Andy Warhol | Paul Swan / 1965

paul swan and the aesthetic

by Douglas Messerli

 

Andy Warhol (director) Paul Swan / 1965

 

As I observed in my July 2022 essay on Charles W. Allen and Francis Trevelyan Miller’s 1916 film, Diana, the Huntress, in which dancer Paul Swan performed as Pan, Swan was perceived as a major dancer throughout his early years. That work was choreographed by modern dance pioneer Ruth St. Denis, herself highly influenced the aesthetic principles laid out by François Delsarte, his disciples and his Society of Gymnastics and Voice Culture.

     Delsarte, who had inexplicably lost his voice, began a search to comprehend the relationship between personal emotions and physical gestures, over time developing a codified system connecting mental attitudes, physical postures, and gestures. He believed that one’s emotional state could in fact be communicated through one’s physical appearance and performance.

     For example, the extension of the body would be in relationship with the feeling of self-realization; the feeling of annihilation would translate into a bending of the body. Practicing those positions would reinforce the feelings they traduce and all emotions would have their own bodily translation. The gesture reinforced the emotions and the emotions were reinforced by the gestures. Arguably, this was an early Western version of ideas that had long been in action in Eastern thought, that such would also be able to help the dancer or gesturer to open himself up to  those emotions. And accordingly the gesture came to take precedence to the verbal language used to describe the gesture. As he wrote:

 

“What we say is not what persuades but how we say it. The speech is inferior to the gesture because this last one corresponds to the phenomenon of the spirit. The gesture is the agent of heart, the persuasive agent. Sometimes 100 pages cannot say what one sole gesture can express, because in that simple movement our whole being comes to the surface”

 

His codification of the system was also organized under the omnipresence of what some historians call his “understanding of the Christian concept of the trinity,” influenced presumably by this ideological system and the thought of Saint Augustine, the medieval scholasticism and the Neo-Platonism.

     His theory is full of classifications that are always divided into three categories. Called applied aesthetics, it is divided in three parts: the statics, the dynamics and the semiotics.

     The body similarly is divided in three zones: the physical, the emotional and the mental, which correspond to the inferior members, trunk and arms, and neck and head respectively.

     Delsarte argued, moreover, that there are three languages: the affective, transmitted through voice, the elliptic, expressed through gestures and the philosophical, traduced by the articulated word.

      Movement is of three orders: opposition, parallelism and succession, according to the intervention of the physical, emotional or mental part.

       Movement, moreover, is divided into three categories: eccentric, concentric, and normal. And there are three laws for movement (The laws of harmonic movement):

 

1. Law of the harmonic posture: there’s a need to obtain a balanced and natural attitude like the position of perfect rest in Greek statues.

2. Law of opposed movement: every movement of one or several parts of the body demands, for balance principles, an opposed movement of the rest of the segments.

3. Law of the harmonic muscular function or of the succession of contractions: the force of a muscular function must be in direct relationship with the size of the muscles. Therefore muscles should start from the big muscles that surround the pelvis.

 

    Delsarte had two major pupils who spread his theories, Steele MacKaye and Genevieve Stebbins, and it is these two spread the word to modern figures such as Ted Shawn, Isadora Duncan. Ruth St. Denis, and Rudolph Laban.

     By this time, however, Delsarte (1811 – 1871) had been almost forgotten in France, and as his ideas became popular in the US, his teachings quickly became so distorted and mechanized that the entire system soon lost its reputation and grew out of favor.

     Indeed by the time Paul Swan began dancing under its influence it had already begun to grow out of favor.

 

     As I wrote on his 1916 film dancing: “As Pan, Swan presents another, far more innovative dance pattern, although also highly influenced by the Delsarte’s Aesthetic. By this time, however, Swan had already done some of his entirely nude dances which intrigued and scandalized dance admirers and which would later find a ready enthusiast in Isadora Duncan, with whom Swan may have had an affair.

     Although he does not appear nude here, the young Swan, billed as ‘the most beautiful man in the world,’ represents a Pan who is sufficiently undressed to make his movements appear scandalous to some viewers of the 1916 short.”

      Indeed, the eroticism of Swan's nude and near-nude performances was shocking and innovative for the time. A journalist described the reaction of Paris audiences to shows that Swan starred in: "even this gay city has been shocked really and truly by the prevailing cult of nakedness, whose expositions grow more and more daring." Swan described himself in 1915 as "the only man in the world who has the courage to take off his clothes and dance." Surely given his nude dances he might have been arrested and imprisoned, even more so because of his known homosexuality. But his apparent heterosexual marriage to the open-minded Helen Gavit certainly accounted for something. As his biographer Richard Londraville wrote, "He was able to walk through the world much more freely than most homosexuals would at the time. He was very lucky to have a wife that he could fall back on."

     In his speech after the performances that Andy Warhol recorded on tape in 1965, he bragged still that he had never once been jailed.

      In the early 1930s Swan moved permanently to Paris, both painting and dancing. Most of the former except his portraits of Duncan have been lost because of the Nazi occupation. And his dances from that period are now forgotten. In the late 1930s he returned to the US, took up residence in the few Carnegie Hall apartments and from 1939 to 1969 danced and declaimed in Sunday night recitals almost without a break. Among the many who attended his recitals were Marcel Duchamp, Alexander Calder, and others. Presumably Warhol had attended before determining to film him.

     Although the Aesthetic by 1965, when Swann was 88, had long been abandoned by modern and contemporary dancers, and Swann himself had studied other methods, even becoming a private pupil early on with Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes star Mikhail Mordkin, he continued to perform the Aesthetic. And it was that outlandish devotion to a tradition which surely he knew was totally out of style and meaningless that apparently led Warhol to describe him as the very definition of the “camp aesthetic.”

    For anyone without knowledge of who this man was or without comprehending his absurd devotion to a method long lost, Warhol’s film of this elderly man who can hardly any longer move his limbs and who spends much of his time changing into skimpy, outdated costumes which he himself had made, some of the accessories, as he admits, purchased in the dime stores, must seem simply pathetic.

      Swan does not seem at all embarrassed about a no longer attractive body, dressing and undressing almost in the nude in front of the camera. Moreover, he not at all embarrassed for quoting, in the first piece, long passages from the outdated Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, gesticulating in the broad hand waves of the Aesthetic.

      In his elegy for World War I soldiers, he jousts with a wooden sword and kills dozens in his dance “Two Hero’s Slain” before laying down the sword in surrender.

     In his “Three Oriental Numbers”—of which I could discern only two—he don’s his skimpiest of costumes to play out the stereotypes of Asian dance and culture.

     Unable to find his black slippers in order to correctly perform his “French Peasant Dance,” he spends the end of the first reel and much of the beginning of the second behind the stage curtain swearing at the situation as Warhol’s cameraman or others keep calling for him to come out and perform even with the wrong shoes. Finally, his pianist joins in the search and Swann finally reappears.

      Whereas the camera of the first reel was static, allowing us to observe the dance properly in full perspective, the second reel represents a moving camera, which truly does turn Swann’s performance into something very close to Jack Smith’s Normal Love and Ron Rice’s Chumlum of the previous year.

      As he attempts to dress for one more dance, the photographers realize they are quickly running out of film and request that he appear, he arguing that they are probably going to cut most of it anyway, but finally he does reappear to declaim some of his own poems, again embarrassingly outdated works with rhyming couplets and archaic language. The following poem is typical [line breaks mine]

 

           I sometimes think that love is only pain.

           And when your sad eyes smile I think it’s only ecstasy.

           When you’re from my side, love seems only longing

           and unrest. And when I kiss your lips contentment sweet

           is all I know. So, what is love? It won’t be every mood

           and every mood somehow reflects it less and less of you.

     

    His final speech, beginning with his statement of never having been in jail, ends abruptly as the camera runs out of film.

    Rather than perceiving him as pathetic I endured the entire 66 minutes with fascination—yes, also with frustration—and admiration that someone could continue to be so totally devoted to something he surely recognized as laughable and outré. His stubborn performance was without hesitation or analysis, almost as if were keeping the tradition of the art in which he was educated alive despite the fact that he could no longer move gracefully or, at moments, even step into his shorts he wore that represented the characters he attempted to emulate.

     As Susan Sontag noted, the essence of camp is “its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration,” that sexually it goes against the grain, cherishing either the androgynous or the extreme sexuality of figures such as Jayne Mansfield and Victor Mature; its source is from passion and naiveté not from a winking, mocking knowledge of its idols. Just as Jean Genet argued for a sense of elegance, so Oscar Wilde argued for style over sincerity. I would add that camp emulates mannerism as opposed to pure originality. And it emanates always from the sincere even while its queerness or oddity of viewpoint is recognized.

     Seeing these performances of Paul Swan, one can only agree that Swan is enacting the sacredness of a camp experience. And it is clear why Warhol included him in his film of the same year, Camp.

 

Los Angeles, October 9, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2022).

Tom Young | Jim / 2022

transgression redeemed

by Douglas Messerli

 

Tom Young (screenwriter and director) Jim / 2022 [15 minutes]

 

A handsome British priest, Jim Fitzsimmons (Gary Fannin) in 1982 determined to resolve his continued illicit fantasies by hiring a rent boy for just one night. He visits the pick-up alley and takes home a young boy, Simon (Cary Ryan).

     Almost immediately, however, the boy seems far less experienced than the priest might have expected, shy and somewhat fearful about the encounter. Presuming that the boy’s seeming reluctance has to do with his being a priest, Jim offers him some alcohol to steady his nerves.

     The boy drinks but suddenly becomes ill and vomits, rushing to the bathroom. Jim comforts him in the bathroom, surprised by the behavior of a supposed to be an experienced rent boy. What we eventually perceive is that not only has the boy probably gone hungry for a long while but he is not acquainted with the effects of liquor.

      For while attempting to clean the dirty pants the boy has shed, the priest suddenly uncovers a billfold in his pocket. The revelation is startling, and Jim soon confronts Simon, asking him about his age. The boy, he discovers, is only 14, with no place really to live expect an occasional return to his mother’s house, where, because of his sexuality, he is not welcome.

     What was to have been a night of illicit sex and exceptional sinning, suddenly has become for the priest a moral dilemma as he realizes that the experienced rent boys he imagined are still children, thrown into the streets and forced, in order to survive, into offering themselves up for sex.

      The short film by British director Tom Young, is based on the real-life tale of Fitzsimmons, who spent much of the rest of his life befriending the street kids and working through his sermons and public statements to help change laws and give support to such boys and girls forced onto the streets in their youth.

      The film is moving, particularly in its early moments when the priest and boy are equally terrified of a situation they both desire and dread. But unfortunately, the film soon transitions into a kind of representation of the historical facts, losing much of its poignancy along the way.

      It would be fascinating to have a fully dramatized documentary about the subject of the priest who went astray only to be redeemed by attempting to help the very boys of which he had at first resolved to take advantage.

      The film was a favorite film among the 2022 Iris Prize nominees (given for short films “by, for, about or of interest to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or intersex audiences” each year since 2007).

 

Los Angeles, October 7, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2023).

 

Luis Fernando Midence | Lo que no sanamos (What We Don’t Heal) / 2022

the remnants of a relationship

by Douglas Messerli

 

Luis Fernando Midence and Bryan Valladares (screenplay), Luis Fernando Midence (director) Lo que no sanamos (What We Don’t Heal) / 2022 [8 minutes]

 

Marcos (Bryan Lemus), four years into a relationship with Héctor (Levi Ramses) is finally beginning to perceive that the communication between the two men has broken down. Time and again he tells Hector to clean up the cups and dishes he readily deposits in the sink. Héctor, busy with a book or other things, nods and verbally agrees with an OK, but yet doesn’t make the effort to change his habits in the slightest. And when Marco brings it up once again, Héctor again nods OK, and hands him a glass to clean up.

     Moreover, it appears that Héctor is dressing up to meet with a co-worker whose name we won’t even share with his lover. “Doesn’t matter. You don’t know him.”

     Marcos returns to the kitchen to find several dirty pans in the sink.

    It is now clearly another day, and Héctor is showering after obviously having wine and cheese with someone else, who has also brought him flowers.

     It doesn’t mean anything, he insists.

     “Oh no? And these flowers and the hors d’oeuvre, what?”

     “Did you think that maybe I did it for you to see?”

     Hector now declares that Marcos has been cold for him: “You’re never here. You don’t have time for me.”

     Marcos argues that he is not having romantic dates. “I work and all I want is to find my house clean and tidy when I return.”

    Each time he grows angry, he runs into a small bookcase outside the doorway, knocking over various difference pictures of the two men together. The most recent one is a strange photo where Marcos stands high above and apart for Héctor, stooping at a window.

     Yet again the sink is filled with dirty dishes and pans. At this point we can only imagine that Hector’s behavior is intentional.

      As he returns to the bedroom, he discovers that Héctor has left a trail of condoms. He lies naked on the bed. Marcos orders him out of the house: “This is not the fucking relationship I want.”

      Héctor insists that he is not going to leave yet. “This relationship is what you and I built together.”

      “Then it’s over. I stopped being happy with you a long time ago.”

      Héctor’s answer is lame one: “So why do you keep thinking of me?”

      This time when he picks up his own coffee cup, he finds the sink empty and clean.

      There is a package waiting, this time of Marcos alone, a cold winter view behind him.

    Has Héctor left, reminding his former lover what he will be facing in his absence, or is this the beginning, somehow, of Héctor’s reformation. We have to doubt the latter. Héctor has been told in uncertain terms to leave, and has hinted at his intentions for staying on just a little while longer.

       It’s clear now Marcos will have to carry on alone, with wounds that aren’t easily healed, including the loneliness itself. A clear sink, a fresh cold air view, but without the warmth and mess of human contact.

       For several years now Guatemalan director Midence has been making interesting films. The best of them was perhaps No Return of 2012. This was not among the best of them, but even here we see probing and careful thinking and writing even if it does not always succeed.

 

Los Angeles, November 14, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (November 2026).

              

Victoria Uchitel | סימן רכות (Soft Sign) / 2023

what about us?

by Douglas Messerli

 

Victoria Uchitel (screenwriter and director) סימן רכות (Soft Sign) / 2023 [24 minutes]

 

This film begins with Natalie’s sister calling out to her asking if she can fill in for her at cleaning the house at which she works; she has other plans for the day.

    With camera in hand, “Natash” (Sharon Strimban) doesn’t respond having entered the private world of the cameraman through which she observes most of this short film by Israeli filmmaker Victoria Uchitel. On the radio is a newscast about the upcoming 1996 elections.* She is attempting to get his sister’s attention to ask her to substitute for her in her cleaning job in Denya, an affluent suburb of Haifa, the city where apparently these women live.

    The sister, Dasha (Eugenia Itin), is going away for the weekend with her boyfriend Erez (Amit Roth), an Israeli soldier, who arrives and almost immediately barges into Natalie’s bedroom, leafing through her videos, mostly with the name Amir on them, the boyfriend suspiciously asking, isn’t that your “Arab” boyfriend?

     Two things are worth observing, Natalie speaks Hebrew, while her sister speaks Russian. And Natalie, it is clear, would rather be a boy or least be perceived as being a female looking more like a boy than a female. When she spills some bleach on her shirt, she borrows a male T-shirt, a causal dress shirt and a hat from the people in Denya for whom she is cleaning house in her sister’s place. She also stuffs some stockings and other extras in her crotch to make herself look as if she has a penis.

      In 1996, it should be understood this was not always a sign of a transgender desire, but simply a statement of the way, as a woman, she preferred to appear before the world. Transgender behavior was still rare in that time, and if one felt lesbian feelings it sometimes expressed itself in what is described, often as a slur, as dyke behavior, the desire to appear butch or androgynous.  

     Finished with her cleaning, she meets up as planned with Amir (Muhammad Toukhy), who for his own broadcast is interviewing individuals about the election and their feelings concerning the Palestinians. Natash serves as his cameraman, although she would clearly like to try directing as well. There is a deep rapport between the two, Amir completing her upon the way she looks and she clearly lightening in spirit the moment she is with him; although it is also evident that the two make no pretense to be a couple despite the fact that her sister’s boyfriend and Amir’s friends all presume that relationship.

     The reactions to Amir’s questions asked of people on the street are a mix, some saying Netanyahu will win, one suggesting Haifa will remain “red,” and another saying the media doesn’t give a shit. one individual slurring all Arabs. When one lady argues that Arabs aren’t like “us,” Amir reminds her that he is an Arab. Her answer: “But you don’t look like one.”

     The boy is understandably depressed. So should Israel have been in early May before Netanyahu’s victory which would mean the end of all Arab hopes. None of them matter, Natalie argues. But at the very moment a couple of tourists who have been watching the filming, interrupt.

They’re looking for something to do for the evening.

     Amir decides to interview them. Asked if they watch the Israel elections, the man, Aloysha (Alexey Branov), speaking Hebrew says that he doesn’t keep up, but his friend Olya (Nataliya Olshanskaya) watches the news a lot. He translates the Russian, in with Olya argues that it’s sad watching the elections. It’s sad, she continues, because whether they vote left or right, nothing good will come of it. “It will be bad.” You can’t talk about peace when you’re bombing people, Olya continues, let alone in occupied territories. And then tell the world how it hurts Israel.

      Aloysha adds that he doesn’t even know it its worth translating since it’s unlikely to be aired anyway.

      Their frank perceptions and intelligence clearly awe Natalie, as she simply remains quiet behind the camera, with her eyes alive, obviously able to understand Olya’s Russian quite perfectly. But she remains quiet as Amir has hinted in his response about her desire to help direct.

    They signal “peace and love,” and end their conversation. But Olya’s friend adds, that they are hearing “this justice fighter’s monologue.” Just wanting a drink and perhaps eat a little food, they ask if the other two know of restaurant nearby.

       Amir suggests “the Hurva,” a bar close to where they are.

       Olya calls over to the leaving couple, it was nice meeting you. At this point Natalie turns back to them, asking if they want to join them. And it is at this moment this complex film turns into another kind of movie, for a few moments no longer fraught with family feuds, political hatred, and governmental hypocrisy.

      Nathalie takes them to the house in Denya, where there’s plenty a beer and liquor and a large pool to enjoy. Nathalie toasts to the glorious failure that they about to face, Olya to her last night here (presumably meaning Israel).

      Taking up her camera, Natalie now feels free to take on the interview, asking in Russian “What does it mean when Olya says her last night?” Olya is surprised by a question in Russian and realizes suddenly that the girl has understood everything she previously said. She explains that she will be on a plane the next morning for a return to Russia, Aloysha expressing his frustration for her refusing to stay. He bets that within a month they will catch her red-handed. “I’m not doing anything illegal,” she claims. “It’s just a matter of time until it will be illegal,” he insists. “We don’t live in the stone age even in the Soviet Union,” she answers.**

      Olya asks if Aloysha is suggesting that she move to Israel. Who would want me here, she argues. But when Nathalie translates for Amir Olya’s question, he replies, “What about us?” a strange question, it seems, coming from an Arab who can’t speak a word of her language and certainly realizes that if she would remain it would be, presumably, as a Jewish individual in the majority rule. However, it is never established whether or not Olya is Jewish. And his argument is broader: “We need people like you here.” Obviously, he has been impressed by her general cynicism.

      “What did they catch you doing,” asks Nathalie, the key question of the film.

      “Having an affair with a girl,” answers Olya, which changes everything. After first spending a few tender moments with Amir, Olya explains that his mispronunciation of her name has to do with his inability to recognize the Russian soft “l” in her name, there are even letters that announce almost as a sign the softness of the upcoming letter, which soften everything like a kiss—hence the film’s title.

       But moments later, Olya has made it quite apparent that her soft body is intended for “Natash,” and she tosses out the idea that Aloysha should join the boy he’s been staring at all this while, Amir. Neither Nathalie nor Amir, it appears, feel any reason to disagree with the attentions of the two, and before long they begin playing in the pool, separating off for long moments before rejoining one another again, making this party very much like a hippie gathering, with love enough for everyone to go around. “Peace and love, indeed.” In three languages in fact, representing three different cultures.

      By morning, we see a large blanket spread out near the pool with all four having fallen asleep, the boys obviously having spent their sexual energy at the far ends of the Nathalie/Olya pairing at the center.

      Trouble is, they have forgotten about the fact that such a house would certainly be decked out with cameras; and moments later Nathalie’s sister and her soldier boyfriend awaken them, the sister hardly being able to control her delighted giggles, while Erez lectures Nathalie on the fact that she has cost her sister her job. All quickly dress, but we hope that the visitors don’t just run off, but realize they are very much needed.

      “Do you have any idea what’s going on in this country,” Erez asks, quite ironically given the night of political discussion Nathalie and Amir have just been through.

       “Listen, you stinking racist,” Nathalie replies, “you’re what’s disgusting about this country.”

       “Stupid Russian whore, that’s what you are,” Erez responds, proving her point.

       The sister replies, “I think you should leave now.”

       And so, at least some of the future violence is sent out of their lives.

       Over the past several years I have noticed that some of the LGBTQ+ films to which I’ve most felt attracted have been Israeli films, mostly of them profoundly considering issues that are far most superficially treated in the US, Canada, Australia, and Western European countries. Perhaps it because although it is a superficially intellectually open society, the pulls of religion and culture make for a problematic relationship with any gay, lesbian, transgender, or transsexual individual attempting to survive in that society. LGBTQ+ individuals remain true outsiders.

 

*The backstory on the elections is important for fully understand this film. General elections in Israel were held on May 29, 2996. In 1993 Yitzhak Rabin, then Prime Minister of Israel, Bill Clinton, and Yasser Arafat had signed the Oslo Accords, establishing objectives relating to a transfer of authority from Israel to an interim Palestinian authority, a prelude to what was understood as an eventual treaty establishing a Palestinian state. Palestinians, in turn, had agreed to abstain from the use of terror and abandoned their demands for the expulsion of all Jews who migrated after 1917 and the elimination of Israel.

     On November 4, 1995, at the close of a rally in support of the Oslo agreements in Tel Aviv, Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing Jewish radical, Yigal Amir, opposing the peace initiatives and, most particularly, the signing of the Oslo Accords. Rabin’s death was a shock to the Israeli Public, but also a sign of the ultra-right conservatives hoping to gain power.

     In the 1996 election, Labor party leader Shimon Peres was expected to win, holding a lead of 20%. But with the support of several ultra-Orthodox rabbis and with financial support by Australian mining magnate Joseph Gutnick, Benjamin Netanyahu narrowed that lead and surprisingly won the election, ending all hopes of a Palestinian-Israeli peace. The effects of that election are still felt today, of course, with and even more determined and conservative Netanyahu serving as Prime Minister, now attempting to even change the Israeli judicial system. (Some of these comments are quoted from the Wikipedia entry, but have been supported by research beyond that site).

 

**The dissolution of the Soviet Union took place actually in 1991, the year I was there, only a month or two after my visit. 1996 was also an election year in the Russian Federation when Boris Yeltsin won. For those who suggest that writer and director Uchitel does not know her history, I’d simply suggest that for Russians growing up in the Soviet Union, it took several years to reacclimate themselves to the fact that they were no longer the same country, a place after all that was still having internal battles of various regions, including Chechnya. In fact, one might describe as such a being Vladmir Putin, who that same year moved to Moscow to become part of the Yeltsin administration. Of course, Olya’s statements about the future of Russian society were mistaken, and she would be found guilty, soon after, for further sexual relationships with other women.

 

Los Angeles, July 20, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July 2023).

 

 

Terence Davies | Children / 1976

the old folks at home

by Douglas Messerli

 

Terence Davies (screenwriter and director) Children / 1976

 

Terence Davies’ very first film already demonstrates his gift for photographic images that communicate narrative in a way that permits him to delimit story or plot, as well as indicating his fascination with the relationship with image, music, and movement. It’s all there, if a bit awkwardly strung together and in its length “strung out” as a series of images that go on far too long (about 44 minutes) in his 1976 work Children which would eventually become the first of a “triptych”—and I do think the word is associated more with art than the literary connected work “trilogy,” the title generally given to such trios, is more appropriate.

      Children begins with just boys, trapped in the brutal environment of a Liverpool Catholic School wherein they imitate the harsh methods of the teachers by torturing one another. The small indoor playground in which the film begins contains several boys already roughhousing before the triumvirate of the school bullies arrive, the other boys speeding off, leaving the smallest, shyest, almost autistic specimen, Robert Tucker (Philllip Mawdsley) to suffer the blows of their perversity. Fortunately, from a high window a teacher blows a whistle, presumably having nothing to do with demanding they cease their activities, but only to indicate that recess is over and classes are ready to begin once more.

      Soon after we observe several boys, among them Tucker, waiting in their underwear to be checked by the school doctor. The young boy sits away from the others who are even then seemingly cooking up ways to torture him, and surely mocking his existence. Later in the halls he is met up with a larger boy who once again threatens him, but this time he fights back, almost getting the better of the bigger lug until a teacher stops them, determining to punish both by taking a short whip to their wrists and hands, almost like the mythical rulers reportedly applied to student hands by punishing nuns in just such schools.

      When Tucker rejoins his classmates he is forced to write out essays as the others appear to be doing under the watchful eye of another teacher who equally seems irritated even by the existence of the young student who answers all questions with “Yes, sir.”

       When Tucker readies to leave the school at the end of day, it is like the beginning of a sprint wherein he must unrun other boys who chase him home where he temporarily finds a moment of safety before having to meet up with his even more violent father (Nick Stringer), who takes out most of his testosterone-fired hostility on his wife, the mother (Valerie Lilley) the boy clearly idolizes for her gentle ministrations and the hard work she undergoes to make her small row house into a home.

       Given the world in which he finds himself entrapped, we have to ask whether it should surprise us that Tucker is nearly mute with endless fear. Even as a grown man, who we see interspersed among these scenes, he seems still uncommunicative, terrified it appears of even crossing the streets to get to an employment advisor who has apparently found him a job, but recognizes the difficulties the older Tucker has in simply keeping it.

        And there is his standard question: has he yet met a girl who might interest him? Although Davies is quite subtle about the issue of homosexuality in much of his work, we recognize that Tucker is queer. As the young boy, we see him in the shower carefully scrutinizing a handsome older boy near him, who puts his hand into his own bathing suit as Tucker’s eyes grow larger and almost greedy with awe. We see the older Tucker about to be fellated by a male friend expressing his absolute pleasure with the word “Jesus,” although even that may be a facet of his imagination stimulated by the collage he has created of beefy wrestlers on the inside of his closet door. 

     Davies’ intense sexual discretion in all of his films appears to explain his interest in the corseted playwrights of the 1950s such as Terence Rattigan to whom the director made homage in his film The Deep Blue Sea. I tend to be on the side of Joe Orton and his murderous lover Kenneth Halliwell’s mockery of that playwright, and agree with Shelagh Delaney’s assessment after seeing a Rattigan play that anyone might write a better play, penning A Taste of Honey in response. Even a gay boy pretending to be the father of the bastard a young girl is about to bear was better that the father Davies serves up.

      Perhaps his subtlety when it comes to sexual feelings leaves one even more frustrated given the fact that for such figures such as Tucker there is little else that he might find of pleasure and joy. Clearly he loves, as a child, riding with his mother in a bus as the multitudinous rows of houses just as the one in which he lives pass by with the frequency of lines of soldiers in a Kremlin May Day parade. This is one of the many scenes in Children might have been trimmed; and even the joy expresses is curtailed when the son finally turns back to discover his mother in tears, she evidently finally being able to express the pain she daily undergoes while locked away in their claustrophobic home in a public space.

       Even when his father dies and is screwed into his coffin, the young boy is still terrified, perhaps that that his elder may suddenly jump out and surprise him with a brutal lashing. When neighboring women arrive to help with the funeral wake, he is afraid to let them in, having obviously been taught by his father to keep away from all outsiders and to keep them out of the house.

       It is only when the hearse comes to cart away the body in the coffin that a sly smile makes its way upon the boy’s face, a smile he cannot easily erase until a short while later the actual significance of no longer having a father profoundly expresses itself in his own private ritual of tears more as a release of the pent up hurt, pain, and suffering the man has wrought than for any sorrow that he is finally gone.

     Children is truly a bleak film, but it is also, at moments, terribly funny and beautiful through its series of images and songs. How cannot we not drop our jaws in amazement as we hear the children of the school in which they are imprisoned, in their high pure voices in unison intoning the memories invoked by Stephen Foster’s lines “far from the old folks at home” while Davies’ camera focuses on the shabby halls of what will someday will surely represent their nostalgic visions of where they lost their own youth? Or to witness what appears almost as a Hallmark Card scene of a father, mother, and son gathered round the fireplace where a moment later the father crashes his fists into the mother’s face, while the child sent upstairs tries desperately to plug up his ears with his bed cover and pillows.

      That Davies was able to create such a profound work with no cinematic experience on a nonexistent budget is almost miraculous, worthy of the title of the second of the triptych, Madonna and Child.

 

Los Angeles, December 11, 2021

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (December 2021).