I Especially Loved Gymnastics
How did a quiet country girl become a sex film goddess? ‘Simple’, explains Christina Lindberg, sensation of 1970s erotic cinema and star of Anita.‘Just go sunbathing...’
What were you like as a girl?
I was a little bit shy. I was good in school. I especially loved gymnastics and history. I read everything about ancient Egypt. My mother was divorced and was working hard all the time so I was rather alone, taking care of my two brothers and my sister at home.
Did you get a lot of attention from boys?
I was thin and small up until the age of 15 but after that, yes, I did. A lot. I liked it when people looked at me so I used to wear crazy clothes.
How did you get into making sex films like Exposed and Wide Open?
I was 18 and on the beach in Gothenburg, it was summer, and some people asked to take my photograph. After a while there were a lot of them and they paid me. I didn’t have much money growing up, so I thought it was OK. After I had been in the daily newspaper, our equivalent of The Sun, I did a cover and a fold-out for a men’s magazine. The producer of a very famous Swedish director called Jan Handoff saw it and hired me for their new comedy Dog Days (1970). Two days after taking my degree I went to Stockholm to start filming. My first home was a hotel room.
What did your family and friends think about your racy career?
My mother has never said anything about it. And I left my friends behind in Gothenburg and started a new life. When I was little I always had to look after myself so it was no different for me.
But it wasn’t something you were ashamed of?
No. Why should it be? The strange thing about the movies made between 1968 and 1974 was that you worked with the big respected actors of Sweden. The technical crew were the same crew that worked with Ingmar Bergman. Bo Vibenius, with whom I did Thriller: A Cruel Picture, was his assistant director on Persona. It was a mixed world at that time between sex movies and very serious movies. I had no clothes on in my movies but I thought, “It must be alright if I’m working with these stars”.
Have you always been comfortable with nudity?
Yes. I don’t see anything weird in it. But I don’t like porno. I went down to Germany to make the film Flossie but left after a week. The director Gerard Damiano told me that they were shooting extra porno scenes during the night to cut into the film. He thought I could have a better career and told me: “You are good. I think you should go home. This isn’t for you.” He said he was going to leave as well. So we both did.
Hardcore footage also appeared, without your knowledge, in Thriller: A Cruel Picture... How did that make you feel?
Not very good but I know that everyone knew that it wasn’t me in those scenes.
Have you ever felt exploited?
No. People respected me. I didn’t let people push me around. And I’ve never regretted what I’ve done either. But that could be because I have such a good life today.
If you had a daughter, would you be happy for her to do sex films?
To be honest, when I think about it I would probably prefer that she studied. That’s a better thing to do. But it was different for me. I grew up in such difficult circumstances that it was my way out to a better life. I got to travel and make some money. It was a marvellous time.
What advice would you give to the 15-year-old Christina Lindberg?
To stay true to your ideals. I’m almost the same as I was back then. I don’t think I’ve really changed.
What’s your life like now?
I own a magazine. My husband died three and a half years ago. That’s when I took over his publication Flygrevyn, which is Scandinavia’s largest aviation magazine. So I’m now editor-in-chief. I live in the countryside, 25 minutes from Stockholm. I have a big house with horses and cats. My office is a three-minute walk away on the land. During the winter I breed reindeer. I even have elks here. In my heart I’ve always been a country girl.
Naughty But Nice
Watching sex films doesn’t have to be a soul-destroying, seedy and solo experience. Shed the raincoat, says Ben Cobb, dim the lights and share the artistic visions of classic erotic cinema with someone special
Pornography has never been pretty. Most pornos are never going to win awards for their cinematography or art direction. Close-ups of oversized members endlessly pounding vaginas have all the aesthetic appeal of open-heart surgery. But back in the 1960s and 1970s, there was an alternative for the discerning cineaste: a wave of beautiful sex films made by first-rate directors. Ben Cobb dims the lights, readies his luxury tissues and digs out ten classics from the golden age of erotic cinema...
Mondo Topless (1966) Lifelong fan John Waters calls him “the Eisenstein of sex films”. Esteemed critic Roger Ebert puts him alongside “radical structuralists like Jean-Luc Godard”. They can only be talking about Russ Meyer, the one-man industry behind such late-night favourites as Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Mudhoney and Vixen.
of duty as an army cameraman, Meyer single-handedly started the ‘nudie cutie’ craze with The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959). But by the mid 1960s audiences had become more demanding. They wanted flesh and lots of it. Meyer was happy to oblige, at the same time indulging his own insatiable appetite for enormous breasts.
I Am a Nymphomaniac (1970) Euro-doll Sandra Julien stars as Carole, a demure youngster who tumbles down a lift shaft and transforms into an insatiable siren. She takes to walking the streets in search of random encounters and experimenting with her burgeoning desires in polite society. Carole’s parents are less impressed by her new hobby and throw her out of the family home.
Curvy go-go girls gyrate wildly to garage-rock guitars and lounge saxaphones. As the parade of breasts bounce, twirl and jiggle by, their owners chat about taste in men, jealous wives and finding a comfortable bra
Anita (1973) No list of erotic cinema would be complete without the Swedes. Arguably their most famous export, Vilgot Sjöman’s pseudo-documentary I Am Curious Yellow (1967) was seized by US customs and subjected to a high-profile legal battle that made it America’s highest grossing foreign film for 25 years.
Last Tango in Paris (1973) With Gerard Damiano’s 1972 double entry Deep Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones and the Mitchell Brothers’ Behind The Green Door, the following year, pornography had become big news and big business. Sex’s inevitable breakthrough into mainstream cinema came with Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris.
Street of Joy (1974) In the mid-60s the Japanese government set up the Eirin censorship board to monitor the torrent of pinku eiga (“pink films”). The censor’s main objective was to regulate the appearance of pubic hair and genitalia. Within these guidelines the Nikkatsu Studios developed a new genre for the new decade: romance pornography, or roman porno for short. These films not only turned Nikkatsu’s profits around, they arguably saved the entire Japanese film industry, which was at an all-time low. The imposed onscreen restrictions also forced directors to come up with ever more creative ways to avoid the offending areas: obscure angles; strategically contorted limbs; and plenty of lingering breast shots. One trailblazing director rose to ‘king of roman porno’ status: Tatsumi Kumashiro.
The imposed onscreen restrictions forced directors to come up with ever more creative ways to avoid the offending areas: obscure angles; strategically contorted limbs; and plenty of lingering breast shots...
La Bête (1975) Until 1973, Polish filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk was respectable. He made award-winning animations, political satire and historical drama. Then came Immoral Tales, a collection of four raunchy stories, one of which starred Paloma Picasso as 16th century Hungarian serial killer Countess Bathory, whose beauty regime involved bathing in the blood of her female victims. Any hope harboured by baffled critics that this was a one-off foray into filth was dashed forever by Borowczyk’s next choice.
The Story of O (1975) When first published in 1954, L’Histoire d’O caused absolute uproar among the French establishment. ‘Pauline Reage’ was the nom de plume on the dust-jacket, but it was widely believed impossible for a woman to have written such a graphic account. It was not until 1992 that the then 86-year-old literary giant Dominique Aury confessed her authorship, renewing the debate over whether O is about degradation or empowerment.
Salon Kitty (1976) Italian director Tinto Brass will be forever remembered for Caligula, the scandalous Roman orgy fest starring Helen Mirren, Malcolm McDowell and Sir John Gielgud. It’s an unfair legacy. Along with the British cast and screenwriter Gore Vidal, Brass disowned the multi-million-dollar production after the unscrupulous producer, Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione, seized the print after principal photography and edited in XXX hardcore footage. Of far more interest to erotica fans is the film that bagged Brass the Caligula gig.
The canny Italians rolled out a string of cash-ins. One dubious delight features SS Major Wallenberg, who recruits a troop of Ayran women to work with Madam Kitty at a brothel for the Fuhrer’s party elite. He samples the girls first and, thoughtfully, tests their mettle with dwarves and cripples...
Maîtresse (1976) A young Gerard Depardieu stars as petty criminal Olivier who, breaking into a Paris apartment, uncovers a secret bondage cavern and falls under the spell of its leather-clad owner Ariane (Bulle Ogier). Amongst the chains, whips and harnesses, a surprisingly conventional love story blossoms between the two as Olivier progresses from voyeur to participant.
Spermula (1976) Planet Spermula is dying and with it the bodiless Spermulite aliens. Taking the form of powerful women, the Spermulites travel to Earth. Their mission is to dominate the male population by draining them of their sperm. The formerly prudish Spermulites start to enjoy the job at hand. Story of O’s Udo Kier pops up as Werner, the only extra-terrestrial to be transformed into a man (albeit one with a 1cm penis).