Corinne Cléry: Story of O, Its Sequels and the Films That Followed

Some actresses spend a whole career looking for one great role. Corinne Cléry found hers early, and then spent years living in its shadow. In 1975, the young Parisian became "O," the silent, surrendering heroine of Story of O, one of the most talked-about erotic films ever made in France. The movie was banned in some countries, packed cinemas in others and turned her face into a symbol almost overnight.

But the story of Corinne Cléry doesn't end in the château where O is taken. It continues in Italian thrillers, in a James Bond adventure, in cult science fiction and in a string of lesser-known films that deserve a second look. In this article, I follow her path from the Story of O movie to everything that came after, including the soundtrack, the sequels and remakes, and the fascinating contrast between O and her famous cinematic cousin, Emmanuelle.

Corinne Cléry as O: The Story of O Movie That Made Her

To understand why this role mattered so much, start with the book. Story of O was published in France in 1954 under the pen name Pauline Réage. For years, readers guessed who was behind it. The author was eventually revealed as Anne Desclos, a respected literary editor who had written it, in part, as a love letter to her lover. The novel told of a young woman who gives herself completely to a world of submission and ritual, and it scandalized postwar France.

For two decades, filmmakers circled it. The great thriller director Henri-Georges Clouzot wanted to adapt it for years but never got it made. The book seemed too dangerous and too interior to film. Then came the success of Emmanuelle in 1974, and everything changed.

Just Jaeckin, Sébastien Japrisot and a Bold Adaptation

The man behind Emmanuelle, former fashion photographer Just Jaeckin, was chosen to direct Histoire d'O, as it was titled in French. Producers Eric Rochat and Gérard Lorin put the project together, and the screenplay went to Sébastien Japrisot, the acclaimed crime novelist. That pairing tells you a lot: a photographer's eye for beauty and a thriller writer's sense of tension.

The plot follows the novel closely. O is a young fashion photographer in Paris. Her lover, René, takes her to Château Roissy, a secluded mansion where a secret society of men trains women in obedience. Later, René passes her to his older, colder mentor, Sir Stephen, and O's journey into submission deepens.

Finding O: Why Corinne Cléry?

Casting O was the hardest job in the production. The character barely speaks. Much of the novel happens inside her head. Whoever played her had to carry the film with her face, her stillness and her presence.

Corinne Cléry, born Corinne Picolo in Paris on March 23, 1950, had exactly that quality. She was elegant rather than flashy, with a calm, serious gaze that suggested an inner life. On screen, she doesn't play O as a victim or as a seductress. She plays her as someone searching, which makes the character far more unsettling. It's a quiet performance, and critics have sometimes underrated it for that reason. One recent reviewer even argued she was a more dynamic screen presence than Emmanuelle star Sylvia Kristel.

Udo Kier as René: The Partner in the Château

Opposite her, as René, stood a young German actor with icy blue eyes: Udo Kier. He was already becoming a cult name thanks to his roles for Paul Morrissey, and Story of O was one of his earliest starring parts. Years later, I sat down with Kier at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, and he still remembered the film vividly. You can read more in my conversation with Udo Kier at Karlovy Vary.

British actor Anthony Steel, a star of 1950s war films, played Sir Stephen, the older man who takes over O's education. The contrast works well on screen: Kier's boyish charm, Steel's cool authority, and Cléry caught between them.

The Look of the Film

Jaeckin shot Story of O the way he shot Emmanuelle: soft light, gauzy textures, luxurious interiors. The château scenes look almost like a fashion editorial from the 1970s, with candlelight, velvet and ornate costumes. That style was controversial. Some viewers felt it made the novel's darker themes too pretty. Others argued it was the only way the story could be told on screen without becoming ugly.

Either way, the images stuck. Cléry in her flowing gown, the leather collars, the long corridors of Roissy: these became the visual signature of 1970s European erotic cinema.

A Role That Changed Everything

For Corinne Cléry, the result was instant fame. Her face appeared on posters across Europe, and "O" became her calling card. That fame brought opportunities, but it also brought expectations, and a lot of controversy. Before she could move on, the film itself had to survive censors, critics and protesters.

Banned, Queued For and Debated: The Story of O Scandal

Few erotic films have split audiences as sharply as Story of O. In Paris, people lined up around the block. In London, the film was refused a certificate. Critics argued, feminists protested, and Corinne Cléry, a young actress at the start of her career, found herself at the center of it all. If you've ever wondered why the movie was so controversial, the answer has several layers.

A Hit on the Champs-Élysées

In France, the film was a sensation. When I interviewed Udo Kier, he recalled that Story of O played for 52 weeks in cinemas on the Champs-Élysées. A year-long run on the most famous avenue in Paris is the kind of success most art-house films never dream of.

Part of that success came from curiosity. The novel had been whispered about for twenty years, and now audiences could finally see it. Part of it came from timing. After Emmanuelle the year before, French audiences had shown they would turn out for stylish, glossy erotica, as long as it looked like cinema rather than something sold under the counter.

Banned in Britain Until 2000

Across the English Channel, the reaction was very different. The British Board of Film Classification refused to give Story of O a certificate, so it couldn't be shown in UK cinemas. The ban lasted a remarkably long time. The film was only passed in February 2000, a quarter of a century after its release.

Kier told me that during those years, British viewers would take the train to France just to see it in Paris. It's a funny picture: British film lovers crossing the Channel for an evening at the cinema. It also shows how a ban can feed a film's reputation. The more forbidden Story of O became, the more legendary it seemed.

Why the Movie Was Controversial

The biggest objections weren't just about nudity. Emmanuelle had plenty of that too. What troubled people was the story itself. O doesn't simply enjoy pleasure. She chooses to give up control completely, accepting ownership, punishment and humiliation as part of her journey.

For many viewers, that raised a hard question: is this a story about a woman's freedom to choose her own desires, or a fantasy of female obedience dressed up as art? The film never fully answers. Jaeckin's soft, beautiful images make O's world look almost dreamy, which some critics found troubling. Making submission look glamorous, they argued, was more dangerous than showing it plainly.

The Feminist Debate

The novel had already sparked a major intellectual fight. In her 1967 essay "The Pornographic Imagination," Susan Sontag defended Story of O as serious literature about the extremes of human experience. A few years later, in Woman Hating (1974), Andrea Dworkin attacked it as a text that taught women to accept their own degradation.

The film arrived right in the middle of that debate, and the women's movement of the 1970s pushed back hard. Kier remembered it clearly. He told me there were many objections from women's rights activists who felt the film showed women in an inappropriate way. Protests greeted screenings in several countries, and the movie became a lightning rod for arguments about pornography, art and representation.

Where do I stand? As a critic, I think the film is weaker than the book, and its glossy style does soften the novel's disturbing core. But I also think it's a mistake to dismiss it. Story of O asked uncomfortable questions about desire and power at a time when mainstream cinema avoided them entirely.

Is Story of O Based on a True Story?

This is one of the most common questions readers ask. The short answer is no. It's a work of fiction. But it came from a very real place. Anne Desclos, writing as Pauline Réage, said she wrote the novel for her lover, the writer and editor Jean Paulhan, to prove that a woman could write the kind of erotic fantasy he admired. So while O and Roissy are invented, the emotions behind the book were personal. That hidden love story adds another layer to the film's reputation.

From Scandal to Cult Classic

Time has been kind to the film. Today, Story of O is widely seen as a cult classic of 1970s European cinema. And when Fifty Shades of Grey became a global phenomenon, many writers pointed back to O as its ancestor.

Kier had his own verdict on that comparison. He told me he hadn't seen Fifty Shades, but from the reviews and trailer, he joked that the hot scenes arrive thirty minutes in, unlike in his film. Coming from René himself, that's a pretty good summary of how bold Story of O was for its time.

Of course, a scandal needs more than images to become a cultural event. It also needs a sound, and Story of O had one of the most seductive scores of the decade.

The Story of O Soundtrack: Pierre Bachelet's Music of Desire

Close your eyes and think of 1970s European erotic cinema. Chances are you'll hear it before you see it: a soft, floating melody, a wash of synthesizers, a female voice sighing somewhere in the mix. Much of that sound came from one composer. The Story of O soundtrack was written by Pierre Bachelet, the same musician whose work helped define Emmanuelle a year earlier. If Just Jaeckin gave the genre its look, Bachelet gave it its heartbeat.

Pierre Bachelet: From Emmanuelle to O

Before he became one of France's most loved pop singers in the 1980s, Pierre Bachelet was a composer for film and advertising. His breakthrough came with Emmanuelle in 1974, where he co-wrote the famous theme with Hervé Roy. That music became almost as famous as Sylvia Kristel herself.

So when Jaeckin moved on to Histoire d'O, bringing Bachelet back made perfect sense. But the two scores are not twins. The Emmanuelle theme is warm and sunny, like the Thai settings of the film. The music for O is darker. Its main theme feels stately and a little sinister, like a slow procession through the corridors of Roissy.

A Dreamy, Psychedelic Score

Working with arranger Mat Camison, Bachelet built a score that mixes very different moods. There are lighter, almost pop-flavored tracks that match the Paris scenes, where O lives her ordinary life as a fashion photographer. Then there are slow, hypnotic pieces that stretch out like a dream, with echoes of the spacey rock of Pink Floyd. On top of it all float synthesized female vocals, wordless and breathy.

That combination is what makes the music so effective. It never tells you what to feel about O's journey. It seduces you instead. And that, of course, is exactly the effect the film's critics worried about. The music makes Roissy sound like paradise.

The Tracks Tell the Story

One of the pleasures of the expanded edition released by the French label Music Box Records is how the track titles read like a map of the film. There's "O et René," "O et le château de Roissy," "O et Jacqueline," "O et Sir Stephen." Each cue is named after a moment in O's path. Listening to the album in order is almost like watching the film again with your eyes closed.

Some titles are wonderfully playful too. "O comme Alice" hints at Alice falling down the rabbit hole into a strange world, which is not a bad description of O's arrival at the château.

Corinne Cléry, the Singer

Here's a detail many fans don't know. Corinne Cléry didn't only star in the film. She also sang on its soundtrack. A song performed by Cléry, arranged by Italian composer Daniele Patucchi, was released as a 45 rpm single at the time. For years it was hard to find, until Music Box Records included it on its remastered, expanded edition.

It's a fascinating piece of the Cléry story. The actress who barely speaks on screen, whose character expresses almost everything through silence, gets her voice back in the music. For collectors, it's one of the most sought-after pieces of 1970s film memorabilia connected to her.

A Hit Beyond the Cinema

Like the Emmanuelle theme, the Histoire d'O music traveled beyond the film. In Germany, Ariola released the main theme as a single. The melody was later covered by easy-listening orchestras on compilation albums of "erotic" film music, sitting right next to the themes from Emmanuelle and David Hamilton's Bilitis.

That tells you something about the era. In the mid-1970s, the sound of erotic cinema crossed into living rooms, lounges and radio. People who had never seen Story of O could still hum its theme.

The Sequel's Surprise: Hans Zimmer

The soundtrack story has a twist ending. When producer Eric Rochat made Story of O: Chapter 2 in 1984, the score was credited to Stanley Myers and a then-unknown young composer named Hans Zimmer. Myers was already respected for his film work, and Zimmer was working as his collaborator in those early years.

Today, Zimmer is one of the most famous film composers in the world, the sound behind Gladiator, Inception and Dune. It's a delightful piece of trivia: one of Hollywood's biggest musical names has an early credit on a sequel to Story of O.

Why the Music Still Matters

Fifty years later, Bachelet's score has aged better than parts of the film. It captures a moment when European cinema was trying to make erotic stories feel elegant, even romantic. Whether that was honest or misleading is still debated. But the music itself is undeniably beautiful.

And it leads to a bigger question. If Emmanuelle and Story of O shared a director, a composer and a glossy visual style, why do they feel like such different films? The answer lies in their heroines, and in the very different novels behind them.

O vs. Emmanuelle: Two Novels, Two Films, Two Visions of Women and Desire

On paper, Emmanuelle and Story of O look like sisters. Both began as scandalous French novels with mysterious authors. Both were filmed by Just Jaeckin, one year apart. Both used Pierre Bachelet's music, soft-focus photography and luxurious settings. Yet anyone who watches them back to back feels the difference immediately. One is about a woman who expands. The other is about a woman who disappears.

Two Mysterious Authors

Even the books' origins mirror each other. Story of O appeared in 1954 under the name Pauline Réage, which hid the literary editor Anne Desclos. Emmanuelle circulated in France from the late 1950s under the name Emmanuelle Arsan, credited to Marayat Rollet-Andriane, the wife of a French diplomat in Thailand. Over the years, many writers have suggested her husband, Louis-Jacques Rollet-Andriane, was the real or co-author.

So both novels came wrapped in secrecy, and both presented themselves as a woman's own erotic confession. That shared mystery is part of why they fascinated readers for so long.

How the Novels Tell Their Stories

The biggest difference is in the voice. Réage writes Story of O in a cool, restrained style. The prose is calm, almost formal, even when describing the most extreme scenes. O's emotions are reported rather than poured out. The effect is chilling, like reading a ritual written down by someone who has accepted every rule.

Arsan's Emmanuelle is the opposite. It's lush and talkative, full of exotic settings in Bangkok and long philosophical conversations. In the novel, an older Italian man named Mario teaches Emmanuelle that eroticism is an art and a path to freedom, a way of escaping guilt and convention. The book reads like a manifesto for pleasure without shame.

A Name vs. a Letter

Look at the titles. Emmanuelle has a full, beautiful name, and it becomes the title of her story. O has only a single letter. It could stand for "object," for "zero," for an open mouth or a ring. Readers have argued about its meaning for decades.

That difference says everything about the two heroines. Emmanuelle's journey makes her more herself. She grows bolder, more curious, more in charge of her own desires. O's journey strips her down. She gives up her independence, her privacy and, in a sense, her identity. Where Emmanuelle collects experiences, O surrenders them.

Desire and Control

Here's the uncomfortable twist, though. Both heroines are guided by older men. Emmanuelle has Mario. O has René and then Sir Stephen. In both stories, a woman's erotic awakening is shaped by a male teacher. That pattern tells us a lot about the era, and about who was imagining these fantasies.

The difference lies in where control ends up. Mario's lessons are meant to free Emmanuelle, even if his philosophy is questionable. René and Sir Stephen want O to belong to them. Emmanuelle learns to take pleasure. O learns to give herself away. For 1970s audiences, that made Emmanuelle feel like a celebration of the sexual revolution, and Story of O feel like its dark mirror.

How Jaeckin Filmed Each Woman

Just Jaeckin, remember, was a fashion photographer before he was a director, and he filmed both heroines with the same loving camera. That's where the films get complicated. The images of Emmanuelle and O look similar: sunlit skin, silk, candlelight, careful framing. But the stories behind those images point in opposite directions.

In Emmanuelle, the glossy style fits. The film is meant to feel like a sensual holiday. In Story of O, the same beauty creates tension. The camera makes O's submission look elegant, which is exactly why some critics found it disturbing. Jaeckin arguably softened both novels, making Emmanuelle less philosophical and O less harrowing than they are on the page.

Sylvia Kristel vs. Corinne Cléry

The two actresses brought very different energies. Sylvia Kristel was playful, curious and open. Her Emmanuelle seems to be discovering the world with wide eyes, and audiences fell in love with that innocence. I wrote about her whole journey in Sylvia Kristel, Emmanuelle and the price of scandal and fame.

Corinne Cléry went the other way. Her O is inward, serious and quiet. She rarely smiles. She watches, waits and accepts. Where Kristel radiates light, Cléry holds something back, and that restraint gives the film much of its tension. Neither performance is better. They're just perfectly matched to two very different women.

What the Two Films Say About the 1970s

Seen together, Emmanuelle and Story of O capture two sides of the same decade. One reflects the optimism of the sexual revolution: freedom, travel, pleasure without guilt. The other reflects its shadow: questions about power, consent and what freedom really means when you choose to give it up.

For both actresses, those roles became impossible to escape. Kristel spent years as "Emmanuelle." And for Corinne Cléry, being "O" would shape every offer that came next, as we'll see in the next part of her story.

After O: How One Role Shaped Corinne Cléry's Career

Becoming famous overnight is a gift and a trap. After Story of O, Corinne Cléry had what every young actress wants: a recognizable face, international headlines and producers calling. But she also had a label. To many audiences, she wasn't Corinne Cléry anymore. She was "O." What she did next shows how smartly, and sometimes how reluctantly, she worked her way out of that shadow.

Before O: A Teenage Start in the 1960s

It's easy to forget that Story of O wasn't her first film. Born in Paris and raised in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, she started acting in the late 1960s, briefly under the name Corinne Piccoli. Her first important film was Les Ponettes (1967), directed by Joël Le Moigne, alongside rock star Johnny Hallyday and the popular DJ Hubert Wayaffe. She married Wayaffe when filming ended. She was just 17.

Those early years were small, scattered steps. Nothing prepared her, or the public, for the explosion that came in 1975.

Living With the Label

Once Story of O hit, Cléry's image was everywhere. She posed for a famous cover of the French men's magazine Lui, holding an enormous copy of the Story of O novel, as if she were the book itself. It was clever marketing, and it also shows how completely her identity was being tied to the character.

The risk was obvious. Sylvia Kristel was already discovering how hard it was to escape Emmanuelle. Many actresses who became erotic icons in the 1970s found themselves offered the same kind of role again and again, until audiences lost interest. Cléry needed a different path.

The Move to Italy

She found it south of the Alps. In the mid-1970s, Italian cinema was one of the busiest film industries in the world, turning out comedies, thrillers, crime films and genre adventures at a remarkable pace. It needed beautiful, charismatic European actresses, and it was far less worried about scandal than Hollywood.

Between 1976 and 1978, Cléry worked constantly in Italy. She appeared in Sergio Corbucci's caper comedy Bluff (released in English as The Con Artists) opposite Adriano Celentano and Anthony Quinn. She joined the comic war film Sturmtruppen, the thriller Plot of Fear, the brutal road movie Hitch-Hike, Carlo Lizzani's Kleinhoff Hotel and the spy drama Covert Action.

Look at that list and you'll notice something important: very few of these are erotic films. Some had sensual scenes, but she was playing wives, lovers, victims, schemers and heroines in comedies and thrillers. Italy let her become an actress again, not just an image.

Moonraker: The Bond Girl Moment

Then came the role that gave her a second kind of immortality. In 1979, she was cast in Moonraker, the eleventh James Bond film, starring Roger Moore. She played Corinne Dufour, the elegant assistant to the villain Hugo Drax, played by Michael Lonsdale.

It's not a big part, but it's a memorable one. Corinne helps Bond, pays a terrible price for it, and her fate in the woods around Drax's château became one of the film's most haunting scenes. For many English-speaking viewers who had never heard of Story of O, she was simply a Bond girl. For Cléry, it was the perfect counterweight to her earlier fame: a mainstream, family-friendly blockbuster seen all over the world.

A Bond Connection That Continued

Interestingly, the Bond link followed her into another film the same year. In the Italian science fiction adventure The Humanoid, directed by Aldo Lado, she co-starred with Barbara Bach, who had been a Bond girl in The Spy Who Loved Me, and Richard Kiel, the famous steel-toothed henchman Jaws. It was a low-budget ride on the success of Star Wars, and today it's a cult favorite for exactly that reason.

Italy Becomes Home

After Moonraker, Cléry's career settled firmly in Italy. Most of her later films were Italian productions made in Italian, from comedies to Lucio Fulci's erotic thriller The Devil's Honey. Over the decades, Italian audiences came to know her far beyond her 1970s image, including as a television personality. She took part in the reality show Pechino Express in 2012 and in Grande Fratello VIP, the Italian Celebrity Big Brother, in 2016.

That's quite a journey. The silent, submissive O became a lively, outspoken public figure in her adopted country.

The Films in Between

Between the fame of Story of O and the glamour of Moonraker lies a whole body of work that most fans have never seen: thrillers, comedies, science fiction and forgotten gems. That's where the real Corinne Cléry, the working actress, can be found, and it's where we're going next.

Corinne Cléry's Lesser-Known Films: The Hidden Filmography

Most articles about Corinne Cléry jump straight from Story of O to Moonraker. That's a shame, because some of her most interesting work sits in between and after. These are the films that rarely show up on streaming menus, the ones you find on old VHS tapes, Italian TV reruns and boutique Blu-ray labels. For fans of 1970s and 1980s European cinema, they're a treasure hunt. Here are the Corinne Cléry films worth tracking down.

The Con Artists (Bluff, 1976)

Her first big Italian production was a comedy, and a starry one. Sergio Corbucci, better known for spaghetti westerns like Django, directed this caper about swindlers trying to outwit each other, with Adriano Celentano and Anthony Quinn leading the cast. Cléry plays Charlotte.

After the heavy atmosphere of Story of O, it must have felt like a breath of fresh air. A playful role in a crowd-pleasing comedy was exactly what she needed to show Italian audiences another side of herself.

Plot of Fear (E tanta paura, 1976)

Next came a giallo, the stylish Italian murder mystery genre that fans of Dario Argento know well. Directed by Paolo Cavara, Plot of Fear follows a police investigation into a string of killings linked to a hidden circle of wealthy pleasure-seekers. Cléry plays Jeanne.

If you've read my articles on giallo actresses, you'll recognize the territory: elegant villas, dark secrets and suspicion everywhere. It's a fine example of the genre in the mid-1970s, and a natural fit for an actress whose image already carried a touch of mystery.

Hitch-Hike (Autostop rosso sangue, 1977)

This is the cult favorite of her Italian period, and the toughest film on the list. Directed by Pasquale Festa Campanile, Hitch-Hike puts Cléry in a car with Franco Nero as her bitter, hard-drinking husband. On a road trip across the American West, they pick up a hitchhiker played by David Hess, the actor who had terrified audiences in The Last House on the Left. Things go very wrong.

As Eve Mancini, Cléry gives one of her strongest performances, caught between two dangerous men in a nightmare with no exit. The score by Ennio Morricone adds real class. It's violent and not for everyone, but genre fans consider it one of the sharpest Italian thrillers of its decade.

Kleinhoff Hotel (1977)

Veteran director Carlo Lizzani took her to Berlin for this intimate, slow-burning drama. Cléry plays Pascale Rota, a woman whose stay at a small hotel becomes an obsessive encounter with a stranger in the room next door. The music is by jazz composer Giorgio Gaslini.

It's one of her most interior roles since O: a woman alone, watching, drawn into something she doesn't fully understand. Released in some markets as The Passionate Strangers, it's a rare find and deserves rediscovery.

The Humanoid (L'umanoide, 1979)

Now for pure fun. Aldo Lado's The Humanoid was Italy's answer to Star Wars, complete with space battles, a robot dog and an evil queen, played by Barbara Bach. Richard Kiel, Jaws from the Bond films, plays a gentle giant turned into a super-soldier. Cléry plays Barbara Gibson.

It's cheap, colorful and gloriously silly, and it has become a cult classic among fans of Euro sci-fi. Sharing the screen with two Bond veterans the same year as Moonraker makes it a fun double bill.

I viaggiatori della sera (1979)

Directed by and starring Ugo Tognazzi, one of the giants of Italian comedy, this is a dark satire set in a future where older people are sent to holiday villages they will never leave. Cléry plays Ortensia. It's a bitter, thoughtful film, far from the glamorous roles she was known for, and it shows the range of Italian filmmakers who trusted her.

Yor, the Hunter from the Future (1983)

Antonio Margheriti's wild mix of caveman adventure and science fiction is a legendary "so bad it's good" favorite. Muscular Reb Brown plays Yor, and Cléry plays Ka-Laa. There are dinosaurs, lasers and a lot of hair. Serious it isn't. Entertaining it absolutely is, and it found its audience on cable TV in the 1980s.

The Devil's Honey (Il miele del diavolo, 1986)

Here's a surprise for horror fans: Corinne Cléry worked with Lucio Fulci, the master of Italian gore. The Devil's Honey isn't a zombie film, though. It's an erotic psychological thriller about two couples whose lives spiral into obsession and revenge. Cléry plays Carol Simpson.

Released in some countries as Dangerous Obsession, it brings her full circle. More than a decade after O, she returned to a story about desire and control, this time as a mature actress in a very different kind of film.

Later Italian Films

Her Italian career continued into the 1990s and beyond, with titles like Via Montenapoleone, The Gamble (La partita), the holiday comedy Vacanze di Natale '90 and Damiano Damiani's thriller Alex l'ariete (2000). By then, she had played everything from con women to cavewomen.

Taken together, these films tell a clear story. Corinne Cléry was never just "O." But one question still hangs over her most famous role: what happened to Story of O after she left it behind? As it turns out, the story kept going without her.

Story of O Sequels and Remakes: From Kenneth Anger to Chapter 2 and Beyond

Corinne Cléry left O behind in 1975, but O never really left the screen. Before and after the famous film, directors kept returning to Pauline Réage's novel: an underground artist, a legendary thriller director who never got to make it, an American adult-film pioneer, a producer with a sequel in mind, and even a young Lars von Trier. The history of Story of O sequels and remakes is as strange and fascinating as the novel itself.

Before Jaeckin: Kenneth Anger and Clouzot

The first filmmaker to try was Kenneth Anger, the American experimental director behind Scorpio Rising. In 1961, he made l'Histoire d'O, a short film of about twenty minutes. Anger's work was always about ritual, symbolism and forbidden desire, so the novel was a natural match for him, even if his version remained an underground curiosity.

Then there's the adaptation that never happened. Henri-Georges Clouzot, the French master of suspense behind The Wages of Fear and Les Diaboliques, wanted to film Story of O for years. It's tempting to imagine what his cold, precise, psychological style would have done with the material. It would almost certainly have been darker than Jaeckin's glossy version. We'll never know.

The Story of Joanna (1975)

The same year Jaeckin's film was released, American director Gerard Damiano, famous for Deep Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones, made The Story of Joanna. It wasn't an official adaptation, but it was heavily influenced by Story of O, borrowing themes from one of the novel's chapters and blending them with ideas from Jean-Paul Sartre's play No Exit. It shows how quickly the story became part of the wider culture of 1970s erotic cinema, both in art houses and on the adult circuit.

A Young Lars von Trier

Here's a name few people expect to see in this list. In 1979, the young Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier made a short film called Menthe – la bienheureuse, inspired by Story of O. Decades before Nymphomaniac, von Trier was already drawn to stories about women, desire and submission. It's one of the most intriguing footnotes in the novel's screen history.

Story of O: Chapter 2 (1984)

The official sequel arrived almost ten years after the original. Story of O: Chapter 2 (Histoire d'O: Chapitre 2) was co-written, produced and directed by Eric Rochat, who had produced Jaeckin's film. Corinne Cléry didn't return. The new O was played by Sandra Wey, with an entirely new cast.

The story was also new, not taken from the book. In this version, O has mastered everything Sir Stephen taught her and now uses that power herself. A powerful business group hires her to bring down the head of a rival American financial empire, James Pembroke. It's an interesting reversal: the submissive heroine of the original becomes a seductive agent in control of others.

Shot as a France-Spain-Panama co-production, the film was released in France in August 1984. Its score, as we saw earlier, was credited to Stanley Myers and the young Hans Zimmer. The sequel never matched the impact of the 1975 film, but it has its own cult following, and it was even adapted into a comic book with artwork by the great Italian artist Guido Crepax.

Story of O, the Series (1992)

Rochat wasn't finished. In 1992, he produced Story of O, the Series, a television and home video version shot in Brazil and released there as A História de O. The series promised something the 1975 film didn't fully deliver: a much closer adaptation of the novel. With more running time, it could follow the book's structure step by step.

Episodes were later released in other countries, including Germany, where they appeared as Die Geschichte der O. For collectors, the series is the most complete screen version of Réage's novel, even if it never reached the fame of the Cléry film.

The Literary Sequel and the Wider Legacy

The book world had its own follow-up. In 1969, Retour à Roissy, known in English as Return to the Château, was published as a continuation of the novel. To this day, it isn't known whether it was written by the same author.

The influence of Story of O spread well beyond direct adaptations. The name "Samois," taken from a town mentioned in the novel, was adopted in 1978 by a San Francisco organization, and the novel remains a reference point in writing about power and desire. When Fifty Shades of Grey became a global phenomenon, critics kept pointing back to O as its ancestor, which is exactly the comparison Udo Kier joked about in our interview.

Why No One Has Topped the 1975 Film

Despite all these versions, when people search for the Story of O movie, they almost always mean one film: Just Jaeckin's, with Corinne Cléry. The sequel changed the story, the series stayed closer to the book, and the art-house shorts remained footnotes. None of them had what the 1975 version had: the timing, the scandal, Bachelet's music and, above all, Cléry's quiet, unforgettable face.

Half a century later, that's still the image that defines O.

O Forever: Corinne Cléry's Lasting Place in Film History

Half a century after Story of O, Corinne Cléry is still remembered first as O. It's easy to see why. Just Jaeckin's film gave her a role that was almost impossible to play: a heroine who barely speaks, who gives herself away completely, and who has to hold the screen through silence alone. Cléry did it with a stillness and seriousness that made the film far more haunting than its glossy surface suggests.

But the full story of her career is richer than one role. She survived the scandal, the bans and the debates. She built a second life in Italy, working with directors like Sergio Corbucci, Carlo Lizzani, Ugo Tognazzi and Lucio Fulci. She crossed paths with Franco Nero and David Hess in Hitch-Hike, with Roger Moore in Moonraker, and with Richard Kiel and Barbara Bach in The Humanoid. She even sang on Pierre Bachelet's soundtrack.

Meanwhile, O went on without her, through a sequel scored by a young Hans Zimmer, a Brazilian TV series and a long line of imitators. Yet none of them replaced the original. When people think of Story of O, they still picture Corinne Cléry, calm and unreadable, in the corridors of Roissy. For an actress who spent years trying to step out of that shadow, it's a strange kind of victory: she escaped the role, but the role never forgot her.

Frequently Asked Questions About Corinne Cléry and Story of O

Where can I watch the movie The Story of O?

Availability changes by country and over time. The 1975 film has been released on DVD and Blu-ray by specialist labels and occasionally appears on streaming and rental platforms. Check a streaming search service for your region to see current options.

Is Story of O based on a true story?

No. It's a work of fiction. The author, Anne Desclos, writing as Pauline Réage, said she wrote the novel for her lover, the writer and editor Jean Paulhan. So the emotions behind it were personal, but O and Château Roissy are invented.

Why was the movie Story of O controversial?

The film shows a woman who chooses total submission, which many critics and women's rights activists saw as glamorizing the degradation of women. It was refused a certificate in the United Kingdom and was only passed by the BBFC in February 2000, while in Paris it played for a year on the Champs-Élysées.

What is the point of Story of O?

Readers still disagree. Some see it as an exploration of desire, surrender and the extremes of love. Others see it as a fantasy of female obedience. Its lasting power comes from the fact that it doesn't settle the question.

Who played O in the 1975 Story of O movie?

French actress Corinne Cléry, born Corinne Picolo in Paris on March 23, 1950, played O. Udo Kier played her lover René, and Anthony Steel played Sir Stephen.

Was Corinne Cléry a Bond girl?

Yes. In Moonraker (1979), she played Corinne Dufour, the assistant to the villain Hugo Drax, opposite Roger Moore as James Bond.

Who composed the Story of O soundtrack?

Pierre Bachelet, who had worked on the Emmanuelle music the year before. Mat Camison arranged the score, and Corinne Cléry sang a song for the film that was first released as a 45 rpm single.

Is there a sequel to Story of O?

Yes. Story of O: Chapter 2 (1984) was directed by Eric Rochat, with Sandra Wey as O and a score by Stanley Myers and Hans Zimmer. Rochat also produced Story of O, the Series in Brazil in 1992, which followed the novel more closely.

What happened to Corinne Cléry?

After Story of O and Moonraker, she made most of her films in Italy, from comedies to thrillers, including Lucio Fulci's The Devil's Honey. She later became a familiar face on Italian television, taking part in Pechino Express in 2012 and Grande Fratello VIP, the Italian Celebrity Big Brother, in 2016.