Page 55 - AVN JULY 2024

When Axel Braun reflects on Compulsion—one of his seminal works—the first word that comes to mind is “pivotal.”
“It’s the movie that took my career to a whole new level,” Braun says. “Until then, even though I had been in the industry for more than 14 years, I was still known as ‘the son of Lasse Braun.’
“After Compulsion, people started referring to him as ‘Axel’s dad.’ It changed everything.”
So it was only fitting that less than a year into his retirement from adult entertainment that the winningest director of all time immersed himself in a new passion project that entailed revisiting his dark classic.
Inspired by the chance to commemorate the movie’s 20th anniversary, Braun embarked on an emotional trip down memory lane when he decided to re-edit the 16mm film he shot for Elegant Angel in 2003.
The special 20th anniversary Director’s Cut is available on DVD, Blu-ray and VOD now at ElegantAngel.com, AdultEmpire.com and AxelBraun.com—almost a year to the day after Braun called it a career.
The first and only movie that Elegant Angel ever shot in the format led to the first AVN Award of Braun’s legendary career when he took home the 2004 trophy for Best Screenplay.
“So you can imagine the significance it had for me,” Axel says. “Winning an AVN Award had been my goal since I got in the industry in 1990, and that night was a fantastic, almost surreal experience.”
Compulsion also took home the AVN Award for Best Couples Sex Scene— bestowed on his lead actors Ashley Long and Kurt Lockwood—and went on to win a total of 15 awards worldwide. The wide range of honors included hardware from organizations such as Adam Film World, XRCO, Venus Berlin, Delta di Venere, and the Barcelona International Erotic Film Festival
“Compulsion was truly the turning point of my career, and marked the beginning of an onslaught of accolades that I was very lucky to receive all the way up to my retirement in June 2023, when I left as the most awarded director in history. And it all started with Compulsion,” Braun adds.
He left nothing to chance with the Director’s Cut, returning to the original 16mm reels and redoing the telecine in 4K, cleaning all the audio and changing all the music in a grueling, yet rewarding process that took several months to complete.
Braun tells AVN it was not a difficult decision to take on the task.
“Well, I retired last June ... I was bored!” he cracks. “All jokes aside, I shot Compulsion on 16mm film, and 20 years ago the best telecine conversion available was 720p ... I just wanted to give this movie, that had been so important for me, a proper treatment.”
Braun reveals that he first tried to do it for the film’s 10th anniversary, but at the time Elegant Angel founder Patrick Collins had sold his studio and retired.
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