THE BEST HOUSE IN LONDON (1969)

In Victorian London, the issue of prostitution is a hot topic. Merchants are complaining that the sheer number of  "princesses of the pavement" strolling the streets are hurting their business. Josephine (Joanna Pettet) leads street demonstrations by the League of Social Purity, a group of "fallen women" who want to become upstanding citizens through education and job opportunities. But the government has a different solution: open a secret but official brothel that would house these women. Sir Francis Leybourne sells an old girls' school building to the government for that use. Francis goes to India, leaving his son Walter (David Hemmings) in charge of brothelizing the place, along with the buxom Babette (Dany Robin) who has been sleeping with both father and son. Meanwhile, we discover that Francis's niece is Josephine, who has joined up with reporter Ben Oakes (also Hemmings) to publicize her organization. Ben is illegitimate (Josephine reacts to the news by saying, "I’ve never met a bastard socially"), but we find out that he is actually half-brother to Walter—they have matching batwing birthmarks on their wrists. Soon, the Social Purity girls are secretly getting jobs as the government whorehouse. As though there weren't enough plotlines, a Chinese embassy worker enters the picture. He's upset that Indian opium plantations are smuggling opium into China, and Josephine wants to use money from the plantations, which belong to Sir Francis, to support her cause. Oh, yeah, I forgot the airship, being built by eccentric Count Pandolfo, which after being a minor background detail, suddenly becomes important at the climax.

This is a smutty British sex farce with very little sex, though lots of sex talk and some nude bosoms and butts on occasion. It was rated X on its initial release, for its overall feel more than for any visuals. Packed with incident, it rarely slows down, though character development is pretty much nil. The biggest problem with it is its neanderthal sexual politics. One of the running jokes is that the Social Purity women can hardly wait to get back to being fallen women. Another has to do with a teenage virgin who is theoretically sold into prostitution  but winds up working on the building of the airship. "You promised my mum I'd be ruined," she says petulantly. The subject of rape is treated cavalierly. It never happens on screen, and when Ben is trying to work up some sympathy for fallen women who had been raped, they all insist that it's never happened to them. All of this gives the movie a grimy feel, but oddly enough, I stuck with it. The production values are strong, with lots of deep red and purples in the sets. You can feel the actors trying hard, none more so than Hemmings who does make Ben and Walter full separate characters, with the help of differing make-up. Pettet (pictured with Hemmings) is very good in a thankless role, and George Sanders seems to be having fun in what amounts to a glorified cameo (and he even gets a nude scene, sort of). I'm not sure I can recommend this to others, and the humor was way too uncomfortable in today's context, but I'm not sorry to have seen it. [TCM]