Curtis Harrington | Fragment of Seeking / 1946

the detective arrives on the case

by Douglas Messerli

 

Curtis Harrington (director) Fragment of Seeking / 1946

 

Curtis Harrington arrives at the gate of the white stucco complex wherein he will proceed with his search dressed, in a raincoat and oversized classes, as a kind of comical undercover detective, his shadow projected ahead of his body, a presence foretelling the terrifying secrets he may soon uncover.

   

  

     So begins the director’s short 14-minute Fragment of Seeking from 1946, as a somewhat comic work but one we also immediately recognize is based on a serious analysis of what our figure detects “on the scene” that might help him find what he’s seeking.

 

     What he quickly perceives is a blonde woman who keeps appearing, forebodingly, in various places around the buildings, sometimes on the roof, at other times in windows, later in halls, garden pathways, on the stairs, almost seeming to stalk our “detective” while at the same time, as in noir films, attempting to attract him and lure him into her arms.

 

     Our somewhat standoffish “hero” seems at times to be interested, following her throughout the film—although we don’t know if he’s actually seeking her company or attempting to discover where she might lead him, or, perhaps, even attempting to find out why she is so suddenly and erratically moves about the space. But as in almost noirs, our young man seems to be fascinated by her, even perhaps sexually drawn to her.

      Yet the camera, giving us a clue of the detective’s true focus, seems far more interested in a handsome young man on the outside terrace having lunch with another blonde woman who we see only from the back. Time and again the director’s camera focuses in on the good-looking stranger as if the detective were attending equally or even more to him. And at one point when the woman meets up with the detective and is perhaps ready to reach out and touch her face, the sudden appearance of the young man walking toward him forces him to quickly pull back from the blonde and move off in the direction the male stranger has taken.

 

     Finally, the detective decides to explore the building’s inner stairways and halls, eventually entering one room, removing his coat and glasses to reveal himself as a rather handsome, curly haired youth, we wonder whether or not he awaiting an encounter with the male or the female.

       The female knocks on his door, but does not enter, and when the young director, now freed of his detective disguise, opens it, he discovers she has walked off, necessitating a further chase after her down long hallways as she moves ever further away from him. Does he truly want to reach her or is only intrigued about her interest him and in her constant presence?

       When the two, female and our hero, finally do meet up face to face, he finally leans in to kiss her again only to discover she has become a horrific skeleton which reminds one, seeing this film today, as critic Chuck Stephens has noted, of a vision out of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho “foretold.” 

 

       Racing away from the scene, he returns to the terrace—en route observing other such skeletons standing and sitting where she has previously appeared—he discovers the man with his head having fallen upon the table, apparently dead.

        His search now becomes an attempt to discover who has done the deed and why? Cartoon-like footsteps point in the direction of a doorway through which he has previously never entered.    

      He opens the double doors, his shadow again proceeding his gaze into the room where he sees what appears to be a woman, dressed as a man, who when she turns to look at him we perceive is himself in a long blonde wig. The end.

 

       What we have just witnessed, obviously, is a search for something he was previously simply not sure of: his own sexuality. And what he has discovered, just as apparently, is dependent upon how the film’s witnesses interpret what they have just observed. But I think we can say, generally, that any relationship he might have sought out with women has failed horribly. Either in reality, or in his own way of seeing, the woman—serving as a symbol for all women, the ones in various positions about this dream-like space—offer him only images of death and decay. It is clearly the man who intrigues him in his lovely smile.

     But his own reticence to explore any communication or love with the boy—and all the others whom he represents—has destroyed any opportunity for love to survive, the seeker himself having killed it off by his own confusion, his own sexual unsureness and inability to present himself as he truly is. As Stephens summarizes it: “death is a wig.”

        This work, created just previous to Harrington’s friend Kenneth Anger’s far more confident celebration of male/male relationships in Fireworks (1947), was perhaps the first gay “coming out film” ever made. In its dreamlike elements, its rather negative analysis of the situation, and the central figure’s confusion of sexual identity and desire, Harrington’s work definitely belongs to the pattern of that genre which I describe throughout these essays as the A variation which we also see played out in several of Harrington’s later works and in movies by Anger, Gregory J. Markopoulos, James Broughton, Willard Maas, John Schmitz, François Reichenbach, Ron Rice, A. J. Rose, and Jacques Demy, among others. And as such. it stands as one of the most important early works of LGBTQ cinema. Here we see, finally, the gay detective, only 20 years of age, arriving to seek out clues to a case which no one ever before had openly announced as an issue even needing to be solved.

 

Los Angeles, August 23, 2021

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog and World Cinema Review (August 2021).

 

 

 

Kenneth Anger | Fireworks / 1947

a body scourged by sailors

by Douglas Messerli

Kenneth Anger (director) Fireworks / 1947

 

Most of experimental gay filmmaker Kenneth Anger’s works are an acquired taste. If you love leather, bikes, and boys who spend hours pulling on their denims, slicking back their hair, slipping into tight leather jackets, checking out the outline of their protruding cocks, and zooming up their motors, you will adore Scorpio Rising (1963). Sorry to say, as sometimes sexy as these images are they don’t quite put me into cinematic ecstasy.

     Nor, for that matter does one of Anger’s very first works, the highly homoerotic sailor flick Fireworks from 1947—although this one is far more visually fascinating and psychologically complex.

      The sailors here serve as a kind of double-edged sword, beautiful boys in summer whites to whom the unnamed 17-year-old Anger is simultaneously highly attracted but also repelled. Anger himself has noted that during the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943 he had witnessed sailors in uniform chasing down Mexican men and attacking them.

       Accordingly, one of the standard symbols of homosexual eroticism is presented in this film as also a possibly dangerous force to which one must sacrifice oneself before being able to partake in the sexual joys they represent.

 

      The dreamer has already sacrificed himself or at least been crucified by the men in white before the film’s very first frame, showing the young man (played by Anger) being carried into his bedroom like the dead Christ as depicted in many historical pietàs. Placed rather gently upon his bed, the dreamer gradually awakens to recall his sailor-boy and re-encounters through photographs of the sea men and himself. In a somewhat witty moment, the boy appears suddenly to be getting an erection until he pulls the projectile of a male African sculpture from under the covers.

      He dresses and tentatively crosses the room to enter a door marked “Gents” as if it were a urinal filled with sexual possibilities or, in this case, possibly even a kind of inverted version of the typical carney invitation of “Girls, Girls, Girls.”

      The boy enters only to find himself in a sort of bar, surely something close to a gay bar wherein a muscular sailor, much like a hoochie-coochie girl, performs his tricks, which in this case instead of dancing consists of stripping off his shirt to flex his muscles and pose. 

      A bit like an intoxicated carnival goer, the boy’s eyes open wide as he admires the man’s arms, chest, and back. But when he proceeds to offer the sailor his cigarette—an act extraordinarily similar to Jean Genet’s prison-set offerings of his 1950 short film Un Chant d’amour—instead of the sailor accepting the offering, results in his taking umbrage, attacking the handsome kid and using a flaming bundle of sticks with which he lights the boy’s symbolic phallus.

     But even that somewhat calmer act is interrupted as a phalanx of sailors gradually moving forward as if in some mysterious military operation or even a dance in which the males maneuver in pairs, trios, and quartets. This too also quickly grows violent as they near the young gawker, chasing after him and pinning his body to the ground, whereupon one stuffs his fingers into his nose while the others beat him with metal chains in an obvious allusion to sado-masochistic sex, before reaching into the inner recesses of his bodily organs, to discover his heart which appears as a ticking timer. The blood pouring from his bodily orifices which has resulted from the sailors’ physical attacks is soon after washed away with milk, which clearly reminds us of the substance of motherly nourishment and, obviously, a stand-in for urine and cum, the male fluids often employed in S&M sex.

     In another witty moment, one sailor unbuttons his pants crotch only to reveal a Roman candle shooting its contents into space instead of a penis filled with semen (all puns applicable).

      The dreamer, now wearing a decorated Christmas tree upon his head, as if decked out in drag somewhat like Carmen Miranda, moves toward the burning fireplace where several of the sailors’ photos, obviously a reference to early versions of pornography, are burning, as if the sexual excitement of the boy has spontaneously brought the objects of his desire into the realm of his own body heat.

      Back in in the sack once more, he is seen sleeping with a man whose head is radiating light, as if the film itself, just like the photographs, has caught fire within its projector.

      Perhaps Anger’s later musings about this flick, which he claims was shot in his own Beverly Hills home with sailors he’d hired over a long weekend while his parents were away on a visit, says everything we need to know about his freshman work: “This flick is all I have to say about being seventeen, the United States navy, American Christmas, and the Fourth of July.”

     One would think that a film such as this, with no apparent nudity, no male-on-male kissing, or even simulation of homosexual sex could hardly be subject to any obscenity charges.

      Yet upon showing the film at Los Angeles’ Coronet Theatre, the owner Raymond Rohauer was arrested and charged for presenting homosexual content with William C. Doran, as the prosecutor, focusing on what he repeatedly described as “the penis scene,” evidently the comic moment when the sailor’s open crotch revealed a firecracker. Rohauer was found guilty with a fine and three years’ probation in 1958.

     Appealed by civil rights attorney Stanley Fleishman to the California Supreme Court, the judges found homosexuality to be a valid subject of artistic expression, reversing all previous charges. Fleishman later defended and won the case against Anger’s Scorpio Rising.

 

Los Angeles, September 27, 2020

Reprinted from World Cinema Review and My Queer Cinema blog (September 2020).

Michael Brynntrup | Liebe, Eifersucht und Rache (Love, Jealousy and Revenge) / 1992

the language of genre of cinema

by Douglas Messerli

 

Michael Brynntrup (screenwriter and director) Liebe, Eifersucht und Rache (Love, Jealousy and Revenge) / 1992

 

Michael Brynntrup is one of the most original and thought-provoking of experimental queer directors of the 1980s and 90s working into the present with challenging intellectual concepts mixed with comic moments.

     Love, Jealousy and Revenge is no exception. It begins with the look of a camp exploitation film, done up Hollywood style, about the themes of “love, jealousy, and revenge,” backed up a what appears to be a full musical score which after a few moments, crashes, the score cutting off as in the end of a hand-cranked record. 

     The short film begins again with a brand new title: “Deutsch für Deutsche: eine Lektion” (subtitled in English, not quite the same as in the German, “German for Foreigners: a lesson”). This purposely subtitled work takes place in a gay bar, a tough, bald-headed, leather-jacketed bartender behind the counter. The leather boy Geroge (Jürgen Baldiga) on the other side of the bar takes up a large (today) quite awkward-looking yellow Princess phone to make a call to his “girlfriend.” Her phone is encased in a red slipper, perhaps calling up associations with Dorothy’s ruby-red slippers of The Wizard of Oz. Her Aunt Ida (Michael Brynntrup in drag) answers, soon after putting on Inge, as the narrator announces the 9th lesson: “A telephone conversation.”

      Their conversation is an absurdist dialogue that might be home in a play by Eugène Ionesco or, even more likely, a play by The Theater of the Ridiculous. George invites Inge to a movie that evening titled Love, Jealousy and Revenge, a foreign film.

      Inge asks if it will be subtitled, but George suggests it is probably dubbed because otherwise his neighbor, who does not like subtitled films, would have mentioned it. He argues that she perhaps can’t even read as fast as the subtitles of foreign films, as Bynntrup’s own film quickly speeds up its subtitles, which are not very visible to begin with.

     Inge goes on to suggest that the neighbor should have learned the original language, which George finds somewhat ridiculous as the film announces a new section: “Was soll der unsinn?” (What’s This Nonsense?), George wondering how that is possible since every film has its own language. Inge and George proceed to list all the languages one would have to learn in order to properly see foreign films: “English, French, Italian, Spanish….and the list continues Swedish, Danish, Japanese, Arabic, etc.” Inge continues, “Polish, Czech, Dutch, Portuguese, Chinese, Hindi…” the lists go on as the two throw the idea back and forth as some of the languages appear in larger type across the screen in their own alphabets.

      You can’t blame their neighbor, George argues, for accordingly only liking German films. Inge suggests that she wasn’t criticizing her; actually, she prefers educational films. And suddenly a new film titled “Kamarrinskkaia: Getantzt von den 3 Tscherpanoffs” appears on the screen, three men in from Berlin, 1895 dancing in what appear to be either 19th century Balkan or Greek costumes.

     Educational films make George yawn, like what “goes on in a post office,” “how parcels are handled,” he replies as he begins to put his own hand to his chest in a sexual gesture. He prefers newsreels.

     Inge asks if he bought the tickets to the film yet, and George replies, “No.” “Where do you want to sit? Up front, on your ass or in the center?”

     The bartender, meanwhile, has begun to attend to George’s sexual movements, reaching out and pulling open his denim jacket.

      Inge suggests the center, outlining the exact seats, whole George is pleased that she is not particular. He unzips his pants as he signs off with a “Cherio” to Inge, the bartender coming forward and beginning to suck George’s erect cock as the credits roll.

     The film has clearly moved from issues of the “aural” to the “oral,” while film genres have shifted from a version of a foreign art film to an educational short to a brief porno piece.

 

Los Angeles, November 23, 2023

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (November 2023).

Malcolm Venville | 44 Inch Chest / 2009, USA 2010

the heart within

by Douglas Messerli

 

Louis Mellis and David Scinto (screenplay), Malcolm Venville (director) 44 Inch Chest / 2009, US  2010

44 Inch Chest is a revenge tragedy which gradually morphs into a dark comedy about marriage, love, and brutal masculinity. When Liz Diamond (Joanne Whalley) announces that, after twenty years of marriage, she has fallen in love with another man, her shocked and furious husband, Colin (Ray Winstone), after attacking his wife and wrecking his home, calls upon his four thuggish friends—Old Man Peanut (John Hurt), Meredith (Ian McShane), Archie (Tom Wilkinson), and Mal (Stephen Dillane)—to kidnap Liz's French "loverboy" (Melvill Poupaud) and slowly torture him to death.

    Two of them, the Old Man and Mal, would have slit his throat in a moment or, more probably, slowly pummeled the man to death. Meredith, a slightly sleazy gay gambler, would just as easily have killed the bastard, although in a more subtle manner. Archie, a man who still lives with his Mother, might have simply conked him over the head. But the decision of method in this perversely structured male masochistic gathering is up to the cuckolded husband, and Colin is so tortured and confused that one day later he has not yet accomplished the task.

      As they gather again in a boarded-up flat, the four men, spouting more expletives and sexual stereotypes (the writers are the duo who cooked up the script of Sexy Beast) than David Mamet, Martin McDonagh, and Enda Walsh could have dreamed of, speak a language so obscene that their conversations, despite the invective and determined murderous intent, become comical and, at times, strangely poetic, as they mockingly repeat and alliterate their venomous outpourings—mostly in an attempt to pull their friend Colin out of sentimental and self-pitying funk.

     The joys of this kind of theater—and this film is so theatrical that one keeps feeling it must have been adaption of a stage play—is centered upon the ensemble timing of the actors, working in joyful conjunction with one another as their characters, who come alive only in this malfunctioning male society, as they gradually reveal their hates and pleasures. Strangely, it takes Meredith, the gay man, to describe the beauty of Colin's wife; the others may lust after her but have no ability to actually deal with the women they abuse. Meredith plays out the same pattern, in many ways, with his young men, using them only for sex, with no intention of getting to know who they might be inside their skin.

     As we gradually come to realize, particularly when Meredith describes the man to himself, is that Colin is only one of the whole lot who can love. When they finally pull the prisoner out of the cell of a dilapidated armoire, it is as if masculine beauty has been brought out of the closet. Blood stained, a hood upon his head, the "loverboy" is still recognizable as a thin, muscular body as opposed to the flabby, red-faced, flat-assed figures about to destroy him. And we comprehend Liz's decision.

 

    Colin demands time alone with the kid, and once the others have left the room, proceeds on a long rumination about love. At its core is a heart-felt, if unintended apologia about marriage, centering on the recognition that thousands and thousands of compromises and sacrifices must be made for any relationship to survive, most of them greeted with ignorance or, at most, a surprising pat on the bum by one's lover. But that "pat," as Colin makes clear, means everything.

     Although Mellis' and Scinto's script creaks in this scene, at times nearly destroying the funny, pun-laden scorn of the previous sequences, there is still great poignancy in Winstone's delivery. He is a brute, yes, but inside his 44 inch chest lies a heart full of caring and tenderness.

     The most notable failure in this long "aria"-like performance is the director's attempt to recreate the back story by taking us into filmic reality, outside the "set," which vents some of Colin's intensity.  The more surreal scenes, imaginary encounters with Colin's wife and friends, are a bit more successful, but one wishes that they were even more absurd and unreal, distancing rather than familial, all of which might have worked better on a theater stage. Yet the scene is saved when, after the reality of his past comes crumbling down around him, Colin clings to the knee of his victim, while the boy gently caresses his head, a pietà that is nearly too painful to watch.

     There will be no murder. Colin's love extends even beyond the boundaries of that love, helping his own wife leave him. Still bound and nearly naked, "loverboy" is sent off into the night, while the homophobic Old Man Peanut strolls off with Meredith to try out a gay bar. These monsters are, after all, just men.

      

Los Angeles, January 20, 2010

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (January 2010) and Reading Films: My International Cinema (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2012).