HOME CINEMAMay 2020 | Sight&Sound | 89little has been preserved from its formative first
decade that it is hard to say what constituted a
typical offering before the one-sex-scene-per-reel
formula took root. However, all evidence suggests
that the two very different titles presented
here were anything but standard, and neither
conforms to the expectations of the sex film.
Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands, directed
by Yamatoya Atsushi, an assistant director at
Nikkatsu who moonlighted at Wakamatsu
Productions, has a plot not dissimilar to Suzuki
Seijun’s Branded to Kill (1967), on which he was
one of the team of anonymous writers. Its tale
of a hitman hired to track down the kidnapped
lover of a wealthy property magnate was realised
on noticeably lower means, but it exhibits the
same wild imagination and hallucinatory touch
in its depiction of a late-60s Tokyo underworld
rendered in striking monochrome The plot is
as incoherent as Suzuki’s film, but its similarly
captivating and feverish dream logic will appeal
to connoisseurs of cult Japanese cinema.
Even more abstruse is Gushing Prayer, one
of a handful of works directed by Wakamatsu
collaborator Adachi Masao, just before his
engagement with left-wing radical politics
saw him depart for the Middle East for several
decades. Its story of a high-school girl pushed
by societal expectations to cross far beyond
the threshold of carnal gratification paints a
dispiriting portrait of emergent sexuality that
seems at odds with the demands of its target
audience. Still, the location shooting provides a
vivid time-capsule of Tokyo’s Shinjuku district in
its countercultural heyday, and the final scenes,
in which the stark monochrome cinematography
of Ito Hideo (In the Realm of the Senses) bursts
into colour, are visceral and affecting.
Disc: The new HD transfers have retained the
scratches of the source prints, in keeping with the
experience of watching the films in the seamy
fleapits they were produced for. The lack of any
extras is unfortunate – these two idiosyncratic
examples cry out for contextualisation.
SECRET FRIENDS
Dennis Potter; UK/US 1991; Powerhouse/Indicator;
region-free Blu-ray; Certificate 15; 97 minutes; 1.66:1.
Extras: interview with actor Ian McNeice; analysis
of film by Graham Fuller; trailer; stills gallery.
Reviewed by Robert Hanks
Dennis Potter came out from behind his typewriter
to direct on two occasions: first for television,
with Black Eyes (1989), adapted from his own
novel; and two years later for cinema, with
Secret Friends, again taken from one of his own
novels, Ticket to Ride (1987). In both cases, critics
and audiences were unimpressed; and Potter’s
preoccupations with male sexual fantasy and the
actress Gina Bellman provoked distaste. But in a
short appreciation included as an extra on this
release, Graham Fuller rather brilliantly makes
a case for seeing the film as both critique of male
fantasy and – like Potter’s masterpiece, The Singing
Detective (1986) – depiction of a therapeutic
journey. (Interesting to learn that the source novel
was tossed off between drafts of that series.)
The film flashes disorientingly between reality,
fantasy and memory. We see John (Alan Bates),
a middle-aged botanical illustrator, suffering a
mental crisis while on a train journey: has he
murdered his wife, Helen? We see him at home,
screaming at Helen (Bellman) about trivial faults –
the music is too loud when she does her jazzercise- and being spied on by his own doppelganger.
We see her working as a prostitute in a swanky
hotel, with John the client who wants to take
her away from all this (I’m pretty sure this part is
fantasy). We see John in the repressive vicarage
where he grew up, learning to hide transgressive
thoughts, inventing the ‘secret friend’ who will
come to haunt him. We see sexual encounters and
murders which may or may not have happened.
There are some fine moments, particularly
from the excellent Ian McNeice and Davyd
Harries as a pair of jargon-spouting execs on the
train, trying to pass off John’s despairing outbursts
as minor social faux pas. But despite that, and
although Fuller has convinced me that it’s a more
substantial work than it first appears, it lacks
momentum and coherence: a nagging, frustrating
reminder of Potter’s originality and greatness.
Disc: A sharp-looking restoration; the extras
package – including a charming interview with
McNeice – goes for quality if not quantity.
SYNCOPATION
William Dieterle; US 1942; Eureka Classics; dual format;
certificate PG; 88 minutes; 1.37:1. Extras: booklet.
Reviewed by Philip Horne
RKO’s extraordinary Syncopation conducts a
fascinating, nuanced debate about the meanings
of jazz, including racial ones. The brilliant
German émigré William Dieterle – who directed
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1934) and Hunchback
of Notre Dame (1939), as well as the noir gem The
Turning Point (1952) – brings warm emotional
engagement, vivid visual inventiveness, startling
wit and political commitment (he was greylisted
in the 1950s) to this historical chronicle of the
first quarter-century of jazz, from New Orleans
to Chicago. The film starts with tribal dances
in Africa – at which white traders then reveal
chains and manacles; a rapid montage shows the
horrors of the Middle Passage, then the slavery of
Southern cotton-fields. It’s made clear where jazz
really comes from: we begin among black New
Orleans musicians before identifying our heroine
Kit (Bonita Granville, delightful), an educated
white girl who plays impressively bluesy piano.
In Chicago, Kit’s new white trumpeter-friend
Johnny (Jackie Cooper) sits at the feet of her oldNew Orleans friend the virtuoso black trumpeter
Rex (Todd Duncan), who reassures him amiably:
“You just ain’t been to the right places, boy” (“boy”
from black to white is startling – and the film
sketches an equality it can’t sustain). Dieterle’s
heart seems to lie with a relaxed interracial
sympathy – there are touching scenes between
Kit and Rex – but mainstream pressures take over,
and the last phase is blandly all-white. The cameos
from white jazzmen – Benny Goodman, Harry
James, Gene Krupa – are lively, but the film never
regains the resonance it has earlier in its picture
of ‘trouble music’ as ‘what brings people together’.
A World War I context gives Dieterle’s direction
an emotional urgency as he choreographs crowds
being seriously moved by jazz, panning over
really listening faces. The argument about the
need to preserve ‘the spark’ points to Scorsese’s
underrated New York, New York (1977), for which
this is both a partial source (jazz marriage breaks
up when brass-playing husband goes on tour)
and, in its care for the intertwining of artistic
vocation and loving integrity, an inspiration.
Disc: There are no extras on the disc, but the
film has been restored and remastered in 2K.VILLAIN
Michael Tuchner; UK 1971; StudioCanal; Region B
Blu-ray and Region 2 DVD; Certificate 18; 98 minutes;
2.35:1. Extras: interview with Ian McShane; interview
with Matthew Sweet; trailer; stills gallery
Reviewed by Philip Kemp
Released a few months after Mike Hodges’s Get
Carter (1971), Michael Tuchner’s cinema debut
suffered by comparison – not least on account
of Richard Burton’s dodgy shot at a cockney
accent. Still, overlook that and the odd touch
of grandstanding from the star, and Villain is a
gritty, very 70s-British crime thriller which makes
the most of its London location shoot, and of its
gleeful mining of real-life people and events.
Two years earlier, the trial of the Kray twins
had transfixed the tabloids. Burton’s character, Vic
Dakin, is blatantly based on Ronnie Kray – gay,
viciously sadistic and sentimentally devoted to
his old mum (the legendary Cathleen Nesbitt). In
his pocket he has MP Gerald Draycott (nervous,
oily Donald Sinden), standing in for bisexual
Tory peer Lord ‘Bob’ Boothby, lover of Harold
Macmillan’s wife Dorothy and avid companion
of Ronnie in their shared pursuit of toyboys.
It’s a rich, reality-fuelled mix. But for all
Burton’s lowering presence, bleak-eyed and scarily
volatile, the film’s all but stolen by Ian McShane,
bringing a sardonic edge and a touch of self-
mockery to Wolfie, Dakin’s rough-trade sometime
lover. A cunningly choreographed heist sequence
offers a visual high-point. Dick Clement and Ian
La Frenais’s script, from James Barlow’s 1968 pulp
novel Burden of Proof, gives the cast plenty of good
lines to chew on – not least Nigel Davenport’s
Inspector Bob Matthews, sights doggedly set
on Dakin. Learning that Draycott has provided
the crook with an unbreakable alibi, he growls
to his sergeant, “You can buy yourself out of
anything in this bloody country!” Plus ça change....
Disc: The period London locations come up
a treat in this pristine restoration. McShane’s
divertingly on form in his interview, and Matthew
Sweet serves up useful cultural background.Anyone for Dennis? Secret Friends (1991)