ecstasy (film)
| Ecstasy | |
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Original lobby card
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| Directed by | Gustav Machatý |
| Produced by |
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| Written by | Jacques A. Koerpel |
| Screenplay by |
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| Story by | Robert Horký |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Giuseppe Becce |
| Cinematography | |
| Edited by | Art Jones |
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Production
company |
Elektafilm
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| Distributed by | Albert Deane |
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Release date
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Running time
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82 minutes |
| Country | Czechoslovakia |
| Language |
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| Box office | $1.5 million (US rentals) |
Ecstasy (Czech: Extase, French: Extase, German: Ekstase) is a 1933 Czech-Austrian romantic drama film directed by Gustav Machatý and starring Hedy Lamarr (then Hedy Kiesler), Aribert Mog, and Zvonimir Rogoz.
Written by František Horký, Gustav Machatý, Jacques A. Koerpel, and Robert Horký, the film is about a young woman who marries a wealthy but much older man. After abandoning her brief passionless marriage, she meets a young virile engineer who becomes her lover. Ecstasy was filmed in three language versions—German, Czech, and French.
Ecstasy was highly controversial in its time because of scenes in which Lamarr swims in the nude and runs through the countryside naked. It is also perhaps the first non-pornographic movie to portray sexual intercourse and female orgasm, although never showing more than the actors' faces. The film was celebrated as the first motion picture to include a nude scene, rather than the first to show sexual intercourse, for which it has a better claim.
Emil (Zvonimir Rogoz), a precise, orderly older man, carries his happy new bride Eva (Hedy Lamarr) over the threshold of their home. (He has great difficulty opening the lock on the front door, trying key after key.) She is greatly disappointed on her wedding night; he does not even come to bed. After living in the unconsummated marriage for a while, she cannot bear it any longer and runs back to her father (Leopold Kramer), a horse breeder. A divorce is issued.
One day, she goes horse riding. She goes skinny dipping, leaving her clothes on the horse, only to have it wander off, attracted by another locked in a corral. She chases after it all over the countryside. The horse is finally caught by Adam (Aribert Mog), the virile young foreman or engineer of a road construction gang. Seeing this, she hides in the bushes, where he finds her. At first, she is ashamed of her nudity, but then she glares at him in defiance. He gives her back her clothes. When she tries to leave, she hurts her foot. At first, she resists his efforts to help, then accedes.
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