Donald Richie | Boy with Cat / 1966

masturbatus interruptus

by Douglas Messerli

 

Donald Richie (director) Boy with Cat / 1966

 

This 6-minute film by the great scholar of Japanese cinema and writer about all things Japanese Donald Richie, Boy with Cat from 1966 was one of about 11 short films by Richie that were not meant for public showing, some of them involving homosexuality.

     The handsome young Japanese man indoors on a summer afternoon in this film—despite the insistent noise of some kind of noisy machine and the incompetent rehearsal nearby of a pianist attempting to play Ludwig van Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata—determines to masturbate.

      To help arouse himself, the young man still takes out a stack of pictures and begins leafing through them as he lays on his side, raising his shirt ever-so-slightly to rub his chest before moving his hand down to his penis and stroking it through his pants.

      There is nothing here to necessarily suggest he is gay, and we can never get a glimpse of the photos clearly enough to determine whether they are of female or male figures. Are they pictures of friends and acquaintances or simply the kind of old porno cards one use to be able to purchase? We never know.

       Although the subject may be heterosexual or homosexual, the camera is definitely involved in a homoerotic representation of the act, according with Richie’s own homosexuality. And the early scenes of the strikingly beautiful young man are quite similar to those in many early gay porno films when setting up the scene was just as important as the result.

       Except in this case, as we witness, with the ungodly noise he and the viewer must suffer along with the increasing affectionate attentions of his pet black cat who every time he begins to pull his pants down or lay on his back jumps up on groin for a petting, the sexuality of this film quickly turns to comedy. And we can only laugh when the boy finally gives up, stands, tucks in his shirt, and seemingly contemplates the situation.

        Richie’s film, accordingly, transforms the entire issue of sexual pleasure and our imminent voyeurism into a commonplace act of gentle satire. The stills reveal, however, just how homoerotic this “uneventful” film remains.

 

Los Angeles, October 13, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2022).