Six of the world’s great film makers portray their sexual visions for Playboy. Unfortunately, due to film censorship and other restrictions, many of the world’s foremost directors rarely get the opportunity to express their own erotic fantasies on celluloid. So we approached some of the master f
...ilm makers with the notion of shooting for us what they can’t or simply haven’t put on film. The directors involved supervised the shootings much as they would a film, and two—Gordon Parks and Jerry Schatzberg—did their own photography as well. As you’ll see, the results are all fairly characteristic of each director’s particular cinematic style.
Federico Fellini (La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, Casanova) - When asked to comment on his fantasy photos, Fellini quipped, "Why do you need a comment? The picture speaks for itself." But in conversations with Playboy's film critic Bruce Williamson, Fellini explained that he simply found amusing the sight of two little priests (played by Alvaro Vitali and Luigi Leone) flying a kite at the shore and discovering a voluptuous goddess (Renata Schmidt) at the other end of the line. Fellini added that he wasn't sure what it all meant.
Michelangelo Antonioni (L'Avventura, Blow-Up) - "When I was asked for an erotic fantasy, strangely, I kept mentally fondling the idea of mountains. I say strangely because nature is dramatic or pleasant or idyllic, not erotic. But I was thinking for a landscape in human form, mountains or dunes that might be erotic. I have put much love and rapture into shaping these images. It is difficult to imagine anything erotic that is somehow not related to the body of a woman. Yet even in this landscape, there is a touch of enigma."
Jerry Schatzberg (The Panic in Needle Park, Scarecrow) - "I've worked with women all of my career - first as a fashion photographer, then as a filmmaker - and I've always fantasized that a woman is really more than one individual, that each woman is really a combination of different women. Fellini expressed this idea in 8 1/2 and I did to a certain extent in my first film."
Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs - "Ah, the Dragon Lady! I was a Marine at 17 in Canton, China, walking down a dim, dirty alley, when I passed a striking, exotic Oriental beauty dressed in Western clothes. Her perfume caressed me for fifty yards, blotting out the stink of the street. Later, I saw her enter the quarters of my colonel. Lying on my bunk, I dreamed she slipped into my room, undressed herself and me. Years later, the aroma is still fresh."
Gordon Parks (The Learning Tree, Shaft) - "I was only ten then, but I remember the cyclone twisting violently over the Kansas plains. Big Mabel had found me in the fields, hurt and terrified. She carried me back to the safety of my father's slaughterhouse, calmed me, undressed me and tended my wounds. This photo is a fantasy of that remembrance."
Richard Brooks (In Cold Blood, Looking For Mr. Goodbar) - "Sex during a crisis heightens intellectual and tactile sexuality rarely experienced under normal conditions. the urgency of the situation motivates the need for immediate intimacy. The chemistry, without words, must say, "Now!' My fantasy girl, in this situation, is always partially clothed. Her eyes are taunting - an air of mystery - we care not for names or personal history. Her desire stems from a necessity for selfish pleasure. This fantasy of mine arose while I was working on the script for Key Largo, when a hurricane struck the Florida Keys."
