FILM
REVIEW – SALON KITTY
The true story of the Salon Kitty brothel deserves to be told properly. Sadly, this film neglects the extraordinary in favour of the merely sensual and erotic elements of the events.
FACTS – The Nazis closed down most of the brothels in Germany and in the occupied territories as they swept through Europe. One brothel, in Berlin, was exempt. The Salon Kitty. It was kept fully functional as many leading Nazis frequented it. However, the German High command had an agenda that went beyond merely being decadent. Men will tend to share their most intimate secrets with a prostitute, and at the Kitty, the prostitutes were under orders to spy on their clients, and report back anyone who dared to express dissenting views on Hitler or the National Socialist cause. Worse, the Nazis also secretly wired the brothel for sound, to get further information, and to ensure that the prostitutes, (most of who were oblivious of the real purpose of the brothel) revealed everything that customers divulged honestly.
Later in the war, allied intelligence managed to get their own microphones into the brothel, and they too monitored the careless witterings of the Nazis who used the facilities.
THE FILM - With realistic, sensible handling, this could be a film to compare to Shindler’s List. Regrettably, director, Tinto Brass (who went on to direct the notorious Caligula), seems mainly preoccupied with sensationalism, and turning the Gestapo into fetishistic sadists, rather than the mere brutal thugs they were. There are lots of scenes of naked girls goose-stepping, and one lady stripped to mere swastika stockings. It isn’t an offensive film – it is a wasted opportunity of a film. It is not without its moments though. The songs performed by the bordello madam (Kitty) in a Marlene Dietrich style, are quite well handled, and there is a gory orgy in an abattoir, with the blood of real freshly slaughtered animals spilling over the various lovers, capturing a sense of the decadence, madness and looming bloodshed of the period perfectly.
The final closing credit sequence, of the brothel windows imploding in an air raid, as Kitty and the girls laugh and drink champagne is also quite haunting.
© Copyright. Arthur
Chappell
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