"...'Only the neurotic and sexually perverted will be interested in it': (in) a sense, Films in Review speaks truer than it intended, for one of Genet's main themes is the normality of abnormality: all the world's a fantasy of sex and power, and all of us are players in it" (Tom Milne, Sight and Sound, 1963). The setting is Madame Irma's House of Illusion, where clients, with the help of hard-working prostitutes, act out their fantasies of political power while, outside, a real revolution rages. Only Madame, watching from the Grand Balcony (with the help of closed-circuit tv) makes her absolute control explicit. Poet and blacklisted screenwriter Ben Maddow cut Genet's famous play considerably to a streamlined screentime, but he did not eviscerate it; this independent, low-budget production would never have passed a Hollywood studio's self-censorship. An extraordinary cast features Shelley Winters as the witty and insidious Madame.