Emmanuelle Director Just Jaeckin Is Born -- August 8, 1940

Although much continues to be (rightly) made of Deep Throat and the 1970s hardcore era of “Porn Chic,” one can not overstate the simultaneous cultural impact made by the softer side of the X-rating.

With that in mind, Mr. Skin wishes the happiest of birthdays (and birthday suits) to French filmmaker Just Jaeckin, who revolutionized erotic cinema with the worldwide phenomenon Emmanuelle, and who went on to helm other steamy classics on the order of The Story of O, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and Gwendoline.

Just Jaeckin was born on this date in 1940.

Emmanuelle was adapted from a tawdry memoir by Emmanuelle Arsan. The movie exploded beyond being merely a box-office smash (it ran in one Paris theater for more than 10 years!) -- it was instantly recognized as a brand name for all-out, hedonistic thrill-seeking and taboo-busting sex.

Star Sylvia Kristel immediately rocketed to the upper most echelons of big-screen sex sirens. She appeared in three official Emmanuelle sequels, as well as Just Jaeckin's Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

So potent was the name Emmanuelle, in fact, that a rip-off series of films starring the incomparably gorgeous Laura Gemser endures as a world-class sensation in its own right, beginning with Black Emanuelle.

Countless other imitators and sequels (some official, many not) followed, with variations ultimately extending to Emmanuelle in Space.

The SM-themed Story of O was Jaeckin's follow-up, and it remains a kink classic revered by erotic film enthusiasts.

Even more outlandish is Gwendoline, the big-screen version of a French fantasy comic book starring Tawny Kitaen as an adventuress who falls prey to a wicked lesbian queen in the lust Land of the Yik -Yak.

In more recent decades, Jaeckin has reinvented himself as a successful sculptor, but it's for his sculpting of humanity's sensual imagination through skinema that Mr. Skin salutes him.