I'm going to make this post an easy one, since I've already both written and podcasted at length about William Klein's 1966 feature film debut, Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? Both of those links connect you to the Criterion Cast website, which is my other main outlet on the internet for sharing my thoughts and opinions about movies. I'm entering the film here in my timeline just to make it as comprehensive as possible, in accordance with the revised rules for this site that I adopted at the end of 2014.
But I did watch the movie again, just to see if I could glean any new insights to offer up this time around. The main distinction of this viewing compared to when I watched it for those earlier posts is that I took in Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? immediately after a weekend immersed in the enigma of Ingmar Bergman's Persona. So the similarities of the two films definitely jump out at me: their close focus upon and fascination with the expressive power of the female face, and the various ways that it can function as a persuasive but concealing mask for whatever true thoughts and emotions lurk behind the gaze. Both movies also seek to amuse us by how they exploit the tools of their medium to create novel visual effects, frame messages, distort perception and seduce the audience, with the added twist of pointedly reminding us of their self-conscious presence in the creative process. We never see either Bergman or Klein on camera, but they are still very tangibly present in their work. We can practically feel them nudging us, a self-satisfied grin on their face as they admire their own cleverness, confident that we'll be equally impressed with their various optical tricks and flourishes.
Of course, Bergman and Klein were at very different stages of their directorial careers - Klein being the precocious upstart, just entering the cinematic realm after establishing himself as a brilliant and much-imitated fashion photographer, while Bergman was an assured master of his craft, going about the business of reasserting his supremacy at a time when critics were beginning to speculate whether he had lost his touch. And I certainly don't intend for any false equivocation as far as my esteem is concerned. Persona is a major statement, deeply resonant and endlessly explorable for new discoveries and extended reflection. Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? is much more hit-and-miss, a series of sketches and experiments of inconsistent quality that nevertheless effectively captures the spirit of its times while continuing to provide insightful comment on the pop culture and media biz that followed in its wake.
The charm of Klein's film is found in the overload of visual stimulation, absurd satire and hyperactive unpredictability of where it will go with each succeeding scene. In retrospect, having worked through this and the later films in Eclipse Series 9: The Delirious Fictions of William Klein, it's nice to get back in touch with the relatively jubilant and whimsical side of Klein's humor, before societal conditions and his own fatigue at resisting the corrupting influence of commerce tipped his political views toward a radicalism that seemed to grow more heavy-handed with each new project. (Even though I also dig that rowdy anti-establishment stuff we get in Mr. Freedom and The Model Couple quite a bit. But I'll get into all that sometime in the future, when those films get their own revisit here.)
Next: The Shooting