|
Event
SWEET LOVE, BITTER
(aka IT WON'T RUB OFF, BABY!)
Dir. Herbert Danska, 1967
USA, 93 min.
Based on John A. Williams' novel NIGHT SONG, Herbert Danska's SWEET LOVE, BITTER is a one-in-a-million collaboration, long overdue for a new audience (to say nothing of a gourmet, bells-out restoration or rerelease.) An unrecognizable version of stand-up comedian Dick Gregory - author of the incendiary memoir NIGGER - stars as Richie "Eagle" Stokes, a brilliant, self-destructive sax player unmistakably modeled after Charlie Parker. The film's narrative originates, however, with David Hillary (Don Murray, of BUS STOP and THE HOODLUM PRIEST): a white academic who's fallen into vagrant dereliction after the death of his wife in a car accident. David and Eagle hit it off at the pawn shop, and become fast friends - eventually, David finds himself a paltry service position at Eagle's nightclub of residency, owned and operated by his increasingly weary friend Keel (Robert Hooks).
Danska's screenplay (cowritten with Lewis Jacobs) also probes Keel's relationship with his girlfriend Della (Diane Varsi), a white woman frustrated by Keel's own insecurities about their taboo relationship. One of the film's remarkable psychic digressions sees him paralyzed by the blown-up image of Della on a movie screen; he runs up to her and becomes a faint silhouette, while Eagle - the bane of Keels day-to-day existence, and a continuous threat to the solvency of his nightclub - enters screen right. To watch Keel's subplot is to realize the notion of a movie about a black man enduring impotence with a white girlfriend getting made, let alone distributed by a major studio, in the American 1960s, is borderline-utopian. Eagle's heroin problem slowly creeps to the fore, while David - well-intentioned but obviously far less brilliant - manages to put some semblance of his life back together, in no small part due to the fact of his whiteness.
When Hillary walks into the esteemed halls of a university to apply for a teaching position, the film jaunts into another remarkable psychic departure. Eagle accompanies him, received like a foreign dignitary, receiving a breathless battery of intellectual (read: square) questions about jazz from the button-down faculty. In the space of a few words, Eagle passes a joint around to lighten the mood, saying more in a few words than all the breathless intellectuals surrounding him put together. It's a moment of respite that can't last, as evidenced by a decisive encounter with a bigoted police officer (played by Bruce Glover, father of Crispin) back in the harsh sunlight of the exterior real world - an event that runs the risk of exposing the meager sum value of Hillary's liberal comradery. This is a race-relation film about the warts-and-all experience of New York bohemia, whose politics fly in the face of everything Stanley Kramer's then-lauded message pictures stood for; interracial solidarity appears, while not impossible, held hostage at every turn.
In his own right, Danska is a director ripe for rediscovery: His Last Poets documentary RIGHT ON (1971) chronicled the birth of what would become hip-hop, and his world-wise MAURICE SENDAK & ALL HIS WILD THINGS (1986) predated the Spike Jonze treatment by nearly three decades. Sadly, he disowned SWEET LOVE - his filmmaking debut, and only work of fiction - after the producers bestowed it the sleazier title IT WON'T RUB OFF, BABY!, reshuffled his narrative flow, and chopped out 20 minutes centering on a supporting character played by THE LANDLORD's Carl Lee and based loosely (perhaps not loosely enough?) on Miles Davis. The movie descended into obscurity after being buried in a tawdry small-release circuit and the three principals walked their separate ways. But even if Danska's original cut is indeed lost to the ages, SWEET LOVE, BITTER makes for a powerful and profound glimpse at the Sixties most American films would still prefer not to talk about - backed by a woozy jazz score that alternates between honey and dereliction, by towering pianist and arranger Mal Waldron.
|
|
 |
LocationSPECTACLE THEATER (View)
124 South 3rd Street
Brooklyn, NY 11249
United States
Categories
| Kid Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: No |
|
Contact
|
