William Klein was already a
noted painter and modernist designer when he shifted to photography in the mid-'50s,
annoying the establishment with an off-kilter style halfway between documentary
and abstract art. By the end of the decade, he'd moved on to fashion photography,
and found the commercial art world unusually receptive to his use of natural
locations and pop surrealism. Inspired by the absurdity of his career to that
point, Klein made a movie: 1966's Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?, a freewheeling beauty-industry satire steeped in
French New Wave technique and graced with an uncanny eye.
The budget-priced three-disc
Eclipse box set The Delirious Fictions Of William Klein matches Polly Maggoo with Klein's mind-bending 1969 action-comedy Mr.
Freedom, about a costumed American
superhero spreading neo-fascism in Europe, and 1977's fantastical The Model
Couple, about a pair of newlyweds
who live in a futuristic apartment monitored by state sociologists (and a
nationwide TV audience). Like the documentaries Klein made prior to, during,
and after his flirtation with narrative filmmaking, these three features sport
a piercing wit, a wild imagination, and a general disinterest in proper
storytelling.
That last part may be a
sticking point for some. All three of these Delirious Fictions are funny, exciting, and visionary—but only in
spurts. They range freely into overkill, making the same points over and over
about media fatuousness, excessive consumerism, and governmental abuse of
power. And since the people in Klein's films are cartoony by design, they're
hardly the easiest folks to spend time with. The closest Klein comes to
relatable characters are The Model Couple's model couple, who share the same anxieties about merging their
preferences and making good impressions as all young marrieds.
That said, it'd be blinkered
to judge Klein's work solely on plot. Ultimately, they're compendiums of great
scenes: the fashion show in Polly Maggoo, which consists of models stapled into aluminum sheets; Mr. Freedom
rousing the rabble at assemblies that are half pep rally and half orgy; the
sped-up montage of "the model couple" preparing and eating a succession of
state-of-the-art meals. Of the three films, Mr. Freedom is the strongest because it's the most concise, and
shows a flair for political grotesquerie that should be familiar to fans of
Godard, Kubrick, Altman, Vonnegut, and even comic book artists like Howard
Chaykin and Frank Miller. But all of Klein's films artfully express the
philosophy espoused by one of the cultural commentators in Polly Maggoo: "The surface is reality too."
Key features: None.