Exactly what it sounds like, the Pick of the Week column is written up by the Cinapse team on rotation, focusing on films that are past the marketing cycle of either their theatrical release or their home video release. So maybe the pick of the week will be only a couple of years old. Or maybe it’ll be a silent film, cult classic, or forgotten gem. Cinapse is all about thoughtfully advocating film, new and old, and celebrating what we love no matter how marketable that may be. So join us as we share about what we’re discovering, and hopefully you’ll find some new films for your watch list, or some new validation that others out there love what you love too! Engage with us in the comments or on Twitter or Facebook! And now, our Cinapse Pick Of The Week…
“What other chance are you going to get to be in a Fellini, Truffaut, Bergman movie?”
-Anna Welsh — Production Manager at the beginning of A Labor of Love
For my pick I have decided to talk about one of my favorite film documentaries A Labor of Love (1974), a film thought to be lost, which was recently rescued and released by the fine folks at Vinegar Syndrome. The film chronicles the production of the Chicago regional indie The Last Affair. The film is the story of Debbie, who discovers she can’t get pregnant by her husband, is devastated she can’t adopt, and enlists the help of male prostitutes to help her conceive.
Things get complicated in the doc for the idealistic French director when the financiers decide to capitalize on the sexploitation craze of the time and mandate he incorporate hardcore sex scenes into his art house masterpiece to secure his funding. Strangely enough the naive cast and crew reluctantly decide to stick with the film — after all, this is the swinging 70s — and what you end up getting is one of the rawest documentaries on the filmmaking process you will probably ever witness.
“I have to raise above this and do it, since I have been a professional actress for a week and a half.”
-Debbie Dan, who is about to have her first sex scene on camera
While at times the film borders on exploitation, A Labor of Love is a product of its time and is at its heart is a very human story. As the film begins we see the director and his cast and crew as a group of dreamers looking to make their first feature film, which just happens to be a porno. As the bravado wears off the inexperience of the cast and crew begins to manifest itself in fear and trepidation on screen, which is only amplified by the stress of having to produce the film that proves to be too much for some.
Relationships, which would have been strained on a traditional set, go into full meltdown as actors who struggle to hold a scene together are forced to be intimate with one another. As the cast begins to crack under the pressure, the director begins to regret his decision to turn his art house masterpiece into this bizarre experiment. Since directors of the doc Robert Flaxman and Daniel Goldman made sure to have total creative control, the camera never shies away (the doc is very explicit after all) as the dream slowly devolves into nightmare, trapping those involved in its clutches.
I found A Labor of Love both technologically and psychologically fascinating as all the drama plays out in front of the giant, noisy cameras that seem to run out of film at the worst possible moments. It’s a film I recommend to almost any aspiring filmmaker because of the brutal honesty of the process portrayed here. The greatest irony is The Last Affair, when finally released, was sanitized of all the sex scenes and played in only one theater. A Labor of Love is akin to a cinematic car crash that you can’t look away from, no matter how gruesome it gets. It could also be the best documentary you see all year.
Check out Ebert’s Review of The Last Affair here.
