The Twilight Girls
Picture: C
Sound: C Extras: C Film: C
A long time ago, New York had a special certifying board
that anyone who wanted to show a film in the city had to go through. This “community standard” was likely some
moral safety net in the face of early, previous challenges to censorship. This all changed when producer Radley
Metzger decided to bring The Twilight Girls to the U.S. in 1961. He took the French film with then-unknowns
Catherine Deneuve (at thirteen under her real name of Dorleau, not to be
confused with her sister) and future XXX star Georgina Spelvin (The Devil in
Miss Jones).
As infamous as that sounds, this film is nowhere near as
bad, but its insinuations of lesbianism created a showdown between Metzger and
New York. Much of the Deneuve footage
was cut, while new footage was inserted to increase the sexual suggestion. Though it was far from hardcore, New York’s
board banned it, with the ensuing court case turning out to be a landmark that
Metzger won. Two years later, that
board was shut down.
That is a victory against censorship, but otherwise, that
is the most important thing about this film.
This new First Run Features DVD offers the uncut version, with the
extras footage in its original French language. It can also be spotted by the yellowing of the analog tape it
comes from, not looking as good (comparatively) as the rest of the film. Not that the full screen, monochrome image
is so great, but it still is noticeably from grainy film stock with cleaner whites,
better definition, and some better detail.
The sound is also average Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono, with the
English dub sounding better than the French, a few generations down from that
old videotape. The few extras include
trailers for this and similar First Run DVD releases, a brief photo gallery of
Deneuve, and an informative-but-short featurette on the film’s battles in the
U.S. and New York.
It may be some kind of curio, but don’t get your hopes up
too much. The Twilight Girls is
laughably tame by today’s standards.
This is probably the only other reason to see it besides it historical
significance.
- Nicholas Sheffo
