The Naked Civil Servant
I’d seen it before, I think, on PBS — back in high school, which is a bit hard to believe now given the attitudes of the country in the late eighties. And the film was actually made in 1975. I can’t speak to what that means vis-a-vis LGBT film history…but I read an article not two weeks ago (in EW, I believe) about the fact that Brokeback Mountain didn’t change anything in terms of Hollywood’s willingness to tell gay/lesbian/trans stories matter-of-factly and not worry about losing money on it.
So, I think TNCS is an outlier, but maybe that’s a function of Quentin Crisp himself. I think he occupied his own territory, culturally. He went past me on a float at Pride one time, and the crowd’s reaction to him…it’s hard to describe. “Reverent,” I guess is the word. He was wearing a hat straight out of Flannery O’Connor and holding himself like a Roman coin, and it was a thrill to see.
As for the movie itself, I’m so glad I revisited it. It has its bitter aspects — Crisp talking about how he doesn’t know what love is, and how he doesn’t speak unless spoken to, and so on; the sequence with the actual great dark man, for whom he peaceably acts as a domestic — but it doesn’t get too bleak, and John Hurt’s repeated renditions of “oh yaahhhhh-eehhhs?” and his ability to pack them with whole sentences is just amazing. It’s a fond, careful performance, and it immediately makes you want to step into that world and know the people in it (especially his ballet-teacher landlady, when she communicates “would you like to keep the furniture” with her hands). The scenes with the insane Pole in particular just break your heart.
It’s well worth watching, both for Hurt’s delightful work and for the storytelling, which is just right in pacing and tone and takes itself with just the right degree of seriousness.
Tags: movies
Re Hollywood: I think so-look at The Martian Child-that’s an autobiographical novel by an openly gay man. Not the movie.
“It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile, Be yourself no matter what they say.”
-Sting
I first saw “The Naked Civil Servant” in…wow, I want to say the late 1970s, on PBS. I was in my teens, still living with my family, and we all watched it together (back then, families actually did watch TV together). We all LOVED it, and were teary-eyed by that final scene where he reminisced swishingly about being surrounded by sailors. So lovely!
As to whether it was an outlier: well, it was made for television (for Thames), not for theatrical release. It didn’t have to worry about making back its investment at the box office. And, of course, it was made in Britain, where attitudes towards homosexuality (as opposed to attitudes towards homosexuals) were considerably more relaxed than here. And PBS used to have guts.
Then there was also just how much of a public figure Crisp had become by that time. He was very much out and about in NYC, and until the day he died he was listed in the NYC phone book, and would happily talk to any stranger who called.
I saw that movie as a child, and when I moved to New York, one of the first things that I did was look him up in the phone book and write him a letter inviting him to the show I was in. I didn’t have the nerve to call him, but he sweetly wrote back. He is, was and always will be one of my heroes.
“I am one of the stately homos of England.”