Swinging Flix from '66

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For this weekend’s blogathon on films of the UK, I wanted to concentrate on 1966, a turning point in that country’s cinematic culture, and specifically on a quartet of films that became quintessential examinations of the Swinging London mindset.  Of course, films ranging from the kitchen sink dramas of Lindsay Anderson & Tony Richardson to the electric A Hard Day’s Night (Lester, 1964) and stylish social commentary of Darling (Schlesinger, 1965) paved the way for that year’s set of films.  But it still represents a telling chronological marker of how content, character, and craft all made a significant step to a more recognizably modern world.

Alfie (Gilbert, 1966) chronicles the caddish exploits of a profligate womanizer (Michael Caine in a game-changing part) living a libertine lifestyle with little concern for commitment or accountability but who is forced to learn some harsh lessons that chip away at the state of denial he values so highly.  The revolutionary conceit of the film is Alfie narrating his own tale by breaking the fourth wall and addressing the camera directly.  Of course, this wasn’t unheard of as the occasional comic aside by Groucho Marx or Bob Hope, but to have the whole movie built around this form of internal monologue, with him making constant casual asides to the audience right in the middle of the action with his fellow characters unawares, was very new in its intimacy.

From a psychological perspective, it’s also a way to provide a window into his web of justifications in what amounts to a romantic laissez-faire worldview.  He seduces a slew of women (married and otherwise) but never makes his nature or intentions a secret.  They’re ostensibly free to do what they want, but his emotional game of coercion is effective in its simplicity: upfront, charming and full of sexual confidence.  And his monologues craftily perform double duty as both a vehicle for viewer complicity (since we’re identifying with him through his story) and confessional, since he lays out his entire outlook on life with brutal, boyish candor.  We see Alfie do some distasteful things, but it’s tough not to fall under his spell, from his flirtatious introduction through his brazen honesty and up to his final moments of gradual self-awareness.  We never ally with his position, but we’re grateful for his progress.

It makes one wonder what Georgy Girl (Narizzano, 1966) would be like if the filmmakers took the same approach to Georgy’s callow roommate Meredith (a young and exquisite Charlotte Rampling), a perfect promiscuous counterpart to Alfie.  Rampling makes a singularly unsympathetic character rich with complexity and opaqueness and the movie is clear-eyed in depicting the double standard women face trying to live an Alfie lifestyle.  Like Alfie, the movie is remarkable for its time in accepting abortion as an everyday reality (though not without its stigmas and legal repercussions).  And while “plain Jane” Georgy (a wonderful Lynn Redgrave) pursues love in unexpected places, her final choice is a bittersweet one, borne out of compromise, insecurity, and an acceptance of the limited choices working class women have.

Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up is the first film he made outside of Italy, and London brings a new sensibility to his filmmaking, taking his trademark theme of alienation and transposing it to the modern youth scene.  The result is a film full of coiled energy, stark compositions, and bursts of vivid color, and while his previous films were often about seething passions muffled by societal restraint, Blow-Up dives deep into a sensualist landscape where everyone is getting off but no one seems to be having much fun (best exemplified by the most ennui-tinged rock concert ever, courtesy of The Yardbirds). 

The central driving force of the film is photographer Thomas (David Hemmings) investigating what he thinks is a murder he’s captured on film in a fit of voyeurism, and the methodical series of darkroom enlargements is a masterclass of construction by Antonioni, all in the service of a mystery that’s ultimately peeling an onion.  For unlike Rear Window or The Conversation or Blow Out (all classic cinematic exercises in forensic sleuthing), the evidence in Blow-Up evaporates—or perhaps was all just a figment of Thomas's restless imagination—and the mystery becomes just another fleeting moment for him.  From the shocking (at the time) full female frontal nudity to the final enigmatic tennis game, Blow-Up shook the censors and the artistic establishment like few films had before, a perfect film to represent a generation undergoing a major tectonic shift.

Vanessa Redgrave is memorable as a femme fatale with a hidden agenda in Blow-Up, but she makes an even more substantial turn in Morgan! (Reisz, 1966).  In that, she plays divorcee Leonie trying to move on with her life despite the pervasive meddling of her former husband Morgan (David Warner).  It’s often said that films from the sixties feel dated, but that’s often in reference to window dressing like fashion, music or lingo.  But of these four films, Morgan! (subtitled A Suitable Case for Treatment) feels the most dated because of the prevailing attitudes that now feel so clichéd of that time: the enormous sense of male-entitlement, the knee-jerk embracing of radical leftism (in this case, Trotsky), the romantic metaphor of mental illness as a middle finger to the square status quo.  It's a hipster film, mostly full of empty posturing and zany swagger.

Certainly, romantic comedy in film has a rich tradition of former lovers entangling themselves in their ex’s love life (Cary Grant practically made a cottage industry out of it), but their tactics were usually a fine balance of suave and sympathetic.  But Morgan is just a self-absorbed cretin and like other charmless films of the 60s (Kiss Me Stupid, Irma la Douce), Jealousy is fawningly used as a toxic yardstick for Love. It’s a testament to Redgrave’s talents that she makes her conflicting feelings (but never her resolve) fluid and ambiguous, a study in how letting go may be essential but is never easy.  The most effective moments in Morgan! come late in the game, when Reisz projects us into Morgan’s mind where he reenacts the fantasy jungle worlds of King Kong and Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan, though that hardly helps the case of a man who wants to live outside even the most considerate norms of civilization.

These four films combined earned 13 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture (Alfie), Director (Antonioni) and lead acting nods (Caine and both Redgraves).  Of course, the British film that swept the awards that year was a 16^th-century period piece, far more the Academy’s speed.  And A Man for All Seasons (Zinnemann, 1966) is certainly a fine film, and one that’s worth revisiting these days since it talks about men of principle standing up to authoritarian heads of state and speaking truth to power, even at great personal cost.  But it’s still a staid movie, with great dialogue and memorable characters but quite stagy, lushly produced but devoid of any personality.  This quartet represented the future, and it’s fun seeing certain points of future convergence, like how Georgy co-stars Rampling and James Mason would reteam 16 years later for The Verdict, or how Alfie co-stars Caine and Denholm Elliiott would compete for an Oscar 20 years later --with future Hannah and Her Sisters and A Room with a View writing winners Woody Allen and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala fresh off What’s Up, Tiger Lily? and Shakespeare Wallah respectively back in 1966.

It’s funny to think about how people complain about franchises in the cinemas now when we see that there was a wealth of them from England in 1966.  Hammer had Christopher Lee reprising his Dracula and Fu Manchu roles, Caine was back as Harry Palmer in Funeral in Berlin, there were new installments in the long running Carry On! And St. Trinian’s comedy series, and TV’s Thunderbirds made their way to the big screen.   And like Antonioni, we saw high-profile directors from the continent making their way to their island neighbor: Francois Truffaut (Fahrenheit 451), Roman Polanski (Cul-de-Sac), and Vittorio De Sica (After the Fox) all had distinguished contributions in 1966.  And don’t forget the war movies of both colonial days (Khartoum) and WWII (The Blue Max), and new riffs on the spy genre (Modesty Blaise, The Quiller Memorandum) in the wake of the huge success of James Bond.  But perhaps my favorite British film made by an actual Brit in 1966 has Caine (in his third film of that year) heading a game cast in the very funny old-fashioned comedy The Wrong Box (my first exposure to a tontine), directed by Bryan Forbes.  And if you want to be a Caine completest, there’s also Gambit from that year, too.

My Top 10 favorite films of 1966

1. The Battle of Algiers (Pontocorvo)
2. Persona (Bergman)
3. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Leone)
4. Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky)
5. Daisies (Chytilova)
6. Blow-Up (Antonioni)
7. Black Girl (Sembene)
8. Au Hasard Balthazar (Bresson)
9. Seconds (Frankenheimer)
10. Tokyo Drifter (Suzuki)

  

The Oscar de la Renta stamps from earlier this year (Scott #5173b, e, & i) worked perfectly with the fashion-based films of Blow-Up and Darling, the latter card being featured previously on this blog here.  The Gee’s Bend quilt is #4097, the Edgar Rice Burroughs stamp #4702, and the Year of the Monkey stamp #3895l.  William S. Hart is #4448, the Civil War centennial #1181, and the Bellatrix Lestrange stamp (from the Harry Potter issue) is #4844.  Last year gave us Carlsbad Cavern National Park (#5080e), corn lilies (#5042) and Halloween (#5137), plus this year had the WPA poster #5183. 

Overkill

Now here’s an example of the bad postmark being 100% my fault.  You may remember the Toy Story card I had discussed earlier.  I really loved this assembly, since the Gene Autry stamp and the earlier science fiction stamp matched Woody and Buzz Lightyear perfectly.

I was incredibly surprised when the USPS issued two sets of Pixar stamps, though.  And when the first set came out with a set of 5 that included Buzz but not Woody, I knew Woody would be in the subsequent year’s issue.  So, now was an opportunity to get both on the face of the postcard, too!

Big Mistake.  As you can see, what was previously a wonderful looking postcard now is now an ugly, cluttered mess.  Part of the reason is the trend of the USPS of having their illustrated postmarks be much wider and denser with the ink.  

But the larger failing was mine.  The card would’ve been much better with the two separate Pixar cancellations on the back of the card, but the thought of having them both on the front was too irresistible, and what resulted in the long run is a big old garbled mess.  You can still make the images out, but the impact of the first combo of stamps is now mostly lost.

Here’s an example of one issue that I did right.

When the Quilts of Gee’s Bend issue came out, this stamp worked uncannily well.  Using it was a no-brainer.  So when Sinatra came out two years later, where should I put it?  Logic dictated the front but I couldn’t think of anywhere it could go without losing the effect from the previous stamp.  So I did this instead:

Putting the Sinatra stamp on the back meant I could add the drug abuse stamp without it cluttering things up further (Otto Preminger’s 1955 film was one of the first major Hollywood productions to deal with the subject).  Later, when the Jazz stamp came out, I added it to the reverse, too.  
 
I’ve made other similar judgment calls on both sides, but while I’m glad I have a scan of what it looked like before, the Toy Story example is the one I still regret the most.  

Buzz and Woody are Scott #s  4555 and 4680 respectively.  Sinatra is Scott # 4265, the Prevent Drug Abuse stamp is # 1428, and the Jazz stamp # 4503.

Queer Notions

It’s hard to imagine two films as different from each other as Beautiful Thing (Macdonald, 1996) and Happy Together (Wong, 1997).  One traces the beginning of a romance while the other chronicles the slow death of one.  One is heavily stylized, with saturated colors, handheld intimacy, and grainy black & white, while the other has TV movie production values.  One story is very linear, while the other is more elliptical.  One is sexually coy, with a cast of unknowns, while the other decidedly isn’t on either count.  They take place on the other side of the globe from each other, with family and community playing a big part in one, while the other is a tale of cultural alienation, with the two main characters virtually the only ones with speaking parts.  Even the respective approach each film has to its title is polar opposite, for while Beautiful Thing is puppy-dog sincere, the men in Happy Together are anything but.

But if there’s one thing they have in common (besides their gay protagonists), it’s about how the laws of attraction can transcend all sorts of barriers and obstacles, for better and for worse.  As The Turtles song (which makes a late appearance in the Wong Kar-Wai film) goes:

Me and you and you and me

No matter how they toss the dice, it has to be

The only one for me is you, and you for me

And these lyrics hold true, in different ways, for both films.

Beautiful Thing starts off as a British working class drama in the classic kitchen sink tradition.  Gritty, urban, and racially diverse, we eventually learn that this, external trappings aside, is no world of a Loach or Leigh or Richardson.  For while the film starts with its feet on the ground, it ends with its head in the clouds.  Forged from common feelings of loneliness, the chemistry between Jamie and his mate Ste is sweet, tentative, believable.  But while trenchant topics like schoolyard bullying and domestic abuse start front and center, the film, perhaps a little too easily, sheds itself of these issues to lose itself, head over heels, in its romance.

What would be the cultural fallout to two lads being out and proud in such a closeknit but economically disadvantaged environment?  There would be pockets of acceptance, but the film skirts the larger backlash from peers that would likely result.  Is the film itself a metaphor for how those other problems dissolve away in the mind’s eye (but not the real world) when you fall in love?  Or is it a victim of its own soft center and good intentions?  The rooftop finale ends up being extremely touching but also a bit naïve, but perhaps that’s only if we project our expectations on the film to ground itself in fact.  But Love often represents its own Truth that ignores fact.  That’s where the risk of Love lies, and one’s sense of the larger film as emotionally authentic fantasy or well-meaning empowerment exercise directly relates to how, for this couple, you choose to embrace this Truth.

That this kind of Love-as-Truth can fly in the face of all demonstrable evidence is also at the core of Happy Together, a film that finds in the extraordinary visual palette of cinematographer Christopher Doyle, a corrosive melancholy in the depiction of a relationship in its downward spiral.  For there is love there, but buried under the frustration, imbalance, and resentment of a romance on the rails.  There are lots of petty arguments and needling efforts to taunt and torture the other, but no huge turning point in the course of the couple, just a festering complacency that is spiritually toxic.  A slow death by a thousand ruts.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t beauty, intimacy, and longing—even if it’s longing for something that once was but is no longer.  The fulfillment of a personal dream, only to understand its hollowness when that person to share it with is absent.  The memory of a closeness that’s faded, when it’s mirrored in the kindness of a stranger.  The cherry-picking of experiences, the fixation on little moments that echo in your consciousness that serve as a reminder of why you’re drawn to them in the first place.  The heart wants what it wants, even if it doesn’t always know best.  Like moths to that flame until one inevitably burns out, director Wong captures those feelings that go beyond narrow conceptions of sex and gender.  It’s a film that’s erotic not in the particulars of the bodily exchanges, but in the language of cinema itself—the rhythms and music, the cutting and compositions that infuse every frame with sensuality…and sadness.

Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung were as big as any actors alive in Chinese cinema at the time, but their portrayal of two gay lovers has no real equivalence in American cinema when it comes to stars of that magnitude in our industry.  And a film like this makes you wonder what a Scorsese or Eastwood or Spike Lee would do with similar material, where the queer element is both central and incidental.  Maybe one day we’ll know.

Like the previous Quilts of Gee’sBend posting, these two one-sheets were selected because the patterns and color schemes of the poster design matched nicely with the stamps themselves (Scott # 4094 & 4091).

For more entries in the Queer Film Blogathon

Quilt by Association

While most of the time, the stamps I use for these covers apply to the movie posters in question for obvious reasons (a film’s star) or tangential (a location or subject matter), sometimes, I choose them for purely visual reasons alone.

The Quilts of Gee’s Bend postal issue presented itself with an interesting opportunity because, while having nothing to do with film, the beauty of the quilts themselves I knew I could pair with some of the one-sheets in my collection—in this particular case, Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (Tati, 1953) and Darling (Schlesinger, 1965).  I think the results are interesting and striking.

These two particular stamps are Scott # 4092 & 4097 respectively.