European and American porn film-making are divided by a different stylistic tradition. Over time this difference has become even more marked. USA's gonzo style, aggressive and fast-paced shooting has no counterpart in Europe, where you have the dark-glamoured style of Marc Dorcel, the stylish fetish approach of Harmony, the realistic style of Italian directors, and the scintillant-glamour style of Private with luxurious locations and still plot-oriented movies. Europe has still to produce John Stagliano or Jules Jordan style of shooting, and when it does, like Rocco Siffredi production they are really produced and formattated for the USA market. In USA there are only two European-influenced director who elevate their work to the glamour tradition: Andrew Blake and Michael Ninn. But their work its a category in its owns.
Porn as an industry is just a counter-twins of Hollywood motion picture industry: as Hollywood the USA porn dominate the world market and its style is what people perceive as the dominant game in town. In comparison the European market is a small slice, but that allow European company to create their own niche. The gonzo revolution happened mainly in USA, leaving the Vivid/Wicked and few others style of plot-oriented shooting into a marginal corner of the market. A marginal corner that in Europe is in contrast the dominant system of making porn, even though in the last decade so many flick have been basically shooted with the American-gonzo style.
USA and European porn style are fruit of two different cinematic traditions, both of which have their appeal. Thinking about porn in terms of better versus worse is not adequate: porn is not about cinematic pleasure, not about acting talent, not about story-telling, not about eroticism and seduction. Its to put blunty about 'assaulting the viewer': to do that you need to do anything but treating the ladies as a piece of meat. This trend has been dominant in the USA market for now about 10 years, and those who did not adjusted to the trend simple got out of the business.
With the advent of the Internet-based companies (Brazzers, RealityKings, NaughtyAmerica, Bang Bros, just to cite a few) the gonzo-style has become almost the only game genre; plot-oriented movies are kinda of strange animal these days, even though they win AVN awards each year. Now the parody-wave started, so let's see if something is gonna change even though this is just another niche: gonzo-style, aggressive and fast-pulsating stuff is still the dominante genre. Its there that the money is made, it is there that the male talent is driven when they switch from performer to director, its there that the female talent is clustered because its there that they get the maximum exposure.
USA and Europe are not cinematic comparable: and this is good. As long this difference will survive we'll have some options but not to be burried under a pile of gonzo-style porn. It is still a pleaure to enjoy great stuff like the series Pornchich by Marc Dorcel, or some Robby D. flick from Digital Playground. But again there is an old saying that porn ended about in 1989...after there was gonzo. The rest exist, but its just the rest. Europe does the rest, and that's enough in these days.
BM
I would have to go with the European right now. For starters there is always anal which is always a treat and I also usually enjoy their story lines a bit more as well....The women also seem a bit more wholesome which resembles reality a bit more...
I am starting to tire of all the tattoo's and bolt on's in the american porn...plus some of these porn stars are fighting the facials...never a happy ending for me anyway!!!
But don't get me wrong, I enjoy them both!!!
