MAN OF FLOWERS

Australia, 1983, 91 minutes, Colour.
Norman Kaye, Alyson Best, Chris Haywood, Sarah Walker, Julia Blake, Bob Ellis, Barry Dickins, Patrick Cook, Victoria Eagger, Werner Herzog, Eileen Joyce.
Directed by Paul Cox.

Paul Cox directed many small-budget films and features in the 1960s. With the making of Kostas in 1969, he moved up a rung in terms of feature films. His breakthrough film with the public was Lonely Hearts with Norman Kaye and Wendy Hughes, 1982. This film followed. During the rest of the 1980s he made quite a number of interesting films including My First Wife, The Island, Vincent.

The film stars Norman Kaye who won the best acting award from the Australian Film Institute for this role. Kaye appeared in practically all of Cox’s films as did Chris Haywood who was featured here. Writer Bob Ellis appears as a psychiatrist – and collaborated on a number of screenplays with Cox. Comic performers and writers, Barry Dickins and Patrick Cook also appear. German director Werner Herzog appears as the father.

The film focuses on a range of eccentric people. However, they are situated in a genteel and beautiful atmosphere. There is a painter, a psychiatrist, and the main character who is obsessed by flowers – but also has a Freudian sexual obsession, paying for a young woman to strip for him. She also has a violent boyfriend.

The film is very well acted, mounted – and illustrates how Paul Cox could bring in a beautifully-made film for a very small budget. Cox continued to make films for the next twenty years or more with varying success.

1. The meaning and tone of the title? The aspects of Charles' life? A symbol for Charles and the meaning of his life? The contrast with David? The irony in the contrasts?

2. The quality of the production: small budget, the brief schedule? Paul Cox and his documentaries and small budget features? His work with Norman Kaye? A creative collaboration?

3. The importance of the colour photography: lighting, interiors and exteriors, classical and modern paintings, the importance of visual compositions, the background of the classic, the 19th century, 20th century? The editing and pace for Charles' world and life? The quick pace for David's world and its garish flashy style? The importance of the photography of Melbourne, the contrast with Port Phillip Bay? The visual tableau of the ending?

4. The contribution of music: the Donizetti music and its recurrence? As theme music, as example of beauty, classic style, Charles' use of it for Lisa's performance for him? The introduction of the operatic tone? The operatic and contrived compared with the real? The classical music commenting on the fast 20th. century world?' Relationships between men and women?

5. The contribution of Charles' playing the organ: organ music and its sound, rhythms, style? The organ played in the church? The background of the sacred? Charles' skill, range of performance, the sound of organ music? His collapse over the organ? The organ music overlapping into his secular world?

6 The world of painting: Charles going to the painting class, the teacher's emphasis on accuracy and not indulging imagination? The humorous irony of the fascist style of the teacher? Charles' presence at the classes and wanting to learn, his painting flowers with the nude? His skill in flower arrangement? His taste? His watching Lisa and her stripping to Donizetti's music – living visual art? The contrast with David and his painting? His studio, mess, his method of painting – slapping, huge brushes, walking over the painting, tossing the paint on the canvas etc.? The variety of views between priceless works of art and works with a price? David and his mockery of Charles' world? The contrast between the trendy and the classic? David's huge bunch of flowers done for Charles' money? Charles' response that Van Gogh could paint flowers classically? The film-maker's comment on visual art, the classic, the trendy, the variety of sensibilities? Where is the true artistic sensibility?

7. The emphasis on flowers: real and artificial, living flowers, artificial flowers and arrangements? Pressed flowers in books, flowers as gifts, Charles buying so many flowers and the florist sequence? Charles seeing Lisa as a flower? Pressed flowers for his mother? David's criticism of flowers and his garish flower painting?

8. The technique of the voiceover and the letters: for communication to the audience, for Charles to express his inner feelings, as a psychological device? The trendiness of the technique recommended by the psychiatrist? The reality of the technique for Charles to understand himself, to exorcise his experience of his mother? The importance of his speaking to his mother and telling his mother everything? The posting of the letters to himself? The importance of memory, his relationship with his mother and her criticisms, flattery, his conspiring with his mother to criticise as well as to understand his father? The humorous irony of the psychiatrist's description of his own letter-writing and its ineffectiveness?

9. The importance of the flashbacks: Charles as a child, his seeing his mother and father from the point of view of childhood? The walks in the park, the statue in the park and its beauty? The primness of beauty? His father being distant and critical? The aunt and his touching her bosom, being ousted from the room? The sling and his shooting through the window and his father's anger and chase? The visitor and the smell? His vision of his mother and her nakedness? The soothing dreams, the fearful dreams, the daydream? The waking effect and Charles' terror? The importance of communicating the dreams and flashbacks via hand-held camera techniques, faded colour, home movie style? The effectiveness of this contrast with the formal beauty of the rest of the film?

10. The juxtaposition of 19th century taste which Charles had inherited with 20th century garishness and his inability to accept this? The credits with the tracking shot over Titian (and the references in Charles' letter to his mother) and the Donizetti music? The contrast with David's studio, 'rawhide' written on the walls, the sounds and traffic of the city, the bulldog? The contrast of clothes? Charles and his vocabulary, language? Lisa and the modern curiosity? Relationships? Inhibitions and freedom? Retardation and cure? Drugs? Promiscuity and impotence? The spectator and the participator? Greed and selflessness? Affluence and hustling? Art and reality?

11. Paul Cox's stances as writer and director? His response to ugliness and hustling? The treatment of women in the film? Lisa as a little flower? Jane and her lesbianism? Angela as the slut? David as the slob? The slob to be killed with the ironic memento and the echo of some permanent beauty? Ugliness to be changed? Beauty has everything, yet it is hot-house, runs the danger of elitism in closed-in interiors? Questions of shyness and reserve, ignorance, impotence, loneliness and isolation? Tension? The options for and answer? David destroyed, Lisa free, Charles standing as the perennial observer in a moving still-life?

12. Norman Kaye's skill in creating the character of Charles? His appearance, style, manner, age? Norman Kaye's expressive face and manner? His skill in organ-playing? The man who watched, was shy, present at art class, observing Lisa and then playing the organ? Unwilling to kiss? The driving of the car, talking in the rain, sharing confidences with Lisa, reacting to Jane and Lisa and their intrusion yet inviting them, coming upon them swimming and offering them tea, the proposition to observe their lovemaking, his hopes for some kind of healing? His encounters with oddball characters: the postman with his philosophy of life, Herbie and his looking after the church and offering help, the man in the antique shop with his theories about life-size bronzes, the psychiatrist with his woes? The clash with the art teacher? Charles' background and family, wealth, age, clothes? Buying so many flowers? His expensive house and his being persuaded to buy the pool as well as its dome? Confined to his house yet venturing out, driving, walking, remembering? The playing of the organ as an outlet, frustration? The encounter with David and observing his art, the threats, the interview? His oneupmanship against David? Breaking through some inhibition? The device of the letters, the dreams, the voiceover? How much self-understanding? The portrait of the man of flowers and art: life, art, beauty, humanity? Lisa calling him a good man? The setting of this kind of aesthete within Australian urban 20th century society?

13. Lisa and her youthfulness, her being considered a flower, the relationship with David and her supporting him, the studio? Love with David, clashes? His taking her money, criticising her? Criticising her as a pervert? Her pose, strip? The friendship with Jane and moving out from David's studio? The curiosity about lesbian relationships? Intruding into Charles' house? The discussions about organ-playing, the discussion in the car? Black eye and the money? Her sitting on the beach pondering? Her love for Charles? Her offer and its refusal? What future? (The contrast with the mocking Angela in relationship to David?)

14. Jane and her friendship with Lisa, support of her? The lesbian themes? The visual focus on the lesbianism? Charles' attitude, seeing it as a help? Jane as a character? Credible?

15. David as the loudmouth trendy artist, seeing him in action, the technological artist? His alleged reputation? The callow and selfish young man, cruel? His drugs and using Lisa's money? His jealousy? His threats to Charles, proposing sales? His reaction to Charles' criticism? The painting of the garish flowers? His being trapped by Charles and being put in as perpetual memento in the bronze statue ironically presented to the city? The contrast between David and Charles?

16. The sketch of the postman and his theories? The humorous irony in the dialogue? The contrast with the man in the antique shop? His theories about preserving the dead and having them in beautiful statuary? His collaboration with Charles for the destruction of David?

17. The psychiatrist, Charles' description of him, his willingness to supervise Charles' money, the sessions and the extra cost, the mournful Jewish tone, his attack on his mother and family? The humorous critique of psychiatrists?

18. The art students and the variety of their work, the fascist teacher and her criticisms and praise? Her comment on imagination, painting what one sees?

19. The importance of the religious background: 19th century decorum, morality? Christian traditions of morality? especially as regards sexuality? The challenge? Charles and his watching Lisa and hurrying into the church? His being soothed by organ-playing within the church? His grief in the church? Herbie and his offering to help? The visual impact of the exterior and interior of the church?

20. The interplay between religion, aesthetics and morality?

21. The final long shot and its meaning? The visual composition, sounds, the birds and their freedom, the isolated men standing facing the eternal sea, their isolation? Was there not future for the man of flowers in the 20th century world?