Negatives
Negatives
Negatives (1968) BFI Blu-Ray BFIB1562 R15
Out on 16th March on Blu Ray from those ever-watchful archive raiders at the British Film institute, director Peter Medak’s debut film is a three-handed psychodrama that may prove to be far more serious today than it did on its release.
Antique dealer Theo (Peter McEnery, ‘Entertaining Mr. Sloane) and lover Vivien (Glenda Jackson ‘Women in Love’ and many more) are playing out their sexual games, he as the notorious murderer Doctor Crippen and she, alternately his wife and mistress in the musty atmosphere of Theo’s hospitalized father’s antique shop. Filled with Edwardian age furniture, clothes and nick-nacks, the setting is perfect for their perverse version of cosplay. Dominant Vivien repeatedly cajoles and berates with a cold word and a sharp look as Theo stands trapped in the constricted garb of a middle-class doctor.
Into this laboratory of strange desire steps a young, brashly confident German photographer Reingard (Diane Cilento-The Wicker Man and numerous others) who charms her way into their empty upper flat and both of their lives. We learn she has been stalking them, adding another element of danger to this story. Cilento’s Reingard, white haired and crisply dressed, has all the bluff demeanor and direct speaking manner of one who is used to getting her own way.
Reingard wastes no time assuming a dominant position over Theo, sensing his subservient personality, endlessly taking photographs of him and flattering him with his resemblance to First World War flying ace, Baron von Richtoffen. Reingard cuts Theo’s unkempt, neck length hair into a severe shaven sided, centre-parted flick and before long he is trying on the German air force clothes to complete the illusion. Theo has found a new obsession and Vivien is incandescent with rage about it.
The few scenes not set in the antique shop give us a glimpse of their lives outside of the pressure cooker shop premises; when Theo visits his ailing father in hospital, when they visit Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors -where they encounter Doctor Crippen’s wax image-and a visit to a scrap metal merchants to supply one of the film’s more outrageous props.
To see three such fine actors in a film together is a treat, albeit one which is loaded with suggestion, which the tragi-comic ending cannot dispel.
The Blu Ray disc has a wealth of extras including an interview with Dr. Clare Smith, historic collection of the Metropolitan Police Museum, who discusses the life and crimes of Doctor Crippen.
Scenester
11/3/26
Buy here: https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/
