FILM                                                                                                                   Woman's erotic presence as a pivotal necessity in art films and documentaries.                 A secret stash of naughty silent films turned up in a Paris attic, and producer Michel Reilhac knew he had to put them on the big screen.                                                                                                                                By Will Hogkinson

Photo: Original frame from the 1905-1930 French film.

Photos: The Good Old Naughty Days: 'Everyone looks to be enjoying themselves'. The film is also knows as "Polissons et Galipettes".
 

Our great-grandparents were rather less prudish than we might imagine. Decades before pornography became big business, naughty French people were making dirty films for the fun of it. In The Good Old Naughty Days, a collection of 12 silent films from the earliest years of the 20th century, nuns, priests, teachers - even a dog - play out sexual dramas in a wide variety of inventive positions, locations and logistical arrangements. And, unlike the stars of today's films for the one-handed viewer, everyone looks like they're enjoying themselves. Even the dog. "The difference is money," says Michel Reilhac, the French director and producer who put The Good Old Naughty Days together. "These films were made as a joke by people who had no idea of performing to the camera, and you can tell: the way they carry themselves is entirely natural. By the 1930s people realised that they could make money with these films and they became another thing entirely. The charm and innocence was gone." Reilhac He shares an immaculately smart converted warehouse in Paris's chic 9th arrondissement with his wife and three teenage children, who are all about to leave for their second home in Kenya.