Nighthawks

The problem with this look at late 70's British gay lifestyle, is that it is a little too realistic to carry off with any sort of interest. Like most stories about people on the hunt for romance/sex etc., it is incredibly introspective. Ken Robertson is a really quite dull, full of himself "Jim" - a teacher by day who looks for love in gay pubs/clubs at night. He picks up an array of folks, sometimes he has sex, sometimes not.... same old, same old... (regardless of your sexuality). If it weren't for the fact that it was set just before the dawn of Mrs. Thatcher's Clause 28 Britain, which at the time of course, this Ron Peck story would not have been able to anticipate - it would constitute little more than a melodrama with some very dodgy music and lacklustre tales of one night stands... As a semi-anthropological study of a gay man in London it is vaguely interesting, but any claims it may make to take a deeper look at the sociological themes of the time, or of attitudes are just bridges too far. It does have quite a telling Q&A style discourse at the end that illustrates the stereotypical attitudes of teenage kids that could have been made much more of, had the film itself not focused so much on the rather dreary existence of the subject.

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.

This extraordinary film was made in 1978 - almost forty years ago. The Sexual Offences Act in Britain had come into effect in 1967 decriminalizing sexual acts between two men in private at the age of 21.

Clearly, seven years on from then, a huge liberation had occurred, but homosexuality was still hampered by amazing ignorance and intolerance in general British society. There was still the fear of being branded 'queer' or 'bent', and becoming bereft of a livelihood and an income, and viewed as repugnant by family and those around where you lived.

This film cannot be valued enough. It's breathtaking in its lack of polemic. It's just about gay men getting on with their lives in their particular period. What's so interesting is that their sad search for love then is no different to the search now.

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.