Thoughts about and by Bogarde

QUOTES ABOUT DIRK BOGARDE

"Dirk Bogarde's astonishing performance in Visconti's Death in Venice confirmed that he is a screen actor of great subtlety. His reign as an idol of teenage girls (top of the British box office in 1955 and 1957) was more puzzling at least to Bogarde himself. But Bogarde had the same attraction that many of today's pop-stars have.... The slight build, the sensual mouth, the delicately raised left eyebrow, the sensitive, rather anguished face, was neither wholly masculine or feminine. The was a hint of delicious cruelty (he's marvelous at playing villains) and at the same time motherable softness." (Heartthrobs by Jack Tresidder)

"The Films starring Dirk Bogarde are an index to the changing iconography and attitudes toward men in the British Cinema...Bogarde's image can be read as a series of attempts to find a new way of representing male sexuality...Bogarde seems always unhappy with the existing norms of masculinity. Where they embody restraint, he strives for excess. Where they remain calm in a crisis, he goes to pieces."

"There is a notable shift in the group of actors who assume leading roles in the British cinema of these decades (1950's)... Bogarde and Mason are noted for their erotic cruelty, nervousness, and defiance of existing norms. Their roles testify to society's increasing concern with the loss of paternal authority and domestic harmony, the presence of generational and class conflict,and, above all, discontent with existing patterns of sexual behavior."

"On the other hand, Dirk Bogarde, who was to attain stardom after this film (The Blue Lamp), introduced a male image that was to become increasingly popular and particularly associated with his own film persona for two decades: the neurotic and sexually threatening young male. "

"A Dirk Bogarde picture is rarely a guarantee of a work of art, yet it has come to promise, certainly of late, a film of definite morbid interest...(Singer not the Song) is a strangely compelling film. This is mainly due to Bogarde himself, intelligent, quietly sardonic, his restraint verging on the hieratic, his hints of inner angoisse...his wardrobe (60 per cent black leather) a fetishist's dream."

" Cavani (director of the Night Porter)...incorporates sexual psychology into a rhapsodic view of human obsession tending towards mysticism...the contract of love entered upon by Bogarde and Rampling---psychotic, born of weakness rather than strength--is a contract of death. It awaits only their reunion to be completed...But, in the very midst of depravity, there is ecstasy and tenderness and the selflessness that is also found in 'normal' love." (from Feminist Film Theory).

"Arguably, Bogarde had a lot more opportunities for quality work in London, were the costs of filmmaking were lower and the barrier for risk higher. Also, his rather feline and even androgynous persona might have stuck in studio bosses' collective craw the way Burton's more "butch", hard-drinking one did not, though it's worth noting that Bogarde's personal qualities actually lent themselves well to his occasional crack at the strong, silent type (as in High, Bright Sun), although it was more of a strength of character than of Stanley Baker-type machismo. One of the 'designs' of Accident was to oppose the more contained, even concealed, force of Bogarde against the blustery and unsubtle stratagems of the Baker prototype: A leopard vs. a grizzly bear." (commentary by D. McKee)

"...what really matters is willingness to live (indeed, thrive) onscreen in roles that demanded sexual ambiguity and/or hysterical emotion, even weakness--though Bogarde's whipcrack screen presence made those weaknesses fascinating (which, of course, is what good acting is supposed to do). Interestingly, much of Bogarde's matinee-idol status in Britain stemmed from these very qualities, and there's an unquestionable fascination in seeing a Major Movie Star tell his female lead (as in Singer . . .) that he knows "what it's like to love a man you can't have", let alone to immerse himself in something like Death in Venice. Even in fairly conventional studio fare, Bogarde was able to bring out various kinds of danger that sparked up his onscreen relationships." (commentary by D. McKee)