Antonia du Bois and The Disciplinarian

‘The Disciplinarian’ is available from Janus WorldWide at (http://www.janusworldwide.com/store/index.php?_a=viewProd&productId=171).  Copies of Janus 20, 24 and Encore Janus are also available from the Janus WorldWide website.

 

‘The Disciplinarian’ is a 16 minute long movie released by Janus in 1983.  It is set is some type of ‘finishing academy’ and it features two characters; Dr. Weltscheim, a stereotypical Teutonic authoritarian who is the Director of the Academy and a student named Antonia Du Bois.

Antonia Du Bois’ was one of the most popular Janus models of the early 80s but her career was very brief.  She first appeared in Janus 20 where she appeared in two photostories; one called ‘The Punishment Officer’ and a second composed of photos from ‘The Disciplinarian’.  The cover photo for that issue was also from ‘The Disciplinarian’.  Later that year she was the subject of an illustrated profile called ‘Will the Real Antonia du Bois Please Bend Over’ in Janus 24.  Then she disappeared as quickly as she had appeared.  Her later appearances in Janus (Janus 33, 91, 140 and Encore Janus 2, 3 & 4) all consisted of photographs taken for the previous stories or during the filming of ‘The Disciplinarian’.

The profile in Janus 24 describes Antonia du Bois as a nursing student from Hampstead in London. It’s difficult to know how much of the profile is true because Antonia du Bois was a fictional persona adopted by a model in an entertainment magazine that wasn’t above creating a good story; take Gordon Sargeant, the never seen editor of Janus, for example (but more about him in some future post).  Between 2010 and 2014, Nick Urzdown, who was both a writer for Janus and a performer for Moonglow, wrote a blog called ‘Memories of a Strict Uncle’ (http://strictuncle.blogspot.com/) which included a series of posts called ‘Trade Tales’ that recounted stories that had circulated inside the British spanking industry.  His ‘Trade Tale’ of June 25, 2010 was devoted to Antonia du Bois:

“In her interview Antonia told the story of being recognised by two girls on a bus. This story seems to have been half-remembered by people who often claim that her father found out about her activities which forced her to drop out in rather a hurry. Given that the girl really did live in Hampstead, one of the swisher parts of London, that story cannot be entirely ruled out. That said, she must have know (sic) what she was getting into before she made her first shoot, so it is stretching credulity a bit.

Another and more likely version is that she had a life as a catalogue model and the agency she worked for warned her that the spanking work might effect her more vanilla activities.”

An anonymous commenter to that post wrote:

"She, Anna, became a psychiatric nurse. Antonia du Bois was not, of course, her real name. I worked with her for a while.

She had attended a Polytechnic in East London when modelling as A du B so probably lived in East London during term. Her family home was in Luton. She probably quit modelling to start her nursing career. As a former colleague I could never quite work her out. Some of us knew a lot a more about her than she knew but we didn't let on.”

Of course, I can’t confirm any of that information so I will leave you to decide how much you think is true.

The movie open with Antonia waiting outside the office of Dr. Weltscheim.  Eventually she is called into the office and he goes into a lengthy tirade about her transgressions.  Finally, he decides that action must be taken and he tells Antonia to return to his office at 9 p.m. that evening and to tell no one about it on pain of expulsion.  All of this requires nearly 7 of the movie’s 16 minutes.

Antonia returns that evening and Dr. Weltscheim is outraged that Antonia has been caught smoking in the meantime.  Of course, he is lighting a cigarette himself while he sputters on but he eventually decides to begin her punishment.  He leads her over to a sofa next to the fireplace where he orders her to remove her skirt and bend over for a caning.  A series of hard strokes follow and he stops part way through to remove his jacket.  Next, he orders her completely undress and a few minutes of naked calisthenics follow accompanied by occassional smacks across her bottom with a tawse.  The final stage of her punishment will be 12 strokes with his riding whip but the scene fades to black after three but a few more are heard afterward.

In his “Trade Tale’, Uncle Nick describes the ending of the movie:

“One thing is clear and that is that Antonia was unwilling to take a serious thrashing. If you watch The Disciplinarian then you will see that the screen fades to black some three strokes into what was supposed to be a 12 whack final tawsing. Basically Antonia jumped up, fled the set and refused to return. The video was completed with a voice-over in the hope that nobody would notice.”

His description of the ending of the movie certainly is accurate, except that it is a riding whip rather than a tawse, but given what we’ve seen prior to this point I am a little skeptical of this story (I should note that Uncle Nick tells a similar story about the SfP movie ‘The Caning Machine’ as recounted in my post of September 21, 2018).  I think this fade out may have been the intended ending of movie all along and I like it; sometimes imagination is better than dramatization. 

I don’t care whether the unseen strokes at the end of the movie are real or not.  It works for me and this movie is a favorite of mine.  Personally, I think it is a better movie than the ‘St. Winifred’s Trilogy’ but others will likely disagree.  There are some technical issues, particularly street noise even though the movie was obviously filmed indoors and the quality of the movie which I assume was originally recorded on videotape has suffered over time.  The major weakness for me is the character of Dr. Weltscheim which I think should have been toned down to something less farcical.