Ah, Netflix. When you pay by the month instead of by the movie, you order movies you’d never even consider paying for. My last two Netflicks deliveries were both enormously satisfying: GILDA, starring Rita Hayworth from 1946, and SHORTBUS, directed by John Cameron Mitchell, from last year. Both are wonderful, both are sexy, but only one has both real onscreen sex AND was shot in color. However, Gilda is better.

You may recall I spoke a couple of weeks ago about the late sixties as a peculiar time in cinema history, when the executives completely lost touch with the zeitgeist. Since they didn’t know what movies would sell, they put their money behind all kinds of weird crap in the hope that something would work. The period immediately following World War II, on the other hand, was a time when the studio chiefs were zeitgeist surfers. They had a perfect handle on their audience, and that audience was suffering from a nationwide clinical depression.

After five years of world war, when death had been a constant shadow hovering over everything and the movies were simple good vs. evil fables, the American public was safe again and ready to face the darkness they had so long been forced to dance around. Thus was born Film Noir. Film Noir exists in a moral twilight zone where civilization can’t save you, where you have to make up your own code of conduct. There are no Canadian Mounties in film noir.

In the opening scene of Gilda, we meet Johnny Farrell, played by Glenn Ford. He’s running a dice game in the alleys of Argentina, fleecing American soldiers with crooked dice. Johnny is the hero. A guy attempts to steal Johnny’s winnings back at gunpoint, but the crime is thwarted by a mysterious man with a walking stick (concealing a deadly spike) named Ballin Mundson. Ballin runs an illegal casino in town and Johnny persuades him to hire a crooked gambler like himself to watch the floor. Mundson, who is played by George Macready as a man with a long scar on his face, an indeterminate nationality, and an ability to never, ever blink, takes Johnny up on it.

Johnny does fine work for his creepy benefactor until one day Mundson comes back from a vacation with Rita Hayworth. He’s married Gilda, a woman so beautiful that my wife had me pause the DVD player on her entrance. Mundson met Gilda and married her two days later. What Mundson doesn’t know is that Gilda knows Johnny - in fact, she got married on the rebound from him. And now she is determined to torture Johnny, who is given the task of looking after the new Mrs. Mundson, by sleeping around with other men and forcing him to cover up for her.

So, try to imagine a major studio making money with this scenario nowadays. It’s a love triangle between three dislikable people. In fact, between three movie villains. Ultimately Gilda is the least unsympathetic character, but only only by a thread and because she’s the most attractive. As a matter of fact, in this context they manage to make us empathize with all the characters, even though one of them is in business with the ex-Nazis. (Ex-Nazis? In Argentina? The devil you say!) The movie, the genre, defies all conventional screenwriting wisdom, and still works.

Also working for GILDA is the restrictive film codes in place at the time. You are forced to fill in the most lurid details yourself. What did Gilda do that made Johnny throw aside a dame that breathtaking? What exactly is she doing now with all those men? The best way to generate sexual tension on the screen is to not show sex. GILDA doesn’t show more sex than any movie I’ve ever seen.

Which brings me, I guess, to SHORTBUS, the movie from John Cameron Mitchell. Mitchell is the man behind HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH, a stage show that he turned into a tiny cinematic gem. SHORTBUS is similarly a gem, but the making-of story is almost better than the movie itself. It stars unknowns, cast with the knowlege that they were going to be a. workshopping the script by improvising during rehersals, coming up with their own characters, and b. having real sex on camera.

And oh, there is a lot of sex. For a movie that isn’t pornography, it’s surprising how much on-screen hardcore sex you can put in to a story and still have it be a story. Mitchell says he wanted to use sex the same way that HEDWIG used songs, as a way to express emotions and ideas. For the purposes of this essay, I’ll add that all the of the SHORTBUS characters are sympathetic, but come on, one exotic element is enough for a movie.

The story concerns a number unconnected 20somethings in New York, trying to make sense of their lives. When I say unconnected, I’m being deep; the movie is all about connecting, finding that route from your soul to another person’s. There’s a sweetness to the concept that leavens all the schtupping. It’s kind of like watching the Woodstock outtakes, re-edited to remove the music and bands and mostly show hippies making love in the mud.

You won’t enjoy SHORTBUS if you’re bothered by hardcore on screen sex, and even then if you’re bothered by onscreen man-on-man sex it’s not for you. I can tell you that weirdly, it really isn’t erotic. When two people fuck you’re watching how they do it to see what they mean to each other. It’s just like Fred and Ginger dancing.

Talking about Zeitgeist, Mitchell made his movie about 35 years too late. Americans are terrified of sex nowadays. SHORTBUS barely got a theatrical release, it isn’t burning up the DVD circuit and television sales… well, I wonder if even Showtime knows what to do with it. And I’m dead certain it won’t make it to the airlines. Alas, John Cameron Mitchell. I love your work and I hope your muse takes you someplace more profitable next time.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 25th, 2007 at 2:17 am and is filed under General, Motion Pictures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.