If only all porn looked as good as Peter De Rome’s. His blue movies have a beauty to them entirely absent from modern day erotica and an intelligence completely unbeknown to Redtube. I can almost imagine Rose from Titanic rolling her eyes at Jack’s attempts to draw her like “one of his French girls” and screaming instead for Peter to film her like one of his sailors.

De Rome, of course, wouldn’t be at all interested in Rose. His films are passionately, loin-girdingly about men. Men who sweat. Men who bulge. Men who catch the eyes of other men on the subway and men who masturbate furiously in their hot pants. His films, however, are about so much more than smut. Himself an avid cinema-goer, De Rome’s cinematography takes inspiration from a vast array of great directors, delighting in the titillation of the build-up rather than the big reveal, the narrative rather than the pop-shot. This documentary is the portrait of a pornographer immersed in dedicated pursuit of the full range and colour of human desire.

PETER DE ROME: GRANDFATHER OF GAY PORN follows the infamous pornographer as he looks back on his career following the news that the British Film Institute will be recognizing his work in their archives. The man is limitlessly charismatic, a hive of wit and energy seemingly only disguised as an elderly man. We watch as he cheerily leaves his property in Kent, walking past the gold-painted penis trophy proudly on display in his window. His joy and confidence in sex shines throughout with a persistent continuity. He seems never to have doubted his sexuality, nor ever really to have become “aware” of it. There is no triumphant tale of coming-out or of acting politically; there is just pleasure, curiosity and humour. It often feels as if De Rome’s passion for sex is too all-encompassing, too busy having fun, and too busy exploring new ground to fit within a particular agenda or politics. And yet, as one observer comments in the documentary, De Rome’s pornography’s major triumph for the gay community is as simple as it is potent: it showed gay people being happy at a time when it was near impossible for gay people to be happy, and it showed gay sex to be vital, ecstatic and erotic at a time when it was considered a sin.

… we need pornography as much as we need novels …

Peter De Rome feels as natural on the big screen as his films. He and his work are spitting images of each other; they are all about connections, generosity and the cheekiness of the obscene within the everyday. When he talks of the times he exhibited his creations at parties and gatherings, there is the feeling that this is finally being made possible again. Within the crowd groups of friends with glasses of wine gather beside couples both elderly and young sharing a bags of Minstrels as penis after ejaculating penis waltzes across the screen. There are plenty of laughs to be had, and these are not sniggering, nervous laughs but voluptuous, infectious laughs. There is real exhilaration and pleasure in witnessing these bodies through Peter De Rome’s eyes; they have personalities and subjects and intrigues and psychologies. Whereas modern porn seems to cater to demands of functionality – a quick, practical release inbetween boardroom sessions and tax sheets – De Rome’s is about everything but. Everything that happens in sex in spite of itself. The danger, the environment, the textures; these elements reveal themselves to be vital sites of excitement so devastatingly overlooked in modern rhythms.

De Rome’s most effortless triumph is his mockery of the division between art and pornography, orgasm and storytelling. His porn makes so much recent Hollywood and art-house cinema look like cheap fakery. Who honestly do the Lars Von Triers and the Catherine Breillats think they are fooling with their prostheses, their stand-ins and their grand artistic manifestos? Anyone attempting to kick their ‘filthy’ porn habit with the aim to refresh their libido and streamline their sense of morality might want to think again. It might not be porn that is the problem, but indeed the type of porn we watch or the way we watch it.

De Rome’s love is infectious and convincing; we need pornography as much as we need novels and Hollywood blockbusters and paintings. Within his eclectic corpus is the potential that one day we might learn how to take real joy in our bodies again and that we might again realise the irreversible need for desire, in all its intensity and authenticity, within our enjoyment of art. And possibly also that dicks look great in widescreen.

httpvh://youtu.be/ojESUY3dAvY