Saturn-Film:
Living statue silent movies
The Artist’s Dream | Living Marble
Saturn-Film was an Austrian film company that made erotic shorts from 1906-1911. Their material is extremely softcore by today’s standards, but would probably have been considered pretty shocking back then. Many of these films have appeared on an Austrian compilation DVD, and a couple of them feature actresses posing as nude statues. I first became aware of this thanks to a post on one of the Yahoo! Groups (unfortunately, I can’t remember which one) and got hold of a copy of the DVD, from which the following screencaps are taken. The actresses do a pretty good job of posing motionless. It’s only when you fast-forward the DVD that you can see them swaying slightly for balance.
Screencaps are in PAL resolution (originally 720 x 576 px, but cropped to 623 x 512 because the films are presented with black borders).
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The Artist’s Dream
WATCH ON YOUTUBE (stretched widescreen format)
A sculptor is putting the finishing touches to his statue of The Three Graces. After making a few adjustments he steps back to admire his work, then drinks a toast to the statue, has a smoke and takes a nap on his couch. While he’s asleep the three figures come to life, step down off their pedestal and gingerly approach him. Finally one of them plucks up the courage to give him a kiss. Then they return to their pedestal and freeze once more. When the artist wakes he pleads with the statue to come to life again, but alas, it was all just a dream, and there’s nothing he can do but to carry on sculpting.
Living Marble
A group of men decide to play a joke on a colleague. Persuading a demure young lady to strip off and pose as a statue (with the help of a little flour, apparently) they leave the gentleman alone with her. Sure enough, after a little while he can’t help inspecting the statue up close (after first checking to make sure no one’s looking!), and eventually gets quite hands-on... at which point, of course, the game is up. My only real gripe is that the film has poor composition - the statue-girl is right at the edge of the frame, when she should be 1/3 of the way in (which is exactly where the Three Graces are in the previous film). Note also the round decoration on the wall near the door - it’s a Saturn-Film logo, included to discourage piracy. Between screencaps 12 and 13 it falls off the wall.
