This is how Austrian cinema was born. No matter how much we try to avoid stereotypes, some historical cases show us that truth may be at the root of them. Every country has at least something, but managed to become famous. Italy is pasta, India is tea, and Germany is pornography. However, in this case, we are talking about its neighbor Austria, whose cinema originated in the first decade of the XX century in the porn niche and for several years developed in this area. Saturn-Film Studio, founded by Johan Schwarzer, has released the first ever extensive collection of “bachelor movies,” as they were then called.
The kidnapping of female slaves lasts only five minutes, and a good half of the time is occupied by a meeting in the dense forest of two detachments of armed warriors, some of whom look like Turks and others like some Bedouin from the desert. There is a rather indiscriminate brawl with one or two murders, after which the action is transferred to the shore of the reservoir, where the slaves of one side bathe naked, despite the mud. And we reproach someone else for uncleanness in the twenty-first century. Understanding who the film is designed for and what to attract viewers, the operator did not miss the opportunity to show all the interesting details of this second half of the plot. Slaves are shown to be completely defenseless. These are toys in the hands of their cruel masters. It is noteworthy that the entire film from beginning to end was shot on nature. We see a real forest and a real body of water, while many feature films of those times were completely shot in artificial scenery, reflecting the literal meaning of the word “cinema”.
Watching The Abduction of Slave Women, it is impossible not to notice a different view of the aesthetics of the female body. The actress was clearly matched by a similarity to the sleeping Venus created by Giorgione in 1510. At the beginning of the twentieth century, when even in the most progressive countries there was still a segment of the population that felt a strong need for the most basic needs, women still valued the ability to survive and bear children, not the ability to please the sophisticated male gaze. Although hints of the coming era appeared even then. In the 1900s, the first censors of the film world opposed pornographic videos and destroyed such content if it came into their hands, so that surviving films like “The Abduction of Slave Women” are unique in themselves.
10 out of 10