Various - Vintage Erotica Anno 1940 (2003)

Continuing its exploration of the weirdest moments of cinema, Cult Epics brings us Vintage Erotica anno 1940 (aka Les Archives d'Eden), a collection of French porn vignettes covering the early years of celluloid sex from 1900 to 1940.

Through these short films, 15 black & white silent sequences accompanied by a soundtrack, we discover the sexual fantasies of our elders and though, technically, cinema was in its mumbling stage, it is evident that these filmmakers quickly assimilated and mastered the visual potential of this medium. Delivering XXX in various settings (maids, bourgeois, nurses, lesbians, fetish, spanking, nudism without forgetting a Santa Claus cameo!) through different sophisticated shots, involving lots of close-ups, they seem to have established all the rules of a genre that doesn't seem to have changed much in the last 100 years.