Starring: Charlotte Rampling, Oliver Tobias, Fabio Testi
Directed by: Giuseppe Patroni Griffi

The plot: University student Giovanni (Tobias) meets with a friar to discuss his passionate love for his sister, Annabella (Rampling), which has resulted in a sexually reciprocal incestuous affair. Annabella is besieged by suitors, but her tutor, Putana, urges her into her brother’s bed. Annabella becomes pregnant and resigns herself to marrying Soranzo (Testi), who she despises. Court intrigue, poisonous plots, double-crosses and soap operatic twists that would put “General Hospital” to shame ensue, resulting in a truly horrific and tasteless climax.

Why it’s good: John Ford’s 1631 play has been one of the most controversial works in the history of English literature. Complex and ambiguous, Ford refused to morally judge his incestuous hero and heroine. Only in the 1970s could a director pitch this scenario to investors and receive a budget. Ford’s pedigree is without question: he wrote, gorged, whored and drank with Good Will Shakespeare and Doomed Chris Marlowe. But some properties simply shouldn’t be lensed. Towering novels like Sterne’s “Tristram Shandy,” and Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow,” are essentially unfilmable. Both Stanley Kubrick and Adrian Lyne failed to transfer the ecstatic passion and hilarity of Nabokov’s “Lolita” to the screen. Brecht and Weill’s “Threepenny Opera” and all of Stephen Sondheim’s musicals after 1964 should only be seen on the stage. But what an intriguing idea to bring England’s “Whore” to the big screen!

Why you should own it: This film looks luscious. Even third-rate directors in the 1970s seemed to know how to photograph exteriors—particularly in lush countrysides—with exquisite appreciation (why this talent seems to have disappeared, I don’t know.) The art direction and costumes are excellent, and the sex scenes steamily staged. Unfortunately, this erotic bonus detracts from the multi-layered complexity and comedy of Ford’s original play. Ford’s script is about loyalty—to society, family and self—and Griffi’s movie is more about photogenic female parts. Charlotte Rampling, like Andie MacDowell, is one of those cinema beauties that many people have trouble not hating. Rampling does a fine job, and a year later she mightily proved her worth in “The Night Porter” with Dirk Bogarde. But the Music Video International DVD has a botched ratio transfer, 15 minutes of footage have been cut, and nothing was effectively remastered from the original print. And the film has a post-synchronized soundtrack, standard practice for Italian films until the 1980s.