James Broughton | Adventures of Jimmy / 1950

seeking what he seems to never find

by Douglas Messerli

 

James Broughton (director and actor) Adventures of Jimmy / 1950

 

     James Broughton’s 1950 film Adventures of Jimmy is, in many respects, like Markopoulos’ 1949 film, Christmas, USA, a voyage of recognition—although in Broughton’s work everything the hero says seems to say is the opposite of what he does. Jimmy, having been left alone by the death of his family, has inherited a mountain shack, coming of age but feeling quite alone, expressing, as Broughton does throughout this work, a kind witty expression of the facts: “I had no one to play with. I could play with myself,” etc.

     Determined to find someone to love, Jimmy ventures out into the world, his isolated location requiring him to travel a long time before finding friendly faces. He first encounters others playing in the waters, sailing and sunbathing along what is clearly is a beach community. From his small circular suitcase—one of the several visual jokes of this film—Jimmy pulls out a sailors’ cap, which, when put upon his head turns him almost immediately—particularly given his high reedy voice and his slim, good-looks—into a gay icon. Pulling a telescope from the same small carrying case, he first looks to a boat filled with beefy males, followed up by a small vessel of floating female vamps, obviously out to get him.

      The dialogue in this film is quite clever, suggesting always one thing but saying something else: “Finding what one wants is hard to do,” the young sailor-boy suggests. With camera in hand and shewing off the obviously advancing female figure, he wonders “Could I make fit the picture to what I had in mind?” Obviously, none of these females appeal to our hero, for he is soon off to the city to find what he can there.

      Almost immediately he encounters two prostitutes who each vie for his attention, forcing him to enter a building where he waits for them to follow before making his escape. How can “an awkward fellow with high ideals” find the right person, he ponders. Of course, all of his self-descriptions suggest his sexuality is other than she is seeking, and in between each set of up possible female companions, Broughton imposes various male on male configurations of men wrestling, visiting Turkish baths, or just hanging out together, making it clear that our troubled hero is looking in all the wrong places.

      Indeed, Jimmy is so perplexed and dissatisfied with women, particularly when he tries to turn a plain looking servant into a beautiful woman—hilariously pulling a pair of women’s slippers and a featured hat from his little round carrying case (one can only imagine why he is carrying these items in his luggage)—but, once again, failing in his search for love, that he seeks the help of a psychoanalyst. Again, Jimmy queries: “Was I too refined, too well read that I gave the wrong impression? I was getting more confused.”

      Soon after, we see the well-dressed Jimmy leaving the church with a bride—only this bride has a complete veil hanging over her face, which forces us to speculate what she (or obviously he) might possibly look like.

      Broughton quite wryly refuses to go where the movie has logically taken us. Instead we see him back at his mountain cabin where a woman appears in a window, before another, and another, until several women come together to represent, purportedly, a complete family of cheerful servants. Isn’t this after all, what the American male truly seeks, Broughton seems to be asking? Not a true sexual companion, but a being who, perhaps even with others, can properly cook and clean the house?

      The director, accordingly, turns the obvious desires of the searching Jimmy on their head—forcing us to realize that what Jimmy really wants, he can’t have. At least not yet!

     

Los Angeles, July 5, 2015

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July 2015).