Frank Vitale | Montreal Main / 1974

the innocents

by Douglas Messerli

 

Frank Vitale, Allan Moyle, and Stephen Lack (screenplay), Frank Vitale (director) Montreal Main / 1974

 

I have to report that the quality of the DVD currently available for Frank Vitale’s 1974 film is quite bad, the film itself faded and the sound sometimes difficult to endure, let alone hear. But the film itself, described as a docufiction, is certainly worth watching, even though the plot consists mostly of events imagined rather than those that really happened. That doesn’t, however, diminish the effects of those imagined events, particularly upon the young 12-year-old Johnny (John Sutherland) and his adult friend Frank (Frank Vitale). The plot appears to have been partially autobiographical, which makes it all the stranger and somewhat inexplicable.

     Frank is friends with Bozo (Allan Moyle). Frank is quite obviously gay, while Bozo is clearly still in the closet, dating—if you can call it that—a woman named Jackie (Jackie Holden), who is both loved and abused simultaneously.

     It’s not that Bozo doesn’t imagine his own sexuality; he and Frank even try out a sexual fling near the docks early in the film; but it is uncertain what comes of that attempted sexual encounter, and in various ways, gently and violently, Bozo spends much of the rest of the film fighting against his own homosexual behavior, although he acquires new male friends along the way.

     John Charles, writing on Letterboxd nicely summarizes the situation:

     “One of the earliest and most notable Canadian underground movies, this finds director Frank Vitale and friends Stephen Lack and Allan ‘Bozo’ Moyle essentially playing themselves. Depressed after breaking up with his girlfriend, photographer Frank strikes up a friendship with a disaffected 12-year-old boy (John Sutherland, who comes across like a pre-teen, Canadian-accented Joe Dallesandro). While their interaction is strictly platonic, trouble still ensues. Meanwhile, Lack and Moyle come in and out of the narrative, the former a free-spirited observer, the latter an immature, self-absorbed trainwreck.”

     Even Frank cannot explain to himself his attraction to the beautiful long-haired boy. In part, Frank is still himself a boy, who plays in the parks with Johnny as if he were a 12-year-old, at one point the two planting rows of matches in the ground to observe their small pyrotechnical effects when lit. And the adult, turn, offers the boy information about radio waves and other facts about which Johnny would otherwise never discover, since he is also regularly skipping his school classes.

    

      Perhaps one might argue that Johnny loves to be in Frank’s company, even more than Frank in his; but the two equally share their sexually innocent relationship. Yet Frank, as an adult, should have known where this might end, and if more self-aware would have realized the dangers of their  relationship, particularly in a world of near hysteria about pedophilia. Today, such a film could not have been made, and if it was represented on film, legions of psychologists and law-officers would have quickly carted Frank off.

      One night, Johnny and his best friend of his age (whose relationship may actually be sexual) escape to another part of town to play in a game amusement parlor. There they encounter a true pedophile, who slips up to them ready to find a way into their confidences. It just happens, however, that Stephen Lack observes the scene and sends the man running with one of Lack’s endless rifts: "What are you doing down here exposing yourselves to this kind of decadent street janitorial paranoia, standing here on the tiled urinal of Babylon?"

      And from that moment on, he begins to suspect Frank’s relationship to the boy, accosting Johnny with insinuating questions and asking him what he feels about all the photographs (Frank works as a photographer) the elder is taking of him.

      Bozo now also turns against his former friend, often behaving violently against him. In fact, it is Bozo who almost molests two young girls who are riding in his car with Jackie.

      Frank and Johnny’s relationship remains innocent, even though it is quite clear that Frank is becoming more and more attracted to the boy. And, course any man who puts himself into such a relationship is to be questioned—his sanity if nothing else.

      Soon Johnny’s inattentive parents becomes involved, Johnny’s father insisting that his son no longer see Frank. This not only confuses the angry young boy but leads him directly back to Frank. But by this time Frank too has been told to stay away from Johnny, and as if waking from a dream, Frank begins to see the ridiculousness of his ways.      

     When Johnny suddenly appears at his ramshackle digs, he suggests a short walk. Sending the boy to a nearby store for a couple of cokes, Frank suddenly disappears from Johnny’s life. That scene is one of the most coherent and emotional of the entire film, as the boy must now face the betrayal of his only adult friend.

      The entire relationship reminds me somewhat of a later film about an immature adult and a child represented in Mike White and Miguel Arteta 2000 film, Chuck and Buck. Yet this is a far more intense relationship between child and man, and you can feel the deep sorrow and anger of the boy, who ends this underground film, in an amusement parlor, a large rifle in hand as he game-plays destruction. One only has to wonder, who is he imaginatively shooting at: all adults, his own father, Frank, a world that stands against innocent love? Fortunately, director Vitale leaves us simply with the image and our own imaginations.

 

Los Angeles, June 8, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2025).