The death of filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk last month at the age of 82 went unnoticed by the American press, which is not surprising: his work is largely unknown in this country outside of cult aficionados who sought out imported and bootleg copies of his films on the basis of lurid descriptions that led them to expect something different from what they were getting.

Though his later films were derided by many as nothing more than pretentious, soft-core sleaze, Borowczyk was a distinctive filmmaker whose work always reflected his sometimes peculiar artistic values. Trained as a painter at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, he designed socialist realist film posters for the government of Poland before moving to France and a career as an animator of surreal short films. (Many of these are still highly regarded.)

Like Terry Gilliam, David Lynch, the Brothers Quay, Jan Svankmajer, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Tim Burton and others who began in animation, by the time Borowczyk moved to live-action filmmaking he was intractably accustomed to the animator’s ability to have everything his own way. His early features capitalized on his existing reputation. The success of his mid-1970s film Immoral Tales—due in large part to its sex scenes featuring Pablo Picasso’s daughter, Paloma—had producers willing to bankroll him for another decade, though on the understanding that his films have enough sex and nudity to make them marketable whatever the actual content.

Ironically, the always-interesting DVD company Cult Epics released a three-disk box set of Borowczyk’s films on the day of his death. As an introduction it covers his post-animation career evenly and contains his first feature, his last completed film and his most notorious effort.

That last would be La Bête/The Beast (1975), an outrageous satire that ruffled critical feathers for a lengthy sequence in which a 19th century woman imagines giving herself to the insatiable lusts of a part ape/part wolf beast in the forest. (That the beast is also quite noticeably part stallion particularly upset viewers of the time.) This is juxtaposed against a plot about a noble but corrupt family planning to restore its finances by marrying a cretinous son to a wealthy American heiress. Borowczyk’s rigorous shooting and editing style recalls both Luis Bunuel and Robert Bresson, though at the same time he couldn’t be more different from either.

Goto, Island of Love (1969), Borowczyk’s first feature, is a political satire masquerading as an erotic farce, set during the 1800s on an island where the totalitarian ruler is cuckolded by the condemned killer he employs as a personal servant. It’s the most unusual of the films in the set, recommended for fans of early David Lynch.

Love Rites (1988), Borowczyk’s last completed film, is an adaptation of a novel by French surrealist Andre Pieyre about a psychological tug of war between a prostitute and an antiques dealer. The beauty of the largely wordless filming —especially their first meeting in the Paris Metro—will appeal to viewers who may be unpleasantly surprised by the shocking, though hardly unpredictable, ending. The Cult Epics disk includes two versions of the film: the “Director’s Cut,” while shorter, eliminates a number of unnecessary scenes and is the recommended one.

“Happily we have this gift, this intelligence, which helps us fight our instincts,” says one deluded character in The Beast. For better or worse, Borowczyk’s films sought to prove the error of that statement.

—m. faust

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