Review of I a Man

I a Man (1967)
Warhol's weakest
11 August 2001
How great is Valerie Solanas? In her vignette in this highly Paul

Morrissey-accented porno spoof, she stands in a poorly lit hallway

and rebuffs the star, Tom Baker's, attempts to bed her. Her

rapidfire delivery suggests a long-term study of 1930s third and

fourth bananas--gum-chewing wisecrackers handed a scene's

one good and last line. If only Andy had given her the Ingrid

Superstar treatment instead of shutting her out in the cold, things

would've been so different--Warhol would've gone on making good

movies, and Morrissey would have had no career.

There is also a spicy and almost mesmeric sequence with the

extraordinary Nico, who, in addition to all her other qualities, is

infinitely more able to act improvisationally than the cloddish

nonactors assembled here. Baker, the straightest, most earnest

and dullest figure ever put at the center of a Warhol movie, has no

gift for impromptu dialogue; the women opposite him generally

don't either. The film is long and draggy; it resembles the

"recitative" sections between sex scenes in an early-seventies

porn movie. It seems not particularly Warholian but quite

Morrisseyan--it recalls the worst of Morrissey. (One big laugh line

comes when Baker interrupts the beginnings of sex with a

stoned-seeming woman to spray a passing cockroach.)

The film is also, in the worst Morrissey fashion, obsessed with a

microscopic study of physical uglinesses. It often induces

gagging.
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