Sebastiane

Year of Release:  1976

Director:  Derek Jarman and Paul Humfress

Screenplay:  Derek Jarman, Paul Humfress and James Whaley

Starring:  Leonardo Treviglio, Barney James, Richard Warwick, Neil Kennedy

Running Time:  85 minutes

Genre:  Historical drama

Third Century AD:  Sebastian (Treviglio) is one of the Praetorian Guards for Emperor Diocletian (Robert Medley).  When he intervenes to stop a servant form being strangled by one of the Emperor's bodyguards, Sebastian is reduced in rank to private and exiled to a remote coastal garrison.  Sebastian's religious faith and pacifism, not to mention his celibacy, incense his commanding officer Severus (James), who becomes increasingly obsessed with Sebastian, with tragic results.

Inspired by the life and death of early Christian martyr Saint Sebastian, this homoerotic fantasia, is starling, sexy and more than a little dull.  Despite sharing a co-directing credit with Paul Humfress, the film opens with the title "Derek Jarman's Film", and this is how it is seen today.  Beginning his career in the film industry as a set designer (most notably for the Ken Russell film The Devils (1971)) Sebastiane marked Jarman's directorial debut, and he would go on to become a notable name in British independent film throughout the 1980s and early '90s.  The male gaze has become increasingly controversial, but this film celebrates the gay male gaze.  Filmed under the blazing Sardinian sun, the film mostly consists of bronzed, sweaty men, either naked or mostly naked lolling around on the rocks, wrestling, hitting each other, washing or caressing each other in languorous slow motion.  Despite being successful, the film was controversial for it's copious nudity (when asked about the nudity Jarman responded "we couldn't afford costumes") and also for the fact that, despite being a British film, the dialogue is entirely in Latin.  The acting is variable, with many of the cast seemingly chosen more for their looks than their acting ability, it's an important film in the history of gay cinema.  While it's a powerful film, with some memorable images, if you're not tuned into Jarman and Humfress' brand of homoeroticism, you may find it a long slog.

Richard Warwick and Leonardo Treviglio in Sebastiane 

If....

Year of Release:  1968
Director:  Lindsay Anderson
Screenplay:  David Sherwin, based on the script The Crusaders by David Sherwin and John Howlett
Starring:  Malcolm McDowell, Richard Warwick, Christine Noonan, David Wood, Robert Swann, Peter Jeffrey
Running Time:  107 minutes
Genre:  Drama, satire

The film is set in an all-male British boarding school where the pupils lives are ruled by meaningless tradition, and bullying, predatory prefects (known as "Whips") who force the younger boys (who are referred to as "scum") to act as their personal servants.  The headmaster (Jeffrey) is completely ineffectual and out of touch, and the rest of the adults are either bullies, weird or ineffective or a combination of the three.  Mick Travis (McDowell), Knightly (Wood) and Wallace (Warwick), three senior boys, start to rebel and soon become a problem to the staff and Whips.  After a particularly brutal beating, the three boys plot violent revenge for the school's Founder's Day celebration.

Lindsay Anderson, who himself attended boarding school, had a reputation for tough, social realist films such as This Sporting Life (1963), and this film mixes gritty realism with surreal flights of fantasy.  The early scenes introduce the daily life of the school, depicting the traditions, and casual cruelties that Mick and friends are rebelling against.  The picture switches, seemingly randomly, between colour and black-and-white.  Apparently because it was easier to film the scenes in the chapel in black-and-white rather than colour, and Anderson liked the effect and decided to use it throughout the film.  There are memorably bizarre sequences, such as where McDowell flirts with a waitress (Noonan) in a cafe and they end up wrestling naked on the cafe floor impersonating tigers, and a scene where a character, who has seemingly been killed earlier, pops up in a drawer to shake hands with his supposed killers.  This is very much a film about the late 1960s.  It's a counterculture film, about the struggle between old and new ideas that were going on in Britain at the time.  Despite it being very much a product of it's time it is still weirdly relevant today, in it's depiction of old versus young, albeit in possibly the most privileged place imaginable.  The violent climax, which involves a gun battle at the school, is possibly even more disturbing now than it was at the time. This is a deeply disturbing film, that still packs a punch, but it is also very funny, and features a star-making performance from Malcolm McDowell, in his film debut.         
 McDowell and Anderson reunited with writer David Sherwin for two subsequent films, O Lucky Man! (1971) and Britannia Hospital (1983),  in which McDowell reprised the role of Mick Travis, albeit as a very different character each time.  Both of them are very well worth checking out, if you can find them.

Richard Warwick, Malcolm McDowell and David Wood in If....