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Vice and Virtue

1963 ‘Le Vice et la Vertu’ Directed by Roger Vadim

1944 : Occupied France. Juliette (Vice) is Wehrmacht General Bamberg's mistress and enjoys a privileged life. Her younger sister Justine (Virtue) is about to marry Jean who is in the Resistance and come to Juliette for help. Both sisters end up at "la Commanderie", where Juliette becomes SS Colonel Schonberg's mistress and Justine is detained with other pretty girls who must satisfy the sexual needs of high-ranking nazi officials. Inspired by "Justine ou les infortunes de la vertu" by the marquis de Sade

Annie Girardot Catherine Deneuve Robert Hossein O.E. Hasse Philippe Lemaire Luciana Paluzzi Valeria Ciangottini Paul Gégauff Astrid Heeren Serge Marquand Georges Poujouly Howard Vernon Henri Lambert Anne Libert Rudy Lenoir Michel de Ré Henri Virlogeux Dorothée Blanck Pierre Gualdi Lucien Guervil Marianne Hardy Jean-Pierre Honoré Juliette Hervieu Michel Jourdan Lena von Martens Monique Messine José Quaglio Jean-Michel Rouzière Jacques Seiler Show All…

Alternative Titles

Laster und Tugend, El vicio y la virtud, Il vizio e la virtu, Порок и добродетель, 乱世姊妹花

Genres

Drama Comedy

Theatrical

01 Mar 1963

France

France

01 Mar 1963

Theatrical

108 mins More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Disgustipated ★★★★ 3

I actually watched this film back in mid-September but there a couple of scenes that have stuck with me through that whole time. They were that horrifying.
The scene where we watch a Gestapo asshole smirk to himself with self-satisfaction. Offscreen the General he has just poisoned slowly dies as he plays the piano and the tune trails off to a discordant finale.
Another scene where we watch a bunch of Nazi assholes performing mundane tasks like making tea, reading the newspaper and picking their nose in boredom, while offscreen we hear the screams of a young man being tortured.
Plenty of other fucked up stuff in this film. The Nazis really sucked.
Review by matt lynch ★★★½

De Sade translated into gorgeous, classically gaze-y black-and-white scope frames that dwarf the women and turn the men into sweaty, plotting spectators, making female sexual purity actually a secret desire for submission. It exists only to be diluted (whatever that means), and Vadim locates in that an operatic sacrifice that he further equates with the push-pull between pragmatic collaboration and honorable resistance. A beautiful, Wagnerian sadomasochistic impulse, the princess in a ring of fire waiting to be rescued from desire and conquered. Fucked up.
Review by Stephen M ★★★

My first experience of controversial French director Roger Vadim, "Vice and Virtue" was a misfire. A strange and sometimes interesting misfire, but a misfire nonetheless. Based on stories by the Marquise de Sade, it's set in Nazi-occupied Paris during WW2. The Nazis' sadism - sexual and otherwise - is on full display as it centers around two sisters - Juliette (symbolizing Vice) and Justine (symbolizing Virtue) and their entanglements with Nazi SS officers.
To be fair, there are some fascinating and creative touches - a debauched party set in a gymnasium complete with a full-sized indoor swimming pool, disturbing closeups of the officers' faces as they witness and inflict torture, some baroque sets, and some damn good acting by Annie…
Review by Michael Stuhlman ★★★

This film was so texturally pleasing that I feel like I could touch it with my eyes.
Otherwise I didn't find the story particularly engaging, but thanks to killer visuals I was never bored.
Review by forkboy ★★★★★

Nothing is as effective as hinting at horror and leaving the rest to the viewer's imagination; the breathtaking beauty of the young Catherine Deneuve goes hand in hand with the beguiling black and white photography of this fascinating and repulsive panopticon.
Review by sara 🐐 ★★★

not enough catherine deneuve 😡

Also.. how is this a comedy????????????????
Review by Scott Kelly ★★★

With the Marquis de Sade (Justine/Juliette) as the jumping off point I suppose this film deserves some credit as a pioneer to all the (largely Italian) films that would up the ante of the Nazis as depraved libertines cycle of films (for the art house crowd: The Damned, The Night Porter, Seven Beauties and, especially, Salo; or the trench-coat set: Salon Kitty and the Ilsa series). While it’s all super slick and artful looking, with Roger Vadim one is always a little sceptical of any high brow intentions - a base perviness always hovers without the fun rewards of exploitation films. The themes are overly underlined and the romantic sheen undermines any potential anti-moral that confirms vice is amply rewarded.…
Review by Eva ½ 1

vadim sucks
Review by Tim H. ★★★★

Vadim's masterpiece? Aside from some stock footage, the black and white scope cinematography (along with the editing, lighting, and music) in this film is so impressive it almost makes you overlook any other flaws that it might have. Imagine a Nazi exploitation picture shot with the same level of quality and opulence as something like Last Year at Marienbad and that is basically what you get here. I might never have seen a more exquisite combination of high and low culture in all my days - vice and virtue, indeed. The bombastic battle sequence at the end is also one to remember.
Review by washington ★★½

I think de Sade's title is supposed to be a sex reference based on the gender of the articles, but I also don't think Vadim was smart enough to catch that possibility. This is easily the best thing I've seen from him which is to say it has a merit. The film probably works a lot better in still frames as the base mis-en-scene is very pleasing, but the overall aesthetic is as leaden as ever with some sense of Vadim's incompetence still afoot. Though I should emphasize again this is the least incompetent thing I've seen from Vadim. He's also really bad at melodrama though that is seemingly the only mode of storytelling he knew. For whatever reason he…
Review by dankwit 1

was watching a little bit of inglourious basterds on IFC and was struck (possibly bc I was thinking of The Last Metro) by Mélanie Laurent's resemblance to Catherine Deneuve. knowing that this picture was leaving criterion, I threw it on to test my hypothesis (the verdict: close enough).
halfway thru, IB ended and on came the wolf of wall street. and if there's a better pair of movies to sum up this "de Sade in Nazi occupied France" Vadim film, it's not going to be shown on cable
this has been my "review," thank you for reading
Review by Zane Schmidt ★★★

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

Stock footage opening is a bit pointless; just don’t really see what any of it means in relation to the events to take place in the film
Vadim has not lost his obsession with CinemaScope at the very least which is fortunate; in a few minutes when we’re at the pool party he just uses it magnificently picking the perfect distance from the setting to encompass everything in view and have the edges of the frame curve around like a Gilliam film
A rather cumbersome tracking shot up to the chapel when Deneuve’s marriage is to take place where her fiancé Honoré is stolen away from her
A fine if melodramatic moment here switching from a closeup of Deneuve in…

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Vice and Virtue

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01 Mar 1963

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01 Mar 1963

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Vice and Virtue

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Theatrical

01 Mar 1963

France

01 Mar 1963

Popular reviews

Director

Producers

Writers

Editor

Cinematography

Assistant Directors

Camera Operator

Set Decoration

Special Effects

Composer

Sound

Costume Design

Makeup