Little White Lies - 11.2019 - 12.2019

REVIEW 089

he rough and tumble of suburban Rotterdam’s amateur motocross

scene is at the centre of this very weird and very enjoyable early

missive from the Dutch maestro Paul Verhoeven. What begins as a bawdy

teen movie, with all manner of japes, larks and monkeyshines, slowly

evolves into a depressive and violent nightmare, encompassing gang

rape, religious rage, crippling depression and a very public suicide. The

director’s I-don’t-give-a-fuuuuuck attitude towards the conservative

predilections of the local audience caused mass scandal in his home

country, leading him to haul ass to Hollywood where such aggressive

provocation would be welcomed with open arms.

It sees three young studs attempting to hone their motocross

skills so they can tread the same mud-splattered path as their hero,

Gerrit Witkamp (Rutger Hauer). A girl named Fientje (Verhoven

regular Renée Soutendijk) enters the fray, and suddenly the carefree

aspirations that come with any healthy motocross fixation make way

for more base desires. Even though the screenplay and the characters

aren’t funny per se, Spetters is a comedy in many ways, as Verhoven

and his co-writer Gerard Soeteman take the privileged position of the

artist to wreak unspeakable violence and cruel bad luck on their hapless

pawns. One of the boys spends his time assaulting and stealing money

from gay cottagers in an underground shopping mall, and his eventual

comeuppance makes for one of the film’s most lurid and politically

incorrect sequences. Taken with his other Dutch language work, Spetters

stands as an obvious calling card for his eventual mainstream crossover.

It’s the least artistically accomplished and nuanced of those early films,

but is still a vital, jagged piece of the Verhoeven puzzle. DAVID JENKINS

s historians have pointed out time and again, the beginning of the

dissolution of the American studio system, which would ultimately

take more than 20 years, coincided almost to the year with the poisonous

surge of anti-Communism in the United States which, in its first decade

of predatory prosecution and harassment, claimed the careers of dozens

of Hollywood leftists. Chief among the star casualties was Wisconsin-born

and New England-educated Joseph Losey, who remains one of the most

worldly of all the great American directors who are still awaiting a level

of appreciation commensurate with their extraordinary achievements.

By the late ’60s, wandering the wilderness suited Losey just fine,

and anyway, it was no longer wilderness: his affinity for esoteric,

experimentalism-tinged drama had been tipped very early on (recall his

friendship and collaboration with Bertolt Brecht), and the world had finally

begun to catch up. Deep into an era of cinema that would empower all

kinds of haunting strangeness, Losey could at long last enter his own house

justified. On the steam of arthouse hits The Servant and Accident, Losey

teamed up with Elizabeth Taylor twice in the space of one year, both for the

Tennessee Williams adaptation, Boom!, and Secret Ceremony, taken from

a short story by Marco Denevi. Both are equally “far out”, all things being

equal, but it’s Secret Ceremony’s more placid waters that produces an even

more haunting, lingering spell – a mystery story whose crimes happened

years ago, or are imminent. The film’s small handful of vivid star etchings

coordinate perfectly: Taylor’s sexy-matronly heft ideally complements Mia

Farrow's porcelain doll, always close to shattering, while Robert Mitchum,

flexing an uncharacteristic knack for earthy insolence, stalks the fringes

in a vile raincoat and a torpid chin-curtain of a beard. JAIME CHRISTLEY

Spetters Secret Ceremony

Directed by

PAUL VERHOEVEN

Starring

RENEE SOUTENDIJK

RUTGER HAUER

JEROEN KRABBÉ

Released 2 DEC

Blu-ray

T A

Directed by

JOSEPH LOSEY

Starring

ELIZABETH TAYLOR

MIA FARROW

ROBERT MITCHUM

Released 25 NOV

Blu-ray

1980 1968

Credits

MGM