As is known to every cinephile, Rex Harrison and Richard
Burton did a bad, bad thing together in 1963 (it was called Cleopatra), so I guess it wasn’t exactly a surprise
to discover them six years later as an estranged, bickering gay couple in
Stanley Donen’s Staircase. With no
Liz rolling out of carpets, they decided to jointly out-camp Roddy McDowall in
this trailblazing two-hander, adapted by Charles Dyer from his own play.
That a movie like this even exists is something of a
wonder, given the time it was made at, as well as bearing in mind the stature of its stars. It was
only five years since Rex won his Oscar for reciting lyrics to music in My Fair Lady (1964) – and mere two after
he shot the breeze with animals in Doctor
Dolittle (1967). Burton was fresh off not only from his wordy boxing
with Liz Taylor in Who’s Afraid of
Virginia Wolf? (1966), but also from the deranged re-match of Boom! (1968). Both of those were mere sparring sessions compared to
the non-stop stream of vitriol that Dyer milked from his premise in Staircase.
George Lucas must have watched Staircase.
"So that's what you had beneath those robes in Cleopatra, eh...?"
The movie portrays a troubled, long-time relationship
of Harry (Burton) and Charlie (Harrison): an aging London couple owning a
hairdressing salon and spending their days fighting. Harry’s bedridden
mother stays under the same roof, with her son taking tender care of her
(despite occasional maternal inquiries about the lost cause of „meeting a nice girl”).
The couple is forever at odds, except when they’re silent and work as a unit:
one of the early scenes shows their mutual shave-and-haircut, with every movement and gesture perfected by years of daily routine.
(Donen even manages to sneak in an incredibly dirty visual joke into the scene,
boldly suggesting anal sex in a movie otherwise too timid to allow its
protagonists a single kiss.)
The relationship is further tested by
the announced arrival of Charlie’s estranged daughter (the result of his early
jab at heterosexuality) and a lawsuit against him, involving alleged
„indecency” of publicly acting up in drag. Charlie is flamboyant, hammy and
outspoken (as I said, he’s played by Rex Harrison), but he abhors the upcoming inquiry, fearing humiliating questions and demeaning medical examination. Harry
tries to be supportive of his partner, but Charlie isn’t good with either
giving or receiving tenderness: he’s addicted to preemptive strikes as a result
of a lifetime of dodging insults. He’s bitchy by default, which puts
Harry forever on the defense – the latter is being called everything from from „my Communist
buttercup” to „Lady Godiva’s tit”.
"You have a pimple on top! It looks like Lady Godiva's tit!"
[The actual line!]
The men are also completely different in the way they
look. In contrast to the unassuming Harry, who spends most of the movie in an
elaborate head bandage (covering the bald scalp he despises), Charie is a much
flashier dresser. Prone to wearing lilac pants, pink shitrs and silk pajamas (as
well as to doing his manicure with a pink file the size of a ruler), Harrison’s
character takes pride in his gaudy jewlery, as well as in his full
head of hair – the sign of virility and youthfulness that the dessicated Harry
no longer possesses. The entire movie is built on the love/hate that founds Harry and Charlie's relationship: Donen wants to show us the mutual interdependecy of
two men who seem constantly on the verge of killing one another.
Someone has been watching too much Stanley Donen movies...
...and way too much Lubitsch!
Gay domesticity is so rarely portrayed in cinema, I
really wished Staircase to be better
than it turned out to be. There’s no doubt it is, in many respects, a pioneering work: with the
single exception of the much less candid Rope
(1948), I can’t think of another pre-Stonewall movie that would present a gay household in
such matter-of-fact way. Still, the script too often becomes insufferable
in its fixation on double entendres and stereotypical flaming banter that quickly
becomes almost rigid in its relentless bitchiness. (In hindsight, Harold
Pinter’s Butley (1974) seems to me influenced by Staircase in its use of
florid rhetoric as armor built to sustain the constant assault of homophobia.)
"You were singing... You really were..."
[Not the actual line!]
Staircase belongs squarely in the much-criticized genre of sad-to-be-gay
movies presenting the lives of their characters in terms of gloom, failure and inevitable
misery. Just like Boys in the Band
(1970) and, in part, Lianna (1983),
Donen’s movie is far from celebratory in its portrayal of gay life: the very
last scene suggests that Harry and Charlie are a pair of crippled individuals
who need each other's compassion in order simply to fuction – but cannot possibly attain happiness
and fulfillment in the world that surrounds them.
Love and marriage.
Unlike many, I don’t find such a notion offensive or
miserabilist. A movie doesn’t have to end on a note of triumph to bring its
viewers a glimpse of hope. In films like Boys
in the Band and Staircase, it’s
the mere fact of gay visibility that matters. The characters may be scarred,
but they try to live their lives and, more importantly, they are up there on the screen. I once heard Boys in the Band being described as a „whining orgy”, but I firmly
believe that every oppressed group has a damn right to a heartfelt moan –
especially when it only starts fighting for dignity and rights it boldly defines
as inalienable.
The world has changed tremendously since 1969 and there’s no
doubt that modern-day Harry and Charlie would have been living very different
lives (should they be lucky enough to be born in a place that recognizes gay
rights). Harry’s longing for a child wouldn’t seem outlandish, and the movie
could be closer in tone to Donen’s Two
for a Road (1967), in which the sexual orientation of the characters wasn’t
an issue (only their emotions were). Still, all change has its stages. Staircase largly fails as drama
and feels sloppy as moviemaking (the editing is especially jarring), but it does count as a step forward in a struggle for a world
in which the images you see below cease to be a joke (or an outrage) to become commonplace instead.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment