''Salon Kitty'' is a 1976 erotic-

war War is an armed conflict between the armed forces of states, or between governmental forces and armed groups that are organized under a certain command structure and have the capacity to sustain military operations, or between such organi ...

drama Drama is the specific Mode (literature), mode of fiction Mimesis, represented in performance: a Play (theatre), play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on Radio drama, radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a g ...

film directed by

Tinto Brass Giovanni "Tinto" Brass (born 26 March 1933) is an Italian film director and screenwriter. In the 1960s and 1970s, he directed many critically acclaimed avant-garde films of various genres. Today, he is mainly known for his later work in the Erot ...

. The film was co-produced by Italy, France and

West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...

. It is based on the novel of the same name by Peter Norden, covering the real life events of the Salon Kitty operation, under which the ''

Sicherheitsdienst ' (, "Security Service"), full title ' ("Security Service of the ''Reichsführer-SS''"), or SD, was the intelligence agency of the Schutzstaffel, SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. Established in 1931, the SD was the first Nazi intelligence ...

'' took over an expensive

brothel A brothel, strumpet house, bordello, bawdy house, ranch, house of ill repute, house of ill fame, or whorehouse is a place where people engage in Human sexual activity, sexual activity with prostitutes. For legal or cultural reasons, establis ...

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

, had the place wire tapped, and replaced all the prostitutes with trained spies, in order to gather information on various members of the

Nazi party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor ...

and foreign dignitaries. It is considered among the progenitors of

Nazisploitation Nazi exploitation (also Nazisploitation) is a subgenre of exploitation film and sexploitation film that involves Nazism, Nazis committing sex crimes, often as camp or prison overseers during World War II. Most follow the Women in prison film, wo ...

genre. In the U.S., the film was edited to lighten the political overtones for an easier marketing as a

sexploitation film A sexploitation film (or sex-exploitation film) is a class of independently produced, low-budget feature film that is generally associated with the 1960s and early 1970s, and that serves largely as a vehicle for the exhibition of non-explicit se ...

and released under the title ''Madam Kitty'' with an

X rating An X rating is a film rating that indicates that the film contains content that is considered to be suitable only for adults. Films with an X rating may have scenes of graphic violence or explicit sexual acts that may be disturbing or offensive ...

. Blue Underground Video, for the uncut version, has surrendered the X rating for an unrated DVD and Blu-ray release.

Plot

Wallenberg (

Helmut Berger Helmut Berger (; ''né'' Steinberger; 29 May 1944 – 18 May 2023) was an Austrian actor, known for his portrayal of narcissistic and sexually ambiguous characters. He was one of the stars of European cinema in the late 1960s and 1970s, and is r ...

), an ambitious Nazi SS 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 World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

in order to collect intelligence on various important members of the Nazi party and foreign dignitaries who frequent the establishment. The selected SS auxiliaries are then group tested with SS men to assess their suitability. The brothel is then purged of its regular girls and Kitty (

Ingrid Thulin Ingrid Lilian Thulin (; 27 January 1926 – 7 January 2004) was a Swedish actress and director who collaborated with filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. She was often cast as harrowing and desperate characters, and earned acclaim from both Swedish and in ...

), the owner and Madam of the brothel, is forced to comply and allows her original girls to be deported. Kitty initially despairs of the girls' abilities and has to train them up. The building gets wiretapped with listening devices and other surveillance equipment, after which the new girls proceed to spy on their illustrious clients. The operation seems to yield results but takes a toll on the girls. One falls pregnant and refuses to abort the baby: Wallenberg has her removed from duty and handed over for medical experimentation. Another girl suffers an epileptic fit and is taken away by Wallenberg's men, while a third hangs herself. One of the informants, Margherita (

Teresa Ann Savoy Teresa Ann Savoy, FRSA (18 July 1955 – 9 January 2017) was a British actress who appeared in a number of Italian films. Biography Savoy was 18 years old when she appeared in the October 1973 edition of Italian adult magazine ''Playmen'', us ...

), who is Wallenerg's favourite, falls in love with a client, Luftwaffe pilot Hans Reiter (

Bekim Fehmiu Bekim Fehmiu (; ; 1 June 1936 – 15 June 2010) was a Yugoslavian theater and film actor. He was the first Eastern European actor to star in Hollywood during the Cold War, and one of the internationally best-known ethnic Albanian actors. ...

). Over the first few months of the war, he becomes disillusioned with what he has seen at the front and confesses to Margherita that he plans to defect. She submits a report claiming he is a devout National Socialist, but his confession is picked up on a recording. Later, another one of Margherita's clients tells her that he has been arrested and executed and that he personally spat on the corpse. Margherita spontaneously shoots him while he is in the shower and Kitty makes it look like a suicide. After the killing, Margherita takes an unauthorised break from the brothel to visit her parents, who don't know what her work entails but become suspicious when Kitty visits. Kitty asks Margherita to return to work, saying she can't cover for her much longer and her absence will become suspicious. Margherita angrily condemns Kitty for her involvement in the operation, but realises that she knew nothing about it: Kitty thought the Nazis had merely commandeered her brothel for their own use and was unaware of the surveillance and reports. Around the time of the fall of Paris in June 1940, Kitty and Margherita discoer the bugging devices and determine that the bathrooms are not wired. With the help of Dino ( Stefano Satta Flores), an Italian friend of Kitty, they acquire their own recording device. Margherita entraps Wallenberg into a recording where he tells her that his wife's father was Jewish, that he doesn't believe in National Socialism, and that he has the dirt on all the top Nazi hierarchy and intends to bring them all down. Margherita takes the recording to Wallenberg's colleagues in the SS, and he is immediately apprehended and shot. Kitty and Margherita celebrate, as the first bombs start to fall on Berlin.

Cast

The film also includes a large number of uncredited actors.

Production

''Salon Kitty'' was filmed mostly at Dear Studios in Rome, with some additional location filming in Germany. Production designer

Ken Adam Sir Kenneth Adam (born Klaus Hugo George Fritz Adam; 5 February 1921 – 10 March 2016) was a German-British movie production designer, best known for his set designs for the James Bond films of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as for '' Dr. Str ...

had recently suffered a nervous breakdown while working on ''

Barry Lyndon ''Barry Lyndon'' is a 1975 epic historical drama film written, directed, and produced by Stanley Kubrick, based on the 1844 novel '' The Luck of Barry Lyndon'' by William Makepeace Thackeray. Narrated by Michael Hordern, and starring Ryan O'N ...

'', and he described his participation in this film as creatively regenerative. He has stated that the production was enjoyable, 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.Frayling, p 205. 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.

Release and reception

''Salon Kitty'' was released in Italy on March 2, 1976. In a review at the time of the UK release, the ''

Monthly Film Bulletin The ''Monthly Film Bulletin'' was a periodical of the British Film Institute published monthly from February 1934 until April 1991, when it merged with '' Sight & Sound''. It reviewed all films on release in the United Kingdom, including those wi ...

'' 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 ''The Night Porter'' () is a 1974 Italian erotic psychological war drama film co-written and directed by Liliana Cavani. It stars Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling, with Philippe Leroy, Gabriele Ferzetti and Isa Miranda in supporting roles. ...

'', and now ''Salon Kitty'') and abandon the subject for a long while to come."

References

External links