Awww! Polyester. Picture: Dreamland Pictures
I love It’s A Wonderful Life, you love It’s A Wonderful Life, we all love It’s A Wonderful Life. But there is more to the festive season than Jimmy Stewart and that ‘ole Building And Loan’. Here are six vintage alternative flicks, with nary a mention of Christmas between them…
Polyester (1981) Presented in glorious scratch and sniff ‘Odorama’ upon its cinematic release, this classic piece of trash by the never knowingly tasteful John Waters is notable for a performance by Divine which could arguably be his finest. Described generally as ‘Peyton Place on acid’ at the time, it’s kinda genius- and far more benign than the brilliant but must-be-in-the-mood-for-it Pink Flamingos. Divine’s Francine Fishpaw (sampled by The Avalanches, no less, on Frontier Psychiatrist at the beginning of the track) should have been a worthy Oscar recipient.
Her awful pornographer husband is shagging around on her with a Bo Derek-homaging Mink Stole, her wayward son is into foot-stomping, and worse yet, even bestie Cuddles (the peerless Edith Massey) is getting some. It’s enough to turn a gal to drink. That is, until Tab Hunter’s lothario Todd Tomorrow appears, promising a better life. Will she emerge unscathed? What do you think? It’s Waters, stoopid. Divine was apparently furious at being made to look so ‘ugly’ (like a melted Liz Taylor) but asked for several retakes of snogs with Hunter as compensation. Here, she is peerless, as she goes into suburban freak-out mode. The music was made by Chris Stein and Debbie Harry of Blondie, with Hunter. It cocks a snook at religious nuts, suburbia and melodrama itself. What’s not to like?
A Bout de Souffle (1963)
Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg
Sure, there are some questionable elements to Jean Luc Godard’s classic film- not least the misogyny of Jean-Paul Belmondo’s character- he is a dick, bien sur. But in terms of style, pacing and the late, unflappable Jean Seberg, it’s a fine example of a French New Wave film which created a sea change in the way film could capture the grit of the streets and the excitement of Bohemianism.The streets of Paris never looked so alive. It’s fast, slick and tres cool, before cool became a mass marketing cliche.
Metropolis (1927)
She’s electric: Metropolis
This updating of the Frankenstein story is worryingly prescient. A forward-thinking dystopian sci-fi,starring Gustav Frohlich, Brigitte Helm and Alfred Abul, it divided critics on release, but is of course now regarded as a classic. When ‘mad’ scientists building robot women from the Expressionist era can be linked to recent Channel 4 documentaries about sex robots, you know director Fritz Lang was onto something.Truly groundbreaking, in terms of both style and content.
Performance (1970)
Trippy: Jagger in Performance
Forget The Italian Job or The Dam Busters. This is a real holiday classic. Mick Jagger when he was still beautiful, the late, great Anita Pallenberg and a whole lot of gangster-related trouble. Iconic and unsettling, it’s a trippy look at London through the fish eye lens of Donald Cammell and director Nicolas Roeg. Rock stars, burnt out on drugs and decadence, East End hardmen and the flip-side to the hippy dream. I personally can’t think of anything more seasonal.
The Servant (1963)
Class and naughtiness: The Servant
Dirk Bogarde plays Barrett, an eyebrow-raising manservant working for Tony (James Fox) in this very English oddity which works like a British take on Genet’s The Maids. Class and sexuality, suffice to say, are put in the spotlight, and it’s all very arch. It may be a little dated to the modern viewer, but at the time was considered pretty outre in its depiction of homosexuality, jazz and power games. Bogarde and Fox smoulder together, there is a hint of partner swapping, and there is even fine support from one Wendy Craig, before she became better known as exasperated posh mums in seventies sitcoms.
No less a talent than Harold Pinter adapted it from the 1948 novelette by Robin Maugham, and Joseph Losey directed it with a great deal of restraint- no wonder it is soaked in disdain, ennui and discomfort. It’s strange, oddly sexy and the kind of thing Morrissey wrote about before he became preoccupied with contemporary politics of a dubious stripe.Sarah Miles does her detached glamour puss thing too, and beautifully.
Fox and Miles in The Servant
Wings of Desire (1988)
Bruno Ganz gets all angelic in Wings of Desire
Quite simply a masterpiece. Wim Wenders’ beautiful, elegiac film is a fairytale, albeit one with the shadow of the Holocaust hanging over it. Bruno Ganz plays a lost, sad-eyed angel looking to be made mortal. Solveig Dommartin is Marion, a circus trapeze artist who needs to somehow quench her loneliness. They find each other, after much soul-searching and traipsing through the streets of Berlin, and life (and the film itself) bursts into colour from monochrome.
A wonderful soundtrack by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Crime and The City Solution,who appear playing in concerts to spiky haired audiences, augments the angst of late eighties Germany. We hear the fears and dreams of schoolkids, old people, and commuters on trains. Nobody seems at peace, bar the kids. Support comes from the unlikely figure of Peter Falk, playing a sort of version of himself, a wry American actor, observing and observed, mirroring the angel and his future lover. It is melancholic, but full of hope of a future where things can finally slot into place. Wenders makes the exteriors and interiors look gorgeous in his hands.Avoid the remake, though, it’s disastrous.
(Lorna Irvine)
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