Tuesday, March 28, 2023

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:


Barrett: I'm not staying here in a place
where they just chuck balls in your face.

As I admitted back on Criterion Announcement Day of this month -- I have never seen Joseph Losey's 1963 film The Servant, which Criterion are putting out onto blu-ray for the first time on June 20th, right in the thick of Gay Pride. (P.S. You can pre-order it at Amazon right now.) So whatever specific context there is to that quote above it's lost on me -- that said I think we can all agree it's best out of context. That's some proto-Clueless hilarity! Anyway I'm quoting the movie I still haven't seen today...

... because it's actor and this movie's star Dirk Bogarde's birthday today -- he was born 102 years ago. I've only just recently become slightly better acquainted with his movies and how ahead of his time he was -- I only saw Victim for the first time around the beginning of the pandemic. I'd seen Darling and Death in Venice of course, but he really was a hell of a gay pioneer -- does anybody know if there is a good biography of him? I can only imagine how much bullshit he had to deal with, and marvel at how incredible it is that he managed to carve out so many legendary roles anyway.


5 comments:

SFOTroy said...

He’s got a lot of great ones. If you haven’t seen his camp villain in Modesty Blaise, I highly recommend.

joel65913 said...

Dirk himself was quite a prolific memorist publishing seven or eight volumes. There is one by John Coldstream which he approved called Dirk Bogarde: the Authorised Biography which I haven't read but which has a lot of positive feedback on Goodreads.

Paul Brownsey said...

Did you ever see him as a camp gay Mexican bandit falling in love with the priest in The Singer Not The Song, an odd British western that gets under the skin in odd ways? And the climax with them in each other's arms, sort of...

Mirko said...

What a cult The Singer Not The Song, directed by the great Roy Ward Baker, featuring my beloved Mylene Demongeot

mrripley said...

If you want to see a great Dirk Bogarde late performance 91's Daddy Nostalgia is a good one,He's also very good as Roald Dahl opp Glenda Jackson as Pat Neal,1967's Accident is another good one,The Damned with Thulin and Helmut Berger.

The French revere him.