Fanny Hill

Plot synopsis:
Frances "Fanny" Hill is a rich Englishwoman in her middle age, who leads a life of contentment with her loving husband Charles and their children. The novel consists of two long letters (which appear as volumes I and II of the original edition) addressed by Fanny to an unnamed acquaintance, who is only identified as ‘Madam.’ Fanny has been prevailed upon by the ‘Madam’ to recount the ’scandalous stages’ of her earlier life, which she proceeds to do with ‘stark naked truth’ as her governing principle.
Fanny’s account begins with the loss of her parents at the age of fourteen followed by a journey to London, and ends with her eventual union with Charles about five years later. The intermediate narrative is filled with an immense variety of sexual experiences, which are described with a clinical degree of vividness, whimsy, wit and humour. A rich store of imaginative metaphors and outlandish similies is brought to bear upon the sexual organs and actions of several participants, both male and female, in their various states of arousal and exertion (cf. the 'Excerpts' below). The plot has been described as ‘operatic’ by John Hollander, who opines that “the book’s language and its protagonist’s character are its greatest virtues.” 
The first letter begins with a short account of Fanny’s impoverished childhood in a village in Lancashire. She loses her parents to small-pox, arrives in London to look for domestic work, and gets lured into a brothel. She is a clandestine witness to two separate sexual encounters (one between an ugly older couple and another between a young pretty pair), and is a far from unwilling participant in a lesbian dalliance with a bisexual prostitute named Phoebe. Charles (who is a customer at the brothel) induces Fanny to make an escape, which she manages to do with her virginity intact. Soon thereafter, she loses it to Charles and becomes his lover. Charles is sent away by deception to the South Seas, and Fanny is driven by her desperation and destitution to become the kept woman of a rich merchant named Mr H—. After enjoying a brief period of stability, she espies Mr H— in casual congress with her own maid, and goes on to seduce Will (the young footman of Mr H—) as an act of calculated revenge. However, she is soon discovered by Mr H— in flagrante delicto with Will. After being abandoned by Mr H—, Fanny becomes a prostitute for wealthy and discerning clients in a pleasure-house run by Mrs Cole. This marks the end of the first letter.
The second letter begins with a rumination on the tedium of writing about sex and the difficulty of driving a middle course between vulgarity of language on the one hand, and `mincing metaphors and affected circumlocutions’ on the other. Fanny goes on to describe her adventures in the house of Mrs Cole, which include a public orgy, an elaborately orchestrated bogus sale of her ’virginity’ to an enervate rich dupe called Mr Norbert, and a sado-masochistic session with one Mr Barville involving mutual flagellation with birch-rods. These are interspersed with narratives which do not involve Fanny directly; for instance, three of her companion girls in the house (Emily, Louisa and Harriett) describe their own losses of virginity, and the nyphomaniac Louisa seduces the immensely endowed but imbecile ‘good-natured Dick’. The only scene in the novel involving male homosexuality occurs towards the end, when Fanny espies upon a scene of anal intercourse between two young boys. (This episode was expurgated from several later editions.) Eventually Fanny retires from prostitution and becomes the lover of a rich and worldly-wise man of sixty (described by Fanny as a ‘rational pleasurist’). This phase of Fanny’s life brings about her intellectual development, and leaves her prodigiously wealthy when her lover dies of a sudden cold. Shortly thereafter, she has a chance encounter with Charles, who has returned as a poor man to England after being shipwrecked. Fanny offers her fortune to Charles unconditionally, but he insists on marrying her.
The novel contains several sharply drawn characters, such as Charles, Mrs Jones (Fanny’s landlady), Mrs Cole, Will, Mr H— and Mr Norbert. The prose is richly textured and consists of long sinuous sentences containing a profusion of subordinate clauses. Its morality is conventional, in that it denounces sodomy, frowns upon vice and approves of only heterosexual unions based upon mutual love . However, there are sly hints in the concluding paragraphs of the book (“You laugh perhaps at this tail-piece of morality…”) which tend to cast doubt on the sincerity of these moral pronouncements.

Tags: pornographic

Review:
I got myself the John Cleland book, and the DVD with Lisa Foster, expecting the worse.
The storyline is good, it was very well filmed with lots of good period pieces, quite authentic as well, and follows quite well the book.
Let's put aside the over acting by big names like Oliver Reed and Shelley Winters, they were good and amusing, but at best were the support act.
The movie, the story, called for lots of nudity, and I did not feel that any nude scenes were unnecessary, or out of context.
Nudity aside, she could act, the story line required the show of innocence, a sense of naughtiness, excitement, adventure, sadness, elation, Lisa Foster showed all of these.
I am sure that when the movie was first released, Lisa was probably put into some sort of category like 'actress who likes taking clothes of', and may have accounted for the lack of good roles after that.
Shame that she made the movie 20 years too early.As a woman, and a married woman with kids, I am not afraid to say that Fanny Hill is a very good movie, and Lisa Foster is a very good actress.
The first thing that comes to most people's mind is the erotic nature of the movie, with lots of sex and nudity.
They would not be wrong, with lots of sexual implications, male and female nudity, and sometimes quite explicit, but this is not a hardcore movie.
And in Lisa (Raines) Foster, an extremely beautiful actress.
But let's look at the whole movie.First, the story, from John Cleland's once banned (and still is in some countries) book has a good story, and probably had some truth in his days.
A young girl coming to misfortune after the death of her parents, eventually finding happiness.Second, the film itself was well shot, well lit, good scenery, with a good accuracy of the period, follows quite well the spirit of the novel.
Well known stars such as Oliver Reed, Shelley Winter, Wilfred Hyde-White) contributed interesting characters, I guess to give gravitas to the movie to the relative unknown star, Lisa (Raines) Foster and to encourage cinema goers.
I have not seen anything she has done apart from this role, and I thought she was excellent, and I am not referring to the nudity, which is not shocking, although she is extremely beautiful with a very pretty and well defined face, great eyes.
She clearly carried the movie, and did not need the stars (although they were amusing) It is a pity that she has not acted in more roles after this.
I would certainly like to wish her luck.I believe that this movie has been a good contribution to the erotic genre.
Very good erotic movie.
Prompted by a possible adaptation of Fanny Hill for British television, I watched, with intrigued, two film productions of Fanny Hill.
This production stars Lisa Foster, or is it Lisa Raines, as Fanny Hill.
The fuss is the copious about of nudity and sex in the film, often quite explicit, as required by the book.
The most amount of nudity is provided by the incredibly beautiful and sexy Lisa Foster.
She has a most fantastic, and sensual body, quite innocent, which by account of her date of birth and date of making the movie, quite right too.What's good?
The movie is beautifully filmed with what I would say authentic period pieces, and good scenery.
The story is good, I read John Cleland's novel some time ago, but retains much in memory, and I was pleasantly surprised how closely the movie as a whole adhered to the novel.
First, the big names, in Oliver Reed, Shelley Winters and Wilfred Hyde-White were amusing, and interesting.
Now, for the unknown actresses in Lisa Foster and Maria Harper, the latter did not have much to do, but was very good and very naked in one lesbian scene with Lisa Foster.
It is sad that she did not find more roles after Fanny Hill, but I guess, the stigma attached to an actress 20 odd years ago who spent a large part (not that large actually, no more than 10 minutes) of the movie naked could not have helped, unlike today.
Shelley Winters, though amusing, can be irritating at times (the other Madamme that Fanny worked for was better).Overall?
It has laughs, it has sex, and it has an incredibly beautiful and sexy actress (Lisa Foster is not in the Penthouse / porno category, with large breasts, she is very pretty, with a fantastic body, all well proportioned, Monica Belluci offers a different kind of beautiful and sexiness).
I thoroughly enjoyed it, watch it at your earliest opportunity.What of the other, later, production of Fanny Hill?
You will have to read that review, but I preferred this, I gave both a big 10, but Lisa Foster as Fanny Hill makes the difference..
Despite this, it contains so much nudity, especially from the very sexy Lisa Foster, that it should have come with a health warning, in a positive manner, mind you.
My apprehension that movies generally don't live up to books (apart from Lord of the Rings), especially an adaptation of an erotic novel, soon evaporated.
See beyond these, and you will see a rather good movie, with a nice story line, sets, scenery, plots and some excellent acting from Lisa Foster, the lead and real star.There are a few things that needs to be said about Lisa Forster, and this are not what I feel, but what my club member also thought and agreed.
The nudity, and not just from Lisa, are all necessary and tasteful, nothing pornographic, and the amount is not overwhelming.For all of my fellow members, the movie made the book so much more interesting and, put things into perspective, or bring a book to life.
What a fantastic book, my imagination ran absolutely wild, and when I found out that a movie had been made, through IMDb, off I went in search of a DVD.
So much of what I saw in the movie, was what I imagined when reading the book.
OK, so Lisa Foster looks older than what Fanny is supposed to be in the book, but apart from this, I did not imagine Fanny to be much different.
She is a very good and beautiful actress, with or without her clothes on, and I felt she acted according to the requirements of the part, which called for a sense of naughty innocence.
OK, you have to put up with the silliness of the established actors like Oliver Reed, Shelley Winter and Wilfrid Hyde-White.
These guys were good, don't get me wrong, but the real star is Lisa Foster, no doubt about this, she clearly carried the movie very well.
With the amount of nudity involved, it should probably be classed as an erotic movie, but the nudity is always so tastefully done, without a hint of pornography, and there is no unnecessary nudity.I am impressed with what I have seen.
Fanny Hill is by no means a badly made film, but it was a disappointing failure even though it is closely based on a historically important book, John Cleland's "Fanny Hill - Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure", with which most of us born in the U.K. became familiar through Eng. Lit.
As I remember these classes, they started with Shakespeare, continued with Shakespeare again, made reference to Christopher Marlowe, recognised the importance of Samuel Pepys both as diarist and historian, and of Boswell as the father of biography, discussed the role of both Daniel Defoe (Moll Flanders) and John Cleland (Fanny Hill) as early writers of novels, and then rapidly progressed into the riches of nineteenth century English prose.
Both Moll Flanders and Fanny Hill are erotic novels that have earned a major reputation far beyond the British Isles.
The dust cover of my copy of "FannyHill" carried the comment that 'this is one of the most celebrated fictional works of all time', adding that 'it is many years since Fanny Hill was published even clandestinely' and 'open publication is a novelty made possible only by the more sensible standards of our age, and by a deft editorial touch'.
During the decade prior to Fanny Hill, most British sex comedies treated the sex act as intrinsically humorous - we need only remember films such as "Can you keep it up for a week?" or "Confessions of a Handyman".
However they were the style of film that British directors of the period felt constrained to produce if ever the words "sex comedy" were uttered,.
and this style could hardly be less appropriate for a meaningful movie presentation of the classic novel Fanny Hill.
Fanny Hill should have been an important erotic film comparable to Emmanuelle and, like Emmanuelle, it should have remained a film that cinema buffs still periodically search out to view again.
Fanny Hill is quite well filmed and is a period piece with all the trimmings -stagecoaches on narrow dusty roads, period costumes, delightful old houses etc.
The acting is probably at least of average quality.I believe this film failed because the story is treated as a romp which under a different title might have still been watched.
Some recent British Directors are capable of creating erotic films, and had Fanny Hill been directed by, for example, Ken Russell it might have been much more successful.
One last point - John Cleland's book is written largely in autobiographical form, with Fanny herself relating her experiences as well as explaining how she viewed them.
A more recent Brazilian film production under the same name (Fanny Hill 1995 - written and directed by Valentine Palmer) attempts to recreate the story with Fanny's voice alone explaining what is going on during each scene.
This version of the once banned Fanny Hill story clearly had a budget to burn: we have various familiar faces in the supporting roles.
This alone makes it a lot more watchable than the average erotic B-movie, not to mention that the general light-heartedness in which the film approaches its subject is much more suitable for creating eroticism than the Erotic Thriller US style which so often combines sex with violence and death.Still, this film has not managed to become a genre classic and it is not hard to see why.
While she's undeniably pretty (with or without clothes), her acting range is rather limited; it was probably impossible to get an established actress play such an exposed role.
The 'innocent young girl' Lisa has to play at the beginning of the film is not completely believable, but much worse she completely fails to exude any sensuality in the later stages.
This being a British film it doesn't come as a surprise that the sex scenes do not come across as very erotic, and that seems more of a cultural problem than a problem with censorship.
Perhaps the most entertaining part of this movie is the appearance of veteran Wilfred Hyde-White, one of those individualistic character actors who,like his friend Robert Morley, never fail to entertain even in the most pedestrian film.
Fanny Hill isn't great cinema, but it is great fun, and Hyde-White is hugely enjoyable to watch.
Shelley Winters is clearly relishing her role, and between them these two reliable veterans prove that a film that might easily become reliant on nudity to make an impact has chosen, like so many British sex comedies, to use actors of experience and talent to make more of a movie than its sexual content can provide.
Lisa Foster is absolutely gorgeous, and there are many scenes with sex and nudity to please all but the most hardened viewer.
Some of the comedy seems a bit forced, and there are a few scenes where the direction seems to be too chaste rather than risqué, which is odd for this kind of film (as in Fanny's initial couplings with her prince charming).
But the film makes up for it in other scenes.I don't know about the rest of the world, but this was hugely popular over here in the days of VHS.
This is yet another adaptation of John Cleland's scandalous 18th century novel about a penniless young virgin who comes to London and becomes a prostitute, but eventually uses her body to ascend into wealth and nobility.There's a moderate amount of sex here (I guess there was quite a bit more in the original British version) and the girls are all attractive, especially Lisa Raines who plays the lead (she looks kind of like a young Dana Plato or Michelle "Blame It On Rio" Johnson, but is a far better actress than either).
There's also a smattering of real actors here who don't (totally) embarrass themselves, like Oliver Reed, Shelley Winters, and Wilfed Hyde-White (I was afraid for the moment the latter was going to have a sex scene with Raines, but the movie fortunately steps back from that particular brink).This doesn't really compare to the original novel, of course, or (I would suspect) to the more prestigious cable TV adaptations of the same story.
But it's better than the more exploitative versions of the story that I've seen like Joe Sarno's "The Young Erotic Fanny Hill", the horribly dubbed Italian rip-off "The Seduction of Angela", and the bizarre "modern-day" Swedish adaptation "Around the World with Fanny Hill".
This production is an extremely good production of an extremely explicit erotic novel.
It is done with brilliant details of the period, tackling erotically explicit subjects in good humour, and without turning it into a pornographic movie, which it could easily have done.
Of course there are naked people, and some scenes can be explicit but not in a hard-core manner, this is, after all, a movie of Fanny Hill, but I don't feel that any nudity was uncalled for.There are some well known actors in the movie, notably Oliver Reed, Wilfred Hyde-White and Shirley Winters, but they were in the movie as mere characters, and I did not feel they were particularly good in the movie, perhaps simply to provide gravitas?
The star is the unknown, and sadly, still unknown Lisa Raines Foster.
An extremely pretty girl, and a surprising good actress.
Having read the book, and seen the BBC version before watching this movie, I thought Lisa Raines Foster made this movie a memorable one.
Lisa Raines Foster is a very good actress.
When I chanced upon FANNY HILL at the local DVD rental shop, I only had a vague notion of either this version existing or of what the "classic" novel was about  but since American sexploitation maverick Russ Meyer had made it into an intriguing movie himself back in 1964, I figured it was a bawdy period romp and, since I had been in a costume picture state-of-mind for a while now, I decided to give it a spin.The presence of three veteran film stars (Oliver Reed, Shelley Winters and Wilfrid Hyde-White) was also enticing but, unsurprisingly, they are only there for marquee value: Reed's almost incoherent Popeye-ish accent is simply embarrassing, likewise watching flabby madam Winters being surrounded by all that petite naked flesh (not hers, of course, but that of her charges and their consorts) flailing about, but it's octagenarian Hyde-White (in his last film, no less) who tops both of them by snuggling in bed with the title characterwho is all of 19 years of age; I've seen Hyde-White in several of his earlier films and I'm positive he never performed a love scene in any of them!
Indeed, it's gorgeous leading lady Lisa Foster  who, thankfully, indulges in much full-frontal nudity by shedding her clothing completely at every possible opportunity  which, even in the heavily-censored variant I've watched, makes this consistently raunchy period piece tolerable; it's a pity that she didn't get much ahead in her acting career as one would certainly have liked to see even more of her.
In fact, the film's plot line is very similar to that of Jess Franco's MARQUIS DE SADE'S JUSTINE (1968) and it's small wonder that the producer of that one, Harry Alan Towers, is also behind this production but, while I'd say FANNY HILL is a more agreeable picture, ultimately it's just too blandly made to stick in one's mind for much longer after it's finished..
Poor Lisa Foster (Raines)who is now a 48 year old highly regarded and successful movie writer, technician and producer.
No doubt all of this ambiguity is designed to hide the fact that this beautiful, elegant and successful movie producer (see her bio here on IMDb) made this porn film back in 1982 when she was a teenager.
Cleland's novel calls for a virginal 15 year old girl of nubile proportions and Lisa fits the description perfectly.Where I part company, however, with other reviewers, is the somewhat guilt-ridden insistence of some that this movie is "not pornography", since it is true to the 1790's novel.
She is naked for significant periods of time in the movie precisely because of the erotic purpose.
Fanny Hill, Memoirs Of A Woman Of Pleasure first appeared as a book by John Cleland in 1748.
Having read the book, I was quite interested to see what this film adaptation of it might offer.
Few who value literature or cinema as serious artistic mediums will find a great deal to whet their appetite here.Virginal girl Fanny Hill (Lisa Raines) arrives in 18th century London friendless and virtually penniless.
Here Fanny becomes the favourite "woman of pleasure" of a rich old man called Mr Barville (Wilfrid Hyde-White).
All things considered, Fanny Hill is a failed attempt to adapt a literary classic into a worthwhile film..
I can't remember seeing the entire film, or the reason for the rather amusing sexual sounding title, but I do remember that there were a couple of good moments of female nudity and sex.
I did not see any of Oliver Reed as far as can remember, but I don't think this is his type of film anyway.