Alex de Renzy’s Innocents Abroad is an invitation by the filmmaker to explore various locations across Europe and witness the cultural shift as the sexual revolution grips specific countries and cities. Definitely a direct follow up to his previous year’s groundbreaking Pornography in Denmark: A New Approach, the idea put forth in Innocents Abroad is that, when it comes to sexual freedom, most of Europe is now getting lapped by all of Copenhagen and, at least, the North Beach portion of San Francisco. The UK is provocative but not willing to go all the way, France is horribly chaste, Amsterdam is somewhat naughtier than most but its gains are erased by the city’s deluge of disgusting hippies, and Germany is the naughtiest, but even that comes with some caveats.
On the whole, Innocents Abroad is a less inhibited version of Pornography in Denmark. It makes for a fine travelogue and it’s really delightful to see each city captured as it was in 1970. But the movie has two nagging issues that don’t subside with subsequent viewings. For one, it’s a pretty dull affair. Tracking each country’s attitude toward sex, pornography, and debauchery sounds like wall-to-wall action, but outside a few moments here and there, the movie never catches real fire until the audience is back in Copenhagen.
This leads to Innocents Abroad’s second big issue is that the movie opens with the Copenhagen sequence which was obviously meant to come at the end of the film. It’s unclear whether this reel jumble occurred during the scan for the film’s physical media release, or it was a decision on de Renzy’s part to edit the movie at the last minute and release the film in theaters this way. If it was de Renzy’s decision, it was almost certainly because he realized that everything outside of Copenhagen is straight touristy and never rises past warm. By placing Copenhagen up front, the audience is treated to the film’s choicest bits before the opening (closing) credits roll. But had it been kept where it belonged, de Renzy would have done an admirable job saving the best for last because the return to Denmark, the playground of his first feature film, is a bawdy, horny delight compared to the prudish showcases in the other cities, and its more what the raincoat crowd paid to see rather than all of the the Rick Steves-like globetrotting that jams up the rest of the film’s running time.
When it works, Innocents Abroad is effective. If Pornography in Denmark was a textbook, this is a tour guide. The audience samples almost everything in the grittiest of presentations; the harsh red light making the grain on the low-light stock like it were a case of the measles. Everything feels thrillingly illicit and de Renzy is much more comfortable with letting the camera open up and work for the audience. Perhaps the best bit outside of Denmark occurs in Amsterdam where de Renzy takes us into a sex shop and then to an S&M show that is intercut with prostitutes on the street while Miles Davis music plays on the soundtrack. With its temporal editing, the sequence casts an impressively dark mood and is some of the most visually arresting stuff in the whole film. Unfortunately, the remaining time in Amsterdam is spent watching American hippies mistreat the city like it was a parcel of Max Yasgur’s farm.
Other highlights include a trip to a biergarten in Hamburg where we get to witness snatches of utter rambunctiousness on its bandstand as a lady who has quite had it with an audience member kicks him square in the face before her buxom stage partner takes her boob out to rapt applause. The location footage of Piccadilly Circus in London and virtually everything in France is excellent, but it’s also where the film slows down considerably.
In 1971, full-fledged narrative hardcore features were supplanting the need to disguise hardcore under the auspices of a documentary. Though just a year into the life of the hardcore feature, Innocents Abroad feels like it’s old hat material that’s presented in a way that’s grown just a little stale.
(C) Copyright 2025, Patrick Crain
Apollo Twin 