DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS 1971

Spoiler Alert. This is a critical essay, not a review, so plot points will be revealed for discussion purposes.

“I’m just an outmoded character, nothing more. You know, the beautiful stranger, slightly sad, slightly…mysterious...that haunts one place after another.” 

In spite of their vast number and long history, I’m not sure I can name even five vampire movies I like. There’s Andy Warhol’s Dracula (1974), Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), The Hunger (1983), and… OK, looks like I hit the wall at three. Well, make that four; for topping this very short list and ranking #1 as my absolute favorite vampire movie of all time is Belgian director Harry Kümel’s sleek, sexy, and exceedingly stylish Daughters of Darkness.

I grew up in San Francisco, where Daughters of Darkness opened at the Warfield Theater, a venue that specialized in screening exploitation films, on Wednesday, September 22, 1971. 

A Belgian/French/Italian/U.S. co-production, Daughters of Darkness combines—with wit and flair—‘70s arthouse sophistication with good ol’ grindhouse exploitation in the telling of a modern-day Countess Dracula myth set in a desolate, cavernous hotel in Belgium. Conceived as a strictly commercial venture contingent on the internationally market-friendly ingredients of bosoms and bloodshed, Daughters of Darkness, in the hands of Belgian director Harry Kümel (whose other works I’m wholly unfamiliar with), undergoes a kind of alchemic transformation. A transformation wherein the alternatively limiting factors of a low budget, brief shooting schedule, somewhat trashy material, and a minimal cast of unevenly-skilled actors with clashing accents—become the very elements that, when combined, contribute the most to defining the offbeat allure and eerie fascination of this film.

Delphine Seyrig as Countess Elizabeth Bathory

John Karlen as Stefan Chilton

Danielle Ouimet as Valerie Chilton

Andrea Rau as Ilona Harczy

Paul Esser as Pierre

When the train of a honeymooning couple jumps the track (literally and metaphorically), the pair, having wed in Switzerland just three hours hence and now en route to England, are temporarily waylaid in Ostend, Belgium. Stefan, the groom (Karlen), strangely reluctant to reach their destination and have his bride Valerie (Ouimet) meet her aristocratic mother-in-law, suggests a brief stay at an off-season beach resort where they are the only guests.“It’s rather dead around here this time of the year,” intones Pierre (Paul Esser), the concierge.

He's correct. That is, until night falls and an exquisite, 1940s vintage Bristol motorcar arrives at the hotel, from which emerge a mysterious, vaguely predatory, smoky-voiced Hungarian countess (Seyrig) and her exotically overripe “secretary” (Ilona (Rau); then things around there start to get increasingly "deader." 

Descending upon the establishment like a couple of, well...vampire bats, upon catching sight of our unwitting honeymooners (who, given the degree of duplicity and discord already manifest between the two, appear to have met and married in haste), our chichi new guests immediately lay claim. 

"...both so perfect. So good-looking. So sweet."
The concierge recognizes the unchanged Countess from 40 years earlier,
when he was just a young bellboy at the hotel

Veiling steely determination behind a charming smile and the kind of languid savoir-faire unique to the very rich and well-traveled (think Eva Gabor as Marlene Dietrich cast as a lesbian Auntie Mame), the glamorously debauched countess wastes no time insinuating herself into the lives of the newlyweds  Corruption of the innocent is the goal, and possession of that which is most desired is the objective. But the countess and her protégé soon find the path to seduction is not without its obstructions.

For one, there’s the persistent interference of the suspicious and bewildered hotel concierge who always seems to materialize on the periphery of the action (“He’s already up…when does he sleep?” snaps the countess at one point). And then there’s that other figure from the countess’ past, a retired policeman (Georges Jamin) engaged in the amateur investigation of a recent rash of murders of young women.

But it is Stefan, the not-quite better half of our virtuous couple, who may not be all that he seems. Sharing with the countess an eerily simpatico affinity for brutality and the hypnotic allure of decadence, Stephan is both match and pawn to the countess’s femme fatale charm. And true to form, Stephan is yet another self-assured male who enters into a game thinking he holds all the cards, only to discover that the women in his life have rewritten the rules.

The Happy Couple
Both Roman Polanski (Bitter Moon) & Paul Schrader (The Comfort of Strangers ) have made 
interesting films about dissolute couples intent on seducing innocent, unsuspecting couples

Daughters of Darkness is a knowing (and sometimes winking) take on the vampire film, alternately sending up and paying homage to a genre that, by the '70s, was in dire need of a transfusion. In playing it straight, yet with a touch of clever malice, the film‒not unlike the countess herself ‒ exists tantalizingly between two worlds: it’s both a deliberately leisurely, aesthetic horror film and an amusingly camp Eurotrash skin flick. The unified benefit to each is that its arty stylization never has the opportunity to become pretentious, and the exploitation side is surprisingly, refreshingly restrained and imbued with a great deal of sophistication and sly wit.

Stylistically, Daughters of Darkness is a knockout, making subtle visual references to other genre films and cinema in general. Among them: Hitchcock’s Psycho, Garbo, Louise Brooks, the horror tropes of F. W. Murnau and Tod Browning, and Dietrich’s von Sternberg collaborations. It's a film so comfortable in its self-awareness that at one point a character (the detective) breaks the fourth wall, looks directly into the camera, and identifies the film's tone and wry perspective.

Georges Jamin, as the Retired Policeman, reminds us not to take what is to follow too seriously

 “The kind of thing you read about in medieval manuscripts. You know, silly tales about ghosts chased away by garlic…and vampires shrinking from crosses and running water and daylight. Satan’s ritual under a full moon.”

   

The neoclassic opulence of the desolate Belgian sea resort makes for a picturesque alternative to the usual gothic vampire castle, while the desolate backdrop of a vacation spot in the bleakness of winter predates Nicolas Roeg’s similar use of Venice, Italy in the 1974 supernatural thriller Don’t Look Now (especially the scene where Stefan & Valerie explore the canals of Bruges and happen upon the scene of a brutal murder). 

I can’t attest as to what a horror/vampire film fan makes of Daughters of Darkness (my sense is that it’s too slow and lacking in scares and gore to be satisfying), but everything about this movie is suited to my tastes.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

There’s a kind of predictable, tradition-based. to-be-expected adherence to form and structure that comes with the territory of genre films. Filmmakers deviate from it at their own risk. As a movie fan, I can’t help but give historical credit to horror films in general for their vast stylistic influence on the art form as such. But as a non-fan of vampire films, it helped a great deal that I came to Daughters of Darkness with little in the way of expectations and devoid of an awareness of any vampire film conventions I longed to see upheld. I simply hoped the film wouldn’t live up to its limp U.S. ad campaign and that cheesy title, which made the film sound like a made-for-TV movie starring Donna Mills and Kay Lenz. 

To my delight, Daughters of Darkness proved to be one happy surprise after another. It felt both old-fashioned and invigoratingly fresh. An arty exploitation film that I fell in love with the moment Delphine Seyrig’s elegant vampire made her memorable entrance.

"I want to be loved. I want everybody to love me."

In addition to what I find irresistible about the concept of Daughters of Darkness (for my money, female vampires are just waaaay cooler than their male counterparts) is the way it looks. Its visual melodrama and ability to exploit the claustrophobic dominance of interiors remind me of the films of Roman Polanski and Ken Russell. Director Harry Kümel, who has stated he was influenced a great deal by surreal and expressionist cinema in devising a look for the film, gives Daughters of Darkness an operatic theatricality wherein composition and the vivid use of color (pointedly, red, black, and white) are used to arresting, chillingly beautiful effect in creating an atmosphere of dream-like dread. 

The similarities to Polanski arise out of the film’s measured pacing, confined tension, and emphasis on psycho-sexual conflict. Manipulation is indistinguishable from seduction. Evasion is revelatory. Pain is pleasure. Harry Kümel has taken stock characters and genre tropes and created one of the most gleefully sleek, consistently surprising, and intriguingly stylish horror films I’ve ever seen. 

A nightmarish shot of the pre-dawn disposal of a dead body as two figures
 (looking like winged creatures in black & white) retreat into the distance

PERFORMANCES

Successful casting is always a result of a great deal more than simply hiring capable actors. Many an enjoyable film has been populated with folks who couldn’t act their way out of a broom closet (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls), while numerous stinkers feature casts who have to move their Oscar & Tony Awards out of the way to get to the door (August: Osage County). It's easy to understand why Kümel was able to secure financing for Daughters of Darkness exclusively due to the participation of French film star Delphine Seyrig (Last Year at Marienbad); she is the main reason the film is worth seeing at all. Everything about the film – from décor, cinematography, screenplay, and supporting cast – feels as though it is in service of and silent acquiescence to her extraordinary presence and canny performance. She’s really that good, and so incredibly fascinating to watch.

Things That Make You Go Hmmm
Draped in crimson arms, Stefan is brought to a state of ecstasy,
recounting the bloody atrocities of Elizabeth's ancestor 

Possessing an unforgettably seductive voice, Seyrig conducts herself with a kind of otherworldly regal aplomb, making plausible the film’s conceit that her character is not (as she claims) the ancestor of Countess Elizabeth Bathory (a notorious true-life 15th-century serial killer) but the genuine, ageless article.

Best of all, Seyrig’s characterization is a refreshing interpretation of the female vampire. She dispenses with the clichés of the predatory vamp or femme fatale (no dark, sultry gazes or feline stalking); rather, she plays Countess Bathory as though she were a pampered cinema queen: eager to please, desperate to be liked, all disarming smiles and solicitous attentions, yet underneath it all, something of a despotic monster. 

"I wish I could die."

Another personal favorite in the film is Ilona, the countess's pouty companion with the sexy 3D lips. As embodied by German pinup model/actress Andrea Rau (who lends camp appeal by resembling a kewpie-doll Sally Bowles), her limitations as an actress are more than compensated for by her striking presence, appealing screen charisma, and a vague "otherness" that comes across in stilted line readings befitting her status as an alluringly louche member of the undead.

My general antipathy toward vampires accounts for my not recognizing - until fairly recently - actor John Karlen as Willie Loomis of the popular mid-60s vampire TV soap opera Dark Shadows (I was practically the only kid in my school who didn't watch it). As Stefan, Brooklyn-born Karlen, the only American in the cast, oozes so much Eurotrash skeeviness, I always assumed he was European. So, on that score at least, he certainly succeeds and gives a solid, tensely mercurial performance.

Though it pains me to say so, hands-down prizes for the film's worst performance go to former Miss Quebec, Danielle Ouimet. It pains me because Ms. Ouiment’s barely discernible acting ability (she’s singularly inexpressive of voice and face) strangely works to her advantage in the context of the film. Surrounded by the morally desiccated people in a surreal environment under fantastic circumstances, Ouimet’s somewhat dazed countenance comes off as stylized and subtextural, as though the sole character in the film in possession of a compassionate soul is strangely, also the character least capable of expressing emotion.

"Be sure to tell the young woman, 'Mother' sends regards."
The reason for Stefan's reluctance to have Valerie meet his aristocratic family is revealed to be that he is the kept man of a wealthy gay older gentleman identified only as "Mother."
  Mother is portrayed by Dutch film director Fons Rademakers

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Whether considered an arty trash film or a trashy art film (I personally think it’s a special kind of high-style pop masterpiece), Daughters of Darkness is a great deal of creepy fun. I know very little about Harry Kümel, but based on how this film makes me feel and how it draws me in with its visuals, its sharp screenplay (credited to Kümel, Jean Ferry, Pierre Druot, and Manfred R. Köhler), and Seyrig’s insightful evocation of the film sirens of yesteryear, I would say he is a man who not only loves movies but understands them. It’s evident in every frame.

I'm a sucker (Hee hee!) for duality in movies. Both visual and thematic.

Les Lèvres Rouges (Red Lips) is just one of Daughter of Darkness' 14 different international titles

Ever the illusionist, Elizabeth checks herself out in a mirrored compact despite
(what with her being a vampire and all) not being able to see her own reflection

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Apropos of the timeless beauty of Seyrig's Countess Bathory herself, Daughters of Darkness is a film that looks better to me with each passing year. Save for a rather harrowing shower scene and a still-creepy nighttime burial sequence, the sex and violence that once seemed so sensational are now rather tame. Similarly, with movies now becoming faster and busier, yet saying less, the deliberate pacing of Daughters of Darkness feels like a welcome extravagance.
Even the film's camp elements, in this age of overkill and overdetermination, sparkle on a far more ingenious plane than what I seem to remember ("Good day to be alive, eh?" remarks the countess in forced jocularity to the concierge upon returning to the hotel after a particularly grisly homicidal outing).

It's Not Easy Having A Good Time

In the end, you've got to hand it to a director told to go out and make a commercial film with plenty of sex and violence, and he comes back with an erotic expressionist feminist lesbian arthouse camp vampire horror mini-classic.

BONUS MATERIAL

Director Harry Kümel talks about Daughters of Darkness in the excellent BBC documentary Horror Europa (2012) by Mark Gattis. He's the first director interviewed, and he sheds fascinating light on the reasons behind his choices for the look of the countess and the dominance of the colors red, black, and white. 

I also understand that the DVD release is loaded with commentaries and extras.
*6/10/16 Update - Just watched the DVD and listened to Harry Kümel's commentary. Incredible evidence that one can be handed a genre film and still imbue it with an aesthetic sensibility. Of course, I especially love when he says, "Films are not reality...they are dreams. They are the stuff that dreams are made of." A man after my own heart.

Clip from "Daughters of Darkness" (1971)

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2016

THE FOX 1967

 

Spoiler Alert. This is a critical essay, not a review, so plot points will be revealed for discussion purposes.

Films that attempt to dramatize (and, in so doing, comment upon) distasteful aspects of the human condition, set a difficult course for themselves. Pedestrian directors, often in an effort to appear even-handed and avoid offending, tend to oversimplify. In these instances, the nuanced complexities of flawed personality and moral ambiguity are muted in ways designed to confirm audience preconceptions and, by fade-out, restore order and confidence in life's parity.
By way of contrast, artful directors take the risk of being misunderstood and misinterpreted as they eschew easy answers in favor of a little emotional honesty. Invested in examining more than explaining, while at the same time respectful of an audience's ability to extract from a story whatever ideas or themes they wish to divine on their own; this particular genus of film is not often a popular taste favorite, but it's the kind of movie that bears the stamp of creative fearlessness (recklessness?). 

Ellen: "No, I tried. I tried, and I couldn't shoot."

Paul: "Then you didn't want its life."

Ellen: "Yes...yes, I did!"

I can't vouch for movie audiences worldwide, but we Americans have earned a reputation for preferring our films to tell us how we should think and feel about a topic. Otherwise, we seem to get easily confused. Take, for example, when Bryan Forbes' feminist horror film The Stepford Wives (1975) was thought by many to be sexist chiefly because the women don't "win" in the end, and the chauvinistic behavior exhibited by the men wasn't as obviously satiric as some would have liked. Similarly, Samuel Fuller's powerful anti-racism film White Dog (1982) was practically yanked from theaters because many mistook this dramatic parable about the teaching of hatred (a dog is trained by white supremacists to attack black people), for actually being racist itself.

The depiction of objectionable behavior (especially in the absence of punishment or retribution) is not necessarily an endorsement of it. Often, as in the case of the predatory male character in The Fox, a man whose motives and actions can be read as despicable, it is a means of provocation. A sly method of exposing us to the unpleasant things within ourselves (or society) we fail to recognize because they fail to flatter our self-image.
I'm no fan of morally dubious movies that glorify selfish instincts or try to normalize evil (we have reality TV and our current Presidential election to do that), but I do admire films that aren't afraid of ambiguity, are open to interpretation, and resist the impulse to explain and simplify that which is intentionally complex.

Sandy Dennis as Jill Banford

Anne Heywood as Ellen Marsh

Keir Dullea as Paul Renfield

As relationships go, few are more emotionally and psychologically knotted and intertwined than the triangular one at the center of The Fox, director Mark Rydell's (The Rose, On Golden Pond) 1967 adaptation of D. H. Lawrence's 1922 novella.

Jill and Ellen are two college friends living a life of isolated independence on a remote farm in Canada. (Lawrence's story took place in WWI England; the film is set in '60s Ontario.) Jill (Dennis) is the domestic type, forever fretting over her stove and household accounts ("You and your mixing bowl and your muffin tray have conquered the elements"), while Ellen (Heywood) stomps about in work boots, handling the entirety of the farm's manual labor.
One blonde, one dark; this kind of easy, heavy-handed symbolism is something of a motif in The Fox, one I don't particularly mind since the cues are taken from Lawrence's heavily Freudian short novel. Both are younger than portrayed in the novel, and the film presents the pair's adoption of traditionally feminine/masculine roles as arising as much out of practicality as personality: Jill's verbose excitability, physical weakness, and pragmatic temperament contrasting with Jill's athleticism, protectiveness, and taciturn indifference (her standard response to all questions is "It makes no difference to me"). 

But if Jill's obvious contentment with their domestic arrangement suggests the fulfillment of a desire to cloister herself away from the male (even the animals are mostly female: Edwina the hen, Eurydice the cow--and in a monologue I don't believe is in the book, she recounts a college date-rape incident); Ellen's distracted restlessness hints at something suppressed rising to the surface. Her waking hours are dazed by a kind of sensual reawakening, while in her dreams she is simultaneously haunted and hypnotized by the fox that has been raiding their henhouse.

In spite of their sharing a bed (never even touching or kissing goodnight until a distraught conciliation scene near the end) and evincing the relaxed affection of a long-married couple, like the book, the film leaves ambiguous the degree of Jill and Ellen's intimacy. Although the notion of a platonic "Boston Marriage" was easier to accept in 1920 England than in the sexually liberated '60s. 

This ambiguity, whether one finds it maddeningly coy or simply a cop-out, genuinely serves to make what might otherwise be just another romantic triangle more emotionally provocative. Label it lesbianism or bisexuality, whatever is between Jill and Ellen is intensified once their peace is invaded by the fox-like Paul (Dullea), the merchant seaman grandson of the farm's deceased former owner. 

The initial effect of the screenplay's refusal to define the particulars of Jill & Ellen's relationship (or the women's sexuality) is that the audience is placed in the unwanted but self-reflexive position of identifying with the townspeople and Paul. We're forced to ask ourselves: Is our desire to know what these women are to one another just part of a need to define them, explain them, and assign roles to their behavior — indeed, to subject the characters to the confining, socially imposed definitions they seek independence from?  

Secondarily, once Paul makes the shift from welcome guest to predatory intruder, the motives for his actions become less obvious when we aren't really sure of exactly what it is he has insinuated himself into the middle of. Depending on the scene, Paul comes across convincingly as either harmless or sinister.

The Fox, a three-character chamber drama, set, pointedly, in the chilly dead of winter, is something of a war movie. Its vast battlefield encompassing everything from sexuality, gender politics, masculinity, femininity, love, violence, passion, and independence. The weapons of choice: nature (human and animal), instinct (masculine and feminine), self-preservation, domination, and possession.
The catalyst for it all, the fox (the male), an animal driven by a natural, violent instinct to dominate, or an animal of cunning?

Ellen: "You know, you do resemble him (the fox), Mr. Renfield. It's remarkable."

The Fox is one of the few "adult" films from my childhood that I was unsuccessful in persuading my mom that I was mature enough (at 10 years old) to see. Though crushed at the time, in retrospect I'm glad she didn't relent, for not only wouldn't I have understood it, but I'm certain that at the time I would have been deeply disappointed that this intelligent, psychologically intricate film wasn't the risqué, lesbian romp its ad campaign (and my pre-teen imagination) led me to expect.

When I ultimately got around to seeing The Fox in 1979 or so, I remember enjoying it, but somehow feeling afterward that I'd been the victim of a bait-and-switch. Over the years the film had developed a reputation as an LGBT favorite, but when it was all over—with Jill dead by murder/accident, and Ellen whisked away by the domineering Paul—I knew what I'd just watched wasn't a film depicting a lesbian relationship so much as another Hollywood movie using the sensationalistic lure of homosexuality to merely: (quoting Karen Hollinger's book Feminist Film Studies) "validate the superiority and desirability of heterosexuality." A feeling I also got from a similar triangular tug-of-war in the 1984 film adaptation of Henry James' The Bostonians.

It's an opinion I still hold about The Fox, but having read the book and lived a good deal more of life since then, it's now just one of many opinions and impressions I'm left with regarding this fascinating and compelling movie.

Female & Male: Natural Enemies?

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

I began this essay by citing how difficult it is for films to dramatize distasteful behavior without audiences (me, in this instance) resorting to the knee-jerk response of disapproving of a film because they disapprove of the behavior depicted.

That's precisely what happened the first time I saw The Fox. The character of Paul (his being a fox and all) is supposed to be a disruptive force in the relationship between Jill and Ellen. Instinctively, without malice and without even knowing why, his male sense of superiority compels him to seek dominance over these women; in particular, a need to possess the life of Ellen, the woman most threateningly "masculine" and self-possessed of the two.

His marriage proposal (the least romantic on record, and underscored with ominous music) is more an act of authority and domination than a declaration of love. 

Paul, locking his prey in his gaze

Because I so strongly resented the negative subtext (the "weak" women being easily overpowered, the sexual pliancy of Ellen, the nagging femininity of Jill) and became preoccupied with my expectation of the film offering a conclusive, pro-individualism message. So keenly was I hoping for some last-minute sign of feminist redemption, it went entirely over my head how Paul's assumptive, force-of-will-dominance in the narrative (and seeming victory in the end) is depicted as an ultimately negative, destructive force that actually (and tragically) results in none of the characters getting what they want.

The Fox turned out to be precisely the anti-machismo declaration I wanted it to be - an intelligent look at the predatory nature of man in the face of the vulnerable; but because it took the subtle, roundabout route, it took me several years and many viewings to catch it.

Of course, this is just my personal take on a film among whose many virtues lies its ability to be appreciated, interpreted...and even reviled...in many different ways.

Ellen "What is there here for me, Jill?"
Jill: "Yourself. Something I could never take from you."

"And when he holds me, I feel I'm seeping into his flesh...and there's no more me."

PERFORMANCES

No matter how one ultimately feels about The Fox as a film, it's hard not to credit its three stars with giving vividly realized performances. Anne Heywood - whose honest-to-god real name of Violet Pretty(!) makes me want to hug her - is sensational. I've never seen a single one of her other films, but I think I'd have a hard time seeing her as anyone but Ellen Marsh. Playing the most conflicted, least communicative character, Heywood somehow makes us feel Ellen's strength as well as her uncertainty. In the marvelous scene in which she reveals to Jill that she has always felt responsible for taking care of her, Heywood says it with such tender weariness, it just breaks your heart.

The beautiful Keir Dullea (I'll do it for you now, so you won't have to: "Keir Dullea, gone tomorrow" - Noel Coward) is well-cast as the living embodiment of the fox. Facially, he's not the most expressive actor, but he's been blessed with the most astounding eyes, and it's they that do all the emotional heavy-lifting. 

Shot in a manner to best emphasize his vulpine features,
Dullea gives an appropriately sly performance

Coming as a surprise to no one, Sandy Dennis (long-rumored to be lesbian in real life, I certainly hope she was) is my favorite in the film. She's the warmth the film needs in the early scenes, but when she turns chilly, she's truly excellent...in these scenes, the excitable Jill reveals an unexpected sturdiness. Dennis' Jill Banford is one of her least-mannered performances, but given her high annoyance ratio among film lovers, one can't help but feel she serves a purpose in The Fox not dissimilar to that which the casting of Shelley Duvall  served for Stanley Kubrick in The Shining: asked why he cast Duvall in his film, Kubrick gallantly responded: "Well, you gotta have somebody in that part that maybe the audience would also like to kill a little bit."

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Lalo Schifrin's beautiful Oscar and Grammy-nominated musical score.

William Fraker's (Rosemary's Baby, Looking for Mr. Goodbar) breathtaking cinematography.

Paul wields his phallic ax
If it is Paul's wish to have Ellen lose herself within him, then it's imperative that he
remove the one person who reminds Ellen she has a self that's worth preserving 

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

For movies to work for me, they don't have to always be about the truth. They can be just as engrossing and engaging if they are about a truth. The Fox is not the triumphant feminist/LGBT love story I thought it would be. But what it is I've seen played out countless times in my life.

You see it in the "mansplaining" phenomenon (which is nothing new). You see it in the way some men can only relate to women by trying to exert power over them, either through sexual objectification or, when feeling threatened, trying to belittle or destroy them in some way. I see it in gyms I've worked in, where men feel the need to exert a subtle superiority over women by being "helpful" and offering unsolicited workout tips.
You see it in the paradox of male fantasy fetishizing of girl-on-girl sex existing side by side with a real-world hatred and fear of lesbians and bisexuals.

The Fox explores how merely the idea of women existing
without the need for a man can ignite a primal fear in the male

I've personally listened as scores of bright, accomplished, self-reliant women tell me they're looking for a man who'll boss them around or take control. I've been around when women with loyal cores of loving girlfriends dropped them all like hot potatoes when a fascinating man came along and consumed all their attentions.

Lost or Found?
When Ellen appears in her pink feminine finery, making like a contented, domesticated female,
has she reclaimed a suppressed part of her nature or surrendered herself to what Paul wants her to be?

These things are neither admirable nor desirable, and not even indicative of most people's relationships; but here, some 90 years after D.H. Lawrence put pen to paper, the contradictory and cruel power plays between men and women seem to have changed little.
For me, The Fox is an allegory about a particular kind of male/female dynamic, with the suggestion that what is instinctual and primitive is not necessarily natural.

Clip from "The Fox" (1967)

I've been crazy about the superb poster art for The Fox since it came out. The striking artwork has made it one of the most beloved posters in my personal collection. But I only recently learned that this marvelous work represents one of the very few examples of a Black artist being commissioned for movie poster work. The sublime poster is the collaborative art of Leo Dillon and his wife Diane Sorber, the award-winning illustrators of countless children's books. Apparently, it is the only movie poster they worked on.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2016

ROCKY 1976

In a first for Le Cinema Dreams, I’ve handed this week’s post over to a guest blogger! I’m pleased to introduce Roberta Steve of Steel Town Girl. A marvelous writer and ‘70s film enthusiast after my own heart. I hope you enjoy as Roberta steps into the ring with the 1976 Best Picture Academy-Award winner, Rocky.

Growing up in a small, dying mill town in western Pennsylvania didn’t afford us many luxuries, so family night at the movies was a real treat.  My dad was a steelworker, and a rather eclectic movie fan.  He cheered for John Wayne in True Grit, and grieved with Sophia Loren in Two Women.  He loved discussing the movies we saw and prodding my sisters and me for our opinions.
Throughout the 60s, the boom years for steel towns throughout the region, there were lots of movies aimed at the family audience.  But by the 1970s, movies were changing.  Swear words, nudity, and violence were things my devout Catholic parents were not going to pay for us to see.  Especially with layoffs looming and money becoming tight.  Paying for five people to see a movie meant not paying for something else.

One night my mother suggested we go to see Cabaret.  It was a musical, so I’m sure mom thought it must be wholesome family entertainment.  We piled in the car and went off to the movie theater at the mall.  I remember sensing my dad’s uneasiness early on in the movie. My sisters and I grew even more uncomfortable with the decadence and sexuality, eventually slinking down in our seats.  My mom was silently praying for Julie Andrews and singing nuns to somehow show up in the Kit Kat Club in Berlin.
The ride home was stony silence.  My dad shooting “what were you thinking” glances at my mom in the front seat, my sisters and I trying to figure out what we had just seen in the back.  I had nightmares of Joel Grey’s false eyelashes for months.

It would be years before we saw another movie all together.

One day, at the dinner table, my dad commented that he’d read about a little movie that sounded interesting. “It’s about a boxer,” he explained.  “It’s called Rocky and I think I want to see it.” Apparently Newsweek magazine had run a blurb about its word of mouth momentum.
The movie hadn’t yet caught on nationally so it wasn’t playing at the big theater at the mall.  Instead, one frigid night, we drove to a deserted downtown to see it.  The small theater was not quite half full.  I was wearing my fake rabbit fur winter jacket with my black and gold Steeler pom pom hat.  I remember being annoyed that my mom wouldn’t buy me Milk Duds or Ju Ju Bees because they’d get stuck in my braces.

After the Cabaret disaster, I was especially tense about whether or not my dad would sit through the movie, let alone like it.  I spent the first part of the movie watching it out of one eye and my dad out of the other.  I was monitoring his reactions, waiting for the first f-bomb or naked breast that would cause him to pull us out of our seats and take us home in disgust.  He not only settled in; he was watching intently.
I relaxed and turned my full attention to the screen. Rocky was sitting in the fight promoter’s office, with people urging him to accept Apollo Creed’s unbelievable offer for an unknown boxer to fight the champ.  The camera stayed on Rocky’s face.  I felt how he was both afraid to take it and afraid not to.
I never looked away from the screen again.

My favorite scene in the film. Perhaps the last time we saw Stallone underplay until Creed.

Rocky is not a great film.  It is a very, very good one. There’s a reason it became a box office smash and a modern classic. It is hands down the most memorable and exciting movie going experience of my life.

The story is simple.  A down on his luck, no-name boxer in Philadelphia is given the chance of a lifetime to fight the flamboyant World Heavyweight Champion.  At the same time he is starting a tentative, tender romance with the introverted sister of his best friend.  He discovers his dignity and realizes he finally has something to fight for.

When the film came out, many sophisticated critics ridiculed it as a derivative fairy tale, some sort of rehash of a lesser Frank Capra movie. Sylvester Stallone, who starred as Rocky, wrote the screenplay and took the brunt of the criticism.  They had a point.  It was 1976, and compared to the cynicism of Network, the paranoia of All the President’s Men and the nihilism of Taxi Driver, this little movie seemed like a naïve fantasy.

But Rocky is full of anger, grittiness and sadness.  The story’s innate sentimentality is grounded in  drab, raw realness.  Nothing is “pretty” in Rocky.  The movie looks lived in.  Characters wear clothes, not costumes. People yell at each other.  A lot.  

The street where Rocky lives. He may have been from Philadelphia, but his story
echoed with working class folks on the western part of Pennsylvania too 

Because he was an unknown, and his script had made the rounds in Hollywood for a while, Stallone had to fight to get Rocky made and fight to star in it. The trade-off was the studio insisted on a low budget and quick filming schedule.  The entire movie was shot in 28 days.
Perhaps the two best things that happened to the movie were the budget restrictions and the studio bringing in a journeyman director, John G. Avildsen.  One reviewer called Avildsen “lazy.”  He wasn’t.  He simply got out of the way of a great story and cast the movie with actors who were either unknown or barely known to audiences.  It’s telling that the biggest “name” in the cast was Burgess Meredith.  (“Well he’s always good in movies, isn’t he?  He wouldn’t be in a dirty movie, would he?” my mom sweetly asked my dad on the way to the theater.)

There is a plainness and lack of self-consciousness in the performances that made me feel I wasn’t watching actors, I was somehow eavesdropping on real people at the most dramatic moment of their lives.  Stallone is undeniably appealing.  He wasn’t handsome, and in truth, he looks meaty, lumpy and pale.  You can believe he is a third-rate fighter.  Rocky was his creation, and he brings genuine humility, humor and heart to the role.  One wonders how Avildsen was able to reign in the self-reverential preening that Stallone displayed starting with the first sequel and perfected over his 40 year career.

The Rocky who won our hearts, before faux tan, hair mousse
and plastic surgery turned him into a robotic imitation 

Rocky’s love interest, Adrian, is the repressed, frightened, old maid sister of his best friend, Pauly.  Talia Shire, who was cast after Carrie Snodgrass turned the part down, brought both sensitivity and ferociousness to a woman who had never been valued in her life.  Her bitter confrontation with Pauly is achingly painful to watch.  Even her “makeover” is believable.  It looks like a prettier, younger cousin took her to the beauty counter at Wannamaker’s in downtown Philly and then bought her some new clothes.  The pantsuit she wears at the end of the film doesn’t even fit her properly.  Similar to Bette Davis’ brilliant transformation in Now, Voyager, Shire’s Adrian blooms from within.

Talia Shire was one of the last principals cast.
Susan Sarandon was screen tested but deemed “too attractive.”

Burt Young, as her loser brother Pauly, is used mainly for comic relief, until jealousy of his friend’s luck begins eating him alive.  He knows he may soon be abandoned by both Rocky and Adrian, and erupts from years of frustration, loneliness and hurt.

Burt Young's Pauly ruins the holiday.
I can still hear my mother muttering "poor Pauly" for days after the movie
every time she passed the Christmas tree

A former professional football player turned actor, Carl Weathers, plays the champion Apollo Creed, who Stallone obviously based on Muhammed Ali.  Weathers’ handsomeness, athleticism and crisp diction make him not only Rocky’s opponent, but his better in every way – he looks better, fights better and sounds better. Rocky knows he’s outclassed not just in the ring, but in life too.  Creed could have easily been a “villain” of sorts, but Stallone and Weathers make Apollo smart, savvy and completely in control of the “spin” surrounding the fight.

Apollo Creed looks for a small time fighter to face in an exhibition bout. He finds "The Italian Stallion."
Real life boxer Ken Norton turned the Apollo role down.

If there is any false note in the film, it’s the veteran Meredith as Rocky’s trainer, Mickey. Maybe it was because he was the biggest “name” in the film that the familiarity makes him seem less “authentic” compared to the revelatory turns by Stallone, Shire, Young and Weathers. When he first appeared in the film, my sister was waiting to hear him do the Penguin laugh from Batman. It’s the one performance in the film that, well, feels like a performance.

The producers wanted Lee Strasberg for the role of  Mickey but couldn't meet his asking price.

Avildsen cast the supporting roles with meat and potato character actors who looked like he grabbed them off the street in Philadelphia.  He generously gives Thayer David (the fight promoter), Tony Burton (Apollo’s manager) and Joe Spinell (Rocky’s small time gangster boss) moments that do much to create the gritty, small, ordinary world where Rocky knows his place.  It’s a harsh, grimy place, as are the people who populate it.

Spinell had an asthma attack shooting his first scene, and used his inhaler.
Avildsen used that take in the final cut.

Rocky was just the second film to use a Steadicam, which enabled the breathtaking shot of Rocky mounting the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art as well as the climatic fight scene.  For the famous training sequence, much of the footage, including Rocky’s run through the street market and on the quay by the boat, were shot on the fly – Avildsen and crew couldn’t afford to pay for the film permits.  Instead, they drove around in a van filming Stallone in improvised locations. That type of montage is now such a staple in movies, it’s hard to remember how fresh it was in Rocky.  So many post-Rocky “underdog” films have copied it (including Avildsen’s own Karate Kid) that you can’t believe it was never a cliché.

The inventor of the Steadicam first tested it with his girlfriend running up the steps of the  Philadelphia
Museum of Art. Avildsen saw the footage and it inspired the movie's most famous image.

Many film critics grumbled when Avildsen won the Oscar over other more well-regarded directors.  They blamed the win on the out-of-touch Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (sound familiar?)  The fact is, though, that the hipper Directors Guild gave their prize to Avildsen too.

Avildsen collects his Oscar.
He beat Ingmar Bergman, Sidney Lumet, Alan J. Pakula and Lina Wertmuller

Whenever I talk movies with fellow movie buffs, I see them roll their eyes when I bring up Rocky. Their perspective of the original film is skewed by its association with the sequels that followed. If only the story of Rocky ended when the film ended, with Rocky and Adrian frozen in a triumphant embrace.  Instead, Stallone, the producers, and the studio cashed in and pimped the characters out.  The newly trim, bronzed and blow-dried Stallone made Rocky into a cartoon, and threw the supporting characters to the side.  The sequels were overacted, overproduced, overblown, yet strangely underpopulated.  Rocky now lived in a vacuum. He was the only character that mattered. And don’t even get me started on the red sweat band in Rocky II.  It’s more frightening than Joel Grey’s false eyelashes.

Just all kinds of wrong.

It’s a shame that the sequels exploited and cheapened what made the original so stunning, and such a visceral experience 40 years ago.

It was deep in the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate, Jimmy Carter administration malaise. We were worn down by inflation and oil embargos. In small towns like mine, an entire industry was collapsing.
Steel mills, coal mines and manufacturing plants were lumbering dinosaurs on their way to extinction.  Anti-heroes and emancipated women were the darlings at the box office.  Hard-working, decent guys like my dad were just looking for a break.  They weren’t seeing who they were – or who they wanted to be – on the screen.

The night before the fight, Rocky sees that a banner has the color of his trunks wrong.
(An actual mistake made by the props department.)

"Does it matter?" says the fight promoter, in a line that Stallone wrote on the spot.

Back to my parents and my sisters and I in a small theater on a freezing western Pennsylvania night. My dad and mom likely entered the theater that night with lots on their minds – car payments, mortgages, saving to send three girls to college, the nasty chronic cough my dad had from smoking too many cigarettes.  They were probably prepared to have another movie disappoint them, and embarrass their daughters.

With Rocky clutching Adrian in freeze-frame (it was the 70s) and the strains of Bill Conti’s iconic score playing over the final credits, someone in the audience began clapping. Soon everyone was on their feet applauding, which then turned into cheering.  I heard the man behind me tell his date “I feel like I could lift this theater on my shoulders right now!”  I did too. More importantly so did my dad. He was literally out of breath and invigorated when the movie ended.
Walking to the car, my family was excitedly replaying scenes and dialogue.  They were already planning on telling others at work, at church and at school to be sure to see Rocky.  I wasn’t.  In some strange way, I didn’t want Rocky to be a hit. I wanted it to remain something special that had happened just to us. No one will ever know or love these people like we did, I thought. Somehow, keeping the movie a secret meant being able to hold onto the joy forever. One of my sisters suggested that we come back the next night and see it again.  For a moment my dad considered it. I’m glad we didn’t.  While I’ve enjoyed seeing the movie again over the years, nothing will ever top that first time.

As we were driving home, my mom, sisters and I were arguing about whether or not Rocky had actually won the fight.  “What difference does it make?” my dad said from the front seat. “He was a winner either way.  All I know is when he ran up those stairs, I was right there with him.  What a movie!”
Yo, dad, you were right.  Rocky was a winner.  And a knockout.

Roberta Steve is a writer and blogger. A native of Pittsburgh, her Steel Town Girl blog details coming of age in the 1970s.   She is also writing her first play and advocates for mental health awareness. A film buff, sports fan, fashionista, and sometime actress, you can find her on Facebook at Steel Town Girl, or follow her on Twitter @Bertie913.