THE NAKED CIVIL SERVANT (1975)
“I am an effeminate homosexual…a
minority within a majority”.
With
refreshing candour such as this, Quentin Crisp wafted through life - scarved,
hatted and coiffeured, scattering witty and incisive bon mots like elegant
flower petals – a latter-day Oscar Wilde for the Ovaltine generation. In this
charming TV film from 1975, John Hurt masterfully captured the life of an
eccentric aesthete whose flamboyantly effeminate dress and behaviour caused
amusement, bemusement and physical persecution yet concealed a brave soul
within who became a sought-after and highly quotable style maven.
Based on his
autobiography, THE NAKED CIVIL SERVANT opens with something of an endorsement
by the man himself, the real Quentin speaking to the audience from the bedsit
where he spent much of his later years. He’s a unique and contradictory
personality; hermet-like in private but an exhibitionist in public. Although he
leads an ascetic life of monastic absence of sex, money or music, happy to let
dust accumulate for years untouched in his home, he is still seduced by
romantic glamour. Upon hearing of a film to be made of his life, he recalls
being excited as he’d spent his life trying to escape into the fantasy world of
the silver screen. When told the aim is to be a realistic depiction, he stifles
disappointment by venturing to suggest an idealised preferred opening scene to
temper the intrusive desire for unwanted grittiness. We then segue into Quentin
the child lost in a swaying reverie in Edwardian female clothing before the
mirror, morphing into the young 1920s adult embodied by John Hurt, setting a
tone of elegant bewitching playfulness.
The film
spans the period from the ‘20s to 1975, focusing mainly on the more challenging
formative years that shaped Quentin’s personality. Born into a typically
repressed, suburban middle-class family in High Wycombe as the prosaic ‘Dennis
Pratt’, Quentin is shown as the product of an unsympathetic solicitor father
and an unassuming but usefully well-connected mother. His private dreams and
tentative steps as a gay man are cautious in a society still decades away from
the legalisation of homosexuality. One evening, a chance doorway encounter with
a similar cross-dressing but far more worldly-wise chap leads him into a
nocturnal world of kindred souls. He finds himself accepted into a late-night ‘café
society’ of camp and fearless male prostitutes. (The actors in these scenes are
clearly having a ball, including a young Roger Lloyd-Pack). Through the
security of their camaraderie Quentin grows in confidence and begins to build
the beguiling armour that has to deflect violence from men and at one point even
a sudden slap from a woman on the street, offended by his appearance. It is
here in his twenties that he changes his name to Quentin Crisp, a pseudonym
more befitting his demeanour.
Populating
the colourful world of Quentin’s friends and lovers are future notable TV and
film actors. Operatic Welsh character actor John Rhys-Davies, most famous as
Gimli in LORD OF THE RINGS, is a lovable childlike boyfriend, and Patricia Hodge
belies the period drama ice-maidens she often played on screen as a fey,
effusive dance teacher.
The pre-war
period setting of the early scenes is nicely achieved within the obvious limits
of a TV drama budget, neatly aided by amusing silent movie-style dialogue cards
that frame some of Quentin’s more sensational pronouncements such as “Sexual intercourse is a poor substitute for
masturbation” and his defining observation that “Exhibitionism is a drug – you get hooked!” .
Our
curiosity as to how such a person would get by in society is answered as we see
Quentin move from rent-boy through professional commercial artistry. Before
settling into a lucrative career as an artist’s model, or as he calls it: “A naked civil servant. My vocation in life”,
his search for how to make a living is interrupted by World War Two. For me,
one of the two fascinating key scenes in the film is his interview by the Army
Medical Board. Here, we could understand or predict a plot device of attempting
to dodge conscription by using his sexual orientation, but no, he earns our
sympathy even more by the unexpected desire of actually wanting to enlist,
albeit due to the pragmatism of getting three square meals a day. Bravely, he doesn’t
deceive them about his sexuality and when asked what such an unlikely soul
could contribute to the army, replies with disarming logic: “Well, anyone can get killed…” His
steely practicality is admirably at odds with our perceived stereotype of him
at this point.
There is no
sense of Quentin trying to harangue or embarrass the ‘normal’ people around him
with militant shock tactics to extort acceptance. Although his appearance
brazenly stands out as a challenge, his code of behaviour toward others is
discreet and respectful, a model for how he simply wishes to be treated in
return. The other stand-out sequence that beautifully illustrates this is when
he is in the dock defending himself on a police fit-up charge of soliciting.
With enormously persuasive dignity and feeling, Quentin calmly explains that in
order to survive he could not possibly afford to prostitute himself so
publicly. Moreover, out of respect (and fear of reprisals): “I do not approach or speak to anyone unless
spoken to, or look at anyone unless they demand that I look at them”. It is
a greatly affecting scene by Hurt, one of the finest I’ve ever seen him play.
Quentin’s subsequent acquittal due to ‘insufficient evidence’ is hardly a
consolation for being forced to justify his lifestyle in court so painfully.
Happily, as
the decades rolled by, Quentin becomes a kind of icon in demand, a personality
that embodies the counter-culture of the 1960s and beyond. His later lease of
life is as a quotable and entertaining raconteur who ultimately never moved
with the times, but let the times catch up with him. He sums himself up
self-deprecatingly amid the flower-power youths: “I am not merely a stopped clock. I am a stopped grandfather clock”.
At the
close, he fends off the weak harassment of teenage toughs (spot a very young
Phil Daniels here) and intones as narrator: “I
am one of the stately homos of England…” - a winningly wry and dignified
ending.
Hurt is
wonderful in the central role, richly deserving his BAFTA award for it.
Externally he fully commits to the feminisation of clothing, hair, make-up and
physicality, but without ever seeming a distancing, ‘pantomime dame’ caricature
of women. You feel this is a man whose true nature is revealed, not disguised,
by assuming a woman’s appearance - and it’s a harmless, utterly likeable one.
There is none of that cynical hard edge that male drag queens sometimes give
off in their posturing - (maybe that’s why I’ve always found them so irritating?). Watching source interviews with the real
Quentin (such as the engrossing ‘World in Action’ one filmed in his flat in
1968), you can also see how successfully Hurt alters his distinctive gravelly
tones to reproduce that gentle velvety voice and upward speech inflection.
I remember
Hurt once memorably describing himself as ‘the official victim figure of the
British film industry’. It’s an insightful label and amongst his illustrious
CV, a direct parallel can be drawn between his playing of Quentin Crisp and
another real-world ‘outcast’ – John Merrick in THE ELEPHANT MAN. Both men
suffered greatly from the inhuman cruelty of others, persecuted by those who
feared as well as underestimated them for the way they looked. Tragically for Merrick, human understanding
came all too late for him, compared to Quentin’s triumph of living long enough
for his look and original wit to be celebrated more than discriminated against.
In both cases, Hurt’s talent and sensitivity goes to great lengths to represent
these people fully on screen.
Hurt also
made a welcome return as Quentin in 2009’s AN ENGLISHMAN IN NEW YORK which
documented his years living in the more tolerant world of New York.
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