Realistically, Behind the Green Door, as an artistic highlight of pornographic film, is one of the most important films of the twentieth century. Despite disrepute and diminished quality standards, pornography is a bigger industry than mainstream movies and has existed as long as cinema has. There is a timeless ambition to elevate the form into the mainstream. Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris was a classic, albeit softcore, sexual narrative starring no less than Marlon Brando. Every once in awhile, sex as storytelling makes a major impression in great, handsomely produced films such as Philip Kaufman’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being or David Cronenberg’s Crash.

The caveat that kills it for some is the lack of actual confirmed penetration, but a few odd tweeners like In the Realm of Senses made sincere attempts to incorporate hardcore into “respectable” productions. Furthermore, rumors have always persisted about mainstream sex scenes that are less “simulated” than claimed. For example, Mickey Rourke is widely suspected to have taken a very method approach to his sex scenes in the silly erotic gloss Wild Orchid, directed by 9 1/2 Weeks writer and future Red Shoe Diaries auteur Zalman King.

Progress in the worlds of independent, digital, and international film have made the last decade or so an interesting time for artistically ambitious movies featuring hardcore footage. Take a look at the catalog of Catherine Brelliat, Michael Winterbottom’s 9 Songs, John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus, or even Asia Argento’s outrageous vanity piece Scarlet Diva for a start. The quality and success of these films is certainly debatable, but they certainly aren’t mere exploitation. If nothing else, they show that the theory that the carnal focus of pornography and the artistic/narrative focus of mainstream cinema cannot be reconciled is not always entirely true.

All of these examples, however, to some extent involve mainstream filmmakers making tentative steps towards the transgressive content of pornography for a variety of reasons and effects. Even though Ron Jeremy and Nina Hartley occasionally turn up in mainstream films playing versions of themselves, and Gregory Dark has managed to transition from porn to music video to bad mainstream horror as a director, it can’t really be said that there is an awful lot of give and take between the two worlds.

Despite its commercial magnitude, pornography still exists as a separate shadow realm to conventional Hollywood. The reasons for this are probably more economic than aesthetic. Ignored by mass media and peddled through discreet channels and specialty outlets, porn is a bulk business. In the purest definition of exploitation film, the customer base is marketed towards on the basis of content and quantity more than quality. Time and money spent on subtler points than efficiently getting as much explicit sex on camera as possible are seen as wasteful (and are in a bottom line sense). It should be noted that many porn imprints and filmmakers still manage to develop unique and distinctive styles despite the commercial crunch.

It wasn’t always like this, or at least not to this extent. The rise of home video and the internet both effected massive rises in quantity and declines in quality of pornography. There was a time, however, in the pre-AIDs, pre-Reagan ’70s where pornography actually hinted at an artistic ambition and public popularity comparable to mainstream movies. The mainstream epic about pornographers Boogie Nights spins a touching, wildly entertaining story that does a great job of following this height of ambition through to the debased standards of the video ’80s through the arcs of several characters.

There is something poignant about revisiting the best of ’70s porn. Though it inevitably looks clumbsy (they were still cheap, but the need to purchase real film perhaps made directors a bit more thoughtful about the footage) there is an optimistic ambition present, a very apparent hope that pornography could aesthetically improve and maybe at some point integrate into the worldwide cinema landscape. At the same time, there was an unprecedented willingness by the critical establishment and the general public to publicly consider porn.

The mascot for this porn chic trend was the breakthrough hit Deep Throat. A broad comedy about a sexually unfulfilled woman informed by a well-endowed, clownish doctor that her clitoris happens to lie in her esophagus, she proceeds to perform a whole lot of fellatio amid lame comic bits. It wasn’t a very good movie, but it was a phenomenon that made important legal progress by battling countless indecency charges in court and important social progress by becoming the most embraced porn in general pop culture ever. The excellent documentary Inside Deep Throat tells the fascinating story of it’s impact.

Less remembered today is a much better movie released in the same year as Deep Throat, the very successful Behind the Green Door. Where Deep Throat was is sociologically fascinating, but at best a goofy lark of a movie, Behind the Green Door was a thoughtfully shot and crafted movie that was one of the most artistic achievements of pure pornography. While no great shakes storywise (woman kidnapped and subjected to various sex acts of escalating elaborateness in front of a masked audience ending with wish fulfillment sex of audience surrogate with heroine behind the titular door), the movie is aesthetically impressive for a $60,000 porn (incidentally, much more than is invested in most porn movies today). One long, experimental, psychedelic multiple money shot sequence pays indirect homage to, of all things, 2001. An argument can be made that Stanley Kubrick returned the favor in the masked orgy centerpiece of his classic last film, Eyes Wide Shut.

One appealing aspect of ’70s film pornography is the relative reality of the performers. So many modern porn stars are grotesquely plastic, absurdly proportioned, and such shrill, poor actors as to be viscerally repulsive. True, porn has never been known for high acting standards, but watch Georgina Spelvin in The Devil in Miss Jones and tell me there’s not quite a difference between her performance and the caricatures of sex that have succeeded her. Narrative porn has never been terribly close to reality, but the stars of the ’70s look and act much more like real women than the living blow-up-dolls more popular after them.

Deep Throat’s Linda Loveless was neither an actress or a star of any type, though she did have quite a gimmick. A look at Marilyn Chambers in Behind the Green Door, however, reveals a charismatic talent. A legitimate beauty (she was infamously Ivory Snow’s wholesome “99 and 44/100% Pure Girl” at the time of her hardcore debut in Behind the Green Door), even if Marilyn Chambers wasn’t a thespian of Meryl Streep level versatility and depth, she certainly had an undeniable appeal and admirable level of commitment. Let it not be said that she does not let every drop of semen ejaculated onto her face worth it.

Chamber’s star power and fearlessness made her one of the superstars of ’70s porn. She also embraced co-stars of multiple genders and persuasions when even the porn climate harbored a bizarre vanilla conservativeness and intolerance before her, and pioneered many of the more transgressive style and performance feats that would come to be the sole basis of lower class porn productions.

In fairness, it could be argued that her embrace at different points of spectacular erotic feats of athleticism, endurance, and containment, pubic shaving, breast enhancement, and clit piercing encouraged the steady trend away from style and towards sensationalism in pornography. Realistically, however, these trends would have played out without her in any case, and her decisions were always hers. Chambers refused to accept the stereotype of the victimized woman exploited and controlled by men in the porn world. As she matured, she took more and more control of her own destiny, working for independents, directing a few of her own movies and even running for Vice President twice. She was a smart woman who probably had ample talent to work in mainstream film, but refused to show shame in her industry.

Actually, she did do a relatively high profile mainstream starring role. In 1977, David Cronenberg was a young Canadian writer/director who recently made a sensational leap from underground film to commercial horror with Shivers, sort of a highly sexualized Night of the Living Dead riff that established the bizarre venereal horror he would develop throughout most of his career. His follow-up Rabid doesn’t quite measure up to that gem or his late-’70s classic The Brood, but it is a fascinating and effective horror film very much in keeping with the master’s strange running themes. Chambers stars as the beautiful, sympathetic monster of the movie, who awakens from a motorcycle accident and experimental surgery as sort of a sexually voracious vampire who spreads her sickness through seduction and then…um, a new phallic, syringe-like organ that extends through a psuedo-vaginal opening in her armpit. Did I mention David Cronenberg made this movie? Chambers is by no means amazing in the lead, but she is highly sympathetic and watchable, and certainly not the worst low-budget horror heroine.

Marilyn Chambers died on Sunday. She leaves behind a legacy greater than many would care to admit. Not only was she one of the first real cinematic porn stars, but she carried an iconic presence that was a living reminder of how good unabashed pornography could aspire to be. In a massive industry that still manages to house an offensive quantity of exploitation and degradation at least partially because mainstream society doesn’t like to publicly acknowledge it, she maintained an uncommon degree of personal autonomy and dignity. She was a talented and intelligent lady. Maybe it’s unfortunate that her arena was confined to the ghetto of taboo and perpetually hidden in closets, basements, and garages. Then again, maybe the refusal of talents such as herself to apologize for or abandon pornography is it’s own argument for legitimacy.