posted
Chris rented Sex in Chains from Netflix and we watched it last night. Here's the description from Netflix:
quote:William Dieterle directs and stars in this rare silent film, originally banned by the German government because of its subject matter: sexual relations between male prisoners. The film centers on a young man who's incarcerated for causing an accidental death and who develops sexual relations with fellow inmates. Gunnar Tolnaes, Mary Johnson, Paul Henckels, Hans Heinrich von Twardowski and Hugo Werner-Kahle also star.
What's not to like, right? I'd like to be able to write that we rented this movie for what it actually turned out to be, an interesting artifact of 1928 German culture. Unfortunately, this didn't quite meet our expectations. First of all, the title is misleading. There is almost no sex in the movie that would be recognized as such by today's standards, and only one scene with a chain. And it was a small chain.
(SPOILER WARNING) Actually, this movie might have been considered shocking among polite society in 1928 Germany. By today's standards, though, the only parts that were overtly sexual (and they were all heter-overtly-sexual ) were either quaint or downright humorous. (Lots of close-ups of panting faces with double-exposures of the protagonist's wife shot through a foggy lens.)
To summarize the story, Our Hero "Franz" is out of work. His wife gets a job as a cigarette girl at a local restaurant where she is hit upon by some cad. Franz tries to protect her honor, but the cad is persistent and Franz accidentally kills him in the struggle. In prison, he meets a wealthy businessman named Steinau who was wrongly arrested due to the false testimony of some "informer". This man is eventually released and vows to help Franz wife. Once freed, he finds her and gives her a job in his office. He supports her emotionally, too, which eventually leads her to share with him letters from her husband describing the "depravity" of prison life. He vows to petition his political contacts and pressure them for prison reform. In their working together, Steinau evenually makes overtures of a romantic nature. She resists at first, but later succumbs due to her loneliness.
Meanwhile, Franz and the other prisoners are all burning with lust for their absent ladies. The most graphic portrayal of this is when one of the inmates sculpts a female figure out of bread-crumbs and drools over it salaciously. Of course, this might just be my own - by this point somewhat frustrated - interpretation. Maybe he was just hungry. But my interpretation was probably valid since he eventually kills himself because they won't allow him a visit with his girlfriend. This frees up a bunk in Franz's cell for Alfred, a younger man with somewhat-rugged good looks. (More on him later).
I say Franz and the other prisoners were all burning with lust for their absent ladies. This isn't quite true. There were two prisoners who seemed to be coping just fine with the lack of women. One was an old prisoner for whom the coals had long grown cold. He opines the depravity of prison life, noting that he had "even lived to see a man 'unman' himself in order to get a good night's sleep". (Personally, I think one would sleep better if he "unmanned" the other guy, but to each his own.)
The other prisoner unruffled by the lack of women was clearly a stock "fairy" sort of character. He was "Just Jack" without the humor, and toned down a bit for 1930 audiences, but was clearly the 'tween-war-era-Germany version of a nelly queen. Anyway he attempts a pass at the new guy, Alfred. At least I think it was intended to portray a homosexual advance. To my jaded eyes it looked more like he was trying to strangle Alfred, upside down and in his sleep, but didn't want to break a nail.
Alfred valiantly rebuffs this advance with the help of Franz. This leads to a friendship of sorts which takes a turn when Franz sees Alfred writing "Franz" and "Alfred" in his prayerbook during services in the prison chapel, and encompassing the two names with a circle. Eventually, we are led to believe, this leads to more passionate expressions of their amity. On screen this plays out as only a single scene where Alfred can't sleep and Franz (from his own bunk, mind you) asks why. Alfred whispers something that isn't revealed and when Franz doesn't reply, Alfred asks, "Do you despise me?". Apparently not, since the scene ends with a look of longing, an extended hand, and the camera focuses on two masculine hands in an arm-wrestle-esque grasp which slowly sink out of the frame. (By this point I really needed a cigarette, but since I don't smoke, I just opened a window.)
* * * * *
Oh, if you're interested in the rest of the story, but find you can't quite muster the anthropological interest to actually rent it, I'll summarize it here:
Alfred is released from prison, noting that Franz's term should be up shortly. Franz's wife has had an offscreen affair with the businessman who has offered to write Franz asking him to divorce his wife to set her free to rebuild her life. She declines this offer and meets Franz on his release. Meanwhile, Alfred is talking with some friend of his who notes that if Franz was rich, Alfred stood to make a pretty penny from blackmail. Alfred looks aghast at this suggestion (to his credit, I must say). Back in the Franz household, there is an uneasy tension as neither Franz nor his wife seem particularly eager to touch one another. Franz praises his wife's long-suffering, but says that unfortunately he can never go back to her. She asks, "So Steinau spoke to you then?" (OOPS!) He realizes what this means. Just then, Alfred shows up with a bouquet of flowers. (OOPS!) She realizes what that means. Franz gets angry at the inopportune disclosure and yells at Alfred who departs with a sincere-yet-understated "Sorry if I have destroyed your life" to the wife. Franz tries to gas himself at the radiator and his wife stops him. He tells her he can't go on living with the shame and she apparently agrees because she turns the gas back on and they both pass out. (Fade to black).
* * * * *
So, on the one hand I was hoping for a little (at least PG-13) man love, or at least a silent-era film star with his shirt off and what I got was a silent-era German prison-reform snuff film.
To be fair, though, it was really interesting as an artifact of its time. It was restored from two surviving prints, one from Russia and one from France which each provided pristine scenes where they had deteriorated in the other. Additional dialog had been restored to this version that had been removed by the German censors. You could tell which bits those were because the original filmed dialog was hand-written in large letters on cards. The restored-from-censor-records dialog was digital. And what salacious tidbits were heroically reunited with the film? What debauchery had the public watchdogs spared 1930's German innocents? Well, the most provocative was "It is a sad day when some government informant can send an innocent man to prison."
quote:...and only one scene with a chain. And it was a small chain.
quote:(Personally, I think one would sleep better if he "unmanned" the other guy, but to each his own.)
quote: To my jaded eyes it looked more like he was trying to strangle Alfred, upside down and in his sleep, but didn't want to break a nail.
quote:(By this point I really needed a cigarette, but since I don't smoke, I just opened a window.)
Very funny, Karl, and very interesting.
I wonder if the 'revolutionary' aspect of this film was simply the depiction of two otherwise straight-seeming men, (a) having their latent homosexual capacity ignited and (b) apparently intending (at least in Alfred's case) to pursue it on a long-term basis, even away from the 'depraved' conditions that might have been thought to justify it.
Of course such relationships abounded in real life, both in entertainment and political circles (with whatever degree of closeting demanded by the times). There's banning, and there's banning. I wonder whether this film was able to be re-released later, or in neighboring countries, with the proud marquee 'Banned in Dusseldorf!' to attract audiences. Or whether it simply sank (almost) out of sight.
I do find such snippets of cultural history fascinating. Thanks for the review.
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posted
To me it seemed the main intent of the film was to criticize the prison system. The film seemed to be making the following essay:
"Our prison system punishes in ways far beyond the term of the sentence. Good men can end up in prison and by prison be irredeemably destroyed."
I can't really argue against this presumed assertion, though I disagree with some of the ways they showed this to be the case (in the film's version of reality). The film seemed to think the primary torture of prison was being without female sexual companionship. The prisoners seemed otherwise relatively happy. The only fight that broke out was after Franz wife visited and he took from her a hankerchief and was fondling and sniffing it back in the cell. The suicidally, sexually frustrated cellmate tried to take it from him and a fight ensued. In the fight, the frustrated cellmate was able to get a gun from a guard and kill himself. Franz was given 3 days solitary for having contraband during which he smudges a portrait of his wife in dirt on the cell wall and chastely makes love to it.
The bulk of the film dealt with the suffering of the wife, and Steinau's crusade to reform prisons (though it didn't mention any specifics, just showed an ominous folder labeled "Prison Reform" that Steinau presented to his politician contact ultimately to have it marked "To be indefinitely postponed").
The main arguement of the film seemed to me to be that prison makes homosexuals and conjugal visits would likely fix that. I was rather surprised at the implied prudery that would make this film shocking and salacious, especially since at the time the film was made Germany was undergoing a gay rennaisance of sorts. Of course, you wouldn't get a very good picture of American culture of that time, either, if you relied on censor-neutered Hollywood.
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posted
While conjugal visits don't make prison all better, don't you feel things would be worse without them? What I find sad is the on/off, either you are or you aren't presentation of homosexuality. Though in the end, it seemed to be saying that the issue was betrayal, because the wife felt her adultery was as punishable as his.
P.S. I guess the title was also supposed to be a double entendre, that all these people were linked through having had sex.
quote:Originally posted by pooka: While conjugal visits don't make prison all better, don't you feel things would be worse without them? What I find sad is the on/off, either you are or you aren't presentation of homosexuality. Though in the end, it seemed to be saying that the issue was betrayal, because the wife felt her adultery was as punishable as his.
Well, you'd have to actually watch the movie to know what it was saying vs. my own interpretation of it. I've left a lot out, of course. Certainly conjugal visits would be warranted in the case of Franz, (in my opinion), but I'm not sure they are practical or even deserved in all cases. I think something like conjugal visits should be a case-by-case issue. Mitigating factors would include the crime committed and the length of the sentence (and probably several other factors).
I'd also have to know what you mean by "worse off without them". The movie really seemed to focus on the sex (or lack of it). If that's really all there is to it, I don't think they make much difference. I mean, would you advocate access to prostitutes for the unmarried inmates? If not, why should they be expected to find other outlets or no outlet at all, but the married ones get the priviledge?
I think that conjugal visits should be more about maintaining a strong relationship between a married couple to further insure its survival post-prison. It is perhaps possible to interpret this arguement from the film, but I'm skeptical. There was very little (if anything) that overtly implied this and the relative ease with which this could have been argued makes me believe it wasn't a major point of the filmmaker.
As for the dual suicide ending, I think it was a bit of overkill. I'm not sure the wife's joining in was due to guilt because she had also betrayed Franz as much as despair that even after all she they had suffered through, she had lost him anyway. (And to be fair, thinking back, her infidelity might not have been a full blown consummated affair. I certainly thought it was implied, but it wasn't stated as such.) It's these ambiguities that I think make this movie less than what it could have been. It's probably part of the reason it had to be rescued from oblivion in the first place.
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posted
I think you're right that the justification to have conjugal visits would be to encourage there to remain a marriage to go back to, and in that sense I don't think men who aren't married "should" have sexual outlet. Prison is prison, after all.
So do you think his despair was because he had "turned gay" or because he had betrayed his wife? Or did he just not really know?
Was the point that Franz had been infected with gayness from being approached by the queen guy? I think the whole idea of gayness being a disease that you can catch is not good- since I see varying desires of gayness as more a natural result of the fall (just to say where I do see it coming from- I know Karl at any rate is unlikely to agree). But don't you agree that gayness isn't a plague?
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posted
Certainly not a plague. And I don't think the movie was saying it was. The nelly guy in the cell didn't go after Franz, he went after Alfred. Alfred's sexuality was never disclosed. The movie didn't mention a girlfriend or wife. My take on this part of the film (and though I won't go so far as to say it was intended by the filmmakers, I do think I could support it from the film itself) is that Alfred was already gay, just not flamboyant. The nelly guy probably caught onto that and that might have sparked his advance. Alfred for his part might have preferred Franz. (Franz was certainly more my type than the nelly guy.) There was undoubtedly more to the attraction Alfred felt for Franz than sex, and Alfred was apparently fairly frank with the friend who suggested blackmail, showing he wasn't afraid to talk about his activities, at least to certain people. And he was pretty ready to continue the relationship after prison.
If there was any "contagion" message to the film, it was about Franz. He was ostensibly heterosexual before prison but developed a relationship with Alfred. The movie is sufficiently vague about his intentions after prison that I can't be certain if he would have liked to continue the relationship with Alfred, or if he simply couldn't face his wife, knowing what he had done in prison. It might have been a case of having been changed by partaking of "forbidden fruit", or it might have been sober realization of what prison life had led him to. I really can't say.
The message of the film, though, seemed to be that prison itself subjects men to depravity that is beyond any justifiable punishment, and that being deprived of heterosexual outlet, many men will turn to homosexuality. I don't really qibble with either of those two assertions, so I didn't have too much of a problem with the movie as far as that was portrayed.
quote:(just to say where I do see it coming from- I know Karl at any rate is unlikely to agree).
Not believing in "the fall", you're right that I don't agree, but I'm also not offended by the theory either. (In case you were worried ) I believe that gay-straight is a spectrum and that without societal taboos a large percentage of men (maybe even most) would at some point experiment with homosexuality. I also think that there are some people who could live happily gay lives, but who are close enough to the straight end of the spectrum that they can also live functionally heterosexual lives (and for some, even fulfilling heterosexual lives). These men might be susceptible to something that outwardly might look like "conversion" or "infection" if circumstances led them to experiment. I'm fairly certain the movie I saw didn't portray homosexuality itself with sufficient detail to guess the filmmaker's theories of cause.
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posted
Oh, I must have gotten the names mixed up somehow, though in my mind I knew that the main character is the one who was married. Now I have to go back and see which one was approached by Nelly. Okay, was it an approach or attempted rape?
This thread is adjacent title gold, by the way.
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quote:Originally posted by pooka: Oh, I must have gotten the names mixed up somehow, though in my mind I knew that the main character is the one who was married. Now I have to go back and see which one was approached by Nelly. Okay, was it an approach or attempted rape?
This thread is adjacent title gold, by the way.
It's hard to tell whether it was attempted rape. Oddly the way I described it in the review was pretty accurate. It was night, they had beds that were along the same wall, head-to-head, and the nelly guy woke up all hot and bothered. He looked over his headboard at Alfred, then got up on his knees so he could reach over (upside down in relation to Alfred, mind you) and do . . . well, somehting. He sorta grabbed his neck and maybe sorta tried to kiss him. He was way to far away from the good parts for anything to be called a "rape" so maybe it was an un-invited ravish. It looked a little like attempted strangulation, but that made absolutely NO sense in the context of the movie, and for him to succeed in a strangulation would have been like watching a shitzu take down a doberman. At any rate, both Franz and Alfred took the bizarre accosting as some sort of pass.
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I think if someone makes a pass at you while you are unconscious, and you resist and it takes the assistance of another person to get them to quit, that's attempted rape. But I am a very judgemental person.
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quote:Originally posted by pooka: I think if someone makes a pass at you while you are unconscious, and you resist and it takes the assistance of another person to get them to quit, that's attempted rape. But I am a very judgemental person.
Well Franz's "assistance" was simply "Leave him alone", and the nelly guy didn't keep after Alfred once he was awake and had jerked himself away. It's a stretch to call it a "rape" though it could have been -- if on a metaphoric level far out of scale for the rest of the film. I'd just call it a "pass" or an "unwanted homosexual advance", or actually, given that he was asleep at the time it was probably a "molestation" of sorts.
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Blayne Bradley
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I'll suggest the movie to a bi friend of mine. (btw, I'm very straight I thought this was a different kind of thread)
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) were either quaint or downright humorous. (Lots of close-ups of panting faces with double-exposures of the protagonist's wife shot through a foggy lens.)
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) I believe that gay-straight is a spectrum and that without societal taboos a large percentage of men (maybe even most) would at some point experiment with homosexuality. I also think that there are some people who could live happily gay lives, but who are close enough to the straight end of the spectrum that they can also live functionally heterosexual lives (and for some, even fulfilling heterosexual lives). These men might be susceptible to something that outwardly might look like "conversion" or "infection" if circumstances led them to experiment. I'm fairly certain the movie I saw didn't portray homosexuality itself with sufficient detail to guess the filmmaker's theories of cause.
