Tom Jones (Tony Richardson, 1963); Billie (Don Weis, 1965)

Screening Tom Jones (Tony Richardson, 1963) and Billie (Don Weis, 1965) in the same week was arbitrary. So I want to avoid making any grand pronouncements on The Sixties or Hollywood or any other capitalization. Nevertheless, it is difficult to resist pontificating on how these films reflect the sexual revolution(s) and/or an industry in (perpetual) transition.

It took me many days to get through Tom Jones, so tiring were its attempts to come across as au courant. Richardson seems exhausted trying to juice the travelogue longueurs of Oscar filmmaking with the nouvelle vague arsenal: irises, fast motion, cutesy asides to the camera, a silent sequence, more wipes than a toilet paper roll, argh! The film sputters along like a car on its last legs. Jazzy editing breaks down into long takes of the British countryside only to rev back into more jazz editing until you're fed up and take the train instead.

And by "train," I mean something not just brisker but also brasher. In addition to contending with European art cinema siphoning off some American audiences, Hollywood (or, to be precise in the case of Tom Jones, British productions with Hollywood distribution) also had to compete with the increased permissibility concerning sex on film. The Immoral Mr. Teas (Russ Meyer, 1959) became one of the most profitable films ever released and put the great era of sexploitation into overdrive. Adapting Henry Fielding's novel in this environment was a canny move because it promises chesty sights but cocoons the bawdiness in prestige. (Never one to miss out on exploiting a trend, Meyer himself tried his hand at a tony adaptation a year later with Fanny Hill). So the most enduring legacy of Tom Jones is how it prevented many pearls from being clutched or monocles from being dropped. 

On one level, Billie is very much a film of its time. Hollywood had long since made whatever peace they were going to make with television. Filmed during a break in the production of The Patty Duke Show, Billie was an attempt to build off the momentum of Duke's career. But on another level, it feels ahead of its time in terms of sexual politics, a film ripe for lesbian and trans reevaluation. That's largely because it was released just on the cusp of LGBT topicality so that the queerness is of a classical suggestibility, all the easier to pour our own queerness in and out of it. 

Duke plays the titular heroine, a high school tomboy who sings, "I should have been a boy/But here I am a girl." The central conceit is a delicious queering of sports by turning track and field into a musical. Billie is able to outrun all the boys on the team because she hears a rock beat in her head which sends her sailing. The coach not only wedges her onto the team but forces them to learn her dance moves although this latter scene is narratively baffling (albeit still glorious) since she's teaching only the male and female cheerleaders her moves and they're all far better than her (two of the dancers are Robert Banas of West Side Story and "The Nitty Gritty" fame and Broadway legend Donna McKechnie). As one might imagine, the gender play causes a lot of confusion occasioning a bunch of a sweaty boys to sing "A Girl is a Girl is a Girl" in the locker room as if to convince themselves of this formerly self-evident truth. Of course, Billie must adhere to her "proper" gender norms by film's end. But until then, it's a delightful romp that begs to be on a double feature with another hardcore lesbian classic - Calamity Jane (David Butler, 1953).

Tom Jones: D

Billie: A-minus

Note the similarity in the posters.