SAVAGE CINEMA REVISITS: "THE SECRET CINEMA" (1966)

"THE SECRET CINEMA"

A Paranoid Fantasy
Written and Directed by Paul Bartel

Dedicated to Liz Sellers, the one who found what was once so long lost... 

I remember when I first saw Peter Weir's "The Truman Show" (1998), his wonderful satirical, science fiction tinged, psychological thriller about an ordinary man named Truman (a terrific Jim Carrey), living a seemingly ordinary life yet unbeknownst to him, his entire life has been a manufactured product, scripted, directed and broadcast to the nation on television. In addition to marveling at the film, which may have been one of my personal favorites of that cinematic year, what I remember the most was a very distant movie memory that I had long forgotten but was undeniably triggered by Weir's film.

I could not remember the title of the film in my memory. Not even one word of it. But I had this vague recollection of a film about a woman who discovers that she is being covertly filmed, with sequences of her life being screened in a movie theater without her knowledge. I vividly remembered where I had seen such a movie as it was a short feature that occasionally aired between feature films on the long defunct Chicago area pay TV channel called "ON TV," a pay service that existed in lieu of cable television as the city of Chicago during those years in the early 1980's had not been wired for that television technology.

Anyhow, it was a film that I had always stumbled upon as it was never in the schedule. It always took me by surprise, and I consistently found myself captivated by its sheer strangeness. And so, as mysteriously as it entered my life, it vanished from ON TV, and well...life happened and I never saw it again or even thought about it until seeing "The Truman Show." From that point, the mysterious movie lingered deeply within my sub-consciousness, emerging here and there as a "Hey...what was that movie I saw?" moment in time that would evaporate as randomly as it appeared.   

Until last week...

Once again, and with no knowledge of how the memory had once again been prompted, I recalled the mysterious movie and this time, I was sitting at the very computer at which I am currently writing to you. I did a few minor Google searches with key words and came up with nothing. Before heading to bed, I wrote a quick Facebook post, primarily directed towards my Chicago friend with whom I grew up, if they had any recollections. 

By morning, my friend, the amazing Liz Sellers, whom I have known since childhood, had the answer...

"The Secret Cinema."

After reading her message, I quickly looked up the title, and then the film itself upon You Tube and yes indeed...the memories and the movie all flooded back perfectly, in all of its strangeness of vision and execution. And now, having made a full reunion, but now seeing it through adult eyes and within an extremely turbulent 21st century context, it is amazing how the power of this short not only remains and has reverberated through time, it has only increased in its deliverance of the surreal. So much so, that it feels to serve as a societal warning rather than the paranoid fantasy of which it describes itself.

"The Secret Cinema" stars Amy Vane as Jane, the film's hapless ingenue, who works as a secretary who, as the film begins, is constantly being sexually harassed by her boss, the portly Mr. Troppogrosso (Gordon Felio). Upon relinquishing herself of that humiliation, Jane quickly faces another as her boyfriend Dick (Phillip Carson) dumps her proclaiming that he never loved her and furthermore, his only love is (cryptically stated)...the movies. 

The following day, a plot to return Jane to Dick's good favors is hatched by her best friend Helen (Connie Ellison) who suggests that Jane accept a date with the "jet setty" Mr. Troppogrosso to a local discotheque that Dick frequents as a means to ultimately make him jealous, thus inspiring him to want Jane back. As Jane mulls over this prospect, and also endures a stressful lunch date with her Mother (Estelle Omens), Jane is subjected to strange moments and disturbing clues that something out of her control is amiss, from discarded tickets stubs to whisperings of a secret movie being screened starring a "dumb girl" who has no idea that she is being filmed who continuously says "dumb, funny things." 

All of the seemingly disparate elements come together as Jane gradually discovers the truth about her increasingly surreal world in which she is the star and unsuspecting victim.

Paul Bartels' "The Secret Cinema," first and foremost, is precisely as it is self-described: a paranoid fantasy in which the life of Jane ventures through the looking glass into a new reality that calls everything she once knew to be true and valid utterly false. While Bartels has made a playful film, its overall sinister nature combined with its whimsy and satire makes it an even ore unsettling tale this shy of something we might view upon "The Twilight Zone." 

There is not a moment, during which Jane, and therefore, we in the audience, are not thrown off balance, and that even incudes when we may be privy to information that Jane is not, simply because Bartels is playing with our own sense of reality just as his characters are playing with Jane's.

From the film noir-ish black and white Cinematography by Fred Wellington, the boisterous film score which veers from Chaplin-esque whimsy to darkly melodramatic, scenes that feature disembodied laughter, the appearance of Mimi Randolph who surfaces in three different roles (as a waitress, movie theater ticket seller, and a nurse, respectively) to lightly antagonize an otherwise clueless Jane, the slightly out-of-sync dubbing of voices to their visual images, moments of betrayal from trusted sources and not one but two twist endings, Bartels creates an experience that feels like a fever dream edging just this close to paralyzing nightmare. And yet, "The Secret Cinema" remains a comedy, just funny enough to keep you chuckling throughout so as to not otherwise feel as if you have fallen into a David Lynch film.  

To achieve this level of a cinematic balancing act so effectively is first-rate, most especially one that is just shy of being only 30 minutes in duration. Seeing this film now as an adult, I was amazed to realize that I remained as captivated as I remember being when I was a pre-teen. It is a creepy kind of film, albeit an inviting one with an unsettling feeling was appropriately paramount and magnetic--you really can't turn away from it. 

But seeing it now through adult eyes made me take note of Paul Bartels' subversive tactics, as he sneakily sprinkles elements (homosexuality and sexual fetishes, for instance) into the film without making major announcements, which also contributes to the film's overall dream-like nature and our own precarious self-perceptions about our own sense of self-worth, acceptance popularity and unending fear of rejection or being forever placed upon the outside looking inwards to our own lives. 

Which leads us to the increased power of "The Secret Cinema" and its themes of surveillance and the battle between our real and virtual lives within our social media driven 21st century. The sense of fantasy at work in the film circa 1966 has steadily advanced towards a larger reality in 2020, as so much of our lives are played out virtually as much as realistically, if not moreso as we are constantly cultivating our on-line personas, no matter how "real" we are wishing that we are presenting ourselves.

 

With the prevalence of our camera phones and our need to document and therefore, present and re-contextualize our lives visually, it is as if we have willingly ventured into the television and movie screens creating our continuous "reality shows" unlike Jane, who is valiantly attempting to keep herself in one reality rather than having it splintered into several for consumption and ultimately, judgment. 

This quandary certainly sets up a new and ever sifting balance of power and control for who is really controlling the image and who has the power to create the personas and lives lived, whether real or virtual? 

Who knows how far Paul Bartels envisioned our lives in front of and behind camera lenses would travel, if at all, back in 1966. Yet, with his character of Jane, it could be pondered that he may have worried a bit about how far, as a culture, would we venture for entertainment and acceptance and how much of ourselves would we be willing to have taken, or even give away, just to see ourselves at all larger than life.    

Or I am just over thinking all of this and I should take it at face value and just be happy with the fact that I have reunited with a movie that has gently haunted me for decades. I sincerely invite you to look up the film, which is still available upon You Tube in its entirety, and screen it for yourselves. 

And when you do immerse yourself in Jane's odyssey, let me know what you thought when you emerge on the other side.