Desperate Eroticism

'Negatives' is an obscure film about role playing, both in terms of sex and life, if the two things can be considered mutually exclusive. Vague Peter McEnery plays a used furniture dealer embroiled in a toxic relationship with an angry actress (Glenda Jackson). Their home life is fraught and full of bitterness, but they are able to transcend this with sex, but only after an elaborate set of rituals. Their favoured roles are as Dr. Crippen and his mistress Ethel Le Neve, although Jackson occasionally plays his ill-fated wife, Cora, too. It’s a bit of a mess, but it’s their mess, and they really go to town on this, wearing period costumes and staying in character until they reach the satisfaction apparently denied to them when they’re being themselves.

Into this ménage a doux comes a trois, or rather a drei, in the form of German photographer Reingard (Diane Cilento). As you might expect, things start to get rather awkward, especially when Reingard begins to steer the impressionable Theo towards a relationship and a new character, The Red Baron himself, Manfred Von Richthofen. From here on in, it gets weird.

The directorial debut of Peter Medak (later to direct the chillingly nutty ‘The Ruling Class’ and, much later, ‘The Krays’ with the non-twin Kemps), the film, ultimately, has little to say, although the performances are good (Glenda is great, as always) and the music is by much beloved bearded genius Basil Kirchin. 

'Negatives' is a fairly minor and under-seen work, but it typifies a certain type of UK film prevalent in the late sixties: slightly dingy psychodramas where the characters torture themselves and each other because of their inability to balance their relationships against their sexual desires, a sort of ‘La Ronde’ infused with the ambiguous language and motives of Pinter.

I like these films very much, but you need to be in the right mood to watch them - drunk, perhaps, if that’s a mood. The problem is that, unless you’re in the right frame of mind, you can easily be overcome by the sheer self-indulgence of it all and start shouting at the screen. I resisted this temptation with ‘Negatives’ but still wished the characters would just get over themselves and stop wallowing in a mire of their own creation, only to realise that, if they did, I’d just be left with a story about a bloke in a shop who splits up with his girlfriend then, a bit later, gets a new one.

Negatives

That's Easy For You To Say...

I suppose that ‘The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade’ could have been called ‘The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade as Performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company Under the Direction of Peter Brook’ but, as the title easily made the Guinness Book of Records, perhaps they felt the point was made. Most people just shorten it to Marat / Sade.

Adapted from a play by avant-garde writer Peter Weiss, ‘Marat / Sade’ is an uncomfortable piece of confrontational drama that refuses any kind of palliative relief: you will be on edge when you watch it; you will stay on edge. Indeed, it will get more and more uncomfortable. You will not enjoy it, but you will not forget it. My wife saw a theatre adaptation in the eighties where the unease was compounded by having cast members standing around the auditorium in a seemingly catatonic state while, above the audience’s heads, someone swung back and forth manically on a trapeze. Now, that might not be your idea of a good night out but, it’s certainly more memorable than a pie and a pint. It’s the sort of thing that people buy expensive tickets for just to walk out in disgust and give ‘The Daily Mail’ something else to moan about other than brown people and, as such, is undeniably a good thing.

Uncompromising and  sometimes hard to watch, there’s madness and violence, rape and murder, as well as some seemingly interminable songs. Most of all, however, there is still genuine power attached to the production, the same power that so divided audiences who saw it performed live. The film version captures as much of this dread atmosphere as it can, and although it can be static, is much more than just a film recording of a memorable production. Best of all, it preserves some fantastic performances, most notably from Ian Richardson, Michael Williams and Glenda Jackson, as well as the wonderful, marvellous, fabulous, unsurpassedly cool Freddie Jones (in his film debut) and an idiosyncratic and brilliantly batty central performance from the purring Patrick Magee as De Sade. Strong stuff, but well worth gulping down.

Marat / Sade