Story of movie Salon Kitty Film : Salon Kitty is a 1976 erotic-war-drama film directed by Tinto Brass. The film was coproduced by Italy, France and West Germany. It is based on the novel of the same name by Peter Norden, covering the real life events of the Salon Kitty Incident, where the Sicherheitsdienst took over an expensive brothel in Berlin, had the place wire tapped and all the prostitutes replaced with trained spies in order to gather data on various members of the Nazi party and foreign dignitaries.
| Salon Kitty | |
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Poster | |
| Directed by | Tinto Brass |
| Screenplay by |
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| Based on | Salon Kitty by Peter Norden |
| Starring |
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| Music by | Fiorenzo Carpi |
| Cinematography | Silvano Ippoliti |
| Edited by | Tinto Brass |
Production companies |
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| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
Release date |
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Running time | 130 minutes |
| Country |
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| Language | Italian, English, German |
It is considered among the progenitors of Nazisploitation genre.
In the U.S., the film was edited to lighten the political overtones for an easier marketing as a sexploitation film and released under the title Madam Kitty with an X rating. Blue Underground Video, for the uncut version, has surrendered the X rating for an unrated DVD and Blu-ray release.
Screenplay
Wallenberg (Helmut Berger), an ambitious Nazi commandant, devises a plan to select a special group of female informants in order to plant them as prostitutes in a high class brothel on the eve of World War II in order to collect intel on various important members of the Nazi party and foreign dignitaries who frequent the establishment. The brothel is then purged of its regular girls and Kitty (Ingrid Thulin), the owner and Madam of the brothel, is forced to comply and allows her original girls to be deported as the building gets wiretapped with listening devices and other surveillance equipment, after which the new girls proceed to spy on their illustrious clients.
However, when one of the informants named Margherita (Teresa Ann Savoy) discovers that the surveillance project resulted in the death of her lover, she enlists Kitty to help her take down Wallenberg.
- Helmut Berger as Helmut Wallenberg
- Ingrid Thulin as Kitty Kellermann
- Teresa Ann Savoy as Margherita
- John Steiner as Biondo
- Bekim Fehmiu as Captain Hans Reiter
- Stefano Satta Flores as Dino
- Sara Sperati as Helga, the dominatrix
- Maria Michi as Ilde
- Rosemarie Lindt as Susan
- John Ireland as Cliff
- Paola Senatore as Marika
- Tina Aumont as Herta Wallenberg
- Dan van Husen as Sergeant Rauss
- Luciano Rossi as Dr. Schwab
- Giancarlo Badessi as German Officer with Projector
- Malisa Longo as New Kitty Girl
- Patrizia Webley
- Aldo Valletti as Dart Throwing Client (uncredited)
- Salvatore Baccaro as Neanderthal Prison Inmate (uncredited)
Salon Kitty was filmed mostly at Dear Studios in Rome, with some additional location filming in Germany. Production designer Ken Adam had recently suffered a nervous breakdown while working on Barry Lyndon, and he described his participation in this film as a creatively regenerative one. He has stated that the production was an enjoyable one, and that he feels Salon Kitty is "underrated." Adam based his design of Wallenberg's apartment on his own memories of his family's apartment in World War II-era Berlin. Wallenberg's enormous office, though a set, allegedly features a real marble floor, as it was cheaper to use real marble than create a mock-up version.
Costumes and uniforms for the film were designed by Ugo Pericoli and Jost Jacob, and were constructed by Tirelli Costumi of Rome. Adam credited Jacob with the design of the 'kinky' uniforms that Wallenberg wears throughout the film.
Salon Kitty was released in Italy on March 2, 1976.
In a contemporary review, the Monthly Film Bulletin found the film to contain "a script that does nothing more than pile up the perversions as fast as possible (the characterisation hardly rises above the stock Nazi heavy while the motivation is consistently, and laughably, crude)" and hoped that "Italian directors will soon examine their recent track record of the atrocities of Nazi Germany (The Damned, The Night Porter, and now Salon Kitty) and abandon the subject for a long while to come."
- List of Italian films of 1976
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