Fillum...

This is not a review of a film - Claudia Winkelman I am not - but rather a story around a film, and a vindication - in 1986, I was right to like something.....

In the 1980's, BBC2 used to run a film programme that ran two films back to back, and had a critique of both movies in the middle. For example, they ran Fritz Lang's 1920's masterpiece "Metropolis", and then compared and contrasted the techniques used in that film to Coppola's "Rumblefish". Both black and white, although thematically different, they highlighted Coppola's nods towards Metropolis. It was a very interesting programme, and a great way to while away an evening. Sadly however, it predated my ownership of a video recorder - not that I'd have been able to put the entire programme on one tape, and, back then, keeping things for posterity on tape was not something I did.

I wish I had. For the last 25 or so years, I have been hunting down a film by Kathryn Bigelow that was used in this programme, The Loveless. It was compared and contrasted with The Wild One, Marlon Brando's banned 50's motorcycle gang flick - showing, for example, how Bigelow used stylistic and iconic shots from the Wild One to compose a nihilistic and brooding film that doesn't so much tell a story, but paints it. The effect is of the story being told as a sideshow to a slideshow of leather clad 'bad boy' sequences - think, if you will, of a very, very dark flip side of "Happy Days", where the Fonze is a really, really bad boy...

This is a quite relevant film because it represents Kathryn Bigelow's directorial debut, is Willem Dafoe's first film and because of the way it eschewed the formulaic pacing of movies - you know the sort of thing - 15 minutes setting the scene, building to a hectic and chaotic "leave them on the edge of their seats" ending that Hollywood seems to think is de-rigeur these days. No, this film slides along at a pace similar to Dafoe's brylcreem-ed hair melting in the sun, and invites you to enjoy the view along the way. It oozes along to the fairly inevitable conclusion.

Interestingly, it has a soundtrack by Robert Gordon (yes, the same late 70's Rockabilly chap who had his whole act and sound lifted by those oh so naughty Stray Cats) who also plays the foil to Dafoe's brooding malevolence in the film. Gordon's part in the film portrays the constant challenging of alpha male status present in every gang.

It is rare that I can have seen or heard something once, a long time ago, and for it to be as good, if not better than I remembered. I salute myself - although it bombed on release, it is now considered a cult classic. I've altered my list of '1001 films you must see before you die' to include it....