Time of the Heathen (Kass, 1961): Close-Up Cinema, time tbc
Welcome to the latest Capital Celluloid film screening, another important landmark in the history of the blog at which I hope to see as many of you as possible. We are returning to Close-Up Cinema in Shoreditch again after the presentations of selections from my Sight and Sound 2022 poll top ten list. My recommendation is to read as little as possible before experiencing this recent 1961 rediscovery. The film was one of the revelations at the Bologna Cinema Ritrovarto festival in 2023 and has had only one screening in London since. Don't miss the chance to see what I've seen best described as "a nightmarish, hyper-edited, avant-garde freak-out of a film as atomic angst and racial woes wend their way toward Shakespearean tragedy".
Il Cinema Ritrovarto 2023 introduction:
A protégé of Clifford Odets in the 1940s, Peter Kass was mostly
known for his work as a world-famous theater actor, director and acting
coach for the likes of Olympia Dukakis, Faye Dunaway, Val Kilmer, and
Maureen Stapleton. Except for a very limited release in the UK and on
European television at the time (and a screening of a rare 35mm print
more recently at the Finnish Film Archive), Kass’s sole feature release Time of the Heathen has
been mostly overlooked and forgotten in the past several decades. Kass
collaborated with celebrated artist and avant-garde filmmaker Ed
Emshwiller on Heathen, and thanks to the programming efforts by
the Lightbox Film Center at University of the Arts (Philadelphia)
around a 2019 Emshwiller retrospective, the original Heathen pre-print elements were discovered at the BFI.
Todd Wiener
Screen Slate review:
During its first hour, Time of the Heathen (1961) breezily
earns the familiar admiration extended to serious-minded low-budget
features, an affection which prizes resourcefulness and chutzpah over
the qualities usually deployed to evaluate a film such as impressive
craftsmanship or satisfying narrative mechanics. Director and co-writer
Peter Kass milks his depopulated upstate locations for every bit of
photographic intrigue they possess and coaxes a tiny cast to go big
enough to fill the empty spaces usually occupied by extras and sets. In
its final stretch, however, the film explodes into a harrowing acid
bummer of American foreign policy atrocities. What’s more, Heathen’s final
act of grim proto-psychedelia somehow dovetails perfectly with the
bone-simple, though righteous-for-1961, morality tale Kass had been
building for the bulk of the film. The final moments retroactively imbue
everything that preceded them with a heavier apocalyptic aura that
keeps the film lodged in the psyche like a splinter. Shortly after World War II, a “tall stranger, ugly as sin” named
Gaunt (John Heffernan) shuffles around the countryside with only a bible
for comfort. When he’s framed for the rape and murder of a Black maid,
he flees the scene with her mute son in tow. As the pair are hunted
through the forest by the law, Gaunt and the unnamed boy share a doomed
isolation. The film begins with a title card that reads, “The story of
this film takes place in a period four years after the BOMB
fell on Hiroshima.” This instant context, plus ominous shots of jets
flying overhead, enshroud the bubbling brooks and handsome foliage in
unseen clouds of radioactivity. Gaunt’s fragile grip on existence frays
until he’s beset by an excruciating phantasmagoria of city maps, fire,
bomb bay doors opening, children laughing, and scorched corpses. The
sequence is a brief, but nearly comprehensive reckoning with nuclear
ethics, which are ultimately pretty simple as long as you’re not
Christopher Nolan or a History Channel buff. The film’s co-editor, Ed Emshwiller, is also credited with
“cinematography and art work.” That presumably means he’s responsible
for this sequence, which recalls Vertigo’s nightmares and forecasts 2001’s Stargate. Emshwiller had been illustrating pulp science fiction for a decade prior to Heathen’s miniscule release in 1962, and would make his own debut as an experimental filmmaker that same year with Thanatopsis.
That short, the beginning of a brilliant second career that would last
into the late 1980s, features a soundtrack of industrial noise and
heartbeats overtop a dancer twitching in an irradiated blur, none of
which would be out of place in the montage of world-historic
immiseration he contributed to Heathen.
Patrick Dahl
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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