two
early us gay films of 1950
denying what you say as it’s
being said
by Douglas Messerli
Gregory
J. Markopoulos (director) Christmas, USA
/ 1949
James
Broughton (director and actor) Adventures
of Jimmy / 1950
Gregory J. Markopoulos’ 1949 work, Christmas, USA is a trance film that
pretends, at least, on the surface to be a film about the central figure’s homelife.
Critic Adams Sitney has described such films as follows:
These deal with visionary
experience, protagonists are som-
nambulists, the possessed, priests, initiates of some ritual system,
characterized by stylized movements of actors, movements that
are recreated by camera, protagonist wanders through potent
environment (symbolically charged) toward some type of self-
realization, some type of confrontation with the self.
We observe another boy
wandering, this time through a woods, dressed in a Japanese robe, lighting what
appears to be a ritual lamp, while the boy on the phone continues to play with
a letter opener and other nearby objects, which also appear, through
Markopoulos’ editing, to be somewhat ritual in nature. Are these the same
person, including the man we’ve seen meandering through the amusement park?
The young
man enters his house again, this time exiting, candle in hand, in great
determination, walking through the industrial fields under a freeway and across
a railroad tracks to encounter another man, shirtless with a beautifully
chiseled body. With the candle held high, he greets the stranger, who clearly
is a kind of Christ, who with the fervent recognition of his powers, backs up
against the landscape before falling in an obviously re-enactment of the
crucifixion, the boy playing the role of the Mary’s in holding the
crucified body.
The hero
returns home, as does the father. Christmas dinner is observed, but soon after,
to the apparent shock of family members, the young boy puts on a hooded jacket
and leaves the house in what appears to be a final farewell.
Clearly
the sleeping figure at the beginning of this film has, through the encounter
with his own Christ, come to a recognition of his own being, of his own
sexuality which can no longer be contained within the confines of the home in
which he lived. The last date, January 1, 1950, seems to declare a date of
recognition and freedom. The young boy of the film has become a gay man.
Determined
to find someone to love, Jimmy ventures out into the world, his isolated
location requiring him to travel a long time before finding other friendly faces.
He first encounters others playing in the waters, sailing and sunbathing along
what is clear is a beach community. From his small circular suitcase—one of the
several visual jokes of this film—Jimmy pulls a sailors cap, which, when put
upon his head turns him almost immediately—particularly given his high reedy
voice and his slim, good-looks—into a gay icon. Pulling a telescope from the
same small carrying case, he first looks to a boat filled with beefy males,
followed up by a small vessel of floating female vamps, out clearly out to get
him.
The
dialogue in this film is quite clever, suggesting always one thing but
saying something else: “Finding what one wants is hard to do,” the young
sailor-boy suggests. With camera in hand and shewing off the obviously advancing
female figure, he wonders “Could I make fit the picture to what I had in mind?”
Obviously none of these females appeal to our hero, for he is soon off to the
city to find what he can there.
Almost
immediately he encounters two prostitutes who each vie for his attention,
forcing him to enter a building where he waits for them to follow before making
his escape. How can “an awkward fellow with high ideals” find the right person, he
wonders. Of course, all of his self-descriptions suggest his sexuality is other
than what he is seeking, and in between each set of up possible female companions,
Broughton imposes various male on male configurations of men wrestling,
visiting Turkish baths, or just hanging out together, making it clear that our
troubled hero is looking in all the wrong places.
Indeed,
Jimmy is so perplexed and dissatisfied with women, particularly when he tries
to turn a plain looking servant into a beautiful woman—hilariously pulling a
pair of women’s slippers and a featured hat from his little round carrying case
(one can only imagine why is carrying these items in his luggage)—but, once
again, failing in his search for love, that he seeks the help of a
psychoanalyst. Again Jimmy queries: “Was I too refined, too well read that I
gave the wrong impression? I was getting more confused.”
Soon
after, we see the well-dressed Jimmy leaving the church with a bride—only this
bride has a complete veil hanging over her face, which forces us to speculate
what she (or obviously he) might possible look like.
Broughton,
quite wryly refuses to go where he movie has logically taken us. Instead we see
him back at his mountain cabin where a woman appears in a window, before
another, and another, until several women come together to represent,
purportedly, a complete family of cheerful servants. Isn’t this after all, what
the American male truly seeks, Broughton seems to be asking? Not a true sexual
companion, but a being who, perhaps even with others, can properly cook and
clean the house?
The
director, accordingly, turns the obvious desires of the searching Jimmy on
their head—forcing us to realize that what Jimmy really wants, he can’t have.
At least not yet!
Los Angeles, July 5, 2015
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