Forbidden Letters (1976) // dir. Arthur J. Bressan, Jr.

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Forbidden Letters, Arthur J. Bressan, Jr.

1979

Just learned about the forbidden sounds and now I'm upset

Also, who tf spells 'hiccup' like that??

This comic brought to you by my child's intense interest in the alphabet...and by Uppercase Schwa.

Forbidden Letters (Arthur J. Bressan, Jr., 1979)

Put On Your Raincoats | Passing Strangers (Bressan, 1974)

There's a joy of discovery that colours much of Arthur J. Bressan's Passing Strangers. The movie is about a courtship between an older gay man and a younger man who meet over a classified ad. (The title refers to a passage from a Walt Whitman poem which the older man used for his ad.) The younger man, who still lives with his parents, has only recently begun to enter the gay world, so to speak, and the first half, which is structured around their correspondences over mail, sees him, among other things, visit a porn shop and catch a movie at a porno theatre. In other movies, both mainstream and pornographic, these locations might be depicted with a certain tawdriness, but here, the movie evokes the thrill and self-actualization this character feels as he enters these places, emphasizing not just what he's watching, but his reactions as he processes them. (I did chuckle as he walked by the racks in the porn shop and one of them was titled "incest". Also, the porno theatre advertised a double feature of Nymphettes and Fuck Me, Fuck Me. I did not look up whether they were real movies, but laughed when it advertised itself as "San Francisco's oldest art cinema.) I'm perhaps making this sound a bit clinical, but the experience is anything but.

Much of the power of this movie comes from how these characters navigate their environments, first separately, in the B&W first half, and then together, in the vivid colours of the second half. The movie takes a certain poetic approach, trying to abstract the central courtship into pure feeling, but this element gives it a certain tactility. There's one especially thrilling scene early on when the older man explains his cruising routine, and we see him on the street, engaging in a complex interplay of connecting glances and subtle gestures, and the movie climaxes with the characters visiting a gay pride parade, which provides not just documentary interest but the emotional peak of the movie. I admit that by the end I was quite moved.

Now, this is a gay porno, and as a straight man there's probably a cap on how much I can enjoy the movie in that sense, but I did appreciate the way Bressan's camera captures the beauty of the characters' bodies. (I will note that I found a key sex scene ran a tad long, but it was also central to the emotional crux of the movie, so maybe I should suck it up.) This does fall in the great pornographic tradition of amazing soundtracks, with one early synth funk track that especially caught my ear. And I should note that one of the characters wears a Canadian tuxedo, proving once again that it's a good look in the right hands.

The movie is a sort of mirror image to Forbidden Letters, which I would suggest chasing this with. (Both films were recently restored and released together on Blu-ray, and can be rented likewise on Vimeo. The transfers look gorgeous.) That movie also has both B&W and colour sequences, and is also structured around a series of letters, but is undercut by a certain melancholy. If Passing Strangers is about evoking the feeling of falling in love, this is about evoking trepidation and dread that your relationship might never really be repaired. It's about two gay lovers reuniting after one of them did a stint in jail, and even the happier moments are coloured by the psychological toll from being in prison and having to hide that he's gay to protect himself. It also draws much of its effect from how the characters navigate their spaces, but the result is instead dehumanizing. The most potent image in the movie is a shot of both characters masturbating but in separate cells, the incarceration of one of them making the other struggle to even conceive of them truly being together even in his fantasy. I am not sure I can describe just how powerful I found that image, but the composition with the wall between the cells running down the middle of the frame and the gritty B&W wide angle cinematography made quite an impact on me. This is a pretty downbeat film (the one moment of levity comes from the frank advice given to one of the heroes by their female sex worker friend), and perhaps I found it a touch ponderous at times, but I still found the overall result pretty moving.

Forbidden Letters (1976) // dir. Arthur J. Bressan, Jr.

hi i really love how you draw hfw characters, they are so expressive! Your Drakka made me appreciate him alot, would you ever draw Fashav? (and do you have thoughts about him even though he was gone so quick?) :>

Daddy? Sorry. Daddy? Sorry. Daddy? Sorry. Daddy? Sorry. Da--

Forbidden Letters, Arthur J. Bressan, Jr.

1979

Anyways the idea of Tubbo’s originally offers of friendship solely for information about the missing eggs eventually becoming him waiting for a letter back from his pen pal

Fred slowly becoming more and more aware as they’ve spent more time with Tubbo, feeling his own heart beat and stomach twist but being scared of it. Their frightened by the new sensation but can’t stop now

They bled into each other and now cannot mend the wound. Connected through their strange relationship.

horizontober 2023 | 18: tarot

Aloy style study!

I'm slowly getting more comfortable with drawing people and while I'm not entirely satisfied with this, I think it works :)

But I'll keep holding on To the memories we made Hoping someday soon You'll be coming back my way Until then I'll cherish Every moment we've known And pray for the day You're no longer gone

Forbidden Letters (Arthur J. Bressan, Jr., 1979)