Nighthawks

Finding a steady boyfriend proves challenging for a gay geography teacher in prejudiced 1970s London in this British drama starring Ken Robertson. The film was considered daring in its day with its suggestion that something is wrong with a society in which it is so hard for homosexual men to be themselves. Viewed nowadays though, the impact is not the same. There are some admirable techniques at hand, like the absence of audible dialogue for the first six minutes and a shot that gradually zooms into his nervous face at a gay bar, and some of the dialogue resonates (some believe "you're not even human" if you do not "like birds"). For all these positives though, there are many repetitive shots of men dancing for ages on end. A new teacher at Robertson's school also provides a too obvious outlet for him to ramble on about the difficulties of being gay and while a scene in which his prejudiced students grill him about their misconceptions of homosexuality is great, it comes too late in the piece. The film additionally shies over how its protagonist has so much spare time or can turn up to class two hours late without repercussion - but, for all its drawbacks, the film does at least have its heart in the right place.

This film is the story of Jim, a man who's a comprehensive (middle) school teacher by day and gay man by night in the late 80's. It was the time before AIDS when Men wore Levi's and mustaches and before Calvin Klein made tighty whities sexy again.

Jim does the rounds, going to bars to meet men. The string of men lengthens one after the other; some attracted to him some he's attracted to. But, there's never a mutual attraction. As with so many bar-met men, getting to bed is easy, getting to a second date is not.

The film takes an interesting turn when one day in class, he's asked if he's ` Bent'. He answers yes and then proceeds to answer the other questions that the students pose.

Like most things in life, this film doesn't end with all the loose threads tied up neatly. However, for those of us that lived through this period, it is an interesting film.

This could almost be a documentary, it's depiction of the gay male lifestyle is so realistic. A brilliant film unlike any others in the genre. No fantasies here, just honesty (though obviously made before AIDS was an all-too common fear).

I know this is the wrong credit for kris Watson Cos I am Kris Watson and I can 100% tell you I wasn't in it.

The main character's life (Jim) is teaching during the day and dancing and picking up partners at the discos. And this process is shown over and over again, ad nauseum, with the discos playing one of literally four very repetitive songs in every scene.

This film desperately needed an editor. It's a 20-minute film that goes on for an hour and 50 minutes. There's literally just 15 minutes of consequential footage in it, and I've never seen so much disco dancing footage in a single film in my life. Even Saturday Night Fever didn't have this much.

There's one shot of Jim scanning the crowd while he drinks his beer, and the shot just goes on for literally 5 minutes of him staring and pretending to drink from an empty glass with his eyeballs zipping around as the camera slowly zooms in. I could almost imagine it being a Python sketch where satirical subtitles appear, saying, "Okay, you can cut now." "No, seriously, cut." "Okay, cut, please." "Will you please stop drinking from an empty glass?" "No, seriously, there's no more beer in there." "You're literally licking the glass clean now." "Okay, CUT!"

Yes, I appreciate the film as a time capsule and for its honesty and cinema verité style, but it's a film that doesn't know when to quit for lack of interesting material. The only consequential moment is the scene in which he answers questions about his homosexuality for his students.