jromanbaker

Modernism, Post-Modernism. And above all the Theatre of the Absurd. This film in all its cartoon simplicity shows how the imagination rules us, and that societal needs have been constructed to repress it. Billy Wilder created a masterpiece of human chaos in this film. ' Man ' is Tom Ewell ( superb performance ) finds himself alone while his wife and child are away on holiday. In this chaotic mess of Manhattan all males suffer the same fate and have delirious illusions of hunting down ' women. ' Ewell resists but then he meets Marilyn Monroe who lives upstairs and she too becomes a cartoon fantasy of the ' available ' women along with his other fantasies of the opposite sex. No spoilers but this film which worried the Hays Code shows us how cinema itself is fantasy and how we imitate it. References to ' From Here to Eternity ' and ' Brief Encounter ' get tangled up with ' Creature of the Black Lagoon. ' If this film had been a so-called infidelity film it would have been banal. As it stands it shows us the viewers how much we absurdly exist on fantasies of sex and by doing so shows us equally how absurd the Hays Code was in insisting upon yet again so-called morality. Even Marilyn Monroe is mentioned in the film despite the fact she is in it, and this shows in itself how absurdity rules film itself. A great film totally misunderstood in my opinion by worthy critics who want to take it seriously. And denigrate it as being a victim of the Hays Code. Most films are fantasies and as Godard said about his film ' Pierrot Le Fou ' blood on film is nothing more than red paint. This film from 1955 is as relevant today as it was back then.

Set in Tajikistan this film has a lot that pleases, but sadly I found the treatment of women in it appalling. They are either assaulted sexually or left after a male has proved his virility. I have to put this out of context, because it is there and arguably the director of this very well made film had his reasons. Basically it is about a 20year old who is impotent with his young wife and for half of the film tries to find a woman to rectify this. He falls in with gangsters while doing so, and despite unpleasant scenes the film does not indulge itself in full on sensationalism. End of spoilers. The film too has the courage to show male genitalia and is not afraid of doing so; a lesson for gay and straight actors to get over the fact that that they are not ' vulnerable ' in doing so. I do recommend this perhaps hard to find film for its depiction of it's both luxurious and often grubby surroundings, and there is very little glamour to hide the world it depicts. Maybe it deserves a higher rating. I have very mixed feelings about certain aspects that I found repellent.

There is a brief scene after the credits that perhaps most people have not waited to see. I wonder if the UK censors in the mid - 1990's did as well; it is in my opinion the key to the whole film. Without spoilers it implicitly says that the whole film is a joke, and that the supposedly ' unbearable scenes ' are a kind of acted out pantomime for adults, and that over 18 years olds are adults! The acting is no worse than what you can see in other short for cash cult films, and sometimes it is quite good. The gist of the scenario is a fascination with killing so as to see the inner organs within our outer flesh, and only two scenes one in a windmill and one at the end that I averted my eyes. I have done this in certain family Westerns! Also, and that is again in my opinion this is not a purely gay film at all. A young woman joins the men in the so-called atrocities, so using logic this crosses over the divide of how it is just men who think about killing. I do not think it is gruesome especially as in 2025 you can see worst atrocities on television news. And they are real, and this film is definitely not. And Todd Verow is a good queer director who is not afraid of choosing risky material. If the film was submitted today in the UK would it get a certificate ? A question that I think needs an answer.