Borderline

I saw Borderline several years ago on AMC. I've been looking for it ever since. It was haunting: visual, textural, sensual. This movie took me somewhere like a dream and I didn't care where. I will never forget the curtain blowing in the breeze. I still remember the way it made me tilt my head. I remember my facial expression when I saw it. I didn't know what had happened when the movie was over, but I find life is that way. It didn't bother me. The unfairness of the ultimate rejection of an innocent character strikes me as sadly real. I loved the faces, the way the camera dwelt upon them. The camera gazed at the set with the unfocused eyes of a daydreamer. Borderline was real to me in a way movies aren't. It was exactly the lack of explanation, color, sharpness that made it enter my consciousness like a thief in the night. I love this movie. Someday I will own it.

In the fall of 1927, a British film magazine appeared titled "Close Up." Of its purposes, it was trying to elevate film to the status of "art", it was trying to promote the educational qualities of film, it was trying to kick the British film industry into high gear (indeed, all the articles lamenting the poor British film industry grow wearisome), etc., etc. Of these purposes, it was also championing the minorities, blacks in film being one of the main focuses of this purpose.

The brainchild behind this "Close Up" was a man named Kenneth MacPherson, whose name you'll also notice under the Writing and Directing credits of "Borderline", the film in question of this review.

I watched "Borderline" because I'm a fan of this old magazine. Back in these days, the writers had a much clearer sense of film and its potentials, and their writing has a pop and vigor, the type that would transform into the raging "wit" that today's writers pass off. With MacPherson, two others edited and contributed to "Close Up". The first of these is Winifred Ellerman, pen-name Bryher. The second is Hilda Doolittle, pen-name H.D., American poet, actor in "Borderline." Other personalities, of course, frequently appear in the publication, but it is these three whom I'm quite fond of, especially the two women. Quite naturally, I had to see these personalities materialize on film, their only film.

It's amazing how well this film corresponds to these personalities I've loved. The rhythm, the technique, the good-humor of "Borderline" is so apparently theirs. Of course, I say this from bias, but I still say it is uniquely the product of MacPherson, of his person and people. And the jazz score on the Criterion disc compliments this personality well, I feel. It compliments the film. It compliments the rhythm, the technique, and the good-humor. Oh, I should probably define these. Hmm... The rhythm is difficult to describe. The cutting is strange and... jazz-like (undoubtedly, the jazz score again biases me). The story is more rhythmic than coherent, and apparently this throws people off (as evidenced by the few uninformed narrative junkies who have submitted embarrassingly bad reviews to this humble IMDb page). The technique is often impressionistic. "Borderline" is beautifully photographed, if I may say so, and the Criterion quality is the standard of excellence. The thoughtful angles, the focus and lighting, the good-humor... all shines through on the DVD. Oh, the good-humor! Well, that's something you have to experience.

I'm thankful MacPherson made a film. He should have made more. Well, anyone who's interested has some writings they can turn to. In fact, more than "Borderline" I'd like to recommend "Close Up" to the intelligent film-scholar. You'd be surprised how finely clear these writers' thoughts are and you'll get a very good look at the industry of the time (and the people who drove it). Worthwhile.

P.S. Robeson is really good, too.

Yes, and odd and confusing and a dozen other adjectives that make you think just what kind of movie this is!

This is not a movie for most people. It's more like an experience, an ahead-of-its-time extended music video. Most of the action is stifled, static and repressed. The images seem like set-pieces, paintings in time, feelings encased in poses. All which remind me of famous Greek director, Theo Angelopoulos and his static images - which were not static at all - since they housed emotions and a participation of audience in conjecturing what they were seeing by a process of mental elimination of causes and possible actions.

BORDERLINE - instead of being images of things, gazes at people and we are challenged to discover just what it is they are thinking. Mostly because the number of intertitles is scant and far between.

All this is to say -- this is not an easy film to watch. I enjoyed immersing myself in the images, however. The story is rather odd in itself - perhaps it was risqué for its time. In fact, I am sure that a biracial relationship was off-center for those times. As were its sexual undertones.

Indeed, I think the film's title is about the BORDERLINE type of lifestyle that these people wanted to live. And in turn, the consequences, emotional and social, which affected their decisions surrounding this.

This sort of "experimental" film has been done and redone thousands of times by professionals and film students during the 20th century. Perhaps never as compelling as in this film - which is a landmark of sorts for film buffs.

Yet, I repeat, not for everyone.

The film is really about the myriad psychological states that we go through during a relationship -- and racial prejudice is the juice that runs this study. But there are sometimes subtle and sometimes obvious moments of homosexual metaphor scattered throughout.

Don't watch this movie if you are in a hurry. The film won't go faster just because you want it to.

Intriguing but not altogether successful - but highly recommended for film buffs and Gothic types. Both in which I've dabbled through the years.

I recently got a DVD collection of selected Paul Robeson movies from my local library to borrow and I picked this one to view first since it's Black History Month and I wanted to maintain the chronological order (for the most part) of reviewing such films during that month. Anyway, this one was a bit unusual not only because of the subject matter but also because it employs what was considered Avant Garde at the time with lots of close-ups not only of faces but also objects which may (or not) aid in the plot structure. Also appearing is Paul's wife, Eslanda, whose role seems important here. I said seems because if I didn't read the synopsis on this site, I wouldn't have known what the movie was about! The images-not to mention the lack of intertitles-confused me much of the time though I admit they're quite beautiful and intriguing. And the modern jazz score by Courtney Pine adds a modern sensibility that was awesome. Still, this wasn't a very coherent narrative. But on that note, I do recommend Borderline just so you could experience something different if you'd like...

Film historians say Kenneth Macpherson's movie was fifty years ahead of its time in terms of subject matter. The Scottish filmmaker's only feature film could have never been produced in Hollywood at the time, let alone seen nationwide distribution to theaters, especially in the South. His silent film, October 1930 "Borderline," was a mix of experimental and avant garde elements, with a heavy dose of Sergei Eisenstein-type montage editing.

To film such a bold movie, cinema's first look at black/white love relationships, took financial resources most filmmakers don't have. Macpherson married into money in 1927 when he linked up with a shipping magnate's daughter, Annie Ellerman, an English writer known as Bryher. To say their marriage was not of the traditional kind is putting it mildly. It was more of an artistic alliance between the couple, with Annie favoring women while Kenneth loved both genders. Moving to Territet, Switzerland, soon after their wedding, the pair gathered other artists in the community to form the 'Pool Group.' Its members adopted the French and German experimental forms of art, frowning upon commercial formats for more expressive 'art forms,' centered on feelings rather than plot narratives.

After producing three short movies, Macpherson embarked on his first (and only) feature film. He remarkably was able to secure the acting services of African-American actor Paul Robeson, who was on the London stage at the time, and his wife, Eslanda. "Borderline" sees the pair renting a room upstairs from the owners of the house, a white couple. The two couples separately have affairs with the other, setting off a firestorm in the town after a murder takes place. The film is delivered by way of spare inter titles and relies on the actors' expressions rather than dialogue. Said film critic Richard Deming,"Macpherson's brilliance lies in his ability to photograph small movements as nuanced, meaning-producing gestures." A recent review claimed, "Judged on its own merits, Borderline is a ground-breaking work, dealing as it does with issues of race and sexuality at a time when such subject matter was still largely taboo and had only been previously tackled cinematically through oblique inference." Viewers used to traditional Hollywood movies were dumbfounded by Macpherson's feature film. One London newspaper reviewer recommended the filmmaker "spend a year in a commercial studio" before embarking on another project as complex as his "Borderline." The "Pool Group" leader was so stung by such negative criticism he withdrew the prints from distribution and gave up his ambitions to direct any movies in the immediate future.