Double Bill 3: Sex and the Sixties

Double Bill 3: Sex and the Sixties

There's really no better reason to watch today's suggestions than they're two of the best films from two of the greatest directors ever to shoot a scene. You shouldn't need more prompting than that, but since I'm the one making the suggestions I should probably give you some more to go on. As tenuous as the link may be, two examples of attitudes to sex, women and femininity in the early 1960s, seen through the lenses of two of masters of their craft, are The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960) and Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960). You would be hard pressed to find a better pair of films to watch together, tenuous link or not.

Alfred Hitchcock deserves his reputation as the master of suspense, earned and sustained over 6 decades of films, and there's not much I could say here that hasn't already been written abut him already, but important to this example is his tendency towards misogyny. Psycho offers an interesting example of this: Janet Leigh's heroine Marion Crane begins the film as a sexual, autonomous character. Practically unheard-of for a film produced in the late 1950s, we first see her post-coitus, partially dressed and discussing running away with her bland lover. She then steals from her boss to facilitate her escape before suffering a moral quandary. Considering the time in which it was made and the prevailing moral guidelines imposed on Hollywood by the Hays Code, this will have been shocking. She's acting of her own accord without any male persuasion.

Ultimately, however, she can't be allowed to get away with this by Hitchcock and famously meets a bloody end in the shower. While in a narrative sense her murder is a crime of “passion, not profit”, in a broader moral sense, she is punished for her sexuality. The attitudes of the time prevail, no matter how much we like or support Marian Crane.

Billy Wilder, after Hitchcock and John Ford, was arguably the third of the great Hollywood auteurs. His take on the established views of the time were sometimes (arguably) a little more cynical than Hitchcock's who, for example, would not have bitten the hand that fed with a film like Sunset Boulevard (1950). The Apartment is rightly regarded as one of the great Hollywood comedies but consider the set up: Jack Lemmon's ambitious, well meaning coward C.C Baxter allows his superiors to use his apartment for their illicit affairs; his home becomes tantamount to a brothel. Men do not come off well in this film; apart from his next door neighbour doctor, all men are all philanderers or in the case of Fred McMurray's Sheldrake, outright callous bastards. Only the wonderful Shirley McLaine's Fran Kubelik comes off as likeable. It takes until the last 5 minutes for Baxter to grow a spine but she is a rounded, emotional character throughout, and gets all the best lines. It would take a hard heart to watch the film and not love her.

Much like Psycho, however she is punished for adultery. Again, not in a narrative sense but her suicide attempt – a bold change of tone, pulled off expertly by Wilder and loveable schmuck Baxter – is a reminder that a woman in 1950s America, wasn't allowed to upset the social applecart with sex. The worst punishment that befalls any man in The Apartment is Sheldrake's final rejection by Baxter and repeated failures to get laid. Hardly lives at risk.

I would argue that the films, while bound by the time in which they were produced, are not entirely conservative in their attitudes. Which characters are you drawn to when watching these films? Marian and Fran. Yes, Fran relies on Baxter for large stretches but ultimately he ends up (quite literally) holding all the cards. Yes, Marian ends up in the swamp but to get there she makes her own decisions and is the only interesting, most human character in the film. These films are nothing without their likeable female characters.

Do yourself a favour and treat yourself to an afternoon in the company of these two masterpieces. If you want a happy ending, watch The Apartment second, if you want to see a cross dressing Oedipal complex writ large, finish with Psycho.