Reflections on ... Rocco and His Brothers (1960)

/ Alain Delon and Annie Girardot in Rocco and His Brothers (1960) /

Recently watched: Italian art cinema virtuoso Luchino Visconti’s ambitious epic (177-minute!) tragedy Rocco and His Brothers (1960). In his review, critic Roger Ebert summarizes Rocco and His Brothers as “operatic” and “homoerotic” – both descriptions are apt! What greater recommendation is there? 

Led by widowed matriarch Rosaria, the Parondi family relocates from grinding poverty in the rural south to urban industrialized north (in this case, Milano) in search of better prospects. Instead, all they find is relentless catastrophe. And the options for the brothers seem limited to boxing or crime. 

Like his contemporary Pier Paolo Pasolini, Visconti had a superior “queer eye” when it came to casting handsome male actors. All five Parondi brothers are stone cold stunners – particularly beauteous young Alain Delon as Rocco. (We get ample opportunity to ogle the brothers wearing the de rigueur Italian neo-realism white “wife beater” vests, sparring in the boxing ring and showering). In terms of homoeroticism: also note the corrupt boxing promoter and how he is coded as vaguely sexually predatory (especially the scene where he walks into the gym’s changing room and stares frankly at Simone and Rocco as they shower. Although I can’t say I blame him). 

/ The memorable shower sequence in Rocco and His Brothers /

But arguably, the film is dominated by Annie Girardot as local prostitute Nadia, the Parondis’ new neighbour. Encountering the glamorous, sensual and insouciant Nadia throws a hand grenade into the family’s life, with both deeply flawed Simone (Renato Salvatori – magnificent in this complex and demanding anti-hero role) and Rocco falling hopelessly in love with her. Inevitably, heartbreak and death ensue. (As someone laments towards the end, “Christ will regret the suffering visited upon us!”). 

 / Annie Girardot and Renato Salvatori as the doomed couple in Rocco and His Brothers /

Perhaps understandably, Rosaria is prone to glancing skyward despairingly and calling Nadia a “putana.” (This archetypal black-clad Italian peasant mamma is actually played by volatile Greek actress Katina Paxinou. And Delon and Girardot are, of course, French actors playing Italian characters – and dubbed by Italian voices. Watch also for gorgeous young starlet Claudia Cardinale in a supporting role). I’m embarrassed to admit I wasn’t very au fait with Annie Girardot (1931 - 2011) beforehand but judging by her heart-wrenching performance here she was every bit the equal of other iconic European art cinema actresses like Jeanne Moreau, Anna Magnani and Monica Vitti. Time hasn’t blunted the impact of Rocco and His Brothers.

Reflections on ... Love Has Many Faces (1965)

Recently watched: tantalizingly lurid and trashy melodrama Love Has Many Faces (1965) starring 44-year old screen diva Lana Turner at the height of her mature glamour. The steamy action is set in sun-drenched Acapulco amidst the amoral la dolce vita milieu of the jaded idle rich, where tanned half-naked gigolos ply their trade on the beach to sex-starved affluent society matrons. (In this realm, it's women who buy the services of male prostitutes, not other men). The hedonistic idyll is abruptly interrupted when Billy Andrews, one of these beach boys-for-hire, washes-up dead on the shore. Was he murdered? Did he commit suicide? A bracelet on his wrist (engraved “Love is Thin Ice”) links him to married 40-something heiress and playgirl, Kit Jordan (Turner). 

/ Pete (Cliff Robertson) and Kit (Lana Turner) pouting through the pain aboard their yacht. Note Robertson's safari leisure suit - so atomic-era. Note too the glasses of brandy: this duo continuously knocks back brandy (in the blazing heat on the beach!) as if their lives depend on it. Taking a sip each time they do would be a fun drinking game. Interesting: in real life Turner was reportedly a hard drinker, but onscreen her drunks scenes are wildly unconvincing / 

/ Portrait of a marriage /

The all-star cast screams "1965": buff Cliff Robertson as Turner’s ex-hustler husband (Robertson, of course, tormented another older diva - Joan Crawford - years earlier in Autumn Leaves), gravel-voiced Ruth Roman (she gives Love’s earthiest, most nuanced performance as a horny middle-aged tourist. Years later she would make a vivid impression as the butch, growling bewigged mother in freaky exploitation film The Baby), god-like furry-chested Hugh O’Brien as wolfish veteran gigolo Hank (he spends most of the film virtually naked and is a sight to behold. His motto is “Always treat a tramp like a lady and a lady like a tramp”) and Stefanie Powers in her early ingenue starlet years. 

/ Margot (Ruth Roman) cops a feel of Hank (Hugh O’Brien). Can you blame her?! / 

/ Above: A tousled, post-coital Ruth Roman as Margot /

Mainly, though, Love is a star vehicle for Turner: as troubled socialite Kit, she gets to suffer, emote and hide a painful secret, drink and smoke too much, wear sunglasses, dramatically ascend and descend a spectacular staircase, impatiently snap orders at servants in Spanish and repeatedly changes clothes (her garish Edith Head-designed wardrobe was one of the film’s major draws and cost an estimated $1 million). Turner's fellow actors’ close-ups are in crisp normal focus, but when the camera cuts to Turner, the lens is abruptly misty with Vaseline or gauze. No one over-acts quite like Lana Turner. Is she awful or majestic? She’s certainly always undeniably compelling. 

/ Lana - shimmering in soft focus / 

/ Poor Stefanie Powers doesn't stand a chance: you barely notice her when she shares a scene with the majestic Turner /

/ Below: a sampling of Turner's much-ballyhooed Edith Head-designed "Million Dollar Wardrobe" in Love Has Many Faces / 

/ Fascinating five-minute behind-the-scenes"featurette" about Turner's wardrobe, narrated by Edith Head /

Seen today, the unapologetic and overt focus on bronzed and oiled male flesh is eye-popping. Love needs to be embraced by modern audiences as an LGBTQ camp classic! While all the romantic interludes depicted are strictly hetero, it’s difficult to imagine a queerer movie emerging from mainstream Golden Age Hollywood. (Well, considering this is 1965, this is Golden Age Hollywood in its protracted agonizing death throes). In fact, there’s so much outrageously homoerotic beefcake worship in Love Has Many Faces it suggests Bob Mizer  of Athletic Model Guild was some kind of consultant or adviser! In addition to women looking to luxuriate in a weepy deluxe melodrama, I suspect the audience was full of connoisseurs of firm male flesh and “confirmed bachelors.” 

/ MILFS gone wild! Cougars on the loose! Sex tourists Margot (Ruth Roman) and Irene (Virginia Grey), hungrily eyeing up the local talent and out of their depths in Acapulco. (Note the sliced lemon motif on Irene's sunhat). Do these two actually represents gay men? Let's have a heated debate! /

/ Love for Sale: cynical hustler Hank and his smooth-skinned, younger and more naive twink colleague Chuck (Ron Husmann). Their scenes together sizzle with repressed homoeroticism. Regrettably, they never once kiss /

/ Kiss! For the love of god - kiss! /

(I know virtually nothing about the director of Love Has Many Faces, Alexander Singer (who's still alive at 91). But his very skimpy Wikipedia page alerted me that his debut film was the steamy, intenses low-budget 1961 sexploitation film A Cold Wind in August, in which the excellent Lola Albright plays a 30-something stripper infatuated with a cute 17-year old thug. Alexander Singer has suddenly shot up in my estimation! It was John Waters' praise of A Cold Wind in August in his book Crackpot that led me to seek it out years ago. Sadly, it's very difficult film to see. Come on, Criterion - bring out a digitally remastered director's cut Blu-ray of this essential movie!). 

/ Above: Lola Albright in A Cold Wind in August (1961) / 

The storyline is inconsequential soap opera (by the end I was still unclear whether Billy was murdered or committed suicide. It ultimately didn’t seem to matter very much). Singer's direction is frequently indifferent and the pace can drag. But then things build to a totally unexpected climax involving a charging bull (!) that is genuinely jolting and surreal. You will rub your eyes in disbelief! Another bonus: Turner’s palatial beach house is minimalist atomic-era “Tiki moderne” heaven. The most lingering impressions left by Love Has Many Faces is Turner at her most histrionic and the sight of Hugh O'Brien in his revealing bathing suit. 

/ Glimpses of Turner's sumptuous beach house. She makes maximum use of that spectacular staircase for dramatic moments. And check out her zebra-print robe! /

/ Some bonus pin-ups of O'Brian in his tiny well-stuffed white briefs /

Further reading:

Comprehensive and excellent analysis of Love Has Many Faces here.

In August 2018 I spoke my brains to To Do List magazine about the wild, wild world of Lobotomy Room, the monthly cinema club – and my lonely one-man mission to return a bit of raunch, sleaze and “adult situations” to London’s nightlife! Read it - if you must - here. 

Follow me on twitter!

"Like" and follow the official Lobotomy Room page on Facebook if you dare!  

I have serious issues with the frankly homophobic, puritanical, hypocritical and censorious Tumblr these days, but you can follow me on there.

And I'm now spreading my message of filth on Instagram!

Cockabilly 28 July 2015 DJ Set List

/ Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die. Photo via /

From the Cockabilly Facebook group:

Drag a comb through your quiff, swallow a fistful of bop pills and rock around the cock – at COCKABILLY!

COCKABILLY returns to the louche surroundings of The George & Dragon in Shoreditch on Tuesday 28 July 2015! Leather boys, gay greasers, cry-babies, prison wives and juvenile delinquents of all ages are welcome at Cockabilly - London’s only regular queer rockabilly night! With DJ Mal Nicholson and I spinning all your favourite rancid vintage sleaze classicks! Think rockabilly, rhythm and blues, surf, punk and tittyshakers!

The George & Dragon: 2-4 Hackney Road London E2 7NS

8-midnight

FREE

In his definitive literary statement, 1981’s Shock Value: A Tasteful Book about Bad Taste (which I revere as a sacred text), cult cinema’s Pope of Trash John Waters describes his early film Mondo Trasho (1969) as “a gutter film. “ (“It was filmed in alleys, gutters, Laundromats and deserted areas around Baltimore…”).

/ Embryonic young starlet Divine in her first starring role in Mondo Trasho (1969) /

In a similar vein, when I DJ at either Cockabilly or my own punkabilly booze party club night Lobotomy Room I endeavour to exhume and play the most rancid “gutter music” possible. Hopefully in my hour-long set at the July 2015 Cockabilly I succeeded.

As a friend of mine present pointed out (not entirely approvingly, I suspect!) “Your set got quite Country in the middle!” I've indeed recently re-visited and incorporated some old-school Country and Western tracks that I vividly remember from my seventies rural Quebec childhood. A particular strain of white trash / trailer park hillbilly Country music – the kind that conjures images of women with teased hair and frosted lipstick (think Karen Black as Rayette in Five Easy Pieces) lamenting about adultery, men with werewolf sideburns and big cowboy belt buckles crying into their beers at neon-lit honky tonks – is part of my musical DNA. I definitely recall my mother singing along to Loretta Lynn’s tough-talking 1968 single “Fist City”, in which the earthy no-nonsense coalminers daughter threatens some tramp to steer clear of her man. “If you don’t want to go to Fist City / You’d better detour around my town / ‘Cause I’ll grab you by the hair of the head and I’ll lift you offa the ground!” Lynn warns her would-be rival.

/ There's an even better clip of Tammy Wynette belting out "Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad" (sporting a beehive wig, sequinned mini-dress and go-go boots) on Youtube, but whoever posted it disabled embedding, damn it! So watch it here instead /

“Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad”, meanwhile, is the title track of the 1967 début album of Lynn’s contemporary Tammy Wynette. In a variation of the Kitty Wells Country & Western standard “It Wasn't Go Who Made Honky Tonk Angels”, the bouffant-haired First Lady of Country casts herself as a virtuous Christian housewife who’s “never seen the inside of a barroom / Or listened to a jukebox all night long” vowing to become a hardened bar stool mama if it wins back her straying husband. “I'll even learn to like the taste of whiskey,” Wynette wails over rousing quasi-rocabilly guitar twangs (there's a sob trapped in her voice, even on a defiant and sassy number like this). “In fact, you'll hardly recognize your wife / I'll buy some brand new clothes and dress up fancy /For my journey to the wilder side of life.”

A journey to the wilder side of life – that’s the Cockabilly way.

Your Phone's off the Hook - The Ramonetures
Let's Go, Baby - Billy Eldridge
Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad - Tammy Wynette
It's a Gas - The Rumblers
Goodbye So Long - Ike and Tina Turner
Money, Money - Big John Taylor
Where's My Money? Willie Jones
Wiped-Out - The Escorts
Love Potion # 9 - Nancy Sit
Jailhouse Rock - Judy Nylon
Little Darlin' - Masaaki Hirao
Big Bad Boss Beat - The Teen Beats
I'm a Woman - Peggy Lee
Chicken Grabber - The Nite Hawks
Sweet Little Pussycat - Andre Williams
Vesuvius - The Revels
Fist City - Loretta Lynn
Year 1 - X
Rock the Hula - Elvis Presley
Honolulu Rock'n'Roll - Eartha Kitt
Here Comes the Bug - The Rumblers
Viens danser le twist - Johnny Hallyday
That Makes It - Jayne Mansfield
I Wish I Were a Princess - Little Peggy March
Somethin' Else - The Sex Pistols
Viva Las Vegas - Nina Hagen
Twistin' the Night Away - Divine
The Girl Can't Help It - Little Richard
Cretin Hop - The Ramonetures



/ The twisted minds behind Cockabilly: Mal (on the right) and I at my Lobotomy Room club night at Fontaine's on Friday 31 July 2015 /

Further reading:

Read all about the sordid antics at previous Cockabillies here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,  here, here, here, here, here, here and here. 

Follow my tumblr blog (also called Bitterness Personified) for all your retro, kitsch and vintage homo porn needs!

A nice appreciation of the irresistibly kitsch vintage homoerotic art of illustrator George Quaintance (1902-1957) cropped up on the Dangerous Minds blog today. Read it here. Quaintance is definitely a precursor of Tom of Finland and would appear to be an influence on the campy queer vision of French artists Pierre et Gilles. One of the most popular pics I’ve ever posted on tumblr is Quaintance’s painting “Shore Leave.”

I'm next guest DJ'ing on Sunday 16 August 2015 at the free all-day Elvis-o-Rama tribute event A Date with Elvis in Shoreditch. See the Facebook events page for details. If you're London-based, why not come and wriggle and cavort like Ann-Margret in Viva Las Vegas?

And finally: my next putrid punkabilly booze party Lobotomy Room club night in the basement Bamboo Lounge of Fontaine's is Friday 28 August 2015! Revel in sleaze, voodoo and rock'n'roll at Lobotomy Room! In the meantime, read about the June 2015 one here.

/ Lobotomy Room flyer (of Jayne Mansfield and chihuahua) by Ego Rodriguez Illustrations /

New Boots and Panties

Received delivery of a sparkling new pair of black leather engineer boots earlier this week — just like these as modelled by the delectable vintage physique/beefcake model Rock Granger (sadly, wearing them doesn't make me look like him. Granger is one of my favourite male pin-ups; I used a photo of him in a mesh posing pouch to illustrate my 6 February 2013 Wild Thing DJ set list -- and perhaps unsurprisingly, it became one of my most popular blog entries of all time!). 

As many of you know, I freaking refuse to wear anything else (give me engineer boots or give me death!) and they’re increasingly hard to find. (In the 1990s, I’d just head to The Girl Can't Help It in Camden Market!). I always have to have two pairs: I need a spare pair while one is being re-heeled. Anyway, I got my last two pairs from Rockers England in Manchester: highly recommended. Here’s their website.

Which brings us to ...

Young Marlon Brando as sullen and defiant Johnny in The Wild One (1953) remains such a potent image (or as Camille Paglia would call it, “sexual persona”). As I've said before, the clothes Brando and his biker gang members in The Black Rebel Motorcycle Club wear are so covetable they have me virtually drooling. The buckled black leather engineer boots, the perfect dark indigo Levis with the perfect turn-ups, the t-shirts, the leather jackets, the caps, the sunglasses, the quiffs, the sideburns ... Brando and his gang remain the absolute visual / sartorial ideal for male rockabillies today in the way that, say, Bettie Page or Mamie Van Doren do for female rockabilly kittens.

Unwittingly, Brando in The Wild One also set a template or archetype for the enduring and essential homoerotic biker image (perhaps second only to the homoerotic sailor image in ubiquity). Browse through any collections of 1950s / early 1960s-era vintage male physique / beefcake / early gay pornography on tumblr like this one or this one (and I highly recommend you do!) and so many of the luscious male models are sporting tough guy / bad boy variations of the black leather jacket, rakishly cocked biker cap and engineer boots ensembles that seem directly swiped from The Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. (Here -- I've saved you the trouble!). And of course in his eerie 1963 queer underground film classic Scorpio Rising (a true cinematic flower of evil!) Kenneth Anger would drag the gay biker persona up from the subterranean world of porn. Anger also deliberately spliced in a flickering black and white TV clip of Brando in The Wild One, implying his speed freak anti-hero Scorpio (played by Bruce Byron) is modelling himself on Brando. In fact he links Scorpio’s corrupt homoerotic narcissism with his identifications with James Dean and Brando. Beautiful!

Now I need to listen to Turbonegro.