Hugh Hefner: Once Upon a Time

The year is 1954 and Marlon Brando takes the entire United States by storm when he glides across the big screen, astride his Harley Davidson in The Wild One. The same year Hugh Hefner founds Playboy magazine. The magazine embodied the search for new ethics and a lifestyle that allowed fOI- different opinions and sexual freedom. This documentary about Hugh Hefner also gives an insight into the hectic and chaotic life surrounding the Playboy empire,

COMMENTARY
Once upon a time there was a man who built his own fantasy world and then proceeded to go and live in it.
There he sits today, beneath his oak tree, a graying wolf surrounded by happy bunnies giggling to themselves in mutual understanding - like the animals in the Garden
of Eden,
It is difficult to avoid a certain irony when describing Hugh Hefner's life and times. Not that this film is ironic; on the contrary, it is most considerate and the speaker James Coburn sounds mighty impressed. Maybe one ought to be when considering the gigantic Playboy creation, where the foundation has been laid almost singlehandedly by one man,
But the picture is fraught by unintentional comedy when describing the bubbling playground where Hefner is marleting his idea about hanky-panky, dressed in his by now classic silk pyjamas. The girls' affected manners are fascinating. The sex, the music, the freedom and the wantonness is presented with a dizzy enthusiasm in a world formel'ly
ruled by puritanism and strict conventions.
Funny also how the period of the time is reflected through this film. The lifestyle and parties of the sixties and seventies jet set seems both corny and slightly cool in the end.
There is also an almost sad aura surrounding this man who falls in love with his own images. The last picture, the one of an old man who has recently married this young good-looking woman and raised a new family, has a desperate and strained feel to it.
The time has come for Hefner himself to grin and bear it for the camera. As is the case with some of his pin-ups, his smile is not always convincing. ':'
Helena von Zweigbergk