A. Edward Sutherland | Behind the Front / 1926

on the chase

by Douglas Messerli

 

Ethel Doherty (screenplay, based on an adaptation by Monte Price of Hugh Wiley’s The Spoils of War), A. Edward Sutherland (director) Behind the Front / 1926

 

The title of A. Edward Sutherland’s World War I comedy, Behind the Front, represents not only a military position, but puns on what might be hidden behind the faces of its two comic heroes Riff Swanson (Wallace Beery) and Shorty McKee (Raymond Hatton) while perhaps suggesting their permanent physical positions with regard to one another.

     The dense-minded, oblivious Swanson meets up on the city street when the slightly cleverer but just a clueless McKee who attempts to pocket Swanson’s fob. So begins a madcap chase that ends with both of them visiting a recruiting session in which, evidently, young girls such as the sister of Captain Bartlett-Cooper (Hayde Stevenson) are used as decoys to recruit new soldiers. When Betty (Mary Brian) hears her best friend will have her brother’s permission to be able to herself enlist as an early kind of USO volunteer if she gets 29 recruits—she currently has 28—Betty helps hide the window-intruding McKee, while she flirts with his pursuer, handing him her photograph to keep close to his soldier’s heart, asking him if won’t be her war hero, and covertly signing him up as quickly as she can.

      Her friend now having slotted-up 29 men, Betty turns her attention to the man in window seat, offering up her flirtations and photograph all over again. Unknowingly, she has created yet another version of Laurel and Hardy, this time speeding them off into the brutal hands of training Sergeant (Tom Kennedy), who accompanies them to sunny France, which Hollywood long ago has decided to portray in war time as a world of rain and mud.

 

     Inevitably, the Sergeant hates these two men, who are put at the bottom of every roster just as they are punished, jailed, and basically tortured throughout the film.

      As in so many war films, the two previous enemies who don’t recognize one another in their new uniforms, become more than close friends, and like Stan and Ollie seemingly serve and sleep together, some of their physical humor bordering on the bawdy.   

     Were that their adventures as raucous as Laurel and Hardy’s! But there are a few good moments, as when, spotting a man who, having left the trenches, is being used for shooting practice by the Germans. The boys dare to leave their hideout to save him, finally, after clumsy efforts, bringing him back into a nearby trench. But when they see it is their highly hated Sergeant they attempt to take him back to where they found him. At that very moment, US support soldiers arrive to award the Sergeant for having saved not one, but two men. No credit can ever be offered these two lowly privates.

      At several other moments, the duo find it utterly impossible to open a package of Brown’s biscuits. They pull at it, beat it against the wall, punch it multiple times, and even attempt to jump upon it from a height which only deposits it into the ground. Even after a senior office pulls it open, they find the biscuits themselves inedible. At the very end of the film when they discover that their mutual girlfriend, Betty, has just married Percy Brown (Richard Arlen), the creator of this diner’s delight and now highly lauded for having volunteer millions of cases abroad for the soldiers, they take him aside and prove him to be a bit of a wet biscuit.

      Meanwhile, back at the war front, both receive letters from Betty, or at least pretend to receive them. Betty herself eventually shows up at the local entertainment center; and of course, they now realize that she has promised her heart to both of them. Yet instead of fighting over her as you expect they might, they behave in a queer manner, Swanson getting almost mushy over the matter as he “aw shucks” admits “She likes you better, you’re so handsome,” with McKee reciprocating by admitting “You’re bound to get her—you’ve got sex appeal.”

    The boys have obviously bonded. And this time when Swanson approaches the French female bartender, McKee is literally right behind him. Clearly the boys might like a little action but seem more interested in getting some wine out of the two women who run the local bar.

 

 

    A few minutes later, when a German plane attack occurs, while everyone else runs for cover, Swanson goes looking for his buddy McKee, and when he discovers that he’s down, blood apparently running from inside his uniform, he quickly tosses him into the back of a truck, jumps in with him, and holds him close while pleading to the gods to save his life. You half expect him to turn and kiss his “buddy” in the manner of the flyer in William Wellman’s Wings (Wellman’s poignant, truly gay work of 1927 didn’t come of nowhere) until he discovers McKee is not shot, but drunk, and that the blood gushing from his heart was a purloined bottle of wine.

      It’s funny to realize that the actor who portrayed the vilified Brown in this film would later be one of the beautiful flyers of Wellman’s Wings, of which Behind the Front might almost be seen as a precursor.

    Even if you wanted to overlook these bits of evidence that their relationship has turned into something a bit more intimate than soldierly comradery, the movie’s titles won’t permit it.

      As their unit moves closer to the front, a title card suddenly is flashed before us suggesting their desire for the opposite sex, while hinting at their willingness to perform their functions.

   They further prove their commitment to each other by taking on a dangerous duty to reach the German line. They succeed, but get lost, finding themselves in a German trench and soon after in a German armored tanker, imagining that are saving the day only to discover, when they finally attack their own men, that the Armistice had been signed, and their actions have endangered the peace declared by both sides.

      Even after they are sent home and fully take “care” of the biscuit boy, the reality dawning upon them that in the old world they were the robber and his enraged victim, both returning immediately to the chase, the filmmakers themselves insist that they are now an eternal couple, perhaps more dependent upon one another than Betty and her beat-up beau Percy Brown. The final title card reads:

                                  

 

Los Angeles, November 4, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (November 2023).

 

 

 

 

Frédéric Moffet | The Job / 2024

three polaroid pictures, one with an erection

by Douglas Messerli

 

Frédéric Moffet (director) The Job / 2024 [15 minutes]

 

The real “job,” as Canadian photographer John Phillips describes it, was finding the boys which he would take three color polaroids of, all of them naked, at least one with a full erection. Although he claims to have taken photos of all who showed up, he didn’t even way, in some cases of the slow erection.

   

       Having moved to Los Angeles from Canada after being diagnosed as HIV-Positive, Phillips suddenly felt he might not live long and needed, particularly as an illegal alien in the US, to find a career which might allow him to support himself. If he had once imagined himself as being a fashion photographer in the manner of Herb Ritts, he was now reduced to finding appealing male erotica models for the numerous gay magazines of the 1990s, the more liberated inheritors of the 1950s and 1960s Beefcake mags.

     His telephonic message, repeated twice in this short film, tells interested clients that he will meet with them, ask them to strip naked, to get an erection, and to provide proof of being 18 years of age. Their pay, if a gay magazine should happen to take interest in their images, would be from $150 to $300 depending on the publication and the number of photos in the “shoot.”

      It wasn’t really the money for most of them, he recalls, but the ego, a sense that their body, particularly their butts, penises, and faces might be worthy of being included in the then popular mags of the day such as Playgirl, Playguy, Honcho, Fresh, Spurs, and Mandate.

      In the last year of his life, Canadian director Moffet interviews Philllips, who reveals just how difficult to was being gay and HIV-Positive in the 1980s and 1990s, not only with regard to the homophobic elements outside of the queer world, but within it where being HIV meant sudden ostracization.

      He makes it clear that his Hound Dog productions was not run as a casting couch, and that perhaps only 4 or 5 times within the several hundreds of men he photographed did he and his subject engage in sex.

      Filmed in 2023, the year of his death, Phillips, who kept control of his photos was attempting to scan and post most of his archival photos, although given most of the images the film shows us, most of these are not remarkable photos and often not even significant erotica. But Phillips nonetheless felt some pride in representing the vast range of gay men of that era and attempted, so he declares, to create male erotica rather than porno, which he describes simply as sex.

     These were many of the images in which people of my generation grew up with, representing a truly more open attitude toward gay sexuality, despite the specter of AIDS. And one might have imagined such a film to be provocative and fascinating. Unfortunately, Moffet simply sets up his own camera and lets Phillips talk between showing dozens of images of nude men with erections and their butts pointing into air. And any of the true significance of such photographic archives and their relationship to the queer society at large is basically lost in the process of his almost tedious explanation of how he scans his beloved images.

      Despite his aspirations, Phillips was no Ritts nor even Bob Mizner or Frederic Kovert for that matter.

 

Los Angeles, October 19, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2024).

Gary Halvorson and Bartlett Sher | Il barbiere di siviglia, ossia L'inutile precauzione (The Barber of Seville, or The Useless Precaution) / 2007 [the Metropolitan Opera HD-live broadcast]

the crazy house

by Douglas Messerli

 

Gioacchino Rossini (composer), Cesare Sterbini (Libretto, based on the play by Pierre Beaumarchais), Bartlett Sher (stage director), Gary Halvorson (film director) Il barbiere di siviglia, ossia L'inutile precauzione (The Barber of Seville, or The Useless Precaution) / 2007 [the Metropolitan Opera HD-live broadcast]

The great Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez, sometimes described as Pavarotti's heir, who performed Count Almaviva in the Met production of The Barber of Seville Howard and I recently saw is also known also for his performances in La Fille du Régiment, one of Pavarotti's greatest achievements.

     Accordingly, it seems appropriate that I briefly discuss the Metropolitan Opera's wonderful production of The Barber, whose overall production values, overseen by Bartlett Sher, and brilliant operatic performances by Joyce DiDonato as Rosina, Peter Mattei as Figaro, John Del Carlo as Dr. Bartolo, John Relyea as Don Basilio, Claudia Waite as Berta, and, particularly, Flórez as the Count (whose "Ah! qual colpo inaspettato!" nearly stopped the opera with audience applause) were memorable.

  

     The story of The Barber of Seville, as most opera-goers know, is a simple one, the kind of contrived plot behind hundreds of 17th and 18th century farces. Count Almaviva, having espied Rosina in the streets, has fallen in love and followed her to Seville, where he disguises himself as a poor student, Lindoro. Rosina is equally in love with the young man, but is locked away in the house of her guardian, Dr. Bartolo, advised by the musician Basilio, who warns him of the Count's love for Bartolo's ward. Hearing of the Count's interest and the arrival in Seville of a young man, Bartolo tightens the young girl's security, since he himself intends to marry her.

      Figaro, the local barber who has entry to all homes and—so it appears—hearts, is an old friend of the Count, and plots with him how the Count might enter Bartolo's house. He will disguise himself yet again, this time as a drunken soldier, ordered to be billeted in Bartolo's home. When that ends in chaos and failure, the Count visits the house as a disciple of Don Basilio to teach Rosina a music lesson, plotting with her their escape that night.

     The rest of the story predictably involves around a number of temporary setbacks and detours, but ends in the joyful marriage of Rosina to the Count with a nod to Figaro's necessary help, although by opera's end it does almost seem that if the Count had simply appeared as himself in the beginning he might more easily have won Rosina's hand, as if, as the subtitle suggests, all his precautions were useless. But then, of course, there would have been no occasion around which to weave Rossini's joyous arias!

      Aspects of this plot have been employed in so many instances that it may sound to the reader than I am describing another opera or play. The flaxen-haired ward of Judge Turpin in Sweeney Todd, Lucy, a young girl also held against her will, whom the lecherous Judge intends to marry, quickly springs to mind.

      What makes Rossini's version refreshing, however, is the heady willfulness of his heroine, who from the first scene is determined to get the man she wants and is so artful in her quick-witted lies that the audience gasps as she nearly outfoxes her suspicious guardian. In Act II, when Bartolo suggests the letter of love he possesses was sent by the count to another woman, so strong is Rosina's sense of vengeance that she is willing to destroy her own life by marrying the old coot. In short, we can only feel a comic delight when the Count sings of the pains and sorrows the poor, innocent girl has had to suffer; for the woman with whom he will awake in the morning is, in fact, another being than the one of which he sings. There is, indeed, a kind of madness in his love.

      Not only is Rossini's opera, at times, a madcap farce, but is a work that speaks again and again of madness. It is, first of all, a world dominated by the busy activities of Figaro, involved as he is in the secrets and scandals of city life.  Despite the seemingly sequestered world of Dr. Bartolo's house wherein Rosina is confined, moreover, people rush in and out on a regular basis, particularly the Count, first as a soldier, then as a musician; but so too does Figaro feel, evidently, at home in the place, so much so that he is even able to obtain Bartolo's keys. At one point, when Basilio is locked out of the house, he simply pulls apart the iron gate that protects the place. These comings and goings provoke such an uproar at the end of Act I that a crowd gathers in the streets outside the home and the civil guard arrives to correct the chaos. The maid, Berta, sings of the crazy household ("Il vecchitto cerca moglie."). Madness reigns throughout this opera, a storm accompanying even the would-be saviors of Rosina. Is it any wonder that when order is restored, Bartolo defeated, and the Count married to his love, we who have witnessed all these events can only suspect that Rosina and Almaviva may soon continue that chaos in their own new abode.

 

Los Angeles, September 26, 2007

Reprinted from Green Integer Blog (August 2009).