DIRECTOR: Ken Russell.
Sandy Wilson’s 1953 stage musical The Boyfriend was an homage to The Show Must Go On Warner Bros. musicals of the early to mid-thirties – 42nd Street and the Gold Digger movies. Director Ken Russell uses this intro to give us one campy, visually extravagant Busby Berkeley-esque number after another. Thanks to cinematographer David Watkin – he was one of the few OUT gay cinematographers – production designer Tony Walton, and costume designer Shirley Russell, the film looks spectacular. It ranks with Women in Love and Altered States as one of Russell’s best films.
THE PLOT: A shabby British seaside theatre troupe is performing a 1920s-style musical called The Boy Friend. The star breaks her ankle, so the timid assistant stage manager, Polly Browne (Twiggy – rather good in her movie debut), must go on in her place.
Although not explicitly gay, the film is filled with camp theatrical energy, exaggerated male dancers, coded glances and mannerisms, a backstage world where gender roles blur, and gay actor Max Adrian as Lord Brockhurst, the wealthy, eccentric aristocrat who attends the film’s show-within-a-show, bringing his trademark queer-coded presence. The Boyfriend is unmistakably queer in tone, style, and sensibility, putting it very much in line with Russell’s other 1970s work.
Production design: Tony Walton.
Costume design: Shirley Russell
Streaming on AppleTV+ and Amazon Prime Video.
