rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo) (06/25/85)
Here are my lopsided reactions to some films in the Gay Film Festival at the Orson Welles in Cambridge: BLACK LIZARD was terrific! It had the panache, the verve & perfect execution of the movie LA CAGE AUX FOLLES. The film sped merrily along, trashing Japanese movie conventions by the dozen, revolving around the spectacular drag performance of Akihiru Maruyama (I think I saw him in DEMON POND, a fanstasy picture for kids & adults; there he attempted a more kabuki-like onnagata, which I found rather bizarre & unappealing), who thereby places himself among the foremost vamps of movie history. Marlene Dietrich, eat your heart out! Actually, everyone was in a kind of psychological drag, earnestly yet hilariously mugging in their sterotypical film noir roles, with flawless & often subtle lampooning. One moviegoer wondered if it really was a gay film. So far every Festival film has been criticized this way, but acting on such scruples would make a gay film festival impossible. Actually, it may be the product of the gay workforce of Japan's movie industry. Mishima wrote a short story, "Onnagata", about the homosexual love between a kabuki female impersonator and the narrator, who seemed to be the author, but I don't know if the tale's onnagata (means "female", I think) was based on Maruyama. Much of the cast may've been drawn from kabuki (like theater around the world, including Chinese opera and Cuban ballet troupes, with many gay members) and gay screen stars. Whereas, as a friend put it, LIZARD strived to be dreadful and was thus wonderful, CORRUPT was merely dreadful. I didn't like it, but it was arguably gay & probably required more effort than I was willing to make to yield whatever message or value it contained. The British reform school movies contrasted sharply with each other: the boys' film, CORRUPT, was numbingly brutal, with a relentlessly sadistic & uttterly corrupt administration turning the inmates into beasts themselves. It's not a gay film at all: one character labeled a "poof'ter" (sp?) but probably merely vulnerable because of age and lack of aggression, is daily raped (offscreen), finally gang-raped, & commits a lengthy, truly baroque but incredibly agonizing suicide with razor blades that unnerved the audience (quite a few walked out). The suicide, the 2nd of 2, was well-done but excruciating. The film's outlook was utterly bleak & despairing. At the end, all the characters get beaten to a pulp. However, the movie's very well made: the direction & acting is top-notch (John Grillo, who played a harmless absent-minded history don in BRIDESHEAD REVISITED plays an incredibly venal "house master" here). But it's definitely not for moviegoers struggling with profound depression. (If it accurately portrays even one boys' borstal, then it's amazing Britain didn't side with Hitler in WW2.) The girls' film, SCRUBBERS, was uplifting & a comedy by comparison. Brutality was virtually absent; in fact, I felt sorry for the nearly benign administration, who were befuddled by the rowdy gross-out antics of the girls. A charming film, well worth seeing. Even allowing for exaggeration, the stark contrast between the sexes (at least in Britain) presented by the films makes a strong argument for complete suppression of the male of the species. The German movies: TAXI ZUM KLO was still impudent & witty in 1985 but its shock value was dimmed by the years & its celluloid looked pretty deteriorated. BURGER QUEENS OF BERLIN (1983) also seem dated with its radical drag, Warholian ennui, & "epater le normal" ambience, but it was pleasantly looney & sensual, despite occasional longuers & descents into preachiness. The shockers: LOADS was an avant garde home movie sex short starring its director plus assorted rough trade plucked off the streets of SF's Tenderloin in the early 70s. SALO was in color & its first 10 minutes promised the worst (which it delivered, others tell me, in searing depictions), so I walked out, exchanged my ticket & saw Ken Ichigawa's THE MAKIOKA SISTERS (1983?, based on perhaps the greatest novel in modern Japanese literature, by Junichiro Tanizaki), about four aristocratic sisters in 1938 whose poetic world is in decline. A really beautiful film with voluptuous cinematography & affecting acting, worlds away from the depravity of SALO, which I would still warn movie-goers against seeing. Ron Rizzo
rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo) (06/26/85)
Correction! The British film about the reform school for boys is
titled SCUM, not CORRUPT. CORRUPT is the name of the Harvey Keitel/
John Lydon movie about an S&M relationship between a cop & cop-killer.
By the way, I saw George Cukor's THE WOMEN last night: featuring
nearly everyone it seemed in MGM's "stable" of actresses from Joan
Crawford to Marjory ("Ma Kettle") Main, it was an Encyclopedia of
Dish, very fast & funny (the sexist convictions in the story were
obnoxious but ridiculous: the audience booed &/or groaned appro-
priately, but it was offset somewhat by robust ridicule of male
foibles). Villain Joan Crawford's parting line at the end was
"There's a word for girls like you, but it isn't used in polite
society outside of kennels!"
WOMEN played with MADCHEN IN UNIFORM which was delightful, even
though the theater showed the "censored" version; the audio was
often difficult to follow. But considering the movie had to be
smuggled out of Nazi Germany, it's amazing it still exists.
Ron Rizzo