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AMERICAN SWING Send This Review to a Friend
The free-wheeling group sex that reigned at Plato’s Retreat, ensconced in the Ansonia building on Manhattan’s West side, is chronicled in the documentary “American Swing.” directed and produced by Mathew Kaufman and Jon Hart. The era was the late 1970s, and swingers knew they could have an orgy in a room strewn with mattresses and visited by those who had one purpose in mind—sex.
The enterprise was the brainchild of Larry Levenson, and the film includes interviews with those who were there in this eruption of hedonism. But the main show is the evidence—clips from the time, and however grainy, they do give one a sense of the sexual freedom that was the hallmark of Plato’s.
What eventually killed the establishment was the concern brought by the onslaught of AIDS, and the police accusations that prostitutes were frequenting Plato’s and charging for what was meant to be free. If you missed out on the fun, consider yourselves either deprived or lucky. What you now can do is survey the scene through this movie. A Magnolia Pictures release.
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