USA,
1969, 92 min
Shown in 1969
CREDITS
- dir
-
Tom O’Horgan
- prod
-
Ben Shapiro, Alan Stroh
- scr
-
Joseph Stefano
- cam
-
William Zsigmond
- cast
-
Seth Allen, John Bakos, Mari-Claire Charba, Peter Craig, Beth Porter, Victor Lipari
- source
-
Leon Mirell
OTHER
When Rochelle Owens' play, Futz, was presented in New York by the avant-garde theater group at the Cafe La Mama, it was received with shocked praises and also greeted with horror by those who eternally feel that public presentations of taboo themes on stage or screen are harbingers of a declining civilization. For his first film, Tom O'Horgan, the director who staged the original production of Owens' play, has chosen to evoke a contemporary rural background (in this case, Stockton, California), dramatizing with tremendous force the familiar social evils of conformity. The theme of the individual struggling to overcome the force of his society's ideas is very much a part of American literature, but O'Horgan has used every resource of theatrical tradition and the possibilities of the screen to give this story an epic folk quality. In an Appalachian-type of community, young Cyrus Futz lives in isolation on his small farm. Although he is a personable and free-spirited youth, he has never been able to find adequate love from another human being. It is not until the local trollop decides that Futz is ready for seduction that she and the entire village learn that the boy's emotional and erotic desires are entirely devoted to Amanda, a pig. This revelation, aided by the vindictiveness of the scorned girl and the false accusations of a demented murderer, changes Futz's peaceful existence with Amanda. He is thrown in jail, but the community cannot bear to live with Futz's aberrations, his eloquent denunciations of his oppressors. Little by little, the tensions between the youth and the townspeople build to a frenzied, unforgettable climax. O'Horgan's brilliant direction keeps Futz on the level of folk-parable, moving from the background of an outdoor troupe, playing before a group of farmers, into an absolute reality of the present, where humans who judge others are less honorable than those whom they condemn.
—Albert Johnson
FACTOID #27
A surrealist stop-motion animator, the Czech Jan Svankmajer, was the first recipient of the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award in 1997. The POV Award honors the lifetime achievement of a filmmaker who works outside of feature-length narrative filmmaking.
