The son of Emperor Franz Josef of Austria, Crown Prince Rudolf, is believed to have shot his female lover and himself in a tragic suicide pact in 1882 in Mayerling. Due to Imperial cover-ups, the full story may never be known. This story has been filmed several times, in French in 1935 and in English in 1968. Hungarian director Miklos Jancso recreates those events for his own purposes, continuing his favored theme of the rejection of paternal authority. In the film, which has very little dialog, Rudolf is a good-natured pan-sexual golden boy, who cavorts on his rural estate with a host of beautiful, aristocratic lovers and friends of both sexes. He refuses to leave his country idyll even though he has been ordered to by the Emperor, his father. Despite the fact that for a large part of the film, attractive young people go about unclothed and engaging in erotic encounters, the mood is one of melancholy rather than prurience. The Prince is a political liberal who wishes to arrange things so that the Emperor will arrest him, creating a public scandal which will provide a rallying point for the opposition. Instead, when the expected troops come, Rudolf's sensuous friends loyally ward off the Imperial officers, humiliating them in the process. The result is that the guests, the Prince and a hermaphrodite friend are killed by newly arrived Imperial reinforcements, and the now-familiar official story of murder and suicide is concocted for public consumption.

Description / Информация о фильме:
Original Title / Оригинальное название: Vizi privati, pubbliche virtù
Also Known As: Частные пороки общественной добродетели / "Private Vices, Public Pleasures"
Released in / Год выхода: 1976
Genre / Жанр: Drama, Political, Sex, Based On True Story, Erotic
Director / Режиссер: Miklós Jancsó / Миклош Янчо
Writers / Сценарий: Miklós Jancsó (story) & Giovanna Gagliardo (story)
Cinematography by / Оператор: Tomislav Pinter
Original Music by: Francesco De Masi

This is a fascinating film which can be aligned for many reasons with Pasolini's Salo (they were both made almost in parallel). Both films are subversive historical studies of human sexuality and the treatment of the human body as a political object. Or more simply, the way bodies are always at the centre of the forces of power. The two films are very different - but not absolutely distinct. Both do concern the events at a distant place where sources of political and social power subvert the order of things. In Salo, however, it is an insatiable facistic power which reproduces itself through acts of abuse and murder. In Private Vice..., it is a subversive power of a less annihilistic order aiming to alter order by embracing passions and overturning the military order. Quite the opposite to Pasolini's much more bleak vision of politics in the shadow of modern forms of exploitation since WW2.

Private vice, Public Virtue follows a rebel son embracing the ideals of sexual freedom, dionysian joys such as wine and song, and the rebellious refusal to accept the orders of absent elders. The scenes where they mock the military ruler with caricatured masks as the army returns from battle is one such example. But throughout, the film seeks to alter roles and power structures. Women wield dildoes, nakedness is not the domain of women as in so many other films and sexual expression is an unstoppable force. The film is both a beautiful, utopian vision and a tale of the violent power of history.

Additional Details
Country / Выпущено: Italy / Yugoslavia
Company / Производство: Filmes Cinematografica
Duration / Продолжительность: 01:39:07
Language / Язык: Russian / Italian / English
Russian translation / Русский перевод: любительский одноголосый

Rus VHSRip
Format: DVD Video
Video Codec: MPEG2
Audio Codec: AC3
Video: PAL 4:3 (720x576) VBR

Audio: Not specified (MPEG1, 2 ch), Audio #1: MPA, Delay = -90 mSec
Size: 3.33 GB