william friedkin’s “cruising”

all of the flack friedkin gets for this brilliant american giallo is basically undeserved.

a great many of these italian murder mysteries, nonsensical and nonlinear as they may be, commonly feature antagonists that express themselves through their crimes. they fixate on details, they prolong suffering, they reach climax by committing ritualistic murder. in giallo auteur dario argento’s words: “nothing is more appealing than the death of a beautiful woman.” the nearest thing in america to the giallo is the slasher film, both prominently concerned with annihilating young women in infinitely depraved ways. there have even been literate homages to the genre, notably hitchcock’s lurid frenzy and the powerful, chilling henry: portrait of a serial killer. the common criticism of these genres is that they occupy a space just below pornography, reveling not just in violence, but a kind of violent repudiation of sexuality where debased psychopaths become moral avengers. in these films, some bystander is inexorably drawn into the world of the offender, ostensibly investigating these shocking crimes but, really, losing his or her identity to the obsessions of another. it is no wonder, then, that many of these films end with the protagonist being revealed as complicit in or responsible for these crimes. few genres come with such a damning autocritique of its audience.

william friedkin has the puzzling reputation of an embattled director who has had his career nearly ended by a couple of legitimately excellent films. the first of these is sorcerer, a sweat-drenched remake of wages of fear, was a massive flop that earn well deserved acclaim until years after it slunk out of theatres. watching it now, it is thoroughly modern, much like the french connection and the exorcist, so unlike the bloated blockbusters of the era. it’s difficult to imagine critics ignoring how tense, well acted and lean this film is, but tellingly, it’s earned it’s current reputation as an equal to other overlooked thrillers like the killing and manhunter. cruising is the second of these films, coming under heavy fire on both ends – from the nascent gay rights movement for depicting nastier elements in gay nightlife subcultures and from social conservatives for depicting any aspect of homosexual life whatsoever. al pacino, for a time, infamously refused to acknowledge the film for reasons unknown. it also failed critically and commercially, for years considered an unsavory novelty.

much like sorcerer, however, cruising is an unqualified success to modern eyes, no need for a “cult” modifier. this is a film of all rough edges. as the audience, we follow the narrative as uneasily as pacino’s alternate universe frank serpico. if the fringes of the narrative weren’t so entertaining, it might be easy to see how some uninterested viewer could knock this film for being meandering and confusing. most films don’t have the germs and the cripples on the soundtrack. most films don’t have a fisting scene as a minor detail in a tableaux of depravity. most films don’t have al pacino taking amyl nitrate and jerking around on the dancefloor like he’s being riddled with bullets. most films don’t have this. the case to be made for this movie is inevitably concerned with the small details, the side characters, the narrative ellipses. consider the cameo by powers boothe as a leatherwear shop owner, explaining to the naive detective the finer points of the hanky code. consider the scenes in the park – like some dark fantasmagoria new york as seen in the warriors or the wiz, at home in either movie, really, with a night-time hangout in the park revealing a balmy open-air market for anonymous sex.

this doubles as a completely valid criticism for this piece, for any genre movie with distasteful subject matter (murder, not homosexuality). it can be argued that it reduces gay life to sexual fetish and fixation, or that it makes being homosexual synonymous with such deprivations as participation in prostitution, reckless and promiscuous sex or sadomasochism. it’s easy to take the narrow view and view cruising as a condemnation, a square’s journey into some sexual orient that leaves him warped forever. it could be said that steve burns “goes native”, observing, then mimicing, then becoming – the confusion in the narrative is a consequence of shedding away the standard thriller plot. when burns masterfully ensnares the killer, it almost happens too quickly, as though the resolution of the murder mystery is a subplot. indeed, during the final confrontation with the killer, the emphasis is placed on how easily burns preys on his suspect and how well he has ingratiated himself into the lifestyle. the arrest itself is a gag, a double entendre – a reversal of burns’ s&m awakening ends with an incomplete sexual encounter, an intrusion of the duty on the desire.

this also makes the ending somewhat unambiguous. burns’ relationship with his gadfly neighbor is platonic, but still bothersome because it directly interrogates his sexual identity. riffing on the generic “deep cover” trope of the protagonist struggling with his assumed identity, there’s no mistake that the neighbor is murdered directly following the arrest of the killer. there is no question whatsoever who the second killer is. what is actually ambiguous is what personal need it satisfies for steve burns. is it to expunge any traces of lingering doubt; literally, a violent reassertion of his heterosexuality? is it to exorcise this thoroughly unpleasant experience? it certainly seems that way as he stares at himself in the mirror, shaving and scrubbing himself clean of his alter ego? steve burns might the old steve burns or a new man. steve burns plus something. steve burns who has reconciled himself with a piece of his personality he might not have never discovered on his own. it could the ultimate aim of his specific fantasy or, more likely, the release of a frustrated tension that had been building for duration of the film. it’s important to note that steve isn’t repulsed by what he sees at all, what he finds repugnant is his own temptation. hell of a metaphor for the time it was released.

four stars. only a handful of films in the genre are as unique in tone.