Kristen Bjørn | Trouser Bar / 2016

on and off panting

by Douglas Messerli

 

John Gielgud (screenwriter), Kristen Bjørn (director) Trouser Bar / 2016 [20 minutes]

 

This campy and charming short film has a script (purposely uncredited by the filmmakers) by the towering actor Sir John Gielgud, and was originally intended to be directed by Peter de Rome, a gay director of early porn films who Gielgud very much admired. According to producer David McGillivray, de Rome died before being able to complete the project which then fell into his hands. 

      He chose the pseudonymous Kristen Bjørn to direct, which he does very much in the manner of de Rome. But McGillivray could not get permission from the Gielgud Trust to release the film. Finally, after years of correspondence back and forth, the Trust claimed that there was no such script by Gielgud, and that the film could only be released if all mention and associations with the actor were removed from the work and its promotion.

    So they were, the film itself suggesting the issue only tangentially by calling the menswear shop in which the trousers are sold, Sir John’s, which in a preface comment we are told to ignore.

     But McGillivray nonetheless had written about the film and his difficulties, and there is evidence that Gielgud, himself having a sort of fetish for corduroy, did indeed approach de Rome with the script. In any event, the film is certainly worth a peek, which is very much what Trouser Bar is all about, promoting delightful voyeurism of its audience on the film’s fictional British street.

     Two men arrive early to the shop, watching the employees carefully unclothe and re-attire the mannequins in the window. It is hard to know whether they find the boys, the mannequins, or the cloths the most appetizing, but at any rate, they scurry into the shop the moment it opens, tactilely feeling the fabrics they are about to purchase.

     The shop evidently permits only a few clients each day, since the attention provided to them is quite spectacular. Not only do the shop employees   provide curtained booths in which they engage their customers in a complete fitting, but also offer a total massage of all body parts, resulting of course in sexual engagement, which is expected to be viewed by the other customers and employees through the curtains who, in turn, are also nicely serviced.   

     The figures involved read almost like one of de Rome’s titles: Bobby (Denhom Spurr), David (Ashley Ryder), Larry (Zac Renfree), Joe (Craig Daniel).

     Eventually when a third customer, Lee (Hans Berlin) enters seeking horseback riding attire, complete with leather gloves and riding whip, he is offered a special room decked out in S&M accoutrements, and is soon joined by all the other customers and employees for an orgiastic romp.

     The curtains, left just slightly ajar, also bring out a large contingent of streetside onlookers, peering through the shop windows as the action gradually gets hotter and hotter, all very much in the manner of other Peter de Rome films.

     When the blonde employee finally comes to pull down the shades, the streetside voyeurs have already grown so excited that, totally disappointed by the end of their remarkable sexual entertainment, they begin kissing one another in broad daylight.

      The 1970s costumes of garish checks and stripes, the hairdos and sideburns of the period, and the bright pastels of the film all call up de Rome’s works perfectly. Both de Rome and Sir John, I suspect, would have highly approved.

 

Los Angeles, March 8, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2023).