Johann Schwarzer - Director of Vintage Erotica From Early 1900s

This is a series of sensual vintage erotica films from the director Johann Schwarzer.

Johann Schwarzer was an Austrian photographer and pioneer producer of adult films through his Saturn-Film company. Schwarzer was born in Javornik, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and now located in the Czech Republic.

As a photographer and film maker, he produced erotic films to compete with the Pathe brothers and their studio while he could also raise money for his mainstream projects. Schwarzer started out as a nude still photographer who produced postcards. This could be considered an early vintage version of the Playboy or Penthouse we know today.

Unfortunately, while Schwarzer openly advertised his films, they were shut down in 1911 during a crackdown on erotic materials in Vienna. Remarkably, a vault fire in 1911 would destroy around half of Schwarzer’s films. The good news is, many films still remain. This page is dedicated to posting the works that survived.

Johann Schwarzer did not live long. He was born 30 August 1880 and passed on 10 October 1914. He was 34.

Schwarzer’s non-erotic films he was known for are Zimmer zu Vermieten (1908), Sklavenmarkt (1907) and Weibliche Ringkämpfer. There is little information on these titles, but I will continue to look.

For more info on Schwarzer and Saturn-Film, try this link.

In these short film we have naked women. Most of them are dancing around in a forest somewhere.

Schwarzer injected humor and levity into all of his films. They were fun and innocent in an erotic and voyeuristic way. There is none of the harsh phoney ‘banging’ we see in porn today.

I believe these types of films are important to the history of cinema.

So much of what we see today had its roots in the early days of films like these. In would be nice if today’s entertainment had more of this playful sexuality in it.

Most of Schwarzer’s films are courtesy of the Film Archive of Austria.