The Killing of Sister George was the first
“serious†film ever to earn an X rating - though many people erroneously believe that distinction was held by by Midnight Cowboy, which
was released the following year.
A
little-seen but oft-cited film in the queer canon, Sister George still packs a subversive punch 40 years after its
release, not least for its still-unbested, two-minute lesbian sex scene. (Paradoxically
I find it one of the least sexy “sex scenes†ever captured on film.)Â
Beryl
Reid (who won a Tony for the role she originated on Broadway) plays an aging,
gin-soaked actress, June Buckridge who, in turn, plays a kindly country nun on
a popular BBC soap opera, Applehurst
– but not for long. The producers of the show have decided to kill off her
character. Meanwhile, June’s live-in, blond bombshell girlfriend “Childieâ€
(Susannah York) is getting restless. Enter Mrs. Mercy Croft (Coral Browne), one
of Applehurst’s producers, who finds
her first female attraction with Childie. The love triangle that ensues is
still jaw-dropping 40 years later.
The
screening on 2/28 will be introduced by former TimeOut New York film critic Melissa Anderson, who had this to say
about Sister George:
“The
Killing of Sister George, which was released in 1968, has always fascinated me
as a depiction of pre-Stonewall lesbian culture. It was the first “seriousâ€
film to receive an X-rating, due to the notorious 119-second love scene between
Coral Browne and Susannah York. Although that scene is completely ludicrous—if
not downright offensive—I find that Robert Aldrich’s portrayal of George
(played by the great Beryl Reid, reprising her role from the stage play) is
quite compassionate. Though she’s certainly prone to atrocious behavior, George
is the only one in the film who has not compromised herself or exploited
others. And Aldrich’s decision to film the club scene at a real lesbian bar—the
Gateways Club on Kings Road in London—using real patrons as extras gives the
movie a certain level of authenticity.â€
And
let’s not leave out Robert Aldrich for praise. This was one versatile director.
Although he’s best known for his endlessly quotable, taut-wire suspense
thrillers such as Whatever Happened to
Baby Jane? (1962) and Hush…Hush,
Sweet Charlotte
(1964), this was the same director who gave us Kiss Me Deadly (1955), The
Dirty Dozen (1967) and the survival drama The Flight of the Phoenix (1965). We love versatility here at CinemaRetro,
and we love under-appreciated cult classics coming in for their long-overdue
due. Due due? Sorry. Don’t miss Sister George!
Special
thanks to Melissa Anderson for her contribution to this article. Read her
complete article on the film in the January/February ’09 issue of Film Comment or link to it here: http://www.filmlinc.com/fcm/jf09/sistergeogre.htm
Unlike
the high school hellcats twenty years before them, tossing globes out of
classroom windows and firing on police officers (see High School Confidential), Foxes
(1980), is a portrait of teenage torpor at the dawn of the Eighties. These jaded teens,
led by Jodie Foster, would rather pop a ‘lude and put on a Boston LP.
Examining
the loosely woven friendship between four high school girls in the San Fernando
Valley, each with typical problems of her age – and therefore seemingly
insurmountable – Foxes looks at how
each personality type copes with life, sex and parents, all of whom are
divorced and too busy trying to find themselves rather than guide their
children through the rockiest period of their lives.
Released
between two movies that became classics of the L.A.High School genre, Rock ‘n RollHigh School
(1979) and Fast Times at Ridgemont High
(1982), Foxes was more of a teen
drama that dared to bum out its audience with issues of teen pregnancy, drug
addiction and death. With murky cinematography, uneven performances and no
happy ending, it was promptly forgotten after its release and sank like a
stone, not even helped by its Giorgio Moroder music and title track sung by
Donna Summer (“On the Radio†plays over the opening credits.) It didn’t help
that the exploding punk scene that immediately followed gained ground quickly
and influenced the look of scores of more high school movies to come, quickly
dating Foxes’ sun-hazed ambience of
the late ‘70s. It was thus forgotten and became a relic of its time, classed more
with Skatetown U.S.A. than other frank, exploratory teenage dramas of the
same year, like Little Darlings (1980) with Kristy McNichol and
Tatum O’Neal, which is more of a true companion piece.
Jodie
Foster never mentions it in interviews, nor is it ever mentioned in career
surveys of her films. (Likewise her co-star, Scott Baio.)
But
when MGM re-issued the film on home video/dvd a few years ago, a younger
generation (born from the late ‘70s to the early ‘80s) discovered it and embraced
it, creating a revival of interest in the film that far exceeded its reception
upon its release. True to the “twenty-year loop†law, hipsters with an
insatiable appetite for the look and sounds of the early ‘80s began referencing
Foxes in a number of ways, from
fashion design to music, graphic design and photography. (Cherie Currie of The
Runaways, who plays ill-fated Annie, came in for special homage. She has a
peroxided, doomed rocker-chick look that was revived by the style icon actress
Chloë Sevigny.) It also started showing up in “best-of†lists by film
columnists and in critical essays in alternative weeklies and film journals
around the world.
Far
from being a great movie, Foxes is an
enjoyable period piece that is notable for its time for not being in hysterics
about being a teenager. It’s still a “message movie†in the same way that High School Confidential was about the
dangers of neglectful parents, except the message here is that the kids will
probably survive in spite of them.
Apart
from the principal cast of four or five young stars (Foster and Baio being the
marquee names), Sally Kellerman is excellent as the archetypal divorcee mother
of the ‘70s, complete with Toni perm and low-cut blouse. In one key scene, she
breaks down in front of her daughter (Foster), railing at how she and her
friends “make me hate my hips.â€
Look
for cameos by Randy Quaid, Lois Smith, Robert Romanus (Fast Times) and a pre-pubescent Laura Dern in coke-bottle
eyeglasses.
As part of the Film
Society of Lincoln Center’s showcase “Mavericks and Outsiders: Positif Celebrates American Cinema,†at
the Walter Reade Theater, Jan. 30 – Feb. 5, I finally had the good fortune to
see a film I had always heard people speak about in mixed tones of confusion,
offense and admiration: Fingers
(1978), written and directed by James Toback and starring Harvey Keitel. An
added bonus was the appearance of Toback after the screening, who was welcomed
onto the stage for a Q&A with noted French film critic Michel Ciment, the
editor of the film journal Positif
and one of the lone champions of the controversial film when it opened in
theaters 31 years ago. (The twin heavyweights of film criticism at the time,
Janet Maslin and Vincent Canby, both “piled on,†as Toback put it, with
negative reviews that killed its box office word-of-mouth.)
Keitel plays Jimmy “Fingers†Angelelli, a virtuoso
pianist who aspires to a life on the concert stage, rather than his day job of
being a kneecap-breaker for his loan shark father (Michael Gazzo). When the
movie begins he’s practicing a Bach toccata for a make-it-or-break-it audition
with the head of Carnegie Hall. If he makes it, it could be his long-awaited
exit out of a life of shaking down pizzeria owners for ten grand. In between
practice sessions he’s driving a flashy red Cadillac convertible around town,
wearing Botany 500 suits and a rakish scarf, and blaring ‘50s pop from his
portable boombox. This is one dude who is a study in contradictions. Keitel interprets
Jimmy so sympathetically -- the most obvious character tic being his fidgety
hands that cannot be governed, hence his nickname – that you can’t help falling
under his charm within the first few minutes of the movie.
Meanwhile, his father has one client that not only
is refusing to pay up, but is mocking him behind his back: Riccamonza, a
handsome, up-and-coming Mafioso. Jimmy’s father needs Riccamonza to be humbled
– perhaps worse – to regain his respect, and he turns to his son as his only
hope.
Adding to his stress load, Jimmy is crazy about an
enigmatic girl (Tisa Farrow) who barely says a word, stares into space a lot
and lives in a loft in Soho. (This was 1978, keep in mind.) It turns out she’s
a prostitute working for a pimp played by Jim Brown – yes, that Jim Brown – the NFL Hall of Famer and ‘70s blaxploitation star.
His role as “Dreems†is only one of a number of flavorful cameos in this
strange, nervous, colorful and frenetic little picture.
The cinematographer, Michael Chapman, who also
lensed Taxi Driver for Scorsese,
gives Fingers a similar look: dark,
gritty, but splashed with rich, violent color.Â
A number of gem-like cameos are studded throughout:
Stage actress Marian Seldes as Jimmy’s asylum-dwelling mother; Danny Aiello as
one half of the two-member bodyguard detail surrounding arch-villain
Riccamonza, the other half being Ed Marinaro; Tanya Roberts, in a bikini which slips
off easily, as Riccamonza’s girlfriend; Lenny Montana (The Godfather) as the pizzeria owner (filmed at John’s Pizzeria on
Bleecker Street), and – are you ready for this? – GOP fundraiser heavy
Georgette Mosbacher as Jimmy’s father’s cheap and tawdry girlfriend, Anita.
(Checking it out, it makes sense, she was then married to the producer, George
Barrie.)
Toback had many a hilarious anecdote to tell host
Ciment about the making of the film, his first directorial effort, and perhaps
most memorable was concerning the shocking scene in which Dreems (Jim Brown)
knocks together the heads of his two call girls, one of whom was Tisa Farrow.
As Toback remembers, he approached Brown after the first, all-too-real take
that left Farrow with real blood dribbling down her knotted forehead. Toback
told Brown that they wouldn’t be doing another take, it was simply too painful
for the actresses. Brown appeared to not be listening. “He was staring off into
space, not even reacting,†said Toback. Finally Brown, in a voice barely above
a whisper and in language that is unprintable, asked Toback why he hadn’t hired
a more “delicate†actor like Sidney Poiter to do the scene so they could fake
the head-butting. Farrow complained (and in today’s litigious environment who
knows what an actress would have done) and later, as penance, Toback smacked
himself on the head repeatedly with the butt of a pistol during the sound
recording in post-production. He, too, had blood pouring down his face, but he
didn’t want to ask his actors to suffer something he himself wasn’t willing to
endure. “So whenever you’re going through the sound catalogue of heads being
butted together,†Toback told the audience, “that is me hitting my head with
the butt of a pistol.â€
Another anecdote involved Francois Truffaut, who,
during the year of its release, named it as one of his favorite from an
American director in years. Shortly afterwards while at The Beverly Hills
Hotel, Toback spotted the famous French auteur
poolside, who was in town during the making of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Instead of approaching him
directly to thank him and risk putting Truffaut on the spot, opted to page him
on a house telephone, as was the fashion of the day. When he picked up the
phone – Toback watching from inside the hotel – he graciously thanked Truffaut
for his support, only to be met with a long silence. Getting flustered, he
suggested that he would love to meet Truffaut for a drink while he was in town.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea,†replied Truffaut. “Why is that?â€
asked Toback. “I think we should just continue communicating to each other
through our films.â€