Nick Weber | Kiora / 2017

hardy boys

by Douglas Messerli

 

Nick Weber (screenwriter and director) Kiora / 2017 [29 minutes]

 

It’s problematic to even conceive Nick Weber’s 2017 film, Kiora, as a gay picture. The two male figures of this film, Mario (Julian Schleelein) and Alex (Micha Hoff), high school students, clearly have a deep friendship, and are supportive of one another in their school dilemmas. But this intelligent German film makes no mention of any sexual or even non-sexual relationship between the two.

   Sure, Mario calls up his buddy Alex to get him to class on time—they’re late and both are meaninglessly punished for their tardiness. And Marla, their classmate, for no explicable reason is clearly on their case, but what’s the big deal. Even their fellow soccer-playing colleague only gets a 300 franc fine for breaking a windowpane. But the principal, Herr Gerber, is less patient with the two boys, even though he at first confuses them with the previous boy who has broken the window.

     Mario is put in charge of the upstairs cleaning man Haller, but Alex is suspended from school, and Mario goes back to the principal to argue with him about it. So we must presume there is something between the two boys that is closer than just a passing friendship.

      However, that is never fully established, and the rest of the film becomes a kind of mystery film wherein the two boys discover that Haller is about to steal of the school-boys’ fees. With the help of the female friend, Lena—who is a master of breaking into lockers and room without a key—they attempt to catch Haller in the act of stealing the funds, hoping to make Alex into a hero which will alter his outsider status and make him the hero of the English language school.

      With some complications and a computer filled with evidence they succeed with the goal, even if their own sexual relationship is never fully revealed in the process. We can only guess that they must have a deep passion for one another, but we certainly do not get to perceive it. And this short film, as entertaining as it is, makes no effort to establish any deep gay relationship, even if, true to standard queer movies form, Mario temporarily betrays his love, Lena reminds him of his love for Alex, and Mario turns back to protect his friend. 

     This is a well-filmed, basically likeable but totally empty film that might be more at home with the Hardy Boys series than in a gay cinema retrospective.

 

Los Angeles, February 26, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2024).

Donald Petrie | A Raisin in the Sun / 1961

miserable realism

by Douglas Messerli 

 

Lorraine Hansberry (screenplay, based on her play), Donald Petrie (director) A Raisin in the Sun / 1961

 

There was a great deal of tension on the Chicago-based set of the film, A Raisin in the Sun in July and August 1960. Although the excellent cast obviously knew their lines and were more than competent and willing to work together—they had, after all, previously performed for months previously in the New York production of the play—but they were working with a little-known Canadian director, Daniel Petrie

      Columbia had paid what they thought was an exorbitant price for the screen rights ($300,000) along with another $50,000 for playwright Lorraine Hansberry to write the screenplay. The budget for the film, however, was a meager $1.5 million, but even that amount seemed outrageously high given the fact that the film wouldn’t sell in the racist South, and would have to gross double that amount, as Donald Egan reports in America’s Film Legacy, to even break even.

  Hansberry not only had been told that she “wasn’t allowed to ‘open up’ the original story by setting scenes on location,” wrote Egan, but that she had to cut almost an hour of the original script, material that she felt set the major actions within social and philosophical issues of the day. Moreover, within that hour of cuts were nearly all the comic moments of a work that, in its attempt to create a black version of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, resulted in a work that was even more “miserably realist.”  

      Although the play had won The New York Drama Critic’s Award, and had been a great success on Broadway, it was still, one must now admit, a rather moribund affair, arguing, in often stiffly oratorical rants, that the worn-out concept of the American Dream should be available for blacks, as if nothing had changed since the white middle-class 1940s aspirations of the Lomans.

     The young, first-time writer Hansberry had packed her play, moreover, with so many social and psychological concerns—the decreasing significance of male blacks in family life, the shifting values of younger blacks represented by Beneatha Younger, the churchgoing values of the older generation as embraced by the family’s mother, Lena, and numerous other hot-button issues such as white racial prejudice, abortion, Afro-centrism, thievery, alcoholism, and personal betrayal, that the play had come to the screen with a hefty burden on its back.

     For all that, the play, in its family-based ideology, often seemed claustrophobic and confined. Just a few years later, Black playwrights such as Adrienne Kennedy, Amiri Baraka, and later still, figures such as Suzan-Lori Parks would bring up new issues and open new ways of expressing them, while Hansberry was sill intent on writing a well-made play in the manner of the white theatrical patriarchs such Eugene O’Neill, Thornton Wilder, and Arthur Miller.

      According to Ben Mankiewicz, introducing the film on TCN the other day, when I watched it once again, there was also an intense disagreement between the two leads, Claudia McNeil as Lena and Sidney Poitier as Walter Lee, who both felt that they were at the center of the work. In fact, I would argue, they were both right, since their characters would surely have argued the same thing, perceiving themselves at the center of this familial community.

     But they are also both wrong since, arguably, the real future of the original play and the film is centered upon the character based on the writer herself, Beneatha (Diana Sands), who superficially seems to be pulled in different directions by her two potential boyfriends, the wealthy and well-educated George Murchison and the poor, but perhaps more honest and intelligent Joseph Asagai. George represents a fully assimilated black man who denies his African heritage which disturbs Beneatha, while Joseph, a Yoruba student from Nigeria attempts to teach Beneatha about her African heritage. Although both of these men suggest potentialities for the family’s future that neither Lena of an older generation or the bitter young man of slave heritage Walter can even comprehend, Beneatha herself pushes in yet another direction beyond in her desire to embrace her culture and study medicine to become a doctor; she is also as critic Derek Le Beau describes her, “interested in self-discovery…fiercely feminist, and shows little interest in the men she dates,” even announcing at one important point in the film of her intention of never marrying.

     Hansberry herself had joined the first US organization for lesbians, the Daughters of Bilitis, and was writing for their magazine, The Ladder, at the time she wrote the play; and it is quite clear, as Le Beau argues, that Beneatha is a queer-coded figure, a future lesbian like the author who will not fit into any of the current Youngers’ definitions of themselves within the frozen notions of normative US culture they still embrace. Even though the central argument of the plot is about purchasing a new house, there is no real “home” in which these figures can even gather to challenge one another’s notions of reality.

 

     Indeed, one might argue that if the tensions were high on the set, there was really no “set,” in the sense of a Hollywood shoot; rather, Petrie and his cinematographer, Charles Lawtorn, Jr. had rigged up kind of “stage.” Petrie’s struggles to take the play out of the Younger living room and kitchen were mostly unsuccessful, allowing him only a few moments to show Walter Lee at work driving a Cadillac, set against the soft jazz strains of Laurence Rosenthal’s score, and later, planting him in a bar where Lena comes to retrieve him. But otherwise, the film reads as a kind of close-up recording of a stage production. 

     For all of that, however, this movie immediately grabs the viewer by the lapel and doesn’t let go until Lena picks up her beloved flower and turns out the lights of the long-rented rooms wherein the Younger family members have lived out their lives.

     Yes, the characters are all types, but each is given his or her due and, because of the excellent acting, each comes off with some dignity: Walter Lee is the pained dreamer, who hasn’t quite the imagination, however, to escape the limitations placed upon him by situation and society alike; Ruth (Ruby Dee), as the suffering and fed-up wife, who nonetheless continues to love and support her husband with everything she has to offer; the worn-out yet inspired Lena, easily balances her no-nonsense logic with the selfless recognition of the needs of those around her; and Beneatha (Diana Sands), representative of a new generation is confused and tortured as the old without truly knowing why, yet may possibly be able to finally escape the chains that still bond this black family to their roots in slavery.

     Petrie’s version lacks nearly any humor, and thrusts each of its many “themes” in its viewers’ faces like so many stink-bombs, that explode, one by one, in this family’s life. How the Youngers can find a way to unification and dignity after what they face within 128 packed minutes of the drama, is nearly unimaginable; yet Hansberry, far better than Miller I would argue, swiftly pulls the cloth off the fully-set table with an unexpected grace—the very moment the family, now led by chastised Walker Lee, is about to give up on any further dreaming—worthy of the greatest of magicians. And it is with significant pride that the Youngers, represented by the nurturing Lena retrieving her pot-bound begonia, move on to the blandishments of American suburbia, leaving us behind in tears of joy and well-wishing.

 

Los Angeles, May 19, 2015

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (May 2015).

Doris Wishman (as Anthony Brooks) | Nude on the Moon / 1961

conversion therapy 2* 

Doris Wishman (screenplay as O. O. Miller, based on an idea by Jack Caplan), Doris Wishman (director, as Anthony Brooks) Nude on the Moon / 1961

Commentators have long suggested that filmmaker Doris Wishman as a sister to naïve (and equally quite abysmally untalented) director Ed Wood. Particularly in her second film, Nude on the Moon, they are only too happy to point out its silly narrative, sets, costumes, and film-making techniques. Comments on the normally tight-lipped Internet Archive are typical of these perspectives:

 

“Two scientists cash in on one’s inherited fortune, and finance their own trip to the moon. And what surprises they find! Blue skies, lush vegetation, identical gravity, gold ingots… But they also discover a civilization of telepathic ‘moonatics’ who look exactly like us – except for two key differences.

     All of them have pipe-cleaner antennae attached to plastic hairbands…and everyone is topless all the time! Naturally, our intrepid duo must investigate – purely in the interest of science. Of course.

     Nude on the Moon is almost Woodian in its ineptitude. Yes, you shouldn’t expect much more than cheese from these things – but the astronauts’ flight suits seem to be leftovers from a Middle Ages picture. Their helmets are not airtight (really just buckets on their heads) and they keep the faceplates raised most of the time. Their quarter-million-mile trip takes just two hours. Inside the ship, they must communicate with each via mics and headsets…while seated next to each other! And let’s not forget…the queens’….breath….and….halting….telephatic ….communicationnn…”

   

     Wiseacre Paul Kienitz, admirer of bad movies, further comments:

 

“Oh man, this is the stuff that makes a bad movie hobby so rewarding.  I’d have to call this one of my favorite bad movies of all time.  The finest silly astronaut movie ever made.

     Doris Wishman, as some of you know, was a leading maker of “nudie cutie” flicks in the sixties.  The idea is, you set up some thin premise and then you show, like, naked ladies playing volleyball.  They would be given a title something like “the secret world of nudist camps,” so all you really needed for a plot was to have somebody go “There’s a camp of (gasp) nudists, let’s find out what’s really going on in there.”  Nude On the Moon follows that form, but it’s different.  What gives the film its magic is that the “thin premise” part got out of hand.........

      They actually try to do a serious story about building a moon rocket!  With a special effects budget of $0.00, and no idea what they’re talking about except from one or two popular-science magazine articles. (At that time the magazines and Sunday papers were overflowing with education and speculation about the solar system and Outer Space.)  In spite of these limitations, they spend fully a third of the film’s running time getting the rocket off the ground, and they’re only a few minutes short of the midpoint when they encounter the first nudism.

       They couldn’t build a rocket for us, but one thing they could do, by gum, was make the actors some space suits.  And damn me if these are not the BEST... SPACE SUITS... EVER!  These have got to be truly the goofiest laugh-out-loudiest space suits ever captured on film. The exposed skin... that hose hanging from the face... the pointy shoulder pads and matching groin guard...!!  And in their overall fashion sense, I almost wonder if these suits helped inspire the design of the Power Rangers.”

     I should add, in this context, that Huntley and Nichols’ scientific explorations up until their trip to the moon consist of pouring the contents of several bottles of colored liquid into other vials, of feeding a curious monkey, and of secretary Cathy’s (Marietta) attempts to get the hunky crewcut Dr. Jeff Huntley (Lester Brown) to simply notice her, since she’s fallen head-over-heals in love with him, staying on long after quitting time each night to type over his letters again and again—actions which haven’t gone unnoticed by Huntley’s older mentor, Professor Nichols (William Mayer).

     And when they do reach to the moon (after a long two-hour trip) and discover the strange half-nudist colony camping (in all senses of that word) out on what that looks precisely like the grounds of the famed Miami-Dade County “Coral Castle,” dubbed “Florida’s Stonehenge,” they spend of their time, when not photographing the human landscape, worrying about their oxygen levels—despite the fact that they are not apparently hooked up to any oxygen tubes—and wondering whether the gold-nuggets they find scattered about the place might be able to finance their next trip.

     Despite the visual splendors that greet their eyes, neither Nichols nor Huntley take advantage of the nudie cuties on display quite literally posing for their male earthling friends. They allow the women to touch and explore their faces, but they nary lay even a hand on the sweet moon dolls and men. Even intelligent critics such as Abbey Bender writing in Artforum have to conclude that, although it’s “tempting to read a feminist message into the film” “given Wishman’s work in a genre thought to be the sole province of leering men….” “Nude on the Moon’s salient trait is its innocence.”

     Indeed, this 1961 film almost tempts the viewer to compare the work with film-naifs such as Wood and write out a list of the ridiculous events in this seeming sci-fi moon adventure. Wishman herself often encourages such attitudes by mocking her own oeuvre. Critic Elena Gorfinkel reminds us that according to her biographer “she would bristle when asked about her aesthetic, quipping, ‘What style? The lack-of-money style?’”

     To place Doris Wishman in the same category of Ed Wood, however, is a vast mistake. Wishman’s works may look to be “innocent,” but she is as aware of the campy tropes she’s working with and the mind-games she is playing as the wittiest and most brilliant of camp queens such as James Bidgood and John Waters. Those reviewers who make the mistake of taking any of Wishman’s absurd narratives to heart are doomed to miss all the real fun.

     I think to best understand Nude on the Moon we need begin at the beginning of the film with boyish Jeff Huntley’s telephone call to his mentor, so excited by the news he has just received that he stops by a phonebooth to call just to make sure Nichols remains in his office until he gets there so that he can spill the beans, that his uncle has died leaving him 3 million dollars, which will now allow them to build the rocketship to the moon without any government funding.

     Already Wishman has thrown us into world of outsiders, a man who, as in so many movies about sudden luck winners of lotteries, inheritances, and jackpots will probably be doomed in his attempts to enjoy his riches; and a couple of scientists attempting to work completely outside of normal channels. Indeed, Huntley and Nichols are so convinced in their private theories and experiments that they consult no one else and don’t even announce their private space launch to the press.

 

     But then Huntley is an outsider in other ways as well. First of all, the nerdy, flat-topped scientist drives, quite inexplicably, a pink convertible, the color associated with the flamboyant males often described as being homosexual (see, for example, Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr. Sloane wherein the closeted brother of Sloane’s landlady owns a pink 1959 Pontiac Parisienne convertible). And when Nichols, knowing of Cathy’s love for his protégée, suggests he worries about the overworking boy who while he’s young should enjoy himself, Huntly insists that his only real enjoyment is science. With the money he’s just received he might retire, settle down, and raise of family, Nichols continues. But Huntley immediately shuts him up, “Marry? Me? No Sir!”—reconfirming Nichol’s earlier comments to Cathy that Huntley is interested only in his work.

     I’d say, as an observant “outsider” myself, that our young hero sounds a bit like he’s queer, that he’s more interested in spending time in the office with Nichols than ever noticing Cathy’s hardworking attempts to get his attention, let alone observing her rather fulsome bust.

     As the six months they have given themselves before their launch clicks down to a few days, Nichols tries to bring up the subject several times, worrying for the fact that if they get to the moon, they might not be able to return, a tragedy given Jeff’s young age, a boy with the rest of his life before him. But each time Huntley insists that he’s gung-ho on the scientific experiment he’s set out before himself. Even the day before the launch, when Nichols, suggests that he sees the boy as a kind of son, insisting he’d like to see him happily settled down with a wife and a family. Again Huntley immediately reacts, “Let me just say this time and I hope never again: I’m not interested in marriage or settling down. Science is my life and nothing else.”

    What does a father-figure do when he’s convinced that his boy, despite his age, still needs to be thoroughly educated about the birds and the bees, or simply has to be taught about the female anatomy? One must recall that this was still a time when you couldn’t admit to being gay, and no director might possibly explore, if she were to want her movie exhibited, her hero’s “outsider” status. Besides Wishman obviously enjoys women and their shapely figures, particularly their toes and breasts. Her only hope—or perhaps I should say her character Nichols’ only hope is that he might “convert” the boy from being the “unmarrying kind.”

      Wishman plants dozens of small clues throughout this early part of the film that the real trip may not be to the moon—which, after all, has long been the symbol of heterosexual love—but to some more earthy den of iniquity that might help in his protégée’s conversion therapy.

      Wishman plants dozens of small clues throughout this early part of the film that the real trip may not be to the moon—which, after all, has long been the symbol of heterosexual love—but to some more earthy den of iniquity that might help in his protégée’s conversion therapy.

      As they drive off to the launch site we might notice a cute little trinket tied up to the visor with a bright pink ribbon, another indication that our boy just loves the color pink. Huntley suggests that the professor hasn’t gotten to see the movie he was looking forward to seeing before he leaves. But Nichols admits that he saw it last night, Jeff a bit worried that perhaps he didn’t get enough sleep, the professor assuring him that the picture was well worth it. At that very moment, I should point out, they are passing the Variety theater which happens to be showing in “Nuderama” Doris Wishman’s first film Hideout in the Sun.

     We never see the rocket into which they soon after climb, but we really don’t need to see it since perhaps it doesn’t actually exist. Besides, in a few moments after take-off first Nichols and then Huntley are overcome with immense drowsiness, both of them falling asleep almost as if they were drugged. Their ship lands without needing any of their support, and even they wonder are they really on the moon?

     What follows are the semi-surreal adventures described above, a tour through a topless female nudie pic akin to François Reichenbach’s all-male pin-up flick Last Spring (1954), as far away from Jean Genet or even Wishman’s later female sexploitation films as you can get. Having literally slept together, what these two moon explorers—dressed up similar to Christmas elves—observe is safer even than a Times Square topless flick. These pretty girls are there merely for one’s edification, and their male observers are inexperienced nerd-voyeurs who stare and snap photographs, but don’t even dare to touch.

 

    Where they are doesn’t truly matter. All we know is that it’s just like earth, no need for oxygen tubes, although given the fact of Huntley’s increased heartbeat he may soon need some fresh air. And how nice that the moon queen looks exactly like Cathy back in his office, with whose half-undressed visage he’s now quite impressed. Nichols encourages him calmly to explore the territory, obviously in the name of science. And the would-be father is almost pleased with the boy’s wonderment. Does it surprise us that, unlike Dorothy in Oz, Huntley has no desire to return home. He’s clearly already there, as if Nichols has somehow spirited him off to Wishman’s movie down the street from where they work. After all, the theater banner suggests there are always double-features.

     And when they return home, accordingly, it certainly shouldn’t surprise us that, gee whiz, they forgot the camera and have no evidence of their amazing discoveries, and that the authorities from the Pentagon who checked out the rocket doubt it ever could have even flown, or that re-encountering his secretary Cathy, our boy is finally ready to embrace her for his first kiss? There’s no place like home. And there’s no father who isn’t proud to take his boy’s attention off his toys and point him in the direction of some rather more mature playthings? Conversion completed sir! Ready and out.

 

*The first film I discussed under this title was Henry Schenck, Edward Warren, and Alice Guy Blaché’s 1912 film, Algie the Miner. The subject makes its way, in most later films proven as a failure, throughout the several volumes of this work.

 

Los Angeles, March 20, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2023).

Mario Roncoroni | Filibus (Filibus: The Mysterious Air Pirate) / 1915

exploring identity

by Douglas Messerli

 

Giovanni Bertinetti (screenplay), Mario Roncoroni (director) Filibus (Filibus: The Mysterious Air Pirate) / 1915   

 

Milestone films recently restored the 1915 Italian crime thriller Filibus: The Mysterious Air Pirate.

And as their publicists reiterated the advertisement from the April edition of the Italian film magazine La Vita Cinematogafica of that same year, “No other crime thriller compares to Filibus!” It’s still true today.

      Involving a sophisticated male detective Kutt-Hendy (Giovanni Spano); his more-than-best friend, Leo Sandy (Filippo Vallino) who just happens to be an antiques collector who has recently purchased an ancient Egyptian cat statue with real diamonds for it eyes, a man who wants to marry Kutt-Hendy’s sister Leonora (Cristina Ruspoli) perhaps just to remain close to his dear friend; and would-be detective Baroness Troixmond (Valeria Creti), we quickly discover the entire cast would love to uncover the identity of the renowned jewel thief Filibus.

      This remarkable silent film is not only about the art of detection, but the seeming loss of or confusion of identity, or, in the case of Filibus, the constant reinvention of the self.

      One of the amazing talents of the unidentifiable Filibus, who as Filibus always wears a mask, is that he or she is also able to force others into a crisis wherein they are not even quite sure of who they themselves are. From the very beginning of the film, as Baroness Troixmond joins the others in the search for the air pirate—who operates marvelously from a high flying dirigible—she insists that not only will she uncover the identity of Filibus but prove that he is none other than detective Kutt-Hendy himself, a proposition that is utterly preposterous to all those who know of Kutt-Hendy’s societal and sleuthing credentials. 

      But we, who know that the Baroness is Filibus, or perhaps we should say, is also Filibus, are immediately fascinated in discovering how she will possibly succeed in this seemingly absurd task. 

     Before Kurt-Hendy can even finish his morning tea, Filibus manages to steal one the most important ways in which we each can identify our existence as separate beings, our finger prints, taking an imprint off of the Detective’s hand after drugging his drink.

     With that in “hand” so to speak, she metamorphoses once again, this time switching genders to become Count de la Brive, who—after Filibus has arranged to have Leonora kidnapped on her daily horse ride—manages to rescue her, becoming not only a dear friend of the young lady but gaining entry through her into the Kutt-Hendy villa and access to his friends, including Leo Sandy.

      Unlike almost all the other films of the second decade of film history involving cross-dressing, Filibus does not simply pretend to be a man, but quite literally becomes one in behavior as the Count successfully courts Leonora, she far preferring him to Sandy, whose romantic inclinations she has previously dismissed.

      As now almost a member of the family, the Count is someone with whom Kutt-Hendy feels he can consult and, as a friend of the detective, is a man Sandy feels comfortable enough to invite to the unveiling of his new Egyptian treasure.

      At that event, moreover, the Count manages to cut a circle in the protective glass of the diamond-eyed cat, slip the cutters into Kutt-Hendy’s pocket, and place the detective’s own handprints upon the tool, while inside leaving the message that by nightfall the diamonds will be missing.

       Kutt-Hendy is so stunned by the brazen attempts at robbery that he demands all present be searched—whereupon he discovers that he himself holds the glass cutting tool—and fingerprinted, only to discover later, when he applies chemicals to the prints found on the glass, that they are his own, as well those on the glove of the man who abducted his sister! As he admits to the doctor he consults, he fears he is losing his mind. Although the doctor does suggest that nightwalkers sometimes forget all they do during their sleepy maneuvers, he assures the detective that he is not such a man, presumably simply asserting his patriarchal authority.

     To trick Filibus or whoever is behind the attempted robbery, Kutt-Hendy and his friend Sandy remove the diamonds from the cat’s eyes, replacing them with glass stones, but also placing a miniature camera within the eye socket in order to get a picture of the robber. They hide the real diamonds in a nearby container which can be opened only through a hidden trick-lock.

     In order to have open access to his mansion, Filibus kidnaps Sandy and spirits him away to the sky pirate’s aerial headquarters

     Meanwhile, Filibus revisits the cat and, after recognizing that the stones are counterfeits, as well as accidently tripping the lock to the box, discovers the real diamonds and brilliantly discerns the existence of the hidden camera.

     Drugging Kutt-Hendy, she has her men drag over the cat and, pulling away the false stone, allows the camera to snap a photograph of the sleeping “hero.” Hurrying back to his own mansion, finally, she places one of the real diamonds in an obvious location on Kutt-Hendy’s desk, presumably keeping the other as her reward.

 

     The double evidence of the stone itself and the camera picture cannot but convince everyone of the detective’s guilt, even he attempting imagine how he accomplished such tasks in his wildest nightmares. Surely now even Kutt-Hedy’s sister must wonder whether or not she truly knows her brother. And even the authorities who known him for years, have no other recourse but to find him guilty. In short, Kutt-Hendy has been revealed to be someone other than himself—not a detective but a thief!

      Fortunately, given director Mario Roncoroni’s operatic plot, Sandy, still flying through all this overhead as the prisoner of Filibus, steals a parachute and leaps to safety. Swimming home, exhausted and confused by events, he dries off, the next morning reading the paper only to discover that his friend is about to be sentenced for having been behind the robbery.

       He races to the magistrate and explaining his own abduction temporarily frees the detective, but only if they can find the real criminal and prove Kutt-Hendy’s innocence. By the end of Part Four of this adventure, Kutt-Hendy and Sandy exit the courthouse arm and arm as they reassert their love for one another. It may represent only male comradery, but the detective surely knows that he has his friend to thank for saving his life, and Sandy knows that only his friend can find the true criminal who has stolen his peace of mind and, without him knowing it, the love of Leonora.

  

    Surely these two men have grown closer at this moment than ever before. And even if there is utterly no evidence of sexual interest between them, the look in their eyes is one of life-long devotion.

      To lure Filibus out into the open, Leonora, the detective, and Sandy create a plot in which they announce the fact that Kutt-Hendy has been released and has returned to his villa.

        The only things Filibus cannot resist, evidently, are jewels and the possibility of once more getting the better of the men who pose themselves as experts. She takes up the task of incriminating her opponent once again with lust.

       This time she plots to sedate Kutt-Hendy, rob the international bank, and incriminate him in order to prove his has committed the act. Kutt-Hendy takes his tea this morning with cotton plugs stuffed into his nose so the perfume of the sedative will not affect him.

       Filibus, in mask, enters the Kutt-Hendy villa, being sure to cut his telephone line years ahead of any other such intruder until the 1940s when it became standard procedure. She then tosses a few droplets of the sedative his way and he pretends to doze off, but grabs her as she approaches to check, pulling out a gun and stripping the mask away from her face to reveal—why of course it all makes sense now, Count de la Brive!

       Attempting to phone the police, he discovers his line to be dead, forcing him to tie up the count with pieces of rope his has already prepared for just such a contingency. Closing the windows and locking the doors behind him, the detective leaves his villa to get help, he and Sandy rushing off the report that he has captured the villain.

 

       Meanwhile, despite the rope, the Count / Filibus manages to jump near enough to the window and open the covers in order to signal to her dirigible crew, one member of whom slides down a rope grabs her up and takes her back to the heavens and escape.

        When the authorities arrive, they find the room empty. But at least they now know who the thief truly is, Count de la Brive. It is time for poor Leonora to wonder who she might be, having been so taken in by the Count who was a scoundrel even while he made love. Imagine what she might think of herself if she actually knew the Count’s gender? As it is, she finally submits to her second-best choice, Leo Sandy, who, as I mention above, her brother was truly happy to invite into his family.

     Filibus, not truly having been defeated, admits defeat but vows that he or she will find vengeance in the near future. The unknown Filibus still has no one identity at movie’s end, and stands as a woman as an obvious feminist hero, a goal which Futurist writer Giovanni Bertinetti claimed was his attempt to free Italian women. He wrote numerous books of science fiction and an important Futurist manifesto: “The Cinema: School of the Will and of Energy.” Interestingly, Bertinetti also wrote stories for young people, including a version of Pinocchio, and, under the pseudonym of Donna Clara, books about home decoration and beauty for women, making Joe sound, at least to me, similar to his hero a woman in disguise or a man who must have been gay to know so very much, for a macho science fiction writer, about decorating and beauty products.

      Accordingly, I’d argue Filibus is more than a woman who is able to hold sway over an entire minion of males, who can outwit any man, and who can clearly determine her own destiny, but is also a being of transgender dimensions, a figure constantly shedding his or her identities to explore who or what she or he might prefer to be. This film is far more, in short, that an admirable representation of yet another cross-dressing woman with feminist ideals, but is a coded declaration of sexual revolution.

 

Los Angeles, April 22, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (April 2022).