the metamorphoses
by Douglas Messerli
by Douglas Messerli
Michael
Cacoyannis (writer and director) Otan ta
psaria vgikan sti steria (The Day
the Fish Came Out) / 1967
Michael
Cacoyannis’ 1967 film The Day the Fish
Came Out has probably received the worst reviews of any film of a noted
international director. It came out of a period in which campy, sometimes
over-the-top comedies such as Joseph Losey’s Modesty Blaise (1966) were quite popular. And it shares some of the
political satire of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr.
Strangelove and the even earlier Jack Arnold piece of nonsense The Mouse That Roared (1959)—both films
for which I, myself, have little admiration, and neither of which I see as truly
“funny.”
Based partly on the factual 1966 loss by the American Force of 4 hydrogen bombs while flying over Palomares, Spain, the “McGuffin” of the film is a similar loss of two atomic bombs and a nearly impregnable metal box containing something so noxious that we are not even told what it is. The pilot and navigator of the plane (Colin Blakely and Tom Courtenay) drop their load this time on the nearly uninhabited Greek island of Karos before themselves parachuting from the plane and swimming ashore now, somewhat inexplicably, dressed only in their skivvies. And a special American force, headed by a Greek-speaking Mr. Elias (Sam Wanamaker) is quickly transported to the island to seek out the deadly missiles and the mysterious metal box. As Milne’s review, quoted above, suggests, the film ends with the death of the fish in the surrounding waters and the likely destruction of all living in and visiting the island’s small village.
To accomplish his ends, the director
immediately determines to transform all the military straight men into gay simulacrums.
The survivors of the plane crash, both of whom describe themselves as married,
are immediately forced to run around the rocky island not only in underpants,
but particularly in the young Courtenay’s case, in what is almost a cotton
jockstrap. His camera comically strokes the two men’s bodies, revealing even
the size and shape of Courtenay’s small un-cut cock and the more hirsute chest
of Blakely, both of whom, without clothes, without money, and without even the
ability to make a telephone call to explain that they are still living, have
certainly become something “other” than they had been before. Indeed, Cacoyannis
almost immediately shifts them from being stock-comic figures into representing
voyeuristic images to his audience. By showing them almost as nude, and
commenting on the fact over and over again—at one point the two even show up on
screen with their underpants upon their heads as a substitute sunblock—forces
us to perceive them in a new context. They are no longer pilot and navigator
but two grown men living nearly naked in the wild. No wonder so many viewers of
the day squirmed at the sight! And the slightly stupid character that Courtenay
is particularly an appetizing morsel, playing a kind of gay version of Marilyn
Monroe or Brigitte Bardot.
If that isn’t enough, an entire squadron
of hunky military advisers is asked to pretend it is visiting the island to
scout out new places for a large hotel. The director is also credited as the
costume designer. In the name of “going casual,” he clothes them in the outlandish pants, shirts, and
sunglasses—with large mesh cutouts in their pants, mesh-woven shirts, posing
them even without their shirts for most of movie, Wanamaker’s hairy chest being
a particular focus of the camera lens—that they look like the gayest of gayest
travelers that one might imagine.
Boats and boats of tourists, dressed in
equally outrageous Fellinesque-like costumes, suddenly descend upon the port of
Karos. These are the real gay boys along with their sexy girlfriends and wealthy
women “benefactors,” who further transform the island into a truly sexual
paradise whose visitor-inhabitants dance ridiculous Mikis Theodorakis-composed
songs far into the night. Suddenly the sleepy little island has become the mega
hot-spot its elderly citizens had always imagined was out of their reach.
Yet critics were particularly mean when it
came to the Cacoyannis work, since he had previously made grander epic realist
productions such as Zorba the Greek
and Electra. The New York Times reviewer, Bosley Crowther, for example,
described it as “flabby” and “foolish,” going on to evaluate it as “a witless
farcical account of how an unnamed, far-ranging power tries to cover up the
fact that one of its planes has accidentally dropped some fissionable material
on a barren, sleepy Greek island.” That “unnamed country,” quite obviously was
the USA.
Tom Milne of the usually insightful Time Out summarized: “Cacoyannis turns
it all into hideously lumbering farce, so unconvincing that one is heartily
glad when the unprepossessing characters at least seem likely to be overwhelmed
by radiation.”
Even the bland TV Guide called it a “silly and pretentious nuclear disaster drama.”
Based partly on the factual 1966 loss by the American Force of 4 hydrogen bombs while flying over Palomares, Spain, the “McGuffin” of the film is a similar loss of two atomic bombs and a nearly impregnable metal box containing something so noxious that we are not even told what it is. The pilot and navigator of the plane (Colin Blakely and Tom Courtenay) drop their load this time on the nearly uninhabited Greek island of Karos before themselves parachuting from the plane and swimming ashore now, somewhat inexplicably, dressed only in their skivvies. And a special American force, headed by a Greek-speaking Mr. Elias (Sam Wanamaker) is quickly transported to the island to seek out the deadly missiles and the mysterious metal box. As Milne’s review, quoted above, suggests, the film ends with the death of the fish in the surrounding waters and the likely destruction of all living in and visiting the island’s small village.
This is the baseline story, but no one
with any sense of humor might care about this silly series of scary events.
Cacoyannis makes it clear from the very beginning, through an epilogue
comically spoofing the Spanish event and with slickly clever credits by Maurice
Binder, that signals the fact that his tale is not really about bombs and human
destruction but is about an entirely different issue: in this case a kind of
metamorphosis of everything and everyone in this dystopian world. If Karos
begins as a sleepy village of mostly old men and a few women, it ends up as a
kind of sheik tourist and gay paradise that, having achieved such a new
identity, is simply required to be destroyed given the moral judgments of the
film’s audiences. In presenting his theme, accordingly, Cacoyannis almost
invites his viewer’s disdain in a way that might at least reveal their own
hypocrisy. But that’s taking a big chance, which, in this case obviously, just
didn’t pay off.
Perhaps seeing it in hindsight is
fortunate; today we can perceive the campy celebration of this film within a
different sexual context, if nothing else. Yet, it’s hard to even get hold of a
CD. I bought one of the very last copies off of Amazon to be able to view it. Although
I heard it sometimes appears on TV film channels, I’ve never been able to catch
it.
Upon witnessing their descent upon the
island, the pilot and navigator can only suppose they are a gay contingent of
visitors, and one of the outrageously dressed squadron members, spotting the
boys in underwear, presumes they have having sex among the rocks. Throughout,
Cacoyannis shows as many male ass shots as Hollywood films have always
portrayed, if somewhat more subtly, of their female sexpot heroines.
Like any good group of gay boys, these
want to be alone (they need to search the island for the missiles and deadly
box, if you recall)! And, eventually, to establish that separateness, they buy
up an entire part of the island and fence it off, suggesting that they are
testing soil samples, etc. for their new solar hotel. To please those in the
island who do not own this valueless property, they put them to work on
creating a meaningless highway to the site.
Although the military men might see the
local peasants as backward and uninformed, they quickly ring up the Greek
national government with the news of the proposed transformation of their
island, determining to spiff up their village for the deluge of possible new
tourists. Their bare, white washed walls are suddenly painted with bright
pinks, blues, greens, yellows and other colors. Numerous homes overnight become
hotels. The road workers suddenly uncover a beautiful ancient sculpture. The
small island town, just like the military men, also experiences a
metamorphosis. Things here are suddenly very “gay,” in the older meaning of
that word.
Too bad there are still a few stubborn
peasants, particularly one fisherman and his wife, who, having discovered the
large metal box are determined to open it and find what they greedily believe
is a cache of gold. When they finally succeed, they discovers only a few redish-brown
egg-shaped containers, probably holding deadly viruses, most of which the
fisherman throws into the sea and a few of which he wife unknowingly tosses
into the village’s water source. The fish rise to the surface, dead (“fish,”
one might remember, was once a derogatory name for women in gay circles), and
what looks like an eclipse of the sun appears out of nowhere as a public
broadcast microphoned message is drowned out by their music. Tomorrow the US
will see just such a sight.
There will always be, suggests
Cacoyannis, a few hold-out cretins who cannot enter into the current of joy and
pleasure. These are called critics, I suspect, who always rip into all the fun.
Yesterday, when I shared the story of
this film with my thirty-seven year-old friend, Pablo Capra, he suggested it
sounded much more interesting than Zorba
the Greek, a movie I’d dragged to a few weeks earlier. Enough said.
Los Angeles,
August 20, 2017
No comments:
Post a Comment