NEGATIVES
UK, 1969, 98 minutes, Colour.
Diane Cilento, Glenda Jackson, Maurice Denham, Peter Mc Enery.
Directed by Peter Medak.
Negatives is quite weird and will appeal only to those who like something a little meaty, puzzling or enigmatic. The plot is not to be taken realistically but rather as a psychological parable, a type of psychodrama symbolising the characters' interior states. The principal characters act out elaborate charades of Dr. Crippin's life and of the Baron Richthofen, the Red Baron. The characters know they are acting and there are many real life sequences where they revert to normal and discuss their charades. However, imagination and reality merge by the end of the film leading to insanity or death. Peter Mc Enery suits the part of the Crippen-like hero, small, thin, dominated and partly disgusted with himself, under the dominance of a woman. Glenda Jackson's performance pre-dates her roles for Ken Russell's films, but once again she is superb as a sexually neurotic woman who can switch suddenly from fantasy to reality, who is almost schizophrenic. Diane Cilento is the intruding German photographer who changes the others' lives, changing the pattern of their behaviour and also the content of their fantasies. Weird, but arresting.
1. What did the title mean?
2. Why did the couple play at being Dr. Crippen and Belle? What interior feelings and characteristics were they acting out?
3. What kind of hold did they have over each other? What brought them together and what held them together?
4. How did the film make the Crippen world seem more unreal by contrasting it with real life e.g. Dr. Crippen reading 'The Times' about Harold Wilson, the shop, their reactions to one another at table, the hospital?
5. What was the purpose of introducing the hospital sequences with the dying father? What did these sequences do to the film? What did they show of the character of the son?
6. Why did the German photographer intrude herself into their house? What was she after? What kind of person was she?
7. What reaction did she have on each of the couple? Did she dominate each? if so, why? Why did she photograph them? What overtones did the photographing sequences give to the film?
8. Why did the German girl persuade the man to change from Dr. Crippen to the Red Baron? What was the significance of cutting his hair? His buying the old plane and doing it up on the roof?
9. As he became absorbed in his new role, the two women seemed to come together more. Why?
10. What was the meaning of the resolution of the film, the withdrawal of the photographer, the fighting and the physical and mental collapse of the woman, the retreat into himself. the fantasies and death of the man?
11. The film was not meant to be realistic. How should it be interpreted? Is it a film about states of the mind or the psyche? what was the. significance of the symbols and fantasies? Crippen, the Red Baron, photographing? And of the costumes and masks that each put on?
12. Did this film give you insights into human nature?
