A Private Collection (Une collection particulière). Walerian Borowczyk, 1973.
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Edition screened: Included on the Arrow Blu-ray Immoral Tales, released 2014. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 12 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
A Private Collection is a whimsical survey of a collection of vintage erotic toys, photographs, and novelty items. The 12+ minute version originally was screened as an introduction to Immoral Tales, and this is the generally known version that tours with Immoral Tales at film festivals. The Arrow Blu-ray also gives us a 14+ minute version known as the Oberhausen Cut that includes a 2-minute viewing of an early film in the erotica collection … sort of.
The two minutes that sent audiences and censors over the edge in 1974 is a color cartoon of a juggling/magic show, intercut with black-and-white footage of an elegant woman having sex with a dog in her posh apartment. This doesn’t wash with censors any differently in 2014 than it did in the 1970s. So in order to get some semblance of the Oberhausen Cut out to the public, Arrow has provided a black screen over the scenes of bestiality. We see the first scene of the elegant woman and a whippet-like dog in her apartment, then the first bit of the juggling cartoon, then {black screen}, then more cartoon, {black screen}, cartoon, for a few more cycles, concluding with the final scene of live film in which we see the woman washing her crotch with a sponge.
So do we get the Oberhausen Cut in our $400 Borowczyk box set? Yes. Do we get to see the Oberhausen Cut? No. That’s OK. Use your imagination or not. Good job, Arrow, balancing two worlds, and giving us this remarkable package.