stiff upper lips ( 1998 ) is a broad parody of british period films , especially the lavish merchant-ivory productions of the 1980s and early 1990s .

although it specifically targets a room with a view , chariots of fire , maurice , a passage to india , and many other films , in a more general way stiff upper lips satirises popular perceptions of certain edwardian traits : propriety , sexual repression , xenophobia , and class snobbery .

the film was directed by gary sinyor and stars sean pertwee , georgina cates , robert portal , samuel west , prunella scales , and peter ustinov .

it was filmed on location in italy , india , and on the isle of man .

stiff upper lips

source : nightingale , benedict . “upper lips stiff and wooden . ” the times , london ( 8 march 1995 ) : 28 .
rattigan ' s last play is enjoying an emotional revival—with a 1990s slant on the british stiff upper lip .
movies : the misadventures of peter ustinov : his latest film , ' stiff upper lips , ' lets him poke fun at the staid english stereotype that so many people wrongly think he embodies .
movies : the misadventures of peter ustinov : his latest film , ' stiff upper lips , ' lets him poke fun at the staid english stereotype that so many people wrongly think he embodies . - latimes
all the sinclairs are rich , athletic and beautiful . they have servants , money and stiff upper lips . they go to the right schools , play excellent tennis and are as brittle as porcelain , ready to shatter into a million pieces under the strain of rivalry , silence and greed .
stiff upper lips takes a great idea - make a spoof of english costume dramas like room with a view - and ruins it by adding a steady stream of strong but stupid sexual innuendoes and puns , plus some blasphemy . cedric and edward , two upper - class twits from cambridge with latent homosexual desires , try to prevent edward ' s sister , emily , from marrying a lower - class man who ' s gotten emily pregnant .
reminiscent of mel brooks ' recent offerings . stiff upper lips trades in lame comedy by recognition ; while the extended sideswipes are aimed at merchant ivory , sinyor specifically targets chariots of fire , ghandi , brideshead revisited and , bizarrely , visconti ' s death in venice , yet does little to imbue the parodies with real wit and invention .
when the plane is damaged and they have to bail out behind enemy lines , we see more of the real characters behind their stiff upper lips . pursued by soldiers and dogs , they make their escape by leaping on board a train . unfortunately , it’s reserved for gravely wounded ss men on their way home from the eastern front .
stiff uppe . . .
this video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by gary sinyor .
without giving too much away , i can say that doom threatens as the play winds down . but just when all seems hopeless , these plucky british journalists decide to drop their stiff upper lips and fatalism about their futures and take things into their own hands . it’s enough to make a gloom - marinated journalist of today get all misty - eyed .
the time for puncturing that nostalgic dream world has long been overdue . and now , better late than never , comes ' ' stiff upper lips , ' ' a movie that sends up the merchant - ivory ethos in much the same spirit that ' ' airplane ' ' and ' ' the naked gun ' ' series have spoofed hollywood genres . if only it were funnier .
cliches can attach themselves like the proverbial burrs to a playwright whose work dips out of fashion , and sometimes they continue to cling to him even when his work is climbing back into popularity . terence rattigan ' s reputation is still firmly linked to the idea of the stiff upper lip , where tongue - tied upper - middle - class characters find themselves unable to express what grieves them to similarly tongue - tied upper - middle - class characters . there is the element of truth in . . .
so
stiff upper lips '
uncle horace , replete with deep - seated class prejudices and randy desires , provided a welcome change of pace for the actor . it was also a chance to counter the merchant ivory image of staid olde england - - and have a few good laughs along the way . he believes that the victorians constructed a kind of reformed , false englishman . the film opened in los angeles on friday .
london — having stacked up more than five decades of distinguished credits on stage and screen , peter ustinov certainly qualifies as an elder statesman among british actors . yet his latest film role , that of an eccentric tea plantation owner during the british raj in india in
stiff upper lips ,
intrigued him exactly because , he says ,
i ' ve never played that kind of character before . i ' ve never played an englishman .
and so you would be forgiven for thinking that the stiff upper lip – the complete refusal of lachrymosity , no matter what disaster befalls us – has been paralysing the faces of britishers since stonehenge was raised on salisbury plain . but , as thomas dixon shows in his erudite and entertaining book
but there’s no solution to the human puzzle – thank goodness . in 1950 , mass observation sent out 300 questionnaires to its correspondents , asking whether they ever wept in the cinema . many did and a great deal of the weeping went on at screenings of david lean’s 1945 stiff - upper - lip classic
new year’s eve 1899 saw reid leave the theatre early , upset at the inclusion in the programme of one of mary kelly ' s favourite songs . as the camera faded to black he was seated alone , poring over old ripper files . it was a beautifully melancholy conclusion , a slow comedown after five seasons of pulpy escapism and top - rank derring do . a show that celebrated stiff upper lips and manly adventure had come perilously close to bringing a tear to the eye .
when they are matter - of - factly cruel to
hot lips
hoolihan , we cannot quite separate that from the matter - of - fact way they ' ve got to put wounded bodies back together again .
hot lips ,
who is all army professionalism and objectivity , is less human because the suffering doesn ' t reach her .
' ' stiff upper lips , ' ' which is set in 1908 , is divided into chapters , each introduced by ridiculously ornate titles . the opening scenes find the major characters gathered at ivory hall , an english manor presided over by the stuffy aunt agnes ( prunella scales vaguely mimicking joan plowright ) , who is desperately conniving to marry off her attractive niece emily ( georgina cates ) . leading the list of candidates is cedric ( robert portal ) , the pompous bosom buddy of emily ' s dimwitted brother edward ( samuel west ) .
gary sinyor , director and co - writer of
lips ,
parodies those stuffy british period pieces that have gained favor with american audiences . having been weaned on the british fare of masterpiece theatre or films such as
a room with a view ,
passage to india
and
howard ' s end ,
american audiences may be surprised by the playfulness of ' lips . '
theoretically , a merchant - ivory sendup should be a piece of cake . but as ' ' stiff upper lips ' ' stumbles along , its humor is so scattershot , its tone so wobbly and its casting so uneven that the movie never coheres . far too often it takes the low road with bathroom humor that reminds you that yes , these genteel english sylphs had lusts and bodily functions , too . a typical joke has the disgruntled but oh - so - proper chief steward ( named hudson , of course ) of a fancy estate surreptitiously urinating in the soup .
if ' ' stiff under lips , ' ' directed by gary sinyor , wanted to be a lowdown farce , it should have gone much further . but perhaps the only way a merchant - ivory spoof could have worked would have been to take this high - toned genre on its own terms , exaggerate its idiosyncrasies , puff up its ralph lauren imagery of ultimate good breeding and be the snootiest movie ever made .
one of the most welcome theatrical trends of recent years has been the rediscovery of terence rattigan . outstanding productions of the browning version and the deep blue sea have revealed this once derided dramatist to be a writer of exceptional insight and sympathy , a poet of the british stiff upper lip . in praise of love features many of his humane strengths without achieving the overwhelming depth of emotion of his greatest . . .
stiff upper lips takes a great idea – make a spoof of english costume dramas like room with a view – and ruins it by adding a steady stream of strong but stupid sexual innuendoes and puns , plus some blasphemy . cedric and edward are two rich classmates from cambridge who have “feelings” for one another . edward introduces cedric to his 22 - year - old sister , emily , but emily falls in love with george , a lower - class hunter whom the family matriarch , aunt agnes , hires as a servant for a trip to italy and india . cedric and edward , jealous of george , commit arson and falsely accuse george , who escapes from prison in order to stop emily’s impending marriage to cedric .
this is a book that surprises and delights . i won’t give away its biggest surprise , which is the origin of the phrase “stiff upper lip” . dixon notes that , particularly after the first world war , women never did well with their weeping . they were urged not to cry ( “modern girls don’t cry , even if they feel like it , ” said the actress dorothy brunton ) – but if they didn’t , they might be judged “hard - faced hussies” .
in one of his last plays terence rattigan wrote : “do you know what le vice anglais really is ? not flagellation , not pederasty . it ' s our refusal to admit to our emotions . ” but this english reserve , the determination to keep a stiff upper lip in the face of an unbearable depth of feeling , is what makes his masterpiece , the deep blue sea ( 1952 ) , such an overwhelming dramatic experience . it is a play . . .
ever since the much - loved television series ' ' upstairs downstairs ' ' enticed an american mass audience to inhabit vicariously the decorous upper - class world of edwardian england , millions have embraced the dubious pleasures of couch - potato snobbery .
once again we have this fantasy that tv stations can simply pull up their socks adjust their stiff upper lips and produce a string of hit shows that will ensure they never again have anything less than 6m viewers for any primetime show . it ' s not a question of what they ' ought ' to be comfortable with . it ' s an entirely pragmatic issue ; what can they live with ? you cannot force people to watch television at all let alone your own particular brand of television . for itv it ' s a failure if , and only if , it costs more to put on than it returns in advertising income and sales . for bbc it ' s a matter of critical reception . 2m overnights are not automatically flops much as most contributors to this thread seem to be incapable of understanding that .
this irresistibly sexy comedy tells the outrageous story of a beautiful girl and her unlikely romantic awakening ! pretty young emily has just reached the ripe old marrying age of 22 , and her obnoxious family have already matched her with an upper - crust stiff . emily , of course , feels nothing . . . until she happens upon a strapping young peasant who unleashes all kinds of strange new feelings within her body ! as this funny , clever and endlessly entertaining motion picture unfolds , a comedy of events are set into motion that force everyone to deal with some decidedly lusty new emotions !
those qualities , as well as a chilly , dark - hued look that cinematographer pierre milon gets just right , go a long way toward making up for the film’s shortcomings—which include an overly familiar foreboding piano score and an uneven script . while the confinement scenes are effectively succinct and harsh , with belvaux making purposeful use of close - ups to show an increasingly haggard attal , the lengthier paris - set sections are not as assured . belvaux shoots graff’s family members in medium and long shots , nearly dwarfing them amid the dauntingly high ceilings and ornate furnishings of their spacious , sumptuous home ; he’s illustrating their isolation—the fact that money can’t buy happiness—but it’s an obvious point , and one the filmmaker belabors through the distractingly stilted way these characters talk to one another . the fine french actress anne consigny overdoes the uptight wealthy wife bit , and she and her daughters suffer with such stiff upper lips that it’s a relief to see françoise fabian telling people off and cracking withering jokes as graff’s knowing mother .
the way they do that , in
mash ,
is to be almost metaphysically cruel . there is something about war that inspires practical jokes and the heroes ( donald sutherland , elliott gould , and cronies ) are inspired and utterly heartless . they sneak a microphone under the bed of major
hot lips
hoolihan , and broadcast her lovemaking to the entire camp . they drug a general and photograph him in a brothel .
an edwardian upper - class twit plots to marry off his sister to his equally dim friend , but she is far more interested in the family ' s working - class gamekeeper . the siblings ' eccentric aunt tries to resolve the crisis by leading the whole family on a tour of italy and india in the misguided hope that romance will blossom . comedy , starring peter ustinov , prunella scales , sean pertwee , georgina cates and samuel west .
georgina eventually gets her awakening from george in a silly chasing - each - other - through - the - groves sequence . but because of their class difference , she decides that marriage is out of the question . meanwhile , cedric and edward admit they have ' ' strange feelings ' ' for each other . remaining true to their repressed upper - class backgrounds , however , it takes the rest of the movie for them to recognize exactly what those feelings are .
young upper - class fellow edward arrives with his friend cedric at the family manse , ivory hall . he plans to pair off cedric with his sister emily . emily , on the other hand , falls in love with a son of local peasant , george . old aunt agnes sends all the bunch off , first to italy and then to india , so emily would forget george , who is an undesirable partner for her because of class differences , and choose cedric .
this basic plot synopsis sounds innocent enough , but the filmmakers load this scenario with a constant barrage of obscene sex jokes about oral sex , sexual arousal , homosexuality , masturbation , and other lewd matters . one of the sex scenes indulges in outright blasphemy . finally , instead of just attacking the upper - class , imperialistic excesses of victorian and edwardian england , the movie has a politically correct subtext that attacks the very premises of traditional western civilization , which were founded , for the most part , on the gospel of jesus christ and his moral teachings .
but the performances infuse the mechanics with a lively freshness . mr . windsor - cunningham , the only british actor in the cast , delivers a lovable turn as the avuncular geoffrey , who is the first to lament quietly the end of the party when lesley’s strictures dampen the formerly woolly atmosphere in the room . mr . connell oozes self - mocking charm as the slumming upper - cruster , while mr . bellamy exudes a funny torpor as the nearly sleepwalking arnold . ms . reed is adorably hassled and generous - hearted as lucy , around whom the circus spins until lesley puts an end to the merry chaos .
i think perhaps that ' s what the movie is about . gould and sutherland and the members of their merry band of pranksters are offended because the army regulars don ' t feel deeply enough .
hot lips
is concerned with protocol , but not with war . and so the surgeons , dancing on the brink of crack - ups , dedicate themselves to making her feel something . her façade offends them ; no one could be unaffected by the work of this hospital , but she is . and so if they can crack her defenses and reduce her to their own level of dedicated cynicism , the number of suffering human beings in the camp will go up by one . and even if they fail , they can have a hell of a lot of fun trying . also , of course , it ' s a distraction .
emily is now 22 and ripe for marriage . her idiotic brother edward decides , in cahoots with aunt agnes , to pair her off with his upper - class twit friend cedric trilling . emily has already had and refused a proposal of marriage from the local vicar mr . tweeb on the eminently sensible grounds that his eyebrows were too bushy ! an accident at the family lake brings emily very closely into contact with the naked , handsome , muscular , lower - class peasant george and she is instantly attracted to his ripping unmentionables ! seeing the undesirability of the match aunt agnes takes the family first to italy and then to india to try to separate the lusty , ill - matched couple but george accompanies them as a servant . will lust prevail or will emily be forced into a loveless marriage with the extremely dull and boring cedric ?
pagan worldview with pro - homosexual theme & jokes , preoccupation with ( & validation of ) sexual immorality that includes blasphemy & a politically correct statement about
progress
in sexual relationships ; 15 mostly mild obscenities & 11 mostly mild but blasphemous profanities plus butler urinates in family ' s food & many strong sexual innuendoes , puns & references ; mild violence such as men fight in bar , man escapes from prison & father headbutts adult son & ties him up ; implied fornication & depicted sexual foreplay , plus many strong sexual innuendoes , puns & references about oral sex , sexual arousal , homosexuality , masturbation , & other lewd matters ; rear male nudity in natural context , upper male nudity in sexual context , women in underwear , & statue & drawing of male private parts ; alcohol use ; smoking ; and , bearing false witness ( eventually confessed ) , false imprisonment , jokes about racism , & joke about anti - semitism .
rattigan was born june 10 , 1911 , in london to an upper - class family . his father , frank , was a diplomat , serving as acting high commissioner in turkey and british minister in rumania . rattigan was educated at sandroyd school and at the harrow school . as a youngster , he became enamored with the stage and resolved to become a playwright . he was influenced by the work of anton chekhov , bernard shaw , and john galsworthy . in 1930 he attended oxford ' s trinity college as a history scholar , earning his b . a . in 1933 . he began to write plays , and his first work , first episode , was produced in london in 1933 . the play had brief and poorly received runs in london and new york city . a few years later , french without tears ( 1936 ) became a smash hit in london and cemented rattigan ' s reputation as a successful playwright . he served in the coastal command of the royal air force during world war ii , yet continued to write plays . in 1948 he was awarded a new york drama critics circle award , and the title of commander of the british empire in 1958 . in his later years , rattigan adapted many of his plays to the screen and wrote several radio and television scripts . he was knighted in 1971 . he died november 30 , 1977 , in hamilton , bermuda .
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urltoken
long ago he played the prince of wales in
beau brummell
( 1954 ) , but in reviewing his long filmography , this man we think of as british an actor as alec guinness or laurence olivier has surprisingly played mostly non - british parts - - the roman nero in
quo vadis ? ,
the belgian hercule poirot in
death on the nile
and other poirot features , plus a slew of films in which he was called upon to be italian , french , bavarian or something closer to his own ethnic background , slavic .
at 78 , he ' s mentally spry but physically more fragile than he used to be . carefully easing himself into an armchair in his suite at the berkeley , a discreetly classic london hotel , he politely answers questions about his long , accomplished life . he and his wife have just returned from a very british pastime , the finals at wimbledon , but they are soon to leave for the place they call home , the countryside outside geneva .
it is suggested that with his shock of white hair he looks more english now than before .
everyone at my age can look english ,
ustinov ripostes in his well - spoken voice full of well - spoken words .
the british originally were impulsive , romantic and disreputable ,
he says , words that could describe uncle horace .
the industrial revolution and queen victoria ' s personal attitude toward the things she found not amusing perverted the whole sense of what england was . i think england is much closer to shakespeare than walter scott .
the film is set in 1908 when the
veddy
proper aunt agnes ( prunella scales ) wants desperately to marry off her niece emily ( georgina cates ) . the likeliest prospect is cedric trilling ( robert portal ) , a cambridge classmate of her nephew edward ( and emily ' s brother ) - - thus , the right age , the right class , the right deportment . what does it matter that he is a pompous bore endlessly quoting homer (
as the poet homer says , ' the rosy - fingered dawn . . . . '
) ? and what does it matter that emily hates him , instead loving george , the working - class bloke ?
to spark some romance , aunt agnes takes them first to italy , then to india to visit cedric ' s great - uncle horace ( ustinov ) . though in a supporting role , ustinov plays horace to the hilt ; he ' s the quintessential british expat , a crotchety empire functionary bullying his indian servants and blindingly ignorant of indigenous culture .
so great is ustinov ' s gift for gab that sinyor let him improvise during shooting .
when i first met him , he kept me entertained for two hours , just talking and talking ,
sinyor recalls .
the man has a brain the size of mars ! so in one scene where he ' s telling george how to behave like an indian servant , i just wrote , ' horace continues to ramble . '
ustinov also made up a scene , one of the funniest in the film , in which he teaches george to roll his head and sing - song ,
if it be pleasing to you , i am bringing you a gin and tonic . . . .
it ' s easy to see how sinyor was captivated . ustinov is a born raconteur . every question sends him off on an anecdote or a recollection . in a split second he changes his voice to imitate a jowly american politician or an indignant english lady . he plays for laughs , but he insists that his purposes are fundamentally serious .
born and raised in london , ustinov was trained to be a british gentleman , in the victorian sense . to escape his russian background , his father tried to adopt a tone more british than the british and put his son in westminster , one of the exclusive private schools where boys were expected to wear top hats and tail coats .
young peter grew up with a gift for mimicry , precociously copying his parent ' s friends in speech and manner .
i think it happened largely because i ' m an only child ,
he observes ,
and only children have to learn to amuse themselves as much as possible .
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helen maria williams observed the french revolution at first hand . a poet , essayist and novelist known for her support of radical causes , she entertained the likes of thomas paine and mary wollstonecraft in her salons . among the things she perceived , in her accounts of political turmoil across the english channel , were differences in national character when it came to expressing emotion .
“you will see frenchmen bathed in tears at a tragedy , ” she wrote in 1792 . “an englishman has quite as much sensibility to a generous or tender sentiment ; but he thinks it would be unmanly to weep ; and , though half choaked with emotion , he scorns to be overcome , contrives to gain the victory over his feelings , and throws into his countenance as much apathy as he can well wish . ”
, you would be wrong . once upon a time and not so very long ago , this nation was given to paroxysms of sobbing at almost any opportunity . dixon , a historian of emotions , philosophy , science and religion ( phew ! ) at queen mary , university of london , asks what dried our tears and wonders whether the death of diana , princess of wales , in 1997 unlocked the floodgates again .
, offer a reminder that “emotion” is a pretty novel idea . for centuries , the theory of bodily “humours” – blood , phlegm , yellow bile and black bile – held sway ; personality was determined by the balance of these . robert burton , in
, understood tears as part of this balance . “to these humours , ” he wrote in 1621 , “you may add serum , which is the matter of urine , and those excrementitious humours of the third concoction , sweat and tears . ” ( dixon opines that his favourite phrase for tears is “excrementitious humours of the third concoction” and it is hard to disagree . )
emotion only appeared on the scene in the 19th century . smith credits the scottish philosopher thomas brown for introducing the term , which blended physiognomy with feeling : “the coinage indicated a novel approach to the life of feelings , one which used experiments and anatomical investigations to focus on observable phenomena : clenched teeth ; rolling tears ; shudders ; wide eyes . ”
that afflicted devout christians in the early centuries of the religion and then vanished nearly without trace .
both of these books demonstrate the way in which emotions are social constructs , arising not only from our physical selves but also from culture and chronology . dixon moves from the middle ages to the present day in charting the shifting meanings of tears and british attitudes towards them ; i write “british” advisedly , for there are plenty of examples in which the nations that make up this sceptred isle disagree on the matter . the
, observing david lloyd george speak in 1909 to his constituency of carnarvon boroughs – a meeting at which both the then chancellor of the exchequer and his audience wept – despaired of this “display of fulsome feeling” as revealing of a “flowery and fervid national character” . in “hard - headed and self - possessed yorkshire , such an exhibition would have been enough to empty the hall” . the
dixon’s examples are largely english . he begins with margery kempe , the 15th - century mystic whose autobiography of her spiritual journey was rediscovered in the 1930s . dixon calls her “the
dixon traces a line through the reformation , the french revolution and the building of the british empire to show how the nation gradually renounced its tears but , for much of the intervening centuries , the british and even the english were happy to keep their feelings to the fore . queen victoria wept when she learned that she was to be queen . charles dickens was a master of pathos ; at the death of little nell in
, “the world mourned” , one of the author’s obituaries noted . as for oscar wilde’s reported acerbic quip – that one would have to have a heart of stone to read the death of little nell without laughing – dixon does well to remind us that wilde was the author of “the happy prince” , one of the greatest sob - fests ever set down on paper .
, last summer’s hit pixar film , in which five emotions – joy , sadness , fear , anger and disgust – belonging to a little girl called riley battle it out for control of her personality . how fortunate that the animators didn’t get hold of smith’s book ; the movie would have been a mess .
is published in association with the wellcome collection , an organisation that is always trying to bridge the gap between science and art . the result is a kind of very high - class book to keep on a shelf in the lav .
smith’s most entertaining entries are – somewhat by default – those that concern those unfamiliar , culturally specific emotions .
, since you were wondering , is the need to be coddled and comforted by a loved one .
is a melancholic yearning for someone or some place far distant or lost – it was thought to have been named in the 13th century and popularised during the portuguese age of discovery . some of smith’s choices are hard to quantify as emotions , however : does emily dickinson’s “formal feeling” really qualify ? “postal , going” ? i’m not so sure .
“i try so hard not to cry , ” one respondent wrote . “i’m furious with myself for crying and yet the tears do come . ”
the book of human emotions : an encyclopaedia of feeling from anger to wanderlust by tiffany watt smith is published by profile books ( 208pp , £14 . 99 )
erica wagner is a new statesman contributing writer . a former literary editor of the times , she has twice judged the man booker prize . her books include ariel ' s gift : ted hughes , sylvia plath and the story of “birthday letters” , the novel seizure and , most recently , chief engineer : the man who built the brooklyn bridge .
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for those who became addicted to that series , ' ' brideshead revisited ' ' and a subsequent stream of merchant - ivory films delivered enough seductive fixes of anglophilia to instill a mass fantasy in the american imagination of english aristocrats as the ne plus ultra of western high society .
absurdly stuffy and pretentious , cedric , when talking about the weather , likes to quote homer , describing the ' ' rosy - fingered dawn , ' ' and often converses in latin . emily , of course , can ' t stand him . her mr . right appears in the person of george ( sean pertwee ) , a working - class bloke who saves her from drowning one afternoon and during the rescue gives her her first tantalizing glimpse of the male anatomy . when aunt agnes goes searching for george in a local pub called scum of the earth , she brings along a nude drawing of george that emily has sketched from memory .
everybody soon repairs to italy ( george is dragged along as a servant ) , where emily and cedric have their moment of truth . stealing into cedric ' s bedroom one night , emily demands , ' ' i want my sexual awakening , and i want it now . ' ' when cedric proves unresponsive , she bombards him with a list of erotically provocative words of which only one , ' ' eton , ' ' seems to have an effect .
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the farther the film moves from england , the more ramshackle it becomes , and once the travelers reach india , it pretty much falls apart . the farcical jokes lampooning british imperialism are too obvious and sloppily executed to be funny . peter ustinov is wasted in the laugh - free role of cedric ' s uncle horace , their eccentric indian host , who develops an improbable passion for dear aunt agnes .
directed by gary sinyor ; written by paul simpkin and mr . sinyor ; director of photography , simon archer ; edited by peter hollywood ; music by david a . hughes and john murphy ; production designer , mike grant ; produced by jeremy bolt and mr . sinyor ; released by cowboy booking international . running time : 85 minutes . this film is not rated .
with : samuel west ( edward ) , robert portal ( cedric ) , prunella scales ( aunt agnes ) , georgina cates ( emily ) , sean pertwee ( george ) and peter ustinov ( horace ) .
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( yes , you did read that write folks ) will stay with me for a long time . it was one of those beautiful days that you simply just didn’t want to end , and to top it all off , thatchers gold on friggin tap all night . . . . . amazing ! we love you guys , huge congratulations to the both of you . lee & danny xx
last night was a belter ! what a lovely couple we had the great pleasure to play for and a lovely choice of venue too . the temperature was soaring on that dance - floor , hats off to your friends and family . congratulations jess and george ! x
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aunt agnes vainly tries to force emily to marry boring cedric by taking them to italy and india hoping that emily will forget about the handsome george .
what must have seemed a great idea in the pub , sending up all those worthy but dull british costume dramas in the style of airplane ! lacks the verve and inspired lunacy of the zuckers at their best , but at least displays a keen eye for the genre it is satirising .
set at the height of the british empire , gary ( leon the pig farmer ) sinyor ' s film has matriarch aunt agnes ( scales ) inviting stuffy toff cedric trilling ( robert portal ) to ivory hall , viewing him as a potential suitor for her virginal niece emily ( cates ) . yet , during a skinnydip , emily is rescued from drowning by hunky pleb george ( pertwee ) who is subsequently hired as butler for the family ' s expedition ; first to italy , then to india where , enjoying the hospitality of a randy plantation owner ( ustinov ) , george is framed and put on trial for setting fire to the family ' s pride and joy ; the lawn he has slavishly carried from england .
indeed , the film often falls wearily back on puerile britcom staples to up a flagging chuckle ante . still , the milieu is evocatively recreated , a strong cast works hard to enliven the proceedings and , as is often the case with such spoofathons , some of the smaller throwaway gags prove much funnier than the overblown set pieces ( i . e . corset tightening via a galloping horse ) . however , you can ' t escape the feeling it ' s all been done before , but much better and shorter .
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journalists feeling beleaguered — that is to say , journalists — might find a wry glimmer of hope in the michael frayn play “alphabetical order , ” which is having its new york premiere courtesy of the keen company . the play , which opened on tuesday night at the harold clurman theater on theater row , depicts the frantic antics at a withering daily newspaper in the british provinces .
no , withering is not a cheering adjective to apply to a newspaper . ( or a fresh one , for that matter . ) but this modest , tidy comedy dates from 1975 . if newspapers have been shriveling since the distant predisco days , perhaps they can look forward to a twilight as long as that of the theater itself , which was declared to be dying long before the internet was a twinkle in anybody’s eye .
“alphabetical order” is a minor early work from mr . frayn , the english writer who would go on to dazzle and delight with his peerless backstage farce “noises off” and more lately his brow - furrowing “copenhagen” and “democracy . ” but the play proves a zippy little vehicle for a delightful cast under the fine direction of the keen leader , carl forsman . nobody’s a name , and everybody’s terrific , a heartening reminder of the city’s deep , too often underused field of fine character actors . that they all manage to field creditable british accents is icing on the tea cake .
mr . frayn’s play seems deliberately modest , even as a comedy about journalists . instead of being set in the nerve center of the newsroom , where editors bark and belt back whiskey , and reporters crack wise and fight over scoops , “alphabetical order” takes place entirely in the pokey library of the paper in question .
a newspaper’s library , for those not conversant with the antediluvian ways of pre - web journalism , is where research materials were stored , and articles from the major papers were carefully clipped and sorted by subject , then filed neatly away in metal cabinets , to be dug up — by hand , imagine — when reporters were looking for background on a piece .
the cast of “alphabetical order , ” from left : william connell , paul molnar , john windsor - cunningham , brad bellamy and margaret daly ; center , angela reed ; and right , audrey lynn weston , in the keen company production of michael frayn ' s 1975 newspaper comedy at the harold clurman theater .
as the play opens , chaos reigns in the dingy domain of the paper’s librarian , lucy ( angela reed ) , who has hired a new assistant , lesley ( audrey lynn weston ) , to help her restore some order to the dangerously engorged cabinets and vagrant piles of yellowing newsprint . ms . weston’s prim gait and gape of astonishment signal effectively how appalled lesley is at lucy’s carefree attitude toward both her job and her life .
this allergy to disorder will soon find lesley taming both the chaos in the room and the unruly romances of those who pass through it . these include the affable , cambridge - educated reporter john ( william connell ) , who has been conducting an on - again , off - again affair with lucy ; the bewhiskered wally ( paul molnar ) , another reporter and john’s rival for lucy’s distracted favors ; arnold ( brad bellamy ) , who communicates in monosyllables and has both a dying wife and a drinking problem ; the cockney messenger geoffrey ( john windsor - cunningham ) , who’s got a wink and a friendly joke for everybody ; and the features editor , nora ( margaret daly ) , who has a tender eye for arnold .
mr . frayn , who began his career as a journalist , portrays the roistering atmosphere in the room with obvious affection , although “alphabetical order” reveals a playwright still coloring inside the lines . the plot is mathematically tidy , with each strand almost too carefully drawn . the jokes occasionally fall dead on the air , leaving little puffs of dust behind . ( with its groovy , well - observed 1970s costumes , by jennifer paar , the play sometimes reminded me of the endearing london department store sitcom of the era , “are you being served ? ” )
by michael frayn ; directed by carl forsman ; stage manager , justin scribner ; sets by nathan heverin ; costumes by jennifer paar ; lighting by josh bradford ; sound by jill b . c . duboff ; technical director , marshall miller . presented by the keen company , mr . forsman , artistic director ; wayne kelton , executive director . at the harold clurman theater , 412 west 42nd street , clinton ; ( 212 ) 239 - 6200 , urltoken . through oct . 26 . running time : 1 hour 45 minutes .
with : audrey lynn weston ( lesley ) , john windsor - cunningham ( geoffrey ) , brad bellamy ( arnold ) , william connell ( john ) , angela reed ( lucy ) , margaret daly ( nora ) and paul molnar ( wally ) .
with the headline : the withering heights and depths of a dying british paper .
when you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed play or musical through our site , we earn an affiliate commission . but our primary goal is that this feature adds value to your reading experience .
a patrician new england clan decamps to their private island off martha’s vineyard for the summer . of the dozen or so sinclair family members in residence , “no one is a criminal . no one is an addict . no one is a failure . ” three lies , the first of many , provide an irresistible premise for this ticking bomb of a novel by e . lockhart .
overtones of the brothers grimm and “king lear” abound in this quasi - fable about the powerful patriarch and his three beautiful , useless daughters , all of whom drink too much and feud over who will get the biggest slice of the family fortune . meanwhile the next generation — lear’s grandchildren , as it were — raises the moral ante by falling inappropriately in love , fomenting revolution and refusing to participate in the traditional sinclair game of vying for granddad’s money .
the liars of the title are three teenage cousins — johnny , mirren and our narrator , cadence — together with an outsider by the name of gat patil . gat is handsome , dark - skinned and charismatic , with passionately held political beliefs such as : “not everyone has private islands . some people work on them . some work in factories . some don’t have work . some don’t have food . ” cadence’s grandfather cannot even bring himself to address the interloper by name , but for cadence it is love at first sight .
while the sinclair mothers bicker over tablecloths , earrings and trust funds , the liars dream of college and freedom and true love . lockhart admirably captures the erotic intensity of shadowy summer nights when the grown - ups either are drunk or elsewhere , or both , leaving the liars — tanned and barefoot and desperate for intimacy — to kiss and shiver and swear eternal allegiance on the beach .
years pass ; the troubles in paradise intensify . money is tight . drinkers become drunks . sexual jealousies surface . and then , during the summer of her 15th year , cadence suffers a catastrophic accident that leaves her with crippling migraines and total amnesia . but what actually happened ? was it really just an accident ?
amnesia is not an easy literary row to hoe . beloved by cheap tv drama , it’s a device certain to cue groans and eye - rolls from jaded readers . yet lockhart just about manages to pull it off , thanks to the freshness of the writing and the razor - sharp metaphor amnesia provides for the sinclair family habit of denial .
cadence returns to the island after two years to try to reconstruct what happened on the night of the accident . for reasons that frustrate her ( and the reader ) , but which will eventually be explained , not a single witness will talk . the story jumps back and forth in time , interspersing her edgy , idiomatic narrative with a series of powerful twisted fairy tales . slowly , painstakingly , cadence pieces together the events of that terrible night . despite a final chapter that hints at redemption , it is not the sort of disaster from which she will ever recover .
i enjoyed lockhart’s pithy observations , the intimate shorthand , the snappy characterizations of wasp families . they populated my youth on martha’s vineyard and at harvard , flawlessly confident , angst - free and clean in their izod shirts and lily pulitzer dresses , inspiring curiosity and wonder in generations of messy , overemotional jews . who are they ? what are they really like ?
the flaw in “we were liars” is that we never find out . cadence’s story emerges from deep within this troubled family — and yet the aunts , teenagers , littles and golden retrievers form a largely undifferentiated mass . careless , grasping and obsessed with keeping up appearances , they casually wreck one another’s lives , but we never discover why . even the liars are a featureless bunch . cadence repeatedly announces that johnny is “bounce , effort and snark , ” that mirren is “sugar , curiosity and rain , ” that gat is “contemplation and enthusiasm . ambition and strong coffee . ” these are nice descriptions , but some genuine characterization wouldn’t go amiss . their fates seem as distant as the fates of the princesses in cadence’s fairy tales . they are there to offer a moral , not to elicit sympathy or understanding .
this is an ambitious novel with an engaging voice , a clever plot and some terrific writing . in the end , however , its portrayal of a shattered family and the desperate consequences of silence and greed , feels oddly flat . i couldn’t help thinking that the terrible fate of the sinclair family might as well be happening to a collection of fairy tale characters . or to those preppy models in the ralph lauren ads . did i care how they lived or died ? probably not as much as i should have .
meg rosoff is the author of “how i live now , ” the 2005 winner of the michael l . printz award , and , most recently , of “picture me gone , ” a 2013 national book award finalist .
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he last ever episode of ripper street blended bravura action and full - steam sentimentality . a multitude of loose ends requiring tying off , the victorian thriller having woven a typically intricate web of dark deeds through
. but , as the end approached , there was also an obligation to give a respectful farewell to its beloved ensemble of coppers and crooks . this wasn ' t a temporary sign - off – it was a final curtain bow .
one of our favourite characters , inspector bennet drake ( jerome flynn ) , had already met his maker at the conclusion of series four during a run - in with a throat - ripping maniac . now he was back for a delightful encore as , in an extended flashback , di edmund reid ( matthew macfadyen ) reflected on his and drake’s failed investigation , a decade previously , into the ( real life ) murder by jack the ripper of mary kelly .
eid’s obsession with the killer from whom the series took its name was rekindled midway though the 75 - minute finale . the opening half had been spent bringing to a hasty conclusion the taciturn hero’s struggle with villainous scotland yard bigwig augustus dove ( killian scott ) . the jig was finally up for the dastardly dove as he was found to have murdered young robin sumner . the damning evidence was riddled across his chest in the scarlet fever he had contracted from his victim .
a hasty cover - up ensued . dove was bundled off to prison under an assumed name , while his cannibal brother nathaniel ( the sweeter of the pair , it turned out ) was dispatched to the hangman . joining him at the gallows was former brothel keeper “long
susan hart ( myanna buring ) , finally held to account for her crimes across previous seasons .
er husband , captain homer jackson ( adam rothenberg ) , was permitted to return to america with their son , though this proved temporary relief as he was subsequently killed off camera in a drowning accident . with much - loved characters dropping like fruit - flies , reid ' s future suddenly seemed in question too .


fireworks ( 1947 ) is a homoerotic experimental film by kenneth anger .

filmed in his parents ' home in beverly hills , california , over a long weekend while they were away , the film stars anger and explicitly explores themes of homosexuality and sado-masochism .

it is the earliest of his works to survive .

anger synopsizes the film thus : " a dissatisfied dreamer awakes , goes out in the night seeking a ' light ' and is drawn through the needle 's eye .

a dream of a dream , he returns to bed less empty than before . "

adding later , " this flick is all i have to say about being seventeen , the united states navy , american christmas , and the fourth of july . "

anger was arrested on obscenity charges following the release of fireworks .

in 1958 , a lawsuit was brought against the manager raymond rohauer of l.a. 's coronet theatre for screening fireworks .

the case became " an epic obscenity trial " in the california supreme court which declared the film to be art .

fireworks ( 1947 film )

kenneth anger , fireworks , 1947 , 16 mm , black - and - white , sound , 15 minutes . kenneth anger .
kenneth anger , fireworks , 1947 , 16 mm , black - and - white , sound , 15 minutes . united states navy sailors .
kenneth anger , fireworks , 1947 , 16 mm , black - and - white , sound , 15 minutes . kenneth anger and gordon gray .
ka : what i call my magick lantern cycle , nine films . it starts with fireworks and ends with lucifer rising . incidentally , this is the 50th anniversary of fireworks ; i made it in 1947 .
6 . kenneth anger , audio commentary , fireworks ( 1947 ) , from the films of kenneth anger , vol . 1 ( san francisco : fantoma , 2007 ) , dvd .
completed at the tender age of 17 , fireworks – an audacious pre - stonewall exploration of homosexuality , violence , and american youth – was the breakthrough film for avant - garde film legend kenneth anger .
…in his first successful film , fireworks ( 1947 ) , shot at his parents’ home while they were away . the brief movie featured anglemyer as a young man who fantasizes about and is then abused by a group of sailors . ( anglemyer credited himself as anger and later as kenneth anger . ) the overt homoerotic…
the term “trance - film” is taken from p . adams sitney , whose visionary film : the american avant - garde ( oxford : oxford university press , 2002 ) has become the bible of american avant - garde film history .
my favourite queer , film making icon once again makes a short film that ' s so beautiful it ' s hard to explain . everything he makes i really love . he ' s an icon of film making and also soundtracks .
pictures at an october gallery , london , exhibition of drawings and objects by and about the occult master aleister crowley ( 1875 - 1947 ) . exhibit titled
an old master
.
shot this film over the course of one weekend , while his parents were out of town .
founded in 1999 , senses of cinema is one of the first online film journals of its kind and has set the standard for professional , high quality film - related content on the internet .
this year marks the seventieth anniversary of kenneth anger’s fireworks , widely considered the ur - film of american queer cinema . in the pages that follow , artist and film scholar ara osterweil reexamines the seminal short as a response to profound social tensionsracial , sexual , and nationalisticthat came to a head in the aftermath of world war ii .
germany year zero is the closest that italian neorealism came to reckoning with the psychic life of children . made at the same time , fireworks meditates on the generative possibilities of psychic and sexual shattering . in so many ways , fireworks anticipates the explosion of the queer underground cinema that blossomed in the united states in the ’60s and in which anger’s later film scorpio rising ( 1963 ) played a central role . yet fireworks is also a product of its own “queer time and place . ” 19
christopher meir received his ma in film studies from concordia university . come the fall , he will begin work on his doctorate in film studies at the university of warwick . he will be writing his dissertation on new scottish cinema .
fireworks is not only anger’s first major film , but it also introduces many of the themes and motifs which would come to populate his later works . foremost among these is the concern with light . from the film’s title and opening image of a torch being thrown into water , through the lightning flashes and subsequent journey into darkness that the protagonist takes ( and concluding with pyrotechnic orgasms and a lover surrounded by a corona scratched onto the film’s surface ) , fireworks is a film obsessed with the technical and metaphoric use of light . the dreamer of anger’s synopsis ultimately finds his ‘light’ in the sailor with a phallic roman candle who becomes a god - like figure , laying in bed with the dreamer at the film’s end . throughout the rest of his career anger has remained fascinated with this idea of light and the character of lucifer , who is literally the god of light . ( 3 )
i have remarked before that anger ' s work falls either into the mystic camp or the homoerotic camp . this is firmly in the latter , with fireworks as a fairly blatant metaphor for sexual expression ( which both a euphemism and not ) . it ' s worth it for the eye candy , if that ' s your thing , and it ' s , of course , impressive to see this kind of imagery in 1947 .
the claim that this was made in 1947 feels like an elaborate hoax - this thing is decades ahead of it ' s time , that is , if we ' ve even caught up with it today . homoerotic is perhaps too subtle a term . anger is a genius .
no other picture could so perfectly initiate the film career of such a brilliant , complicated , ego - maniacal , queer wizard .
ara osterweil is a painter , a film scholar , and an associate professor of cultural studies at mcgill university in montreal . she is the author of flesh cinema : the corporeal turn in american avant - garde film ( manchester university press , 2014 ) .
a collection of queer characters , representations , and sensibilities on film . from queer masterpieces to camp classics , documentaries to romantic comedies , …
9 . according to scott macdonald , fireworks was shown twice at cinema 16 in new york , in 1952 and 1953 . see his cinema 16 : documents toward a history of the film society ( philadelphia : temple university press , 2002 ) , 171 , 195 . also see david e . james and adam hyman , eds . , alternative projections : experimental film in los angeles , 1945–1980 ( london : john libbey , 2015 ) , 132 .
fireworks ’ insistence on the actuality of homoerotic desire and sexual activity was a first in american cinema . yet the sexual desires that animate the film did not ignite in a vacuum : they were part of an emerging gay culture in midcentury los angeles . they were also a response to the militarization of public life during the war and to the racial and ethnic tensions that convulsed los angeles in the immediate postwar period . in its brutal staging of sexual violation , fireworks erotically transforms historical trauma into anger’s own metaphorical birth and baptism .
fireworks revolves around a young man ( played by anger himself ) associating with various navy sailors , who eventually turn on him , stripping him naked and beating him to death , ripping open his chest to find a clock ticking inside . several fireworks then explode , accompanied by a burning christmas tree and the final shot shows the young man lying in bed next to another topless man .
anger ' s first film was made over the course of a weekend at his family home . his parents were away . he was seventeen . the film is a short and immensely effective exploration of sexuality . that the fantasies are of homosexual leaning bears no relevance ; it is merely the chosen vehicle for the subject . the film is fascinated with the violence of sexual submission as well as the fear of it . the narrative seems to take the form of a dream sequence and is laced with astonishingly mature sarcasm and gentle wit . it is by far anger ' s greatest film and a landmark of the american avant - garde .
not everyone was so discouraging . in 1949 , anger submitted fireworks to the festival du film maudit in biarritz , and his filmmaker hero jean cocteau awarded it the poetic film prize . cocteau then wrote to the young director expressing his admiration for the work , which persuaded anger to move to paris . in 1950 , he took cocteau’s advice . he found a job at the cinémathèque française as an assistant to henri langlois and remained in france for a decade . while there , fireworks was exhibited at several european festivals , where it was better received than it had been in the states . of course , european audiences had not only experienced the war and its ravaging of innocence firsthand but had witnessed the transformation of the representation of adolescence in the various national cinemas that emerged from the rubble .
ka : i ' ve had everything from large spaces to smaller , experimental ones . i met bertolt brecht with charles laughton in the very same theatre where fireworks was first shown , at the coronet film society . this is a theatre that seats about 300 , an intimate theatre , but it ' s perfect for showing experimental kinds of films . it really was a place where you met all sorts of people . james whale - - the director of frankenstein - - came , and dr . kinsey . dr . alfred kinsey was there and he invited me to do one of his famous interviews for his book on human sexual behavior , and he also said he wanted to buy a print of fireworks for the collection at the kinsey institute , which was the first time i sold a print of my film .
in closing , i would like to point out the remarkable synthesis anger achieves in bringing together the nocturnal longings of a gay teenage boy ( and a sense of the cultural climate of the 1940s america he inhabits ) and the work of cocteau , a companion soul the film openly acknowledges . in fireworks , anger melds together a lampoon of american culture and authority and his life - long obsessions with lucifer – and his play with light – into a work which explores the inextinguishable flames of youth and eros . he also made a film which is aware of its own context in the history of avant - garde cinema .
kenneth anger ( b . 1930 , santa monica , usa ) is one of the greatest and most notorious living american avant - garde filmmakers . drawn to cinema , glamour and scandal early on – his grandmother worked in hollywood as a dresser and he knew shirley temple from school dances – he made his first film of note , fireworks ( 1947 ) , at the age of 17 . it set the mold for his later oeuvre , silent films of intense sensual imagery combined with mesmerizing musical soundtracks . a follower of necromancer aleister crowley , anger describes his lifework as being “magick” . his films may be seen as cinematic manifestations of his occult practices , appealing directly to the subconscious mind . anger also wrote hollywood babylon . his filmography includes puce moment ( 1949 ) , inauguration of the pleasure dome ( 1954 ) , kustom kar kommandos ( 1965 ) , rabbit’s moon ( 1972 ) and lucifer rising ( 1980 ) .
like alice in wonderland and the wizard of oz , fireworks pivots on a dream : an “innocent” young protagonist falls asleep and dreams up a world of desires too dangerous to be acknowledged in waking life . in most hollywood dream films , viewers are immersed in the screen’s wonders until the end of the film , when they are yanked abruptly from its fantasy mode and assured that all they have witnessed was “just a dream . ” with this return to reality , what might be called queer desire is once again repressed , along with the vital contradictions between public and private life that such dreams engender . yet when anger’s character awakens at the end of fireworks , he discovers that evidentiary traces of his fantasy have permeated his waking life .
fireworks also screened alongside curtis harrington ’s 1946 experimental film fragment of seeking at rudolph and pauline schindler ’s famous kings road house around 1948 . john cage and merce cunningham were in attendance , as were other radical artists and intellectuals . the screening did not go well : cage apparently told anger and harrington that their films had “ nothing to do with art . ” 13 according to anger , mrs . schindler called the filmmakers a week later to tell them that they were both “very sick young men . ” 14
] in fireworks , i released all the explosive pyrotechnics of a dream . inflammable desires dampened by day under the cold water of consciousness are ignited that night by the libertarian matches of sleep , and burst forth in showers of shimmering incandescence . these imaginary displays provide a temporary relief .
in addition to demonstrating an affinity with avant - garde filmmakers in america , anger’s fireworks also shows a great deal of international ‘cine - savvy’ through its homages to french filmmaker jean cocteau , particularly his classic experimental work le sang d’un poète ( 1930 ) . this can be seen in both films’ use of baroque set design , while the strange artifact hanging from the protagonist’s ceiling in fireworks is a direct quotation of the multiple wire sculptures which are so important to cocteau’s film . apart from similar set design and decoration , the films share a concern with youthful angst and the usually concomitant social repression of sexuality . in both films , this angst finds an outlet in the form of extreme acts of gory violence . the films likewise share a dream - like structure in which their respective protagonists search for some kind of spiritual and sexual fulfillment . it is no wonder that cocteau would become such a fervent admirer of anger’s work , as fireworks shows that anger was also a big fan of cocteau , and was obsessed with many of the same formal and thematic concerns as the french cinéaste .
emerging simultaneously in the immediate aftermath of world war ii , both fireworks and italian neorealism reimagine adolescence through a dark glass , rendering lingering notions of juvenile innocence obsolete . the children in these films are not passive figures but knowing subjects whose keen understanding emerges from the circumstances of their precarity . squired by war , neorealism ’s queer children have complex political agency , perverse desires , sadomasochistic proclivities , and a penchant for navigating the broken world through what stockton calls “sideways” forms of growth . 18 they also , like anger’s alter ego in fireworks , tend to mediate encounters between national identity and ethnic and racial otherness .
10 . mick brown , “ kenneth anger : where the bodies are buried , ” esquire , january 3 , 2014 , urltoken culture / news / a5483 / kenneth - anger . anger also mentions this in the audio commentary for fireworks on the films of kenneth anger dvd , although he doesn’t give a year for the coronet screening .
in the history of american cinema , dream structures serve a variety of purposes , whether as strategic attempts to avoid censorship or as ways of introducing surreal content into more standard narratives . dreams often function as sites where characters and audiences alike can explore forbidden intimacies . these explorations can be deadly or ecstatic . in kenneth anger ’s fireworks , they are both .
ka : i have a couple of film projects . i hope to be filming one of aleister crowley ' s works , gnostic mass . it ' s a short , it ' ll be a half - hour , but it will involve about a dozen people and have music and dialogue .
1 . anger has always claimed that he was seventeen at the time . other sources , including biographer bill landis , suggest he may have been older . in his anger : the unauthorized biography of kenneth anger ( new york : harpercollins , 1995 ) , landis gives anger’s birthday as february 3 , 1927 , which would have made the filmmaker twenty when fireworks was completed .
17 . jaimey fisher , “on the ruins of masculinity : the figure of the child in italian neorealism and the german rubble - film , ” in italian neorealism and global cinema , ed . laura e . ruberto and kristi m . wilson ( detroit : wayne state university press , 2007 ) , 28 .
ac : let me ask you a
thematic
question about some of your works . i ' m thinking of rabbit ' s moon and fireworks but also the babylon books , where in all of them there ' s an almost relentless , sped - up pace . that ' s certainly true of the babylon books ; you can get through them really quickly . . .
ka : well , that he was a poet in many fields - - among them film - - that he was fascinated with and was able to work with . he started in 1930 with blood of a poet . and i was fortunate enough to meet him when i went to europe . he was on the jury at a festival where i sent fireworks . he wrote me a letter saying that he liked it , so i decided i had to meet him the next year , in 1950 . i stayed [ in paris ] 12 years . i was fortunate for an american to find a job almost immediately . i worked for 12 years for henri langlois at the cinématheque française and had a very close relationship with him .
ka : well , i had a good crowd the last time i was in austin . i suppose it will be perhaps some of the art community , maybe some film students and then the groups that are interested in aleister crowley , on which i ' m an expert ; there ' s a little clan there ( in austin ) .
the climax of the film is signified by the liquefaction of the dreamer’s body in milky ejaculate . poured from above , cream flows over the man’s mouth , throat , and chest . we see a quick shot of anger lying nude on the floor of a public urinal and then another image of the door marked gents . a lone sailor with a bulging erection cuts a heroic figure , but when he lights the phallus protruding from his fly , it turns out to be a roman candle that showers fireworks . anger’s character reemerges , wearing a gilded christmas tree on his head , awkwardly positioned for penetration . as the tree is consumed by fire , photos of the earlier pietà scene ignite , destroying the dream’s archive of queerness . the distinction between fantasy and reality bends as we see anger , sleeping again in his room , alongside a shirtless man whose visage is erased in an explosion of painted white rays intended to obscure the actor’s identity . the film ends with a false image of reparation , as the severed fingers of the plaster hand are reattached only to bid a fond “fuck you” to the audience .
ka : i ' ve never made a film using dialogue or speech , so this will be quite a departure for me . i ' ve planned several projects using speech but never have actually done them , mostly because of the tremendous cost to make them . my films up to now have been silent with musical accompaniment . this will be quite different .
ka : this is my host ' s idea , because , actually , it ' s kind of a surprise for me . i think he ' s going to have the balcony arranged in some kind of decor echoing my film inauguration of the pleasure dome , which already inspired . . . did you see pillow talk with rock hudson and doris day ?
this eruption of violent , sexualized conflict between dominant and marginalized forms of masculinity had a profound impact on anger . as he has acknowledged , the zoot - suit riots served as an artistic and sexual awakening . not only did these disturbances spark “his fascination with the image of the sailor , ” 29 they helped to forge an erotic , masochistic identification with america’s racialized others . although the racial dynamics that inspired the film are nowhere in evidence in its whitewashed cast of characters , fireworks uses a fantasy of being beaten to dramatize the radical implications of anger’s growing sense of identification with those mexicans and african americans who were beaten in the streets and vilified by the media . for anger , the zoot - suit riots served as a primal scene for the emergence of a sexual identity in opposition to heteronormative conceptions of masculinity .
the articulation of postwar queer identity was , as fireworks suggests , inextricable from the prohibitions against it . victimized in an incident of police entrapment , 30 anger recognized the kindred plight of the oppressed zoot suiters while simultaneously perceiving shadows of his own desires in the rioters’ mutual attraction and hostility . putting his own body in the place of the abjected mexicans and african americans , anger fantasizes his violation by a gang of sailors . inviting punishment and then exhibiting his own metaphoric castration by the sailors , the filmmaker offered his adolescent body up as a sacrifice to a social order that was as inimical to queers as it was to americans of color . yet by staging his own surrender to the crushing forces of homophobia in what is essentially his coming - out film , anger constructed an image of his selfhood in the very terms of its destruction .
anger began making films in 1937 , when he was ten . he used his family’s 16 - mm kodak movie camera and the end scraps of their home - movie reels ; the spring load on the camera allowed him to shoot for only thirty seconds at a time . by the time he made the fifteen - minute fireworks , anger had a bell & howell camera that operated at 24 fps . 4 he shot the film in his family’s home in beverly hills over the course of three nights while his parents were away . his production materials were modest . shooting on stock supposedly stolen from the us navy , 5 anger transformed his family home into a hotbed of “inflammable desires” with the help of a large canvas depicting a saloon that he had lifted from the abandoned set of a western . a scene in which anger appears nude on the floor of a public urinal was shot on location in the public men’s room of olive hill park while a friend kept watch outside . 6
born in santa monica and raised in beverly hills , anger stitched his self - image from the dream stuff of hollywood . it should thus come as no surprise that fact and fantasy bleed in his biography , as they do in his famously incendiary book of gossip , hollywood babylon ( 1959 ) . anger’s beloved grandmother was , according to the filmmaker , a costume mistress during the silent film era . 2 supposedly it was she , working with max reinhardt , who got young kenneth a role in the famed austrian - born theater director’s 1935 cinematic adaptation of a midsummer night’s dream : anger claims to have appeared as the changeling prince . but while hollywood was bursting with child actors in the 1930sanger danced with shirley temple at the santa monica cotillion and went to high school with her stand - in , with whom he collaborated on an early film 3 child auteurs were a far more singular breed .
( 34 m ) 5th studio mirror :
and about the sky
berlin : outdoors for film . hans albers speaks with rubble women . director joseph von báky brings to recording hans albers . hans albers sits down on a chair , large , and is melted . he eats bread and look at in the mirror , large . intake valve . hans albers climbs ladder . cameraman swings with camera . joseph by leanna in stage directions , great .
on the other side of the door , anger’s double meets a contemptuous muscle queen who taunts him by assuming a variety of poses that might have been lifted from the pages of vim or your physique . rebuffed for asking for a light , anger is slapped silly and then offered , in one of the film’s visual puns , a bundle of blazing sticks . it’s a lame joke , but one that would have resonated with any viewer who had ever been called a faggot .
a wordless film , save for a voice - over introducing us to the imagery of dreams . a shirtless young man dreams of awakening to finds photographs of a muscular sailor carrying him in his arms . he goes to a bar where the sailor from his dream displays his muscular upper torso . a gang of sailors , swinging chains , enters menacingly . he watches , smoking . they surround him and an assault begins . surreal touches accent the dream - like qualities . a phallic firework , a flaming christmas tree , and the burning photographs provide climax and closure as the young man , back in bed , is beside the sailor .
ka : yes , it ' s been about 10 years or so . i spent some time at the hrc [ ut ' s humanities research center ] collection , looking at the film collections . the gloria swanson collection is there , and i looked at that . i hope i ' ll be able to consult some of the things there . i don ' t think they have any zanuck material , because zanuck was my neighbor here in palm springs and his estate is just around the corner . i live in the al jolson estate , in al jolson ' s last house . but i think the zanuck material has ended up in wahoo , nebraska , in his birth house . i ' ve got quite a few zanuck things . he was a wild game hunter and i have some of the pieces that he shot .
after a momentary respite , the young man turns around only to encounter a menacing group of sailors swinging chains and clubs . again , reality punctures fiction : the gang members were played by authentic american sailors who were studying to be cameramen at the university of southern california . 22 they approach and attack him . blood erupts from the young man’s nose as he is beaten mercilessly . upside - down close - ups of his face show the man in an agony easily mistaken for ecstasy . in one of the film’s many unsubtle references to ejaculation , a bottle of milk shatters beside him . the young man’s chest is pierced with broken glass and we see gruesome shots of the man’s eviscerated chest cavity . we glimpse a wavering electrometer buried in the mess . refusing to provide a sentimental image of a dead queer child , anger provides an image of an eviscerated body that is actually a machine . erotically charged by his own annihilation , he supplants the hypocrisy of the american dream with this vision of nihilistic ecstasy .
but if his films are subversive , that aesthetic hasn ' t hindered numerous
borrowings ,
which , as he alludes to in this interview , are both bane and potential boon to anger . the kitsch , irony , and montage editing of anger ' s best - known work , scorpio rising ( 1964 ) , is indeed replicated by today ' s unknowing generation of mtv filmmakers , as anger is only too aware . anger describes his sacrilegious 30 - minute tribute to the myth of the american motorcyclist as
the power machine seen as a tribal totem , from toy to terror . . . thanatos in chrome and black leather and bursting jeans .
scorpio is a catalogue , an iconography of the eternality of the american tough and his depiction in film , and ends with what , in anger logic , is the result of all that adulation : an orgiastic rite . if anger ' s summary reads somewhat enigmatic and mystical , understand that that ' s no mistake on his part . in addition to being an avant - garde filmmaker , anger is an occultist . as any good supplicant of the notorious english magus aleister crowley should be , anger has proved to be his own best experiment or invention .
interracial , intergenerational encounters figure prominently in neorealist cinema . in paisan ( 1946 ) , the second film in roberto rossellini ’s wartime trilogy , a drunken african american soldier named joe meets pasquale , a young neapolitan urchin . when we first see him , joe longs to go home , only to recall , suddenly and bitterly , that the home to which he wishes to return is racially segregated america . throughout paisan , the characters speak different languages and thus fail to understand one another . nonetheless , pasquale recognizes ( though does not fully comprehend ) the social implications of joe ’s blackness . he takes advantage of joe ’s inebriated state , “buying” him from fellow street kids . later , when joe falls asleep , pasquale steals his boots . apprehending the child thief on a subsequent day , joe demands the return of his boots and takes the child “home” to retrieve them . yet when joe witnesses the squalid cave in which the orphaned child dwells with dozens of other homeless neapolitans , he leaves without his boots and without any further retributive justice . despite their ethnic and racial differences , joe and pasquale come to recognize each other as kindred . such cross - cultural identifications became the basis for many of the intergenerational intimacies in postwar cinema .
wandering a devastated world in which the normative structures of civilization are overturned , neo - realism’s children are often confronted with erotic energies that have run rampant . in the third film of rossellini’s trilogy , germany year zero ( 1948 ) , the shattering of a young boy’s innocence serves as a metaphor for the ruined topos of bombed - out berlin . wandering around the city hustling for money , edmund and his environment are posed as phenomenological equivalents . edmund succumbs to the pedophilic seductions of a former teacher , a nazi whose musings on survival of the fittest are taken literally by the boy , who then begins plotting his aging father’s death . after being rebuffed and abandoned by his exploiter , the boy is broken , and his undoing proves fatal . edmund has been so tragically queered by money , war , and nazism that he relinquishes the future he has been denied , and throws himself off a building . nearly simultaneously , but worlds away , an ( allegedly ) teenage kenneth anger embraces the erasure of his own future by celebrating his ecstatic submission to violence . whereas edmund’s suicide is an act of desperation so melancholic that it is hard to imagine the future of childhood in its wake , anger eroticizes his own nullification , fashioning a queer mode of survival . what might these queer boys have to say to each other across the ocean of their desires ?
kenneth anger , who will be in austin this halloween weekend , is a premier figure of american avant - garde cinema . legendary as an underground filmmaker , anger prefers to regard himself as a maker of magick , albeit one who uses the camera as his medium to the occult . born around 1930 ( the year varies slightly by source ) , anger ( an adopted name ) grew up in santa monica , california . he started making his own movies at a young age in 1941 with who has been rocking my dream boat ? and numerous other shorts , all of which were later destroyed by the filmmaker ' s own hand . while still a child , anger appeared ( uncredited ) in max reinhardt ' s visually lush hollywood feature a midsummer night ' s dream ( 1935 ) and he also partnered with shirley temple at dance school cotillions . anger ' s fascination with hollywood ' s early decades has remained constant , as seen in his two tell - all , slash - and - burn hollywood babylon volumes , virtual picture books chronicling the seamier , more lurid details of the lives and deaths of hollywood past .
austin chronicle : i think the first order of business is finding out what you ' ve been up to lately .
kenneth anger : well , i have a book i ' m working on [ hollywood babylon 3 ] and i ' ve done two of them , so that is an ongoing project and i expect to have it done soon , at least that is my hope .
ka : yes . i made it over one weekend . i wish i could still do that .
ka : well , they ' re picture books and they ' re almost like movies because i ' m very visually oriented . the pictures are certainly as important as the text and there ' s a lot of jokes and surprises as you turn pages . you find illustrations that may not seem to go with the text .
ka : yes , he certainly is one of my influences . he was much more than a filmmaker ; he didn ' t get into filmmaking until middle age . but he was a child prodigy poet and did very experimental work and choreographed for dance and was involved in so many things .
ac : well maybe i should be more specific - - what i ' m asking about is this kind of thread that runs throughout your career of returning to previous works and doing revisions and i just wanted to hear a bit more . . .
ka : no , this will be a departure for me , but i use ritual in my other films , sometimes in a humorous way , sometimes quite serious . in fact , i admire cocteau for that because you never know when he ' s kidding and when he ' s serious , and i admire that .
ka : yeah , i have a water buffalo that he shot ; i ' ve got pictures of him shooting . i ' m not much into blood sports , but these things came my way when his daughter moved away from palm springs , these things she didn ' t really want in her new house . she said i could have them .
ac : if i could switch gears again to hollywood babylon - - i guess for lack of a better term , currently there ' s a
gossip industry .
i mean there are tabloid shows , of course there are tabloid papers . is hollywood babylon in any way a forerunner of this phenomenon ?
ka : well , of course it was , i mean i sort of made a lot of these kind of tabloid gossip papers and things if not respectable at least legitimate . but frankly my interest is more in hollywood ' s past than its present .
ka : well , i go up to the o . j . case and the hugh grants and all those things but , basically , i treat them with a certain contempt . the glamour is just not there for me with the current crop . i mean some of them are good actors and so forth ; i just can ' t get very excited about them .
ac : now tell me about this event called the
re - inauguration of the pleasure dome
that ' s supposed to take place when you come .
ac : well i guess you know that will be one of the panel topics when you come to town - - the influence of the avant garde on mainstream cinema .
ka : well , of course , people steal from me and it doesn ' t mean that i ' m particularly happy about it , but there ' s nothing i can do about it and i can ' t copyright my images . i will say i ' m
bemused ,
particularly by borrowings by mtv . and there are several groups that have done practically carbon copies of certain scenes from my films . and of course they ' ve never given me a call saying ,
why don ' t you make a music video for us ?
i could use the money . unless i didn ' t absolutely despise the music , i might even think of doing it . but it ' s never happened . it ' s much easier for them just to steal . and the younger generation , people that are making mtv , some of them have moved into hollywood films , but they are a generation of magpies , outrageous thieves , stealing ideas right and left . and they have amazingly little imagination of their own . if they didn ' t have people to steal from , i mean they ' d really be hard up . and that ' s my opinion of them . i hope that doesn ' t sound bitter ! i ' m mostly just bemused .
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depicts a dream sequence about the brutal rape and torture of anger himself ( as a teenager ) by a group of sailors on the street ( after trying to pick one of them up ) .
hotel transylvania 3 : summer vacation stars plan their dream summer getaways to some memorable movie settings .
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a woman dressed elegantly walks purposely through the water gardens at the villa d ' este in tivoli , as the music of vivaldi ' s
winter
movement of
the four seasons
plays . heavy red filters . . . see full summary »
pierrot waxes romantic , entranced by the moon . harlequin appears and bullies him , then uses a magic lantern to project an image of columbine . pierrot tries to court the illusory columbine . . . see full summary »
a soundtrack plays folk rock as a woman prepares , at noon , to take her borzois for a walk . she goes through her dresses , all 1920s style flapper gowns , holding them one at a time , shaking . . . see full summary »
a slavonic mass by leos janácek plays as historical figures , biblical characters , and mythical creatures gather in the pleasure dome . aphrodite , lilith , isis , kali , astarte , nero , pan , and . . . see full summary »
a man in tight jeans buffs his car to the strains of
dream lover
.
a gang of nazi bikers prepares for a race as sexual , sadistic , and occult images are cut together .
experimental short , featuring strobe - like erotic imagery with several shots of the rolling stones in performance and an original synthesizer score by mick jagger .
egyptian gods summons the angel lucifer - in order to usher in a new occult age .
a woman returning home falls asleep and has vivid dreams that may or may not be happening in reality . through repetitive images and complete mismatching of the objective view of time and space , her dark inner desires play out on - screen .
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explore popular sci - fi movies and tv shows available to stream with prime video .
video : kinsey ' s meeting with kenneth anger at aleister crowley ' s abbey thelema .
the blood being pulled from the nostrils . the shower of semen . the roman candle cock .
and so , underground cinema is inaugurated with anger ' s visionary and
buñuelian
homoerotic masterpiece heavy on the symbolisms and on the subjects of repression and personal suffering . voilá .
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styles of substance : the extraordinary image : orson welles , alfred hitchcock , stanley kubrick , and the reimagining of cinema , by robert p . kolker
anger has correctly pointed out in interviews that lucifer is indeed the light - bearer of the gods and not satan , which he calls a “christian slander . ” on this point i am especially indebted to william c . wees analysis of anger’s work in light moving in time ( oxford : university of california press , 1992 ) 107 - 123 .
the swine who rewrote f . scott fitzgerald : joseph l . mankiewicz as producer
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1st caring for injured disabled in self - propelled wheelchairs . disabled sit in wheelchairs and are used in . east frisia : war invalids work retraining village - in the nursery . dinner bell is rung . disabled go door - to - door . at the door writing classroom . lessons in schneider stube .
( 36 m ) 02 . streiflichter from germany a . munich : exhibition of youth exhibition of children ' s drawings . laughing children . stands for career choices . craft booth . workers shows patches on a street . carpenter , plumber , mason . swing on a figure sculpture . artfully forged box .
( 33 m ) b . obersalzberg : hitler ' s estate is agricultural school landscape of the obersalzberg . reconstruction of the court to the agricultural school . women when wiping table and bed - making . pig and piglet the pig . the haflinger stud horses run manor . farmers harvesting hay before grazing herd . cows and horses in the meadow . the berchtesgadener land . ( 25 m ) c . crowded holiday trains queues of people before the ticket office . crowded platform with people on the train . people go with luggage in the train window . train with passengers on the running boards and on the roof of the train .
houses are under water ( 26 m ) 03 . flood in china in the southern provinces of china . people riding in boats . chinese are working on dikes . flooded rice fields . farmers to try to salvage rice plants out of the water . chinese in line up for food . distribution of rice . children eat with chopsticks , great . mother feeding child with chopsticks .
( 42 m ) 04 sports a . mannheim : german rowing championships qualifying run of the eights , totally . accompanying train along with spectators on the shore . spectators sit on the shore . home to the limit of the aft . 5 boats are in the race , including mannheim amicitia , mühlheim rowing club , frankfurt germania . passing to rubble . it wins the rowing community of flörsheim rüsselsheim , germany . see the rowers of the winning boat of georg von opel , of the race in the one won , half close , congratulations .
( 32 m ) b . berlin : police sports festival group demonstration of self - defense . 4 x 100 m relay . it wins the police school in spandau . the winning team receives a silver cup .
( 22 m ) c . wuppertal : german water polo championships swimming pool with water ballspielern . spectators around the basin , total . play it : water sports hanover with swimming friends barmen . spectators waving flags . barmen wins with 5 : 3 . endgame : duisburg 98 against swimming friends barmen . ball flies over gate . goal throw . it wins barmen with 4 : 3 spectators clap .
mattsee : dance course harald kreutzberg harald kreutzberg dances . kreutzberg displays dance movement . young girl dancing in group with harald kreutzberg .
( 17 m ) 06 . siena : at a gallop to the marketplace the marketplace in siena . start the horse at a gallop around the market square . horse crashes into the curve , rider falls , total .
( 20 m ) 07 . a feast day in heidelberg - inauguration of the old bridge aerial view of the city . people in boat trip and get to the other shore of the neckar . the castle . panoramic view over the roofs of the old town . the hotel zum ritter . the university . students . the old neckar bridge . decorated main street . people at festival meeting at inauguration of the bridge .
mannheim ; berlin ; wuppertal ; munich ; heidelberg ; bremen ; berchtesgaden ; china ; east frisia ; mattsee ; siena ; st . louis
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an iconoclastic and homoerotic look at a man who dreams of sailors , made when anger was a teenager . shot over a weekend when his parents were out of town , anger stated , “this flick is all i have to say about being 17 , the united states navy , american christmas and the fourth of july . ”
canyon cinema 145 9th street , suite 260 , ca 94103 , san francisco united states of america tel : + 1 415 626 2255 fax : + 1 415 626 2255 e - mail : films @ urltoken www : www . urltoken
roberto rossellini , paisà ( paisan ) , 1946 , 35 mm , black - and - white , sound , 120 minutes . joe ( dots johnson ) and pasquale ( alfonsino pasca ) .
kathryn bond stockton has argued that the child of the twentieth century was queered by innocence , color , money , and freud . 15 to this damning catalogue , let us add war . images of devastated childhood are among the most memorable in war’s distended photographic archive : a doomed boy , arms upraised , stands with other warsaw ghetto jews under the watch of an armed german soldier . one is certain that this child , as roland barthes muses about another boy elsewhere , is both dead and going to die . 16 in another searing image , a naked vietnamese girl , her body scorched by napalm , runs down a road screaming . the silent frame , vibrating from her howl of pain , can barely contain her agony . these are the nightmare visions from which postwar conceptions of childhood cannot awake .
decimating the myth of childhood innocence , war transforms children into witnesses , participants , and casualties . in the twentieth century , war also fundamentally changed the representation of children in visual culture . simultaneously the most vulnerable locus of war’s treachery and the last hope for the future , the child is everywhere in the italian neorealist cinema of the 1940s . in answer to the “representational problems that arise from the surrender of the heroic male protagonist , ” 17 the male child parallels and highlights the limitations of adult male characters . gendered male , neorealism ’s child is a wanderer , an urchin , an orphan , a miniature partisan , and a mimic of adult atrocity . queered , we can find him in neorealism ’s alternate cast of cripples , masochists , suicides , thieves , and murderers . these queer children refuse the paltry forms of reparation and futurity that they are offered . whenever we meet them , we discover that normal conceptions of time and place have been razed .
the tensions that charged midcentury los angeles profoundly shaped anger’s ecstatic vision of besieged sexuality . for anger , who had grown up in santa monicawell known for its gay beaches and nightlifela was a city of desire and oppression . while gay populations had thrived in the city of angels since the turn of the century , wartime brought an upsurge of police entrapment . it also solidified the growing identification of queer desire with aspects of military and physique culture , especially sailor iconography .
following the bombing of pearl harbor , los angeles saw itself as on the front lines of the war in the pacific . civilian patrols were established throughout the city , and beaches were fortified with antiaircraft guns . with la functioning as a “major training and transit point for military personnel , ” 23 up to fifty thousand servicemen could be found there on any given weekend . members of the armed services frequented the local cruising grounds . during the war , diarist donald vining wrote of cruising downtown pershing square for soldiers on leave , as gay men commonly did . 24
the militarization of los angeles was a response to the fear of external threats . but these fears were also internalized . america’s relation to its own racial , ethnic , and sexual others grew increasingly paranoiac . prejudicial violence was directed most explicitly against asian americans , latinos , and african americans . but , as anger experienced personally , it was also directed against gays and lesbians .