William Branden Blinn | Chased / 2009

without thinking

by Douglas Messerli

 

William Branden Blinn and Taylor McPartland (screenplay), William Branden Blinn (director) Chased / 2009 [16 minutes]

 

One might argue that Chased is a continuation of the love concerns of director William Branden Blinn’s film of the previous year, Thirteen Minutes or So where in two straight men suddenly find themselves in bed together having wild sex, which they immediately after can neither explain nor fully accept. Yet despite all their denials and reassurances that this was just a one-time thing, they can’t keep their hands off one another and immediately resume where they left off, obviously discovered their sexuality in a manner that neither of them ever expected.

    In his 2009 short film Blinn begins this time with two straight collegiate football players, long-time friends Seth (Adam Kalesperis) and Charlie (Gregg Rogen), grabbing a pizza for a weekend of relaxation and fun. One of them accidentally bumps into a man standing outside the pizza parlor, obviously what college boys often call a townie, who is belligerent in the extreme about the incident. Within a moment a whole gang of local thugs have gathered ready to rough up the boys who immediately drop their boxes and run, racing through the city streets faster than they probably have ever had to in a football game. As writer Taylor McPartland puts it in his online description: “Rounding corners and jumping walls Seth and Charlie begin to depend more and more on each other as the chase continues.”

 

    For a moment they are caught by one of the thugs, but both escape again, this time running into one appears to be dead-end alley. Quickly thinking, one of the boys spots a hidden hatch that leads to the building’s basement. He opens it and the boys rush in, closing the door and pushing a garbage can in front of it. They can hear the voices of their would-attackers, confused for disappearance, but finally things appear to quiet down.

      Relieved but still angry, for a moment they blame each other for ending up in this situation, pushing and shoving until suddenly, still throbbing with the adrenaline of the event Charlie impulsively kisses Seth, who in shock backs off shouting out “What’s the matter with you?” before a second later returning an equally passionate kiss.

    In seconds the two are on the floor, Charlie on top wrestling with removing clothing as Charlie fucks Seth. In the middle of the fuck a couple of the thugs return, the heavy weight of the group now spotting the door, pulls in open and pushes away the garbage can to spot the boys almost oblivious of his presence. He quickly closes the door and demands everyone run off, presumably in disgust of what he’s just observed, a sort of reversal of what one might expect, a shock apparently to the thug-town-boy ethos.

 

    Seth is the one cannot believe what happened, his pants covered in cum which he first thinks must be piss. He rejects the entire situation and pulls away from his long-time friend even though Charlie picks him up and drives him to school each day. Charlie tries to assure his friend that it was an isolated thing, that it won’t happen again. Yet he who recognizes the meaning of the events and realizes that he’s long been fantasizing about his friend and that he probably gay, a reality Seth is not at all ready to accept.  Over the next few days there is a kind of stand-off between the two of them as neither of t hem, least of all Seth dare to even discuss what has happened between them. But Charlie, it is clear, is obsessed with his friend, finally admitting to him in private conversation near the school, he admits, “I can’t stop thinking about you. All the time. Every day. I can’t help it. I think about you before you go to bed at night. First thing in the morning….” His conversation is interrupted as they suddenly joined by a group of their male friends, who move in, one of them sitting between them. As their friends chatter, the boys both remain removed and cold to the others, finally making them realize that the two were in the middle of a serious conversation, quickly determining to leave them alone.

       Their conversation results in Seth agreeing to one more time, but this time he fucks. “You owe me,” Charlie arguing that he doesn’t owe him anything.  

       Yet the boys return to Seth’s bedroom, stripping naked, but Seth can’t even get erect, and Charlie realizes that perhaps Seth doesn’t share his feelings after all. The two get dressed and Charlie turns to go. 

       But suddenly Seth stops him, repeating word for word, Charlie’s comments, “I can’t stop thinking about you….”  And almost immediately the boys begin the passionate kiss, Seth now in full erection as they slam into the bed just as the credits begin to roll.

        Not only is this a truly sexy work, but it is well acted, beautifully filmed, and represents a fairly complex narrative structure, visually at least. The music by Mark Chait which seems to incorporate something like a native American chant is perfect for the emotional confusion of the boys who thought they were straight until they suddenly realized they were in love.

 

Los Angeles, July 29, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2024).

Federico Fellini and Albert Lattuada | Luci del varietà (Variety Lights) / 1950

a poor house of artists

by Douglas Messerli

 

Alberto Lattuada, Tulio Pinelli, and Ennio Flaiano (screenplay, based on a story by Federico Fellini), Federico Fellini and Alberto Lattuada (directors) Luci del varietà (Variety Lights) / 1950

 

Although in the middle of the Federico Fellini-Alberto Lattuada directed film of 1950, Variety Lights, the central figure Cheeco Del Monte (Peppino De Felippo) suddenly encounters a world of poor artists who live on the streets of Rome or artists who spend their nights in “poor houses,” hotels where the poor sleep upright, locked into position by a wooden brace, the entire movie might be described as presenting a kind “house of poor artists”—artists who not only have little money but are poor performers, singers, dancers, and comedians showing very little talent playing night after night on the stages of small town Italian theaters before escaping, once again, their theater managers and others to whom they owe they salaries. Fellini’s film—and despite the co-direction of this movie, one would have to recognize it as Fellini’s vision—portrays a whole world of delusional wannabees, figures, who with very little to offer, are convinced of their abilities to entertain and are enchanted with the flea-bitten theater companies that allow them the chance to strut their stuff.

      Like people everywhere, these individuals weigh themselves by their survival, venting jealousies, false pride, and their desires for love as if they belonged to a wealthy opera company instead of the backstreet popular venue, which even its unsophisticated audiences often mock. Fellini’s and Lattuado’s version of these rough-hewn pretenders is comic and, at times, sentimental; but one might imagine, had he simply pushed his sense of the absurd and exaggerated his types just a little further, he might have ended up with a film closer to Tod Browning’s Freaks rather than to the darkly comic work he actually created. Characters such as Cheeco, Edison Will (Giulio Cali), some of the dancers, and even Liliana (Carla Del Poggio) may be dislikeable, but they ultimately find sympathy in the viewer’s eyes. They are not monsters, even if their behaviors might threaten to break out into violence and chaos. Checco’s new company, moreover—the one he creates in opposition to the tawdry side-show in which he have previously played—is peopled by far more likeable and innocent figures, particularly the quite talented American trumpet player Johnny (John Kitzmiller), the Gypsy street singer (Vanja Orico), and the gun slinging cowboy Pistolero Bill (Joseph Falleta). Even though this company fails even more than the previous company with whom he worked, there is something redeeming in their far greater-innocence, their devout poverty, and their unquestionable devotion to their arts.

     Although there are obvious connections between Variety Lights and later works such La strada and even 8 ½, I would suggest that this early film has far more in common with Fellini’s significant 1959 masterpiece, La Dolce Vita, two scenes in particular which predict the director’s satire of the Italian elite and their hangers-on. The one night that the often hungry and sleep-deprived acting troupe actually are invited to dinner and to spend the night in comfortable beds in the castle of a local Duke (Giacomo Furia) ends badly when, because they have interfered with the Duke’s sexual assault of Liliana; like the partiers at the castle of Roman aristocracy, the actors are forced to shuffle of into the sunrise like ghosts without a clear destination in their lives. Shortly after, at an upscale Roman nightclub, Fellini gives us a preview of the bacchanalian-like dancing and sexual coupling of Roman life, including the famed scene of men riding their women like animals while sitting upon their backs. In many respects, Variety Lights represent a community not unlike the journalists and paparazzi of few years later—the only major difference being these poorer folk have a bit less imagination than their debauching brothers. But in that fact, in their simpleness, they are, perhaps, less destructive and more appealing that those who have reached the pinnacle of success these poor folk seek.

     The final scenes of Fellini’s and Lattuada’s concoction reveal just this reality, as the now well-dressed, fur-covered Liliana, finally able to find success with a wealthy burlesque company on their way to Milan, encounters Checco and his company traveling in the opposite direction toward a small Italian village where they will perform that night. Checco is impressed by Liliana’s beauty and attire; she has clearly attained all of her dreams—or has she? We have witnessed her new role where: her breast covered with pasties, she balances for the overweight prima donna, who is so ugly that she appears to be what seems to be an overweight drag-queen singing her way down a staircase in a cheap imitation of the Follies Bergère. Frankly, I’d rather see Pistolaro Bill, the Brazilian singing gypsy, and Johnny the trumpeter any day over the kitschy burlesque routine which now pays her bills.

      And Fellini appropriately ends his film with another train trip, as we tag along with Checco’s new-found friends, and, more importantly, his return to the arms of his beloved Melina Amour (Giulietta Masina), who he has previously abandoned for Liliana. Yet, while everything has changed for the untalented Liliana, nothing has changed, except the faces, in Checco’s company, as a new girl enters their train car, flirting with Checco as he flirts right back: great actor, director, agent Checco is a self-important fool who will never learn—perhaps for his own protection—who he really is. So if Liliana is blind to reality, so too, suggests the directors, is Checco. For those devoted to theater, only the few moments they stomp the stage floor has any truth.

 

Los Angeles, May 21, 2014

Reprinted from International Cinema Review (May 2014).

 

Agnès Varda | Cléo de 5 à 7 (Cléo from 5 to 7) / 1962

 

will art survive?

by Douglas Messerli

 

Agnès Varda (screenwriter and director) Cléo de 5 à 7 (Cléo from 5 to 7) / 1962

 

Agnès Varda’s Cléo from 5 to 7 begins in color with a hand breaking a deck of Tarot cards, choosing several of them, and the cards being turned over by the fortune “reader.” Many of the events she describes in what she sees in the cards we will later find to be true: Cléo (Corinne Marchand), a beautiful young pop singer is loved by an older man who has helped her in her career, she will meet a talkative man, and she is faced with death. Whether or not she will survive that cancer, we never find out. The card reader is convinced she will die.

 























     But Varda also makes clear in shooting that one scene in color that it is of our “real” world, not the black and white fictional world of Cléo’s the takes place over one and a half hours (the length of movie) between 5 and 6:30, helping us to recognize the difference between reality and fiction.

      Cléo and her housekeeper, Angèle (Dominique Davray) are superstitious, almost like children, refusing to take taxis with certain numbers upon them and to wear anything new on Tuesdays. Cléo, however, has deeper problems: she has just tested for stomach cancer and will be told the results that afternoon. Terrified by the idea, Cléo alternates between statements of angst, and a playful flirting with the men who pass her in the street and a more serious flirtation with herself in nearly mirror and windowpane she passes. To cheer herself up, she stops by a shop, joyfully trying on various hats before choosing a winter hat for this summer day. The lovely Cléo dressed in a sophisticated polka dots ensemble and wig clearly is vain and self-centered. She talks only about herself, her budding career as a singer, the fact that her lover hardly ever sees her, and, of course, her fears of death.

     Played out in real time, Varda takes us for a joyful taxi ride through the streets of Paris before depositing Cléo in her spacious apartment, consisting of a swing, a chinning bar, a rocking chair, piano, and a large bed, the latter to which retreats as if it were a throne. Her elderly lover drops by, her lyricist and composer (performed by real composer Michel Legrand) sing and play several new songs from which she asked to choose, and Cléo herself sings a lovely lament before leaving the house in a tiff.

      Back on the street, Cléo meets up with her artist modeling friend, Dorothée who, with her watches a short silent film (with performances by figures such Jean-Luc Godard, Anna Karina, and Eddie Constantine), and takes another wild ride through the streets before ending up at Parc Montsouris.

     There Cléo meets her talkative young man, a French soldier (Antoine Bourseiller) who that very evening must return to his unit in Algeria. Only with this slightly pedantic stranger does Cléo finally stop talking about herself, perceiving the danger he is also facing. Without truly demanding anything from each other, the two finally communicate their fears and worries about life. Together they walk and take a bus to the hospital where Cléo is to hear her “verdict.” Suddenly, however, for the first time, she admits of feeling new hope. A moment later they briefly encounter her doctor who cruelly admits to her that she has cancer while assuring her that, after chemotherapy, she’ll be okay. The screen goes black at 6:30 instead of 7:00.

      If this tale, in which we are reminded of the time as the action moves forward, seems frail, it is, in its frantic movement through space, a beautiful rush of images that seem, even today, as fresh and original as it must have felt in its 1962 premiere. Through snippets of overheard conversation, overlapping conversations, facial expressions, and the gentle dialogue between the film’s two central figures Varda makes us feel as if we were there, on the Paris streets, with her characters. And for that very reason we care for the woman with death following after. Perhaps her salvation, in fact, depends on that sensation of being just behind this awakening woman. As viewers of this all human-like figure aren’t we, after all, a bit like the artist Bladung Grien’s—whose paintings Varda notes, inspired this film—depiction of Death. Will this fictional being survive our judgment of her? Will we allow this shadow to come to life? 

     I’d suggest that Varda’s quick and dark blackout hints at her skepticism. But for those of us who perceive the fresh energy of this early New Wave work, Cléo, a kind of Orpheus, lives on in our memories long past the assigned deadline of the film’s title.

 

Los Angeles, December 18, 2013

Reprinted from International Cinema Review (December 2013).

John Cromwell | Caged / 1950

she’ll be back

by Douglas Messerli

 

Virginia Kellogg (screenplay, based on the book by Kellogg and Bernard C. Schoenfield), John Cromwell (director) Caged / 1950

 

19-year-old Marie Allen (Eleanor Parker) has been sent to prison as an accessory to a small-time botched robbery by her equally young husband, who was killed in the event. We’re not even sure whether or not she knew what her husband was up to; all she knows is that she loved him, and they were both near-starving.

      Worse yet, in the prison entry check-up, she discovers that she is pregnant, and is told that she will have to give up the baby for adoption. Even her mother refuses to take in the child.

       Although the head of the prison, Ruth Benton (Agnes Moorehead), is a stern but kind woman, within this prison for women is yet another, far darker, underworld controlled by Evelyn Harper (Hope Emerson), who awards those who treat her well (including, one presumes, offering themselves up for sexual relations), while brutally abusing others.

       Yes, this is the “grandmother” all those dozens of “dykes in jail” movies that appeared after, itself the granddaughter of Broadway’s 1920s drama Chicago. Certainly we get enough tough talk and stark realist behavior—including the suicide of one of the prison’s denizens, Helen (Sheila MacRae) after she is rejected yet again for parole, sent back into the system since the parole officer cannot find a job for her—that we might think this is yet another cheap pot-boiler B-grade movie.    

       But in John Cromwell’s Caged we get something closer to Anatole Litvak’s classier 1948 film on mental illness, The Snake Pit, with Olivia de Haviland. Like Litvak’s insider view of a terrifying institution, Cromwell’s work has a loud message on its mind. Ranging from total innocence to, by movie’s end, a hardened ex-prisoner, Parker gives a stellar, Oscar-nominated performance that takes us through the step-by-step degradations and learned lessons that turns her from a salvageable young being to a woman, who even the wise prison-head, Benton, recognizes: “She’ll be back.”

      One of the film’s greatest accusations goes to the political system itself, where monsters like Harper are given the patronage of state political hacks, while the good Benton works to reform the situation with the perpetual fear of being fired.

      But there are plenty of guilty figures that work toward the corruption of Marie Allen, including the “buster” (a professional shoplifter) such as Kitty Stark (Betty Garde) and the even higher-up gangster moll, Elvira Powell (Lee Patrick) who ultimately convinces Allen that she’ll never get parole unless she accepts her patronage.

      In this turned upside-down world, breaking the law from inside is the only to get you out. Unless you play along with the evil-doers you’re doomed to the endless boredom, punishment, and tortures of prison life.

      Of course, these facts have been a staple of male prison dramas for decades. We all know that once you’re locked away behind bars, there is no way out: the system makes certain that you will survive only by recreating your crimes over and over.

      Even in the very first scenes, most of the women entering the prison, we perceive, have been there before. Emma Barber (Ellen Corby), standing in for them all, greets her old prison mates and prison staff members with hearty recognition, noting body changes and similarities to their former selves as if she were genuinely happy to see them again. It is only the newcomers, like Allen, who are aghast.

      And yes, as in all of these women-in-prison tales there is something campy about their female camaraderie. But then, even the wealthy women on the up-and-up, such as those in Clare Booth Luce’s The Women are not so very different—perhaps just a bit meaner and more destructive. All-women movies, mostly directed by males, do not generally present a very nice picture of the female sex.

 

Los Angeles, September 22, 2017

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2017).