mf@cornell.UUCP (mf) (01/13/85)
[ Excerpts from a 5-page long review of 2 films ] [ in the Dec. issue of `Commentary.'' ] If you are a neurotic, alcoholic, Mariolatrous, Catholic, homosexual on the verge of going over the edge, have I got the film for you! It is Dutch, yes, Dutch, ``The 4th Man/'' For Holland has suddenly developed a first-rate ``quality'' cinema, capable of turning out decadent films with the best of them--films on the cutting edge of the new sensibility and even of social change, such as ``A Question of Silence,'' a movie so rabidly feminist as to be pathological, the most lunatic feminist film I have ever seen. And both movies are skillfully directed, of course, for Holland is hot. [...] ``The 4th Man'' is based on a loosely autobiographical novel by a Dutch *enfant terrible* named Richard Reve, who has spent most of his life alternately winning Dutch literary prizes and scandalizing the Dutch public. Openly homosexual, he converted to Roman Catholicism at the age of 35, brought to trial for ``comtemp- tuous blasphemy'' in 1966, won yet another literary prize in 1968, upon which he kissed the Minister of Culture enthusiastically, and later gave a televised party at the Church of the Sacred Heart to celebrate. [...] The film stays fairly close to the Reve novel. Not to put too fine a point on it, it is about a man with an obsessive dead of women, or at least of aggressive, sexual women. If the woman could arrange to be like the Virgin Mary, of course, Holly Mary Mother of God, that would be something else. But how often can you expect a break like that? Under the film's opening titles we see a crucifix, with the crucified Christ, and over Christ's face, portrayed in his final agony, a spider has woven her web. A fly gas become caught in the web, and the spider is slowly beginning to devour him. [...] As I said, if you are a neurotic, Mariolatrous, homosexual with a morbid dread of aggressive women, this is the film for you. The big surprise, however, is that droves of apparently healthy heterosexual Protestants and Jews are seeing ``the 4th Man'' also, plus, no doubt, many a backsliding heterosexual Catholic, to the point that it is by far the most successful film of the season. [...] So you see, Holland, perhaps made especially popular by the neutralist climate Walter Laqueur calls Hollanditis, has suddenly leaped into the very vanguard of world cinema, dealing with the most audacious and timely themes. It has produced the most hyper-feminist film ever made anywhere, plus a lush homosexual psycho-thriller inspired entirely by a dread of women. The feminist film proved to have an intense attraction for a quite tiny audience, whereas the homosexual gynophobic movie verged on having rather broad appeal. Judging by the highly unreliable indicator of reactions to these two new movies, then, the question of whether aggressive women are nowadays felt to be wonderful or something of a menace is being answered in favor of ``menace''--and by a big margin at that. [ For those who don't have the OED on their desk, `Mariolatry' ] [ is an exagerated cult of the Virgin Mary. ]
jla@usl.UUCP (Joseph L Arceneaux) (01/14/85)
I too would like to add my support for 'The Fourth Man'. It was certainly one of the five best films I saw in 1984. -- Joseph Arceneaux (ut-sally!usl!jla)
rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo) (01/19/85)
I really liked THE FOURTH MAN, too. It's Verhoeven's first big glossy "commercial success" film, yet I thought it was much more accomplished than SPETTERS (about Dutch teenagers: a main character goes from fag- bashing son of sadistic Dutch Reformed Church farm parents to "out" gay via a bashing & gangbang HE receives in an uncompleted subway tunnel from his wouldbe victims, one of the weirdest comings-out I know of). The film had a lot of misogyny, but didn't really seem sexist (but I'm not female); there was plenty of gore, though most violence that was threatened never materialized. The splicing of hallucinations with "realistic" segments is as good as I've seen in any film. By the end of the movie one's sense of reality is completely subverted. The COMMENTARY magazine reviewer didn't do justice to the opening titles shot of the spider & crucifix: it was wicked & effective. I hope everyone who reads net.religion sees THE 4TH MAN. Maybe then they'll BEGIN to have a glimmer of what religion is about. The sani- tized public cults that pass for religion(s) in North America are a far cry from the living core of historical religion, or even from the inner reality of religious experience today (something few seem willing to own up to). "Fire & brimstone" is vapid by comparison. A lot of us probably know people, gay and straight, who in the eccentri- city of their personal religious practice & belief directly make the vivid (& valid) connections between (what reviewers still call) "blas- phemous [sic.] fantasy" & profound religious conviction. Yet anyone acquainted with ancient, medieval, & nonwestern religious art knows how ironic it is to call this association "blasphemy". It was really nice seeing it at long last on the screen, fully & publicly acknowledged. Ron Rizzo