Flesh (1968) 5.5
A man desperate for money and no income, turns prostitute and interplays with a variety of clients and hustlers. Director:Paul MorrisseyWriter:Paul Morrissey |
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Flesh (1968) 5.5
A man desperate for money and no income, turns prostitute and interplays with a variety of clients and hustlers. Director:Paul MorrisseyWriter:Paul Morrissey |
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| Complete credited cast: | |||
| Joe Dallesandro | ... |
Joe, the Hustler
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| Geraldine Smith | ... |
Geri, Joe's Wife
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| Patti D'Arbanville | ... |
Patti, Geri's Lover
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| Candy Darling | ... |
Candy, a Transvestite
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| Jackie Curtis | ... |
Jackie, a Transvestite
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John Christian | ... |
Joe's Customer
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Maurice Braddell | ... |
The Artist
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Geri Miller | ... |
Terry
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Louis Waldon | ... |
David, the Gymnast
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| Rest of cast listed alphabetically: | |||
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Barry Brown | ... |
Boy in street
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Geri (Geraldine Smith) ejects her husband Joe (Joe Dalessandro) from bed, and insists he go out on the streets to make some money for her girlfriend's abortion. This leads to Joe's various encounters with clients on the streets of New York City: an Artist (Maurice Bradell) who wishes to draw Joe, a Gymnast (Louis Waldon), and another 'John' (John Christian). Joe spends time with other hustlers, one of whom is played by his real life brother, and teaches the tricks of the trade to the New Hustler (Barry Brown). Back home, Joe interacts with his real life one-year-old son. Joe gets back home, presumably at the end of his duty work, and is in bed with Geri and her girlfriend Patti (Patti D'Arbanville). The women strip Joe and begin to get intimate with each other; Joe gets bored and falls asleep. (Source: Wikipedia) Written by Artemis-9
In a lot of ways this film defines the essence of everything I love about cinema, in terms of capturing those strange, elusive moments of unguarded truth. In other ways, it is undeniably an amateurish, unfocused result of junkies self-indulgently fooling around with a camera. Ultimately it comes out somewhere between pure brilliance and unwatchability (thankfully much more so the former than the latter). Part of me wants to reward it solely for it's absolute innovativeness and moments of pure sublimity, but at the same time I can't completely ignore the occasionally downright awful "acting" and overtly bad production values. At first the editing seems overwhelmingly sloppy and needlessly distracting (or maybe just wrongheadedly "innovative"), but after a while I got used to it, which is, in the end, the true sign of whether a film succeeds on it's own terms or not. I guess that answer basically sums up my all-around feelings for the film. That is, despite it's in-ignorable flaws, on a whole it does work very well. And, if nothing else, a film like this really shows how false and contrived the faux-documentary, shaky-cam style can sometimes be when it so obviously applied purely for effect (such as in films like the otherwise admirable Roger Dodger). Here the aesthetics are plainly derived from the necessities of the filming situation, and are not just used arbitrarily to make it look "cool".