In a small but luxurious apartment in an unnamed American city resides an unnamed call-boy (played by Bobby Kendall), who spends his time daydreaming when he isn’t seeing to one of his clients. He imagines himself in a variety of situations – a matador to a cheering audience, a slave to a Roman court, a dancer and a mysterious, deity-like figure watching over the modern metropolis that is home to many people just like him. This is the plot to Pink Narcissus, a bold arthouse drama that borrows heavily from surrealism and artistic erotica in its portrayal of desire, looking at modern lust through the lens of pure, unhinged narrative anarchy. An exercise in elegance and restraint, James Bidgood’s audacious debut film is a complex, masterful work of queer cinema, a piece that is relentless in its pursuit to understand the roots of human desire, but without ever abiding by any known conventions in how it looks at something that has been the subject of many works of art, both before and after this film, yet still standing as a watershed moment in a number of areas: experimental art, independent film and queer storytelling, all of which converge into this strange but seductive work of unrestrained, intrepid artistic expression that stands as one of the greatest experimental films of its time.

Pink Narcissus is an anomaly – it obviously stands as one of the most fascinating pieces of queer cinema ever produced, being more intricately-woven in how it approaches the culture than the work of Kenneth Anger, more alluring to how it portrays the male gaze than the films of Derek Jarman, and more provocative and daring than the controversial masterpieces of John Waters. A pivotal moment in how queer issues are represented on screen, Pink Narcissus is far more than just the work of a director attempting to pass off his own perversions as art by framing the beautiful bodies of his collaborators in a way that seduces the audience, but rather a compelling experiment that sees the filmmaker venturing beneath the veneer of sexuality, and pervading the psychological state of his characters, and by extent his audience, who will undoubtedly be enthralled by this bewildering metaphysical masterpiece, regardless of your own preferences. This is precisely what makes this film such a remarkable artwork – it may be focused on homosexuality, but it is never exclusionary. There is far more beneath this film than just male desire – its complexities, which can’t be seen initially, are more concerned with looking at the core of desire, focusing on the surreal and fantastical rather than the corporeality these kinds of films normally demonstrated.

Pink Narcissus is certainly a puzzling film, but an undeniably effective one at the same time. Perhaps the most important question this film asks is the most contradictory one: what actually qualifies something as a film? Bidgood certainly doesn’t follow any coherent logic in how he constructs the film – rather than having a lucid story, or anything resembling a plot, he creates a tapestry derived from various vignettes, none of which make any sense out of context, but work together in forming a complex series of moments relating to the idea of desire. The film provokes the idea that certain creations tend to defy even the most malleable of artistic conventions, and can transcend boundaries to the point where they take on an entirely new meaning, influencing our entire perception of art. Film has been one of the areas in which this devil-may-care attitude to tradition has been least-embraced: while there isn’t a shortage of films that challenge conventions, they are often restricted to the underground, being relics of artistic audacity without ever being appreciated as masterful works on their own. Pink Narcissus is not just experimental cinema – its an effort to look at the human body in a way no other filmmaker had ever dared to, without resorting to indecency or pornography. Bidgood’s background as a photographer is very clear in this film – he utilizes the camera not merely to record, but as a tool used to explore the body of the main character, but also to pervade his mental state, which is equally as alluring.

In doing this, Bidgood makes exceptional use of everything at his disposal, crafting one of the most unique films of its time. It would be difficult to find a film quite like Pink Narcissus because it’s so original in a number of ways. Just a brief glance will tell you that this is unlike many other films made during this period – the production design is lush and gorgeous, with the cinematography being rudimentary, but still able to capture both the raw beauty and unconventional extravagance imbued within the film. The filmmaking is dreamlike and demonstrates a certain surreal aptitude to how it occupies the space between reality and fantasy, occurring right at the intersections between the two metaphysical realms, which allows the film to flourish into one of the most enduring pieces of independent cinema, one that is never solely focused on its fascinating (but slight) narrative, as well as being extraordinarily striking in its use of saturated colours and set-pieces that allow the film to seamlessly oscillate between different realms. It’s a film that appeals most predominantly to the senses, which is precisely what makes it so arresting.

Moreover, another distinctive quality of this film is how it uses sound. Piecing together a soundtrack composed of classical music, archaic pop hits and the meaningless verbal static that comes from consumer-driven radio (undoubtedly an indictment on the soulless nature of society that Bidgood is presenting to us), which all converge to form a nightmarish version of a contemporary cityscape where nothing is quite what it seems, and where even the most far-fetched of fantasies make more sense than reality. Presented without any dialogue, other than the omnipotent voices heard on the radio in various scenes, Pink Narcissus combines music and spectacle to create a sense of uneasy detachment from reality. Without any dialogue, the film is able to focus solely on the more visceral nature of its plot, and borrows quite heavily from the silent era, in which expressivity was utilized to tell stories that words never could. It’s quite fascinating when you contrast this film with the silent-era masterpieces, especially those that contain some element of masculinity in its plot. Over the course of the half-century between the height of silent cinema and the making of this film, the social and cultural atmosphere certainly had changed, and art had continued to develop. Yet, desire stays the same, and the way Bidgood frames Bobby Kendall is often just as striking as how the camera once captured the likes of Rudolph Valentino and his contemporaries.

Pink Narcissus is a polarizing film, and it seems to openly acknowledge that it is going to be quite a divisive experience, based on its inventive use of nonlinear storytelling. It may be quite unsettling for many viewers, especially those in search of something with more lucidity and reason behind its decisions. The film vehemently avoids cliche to the point where it can be seen as being too saturated in its own experimental nature to ever be truly approachable – it is a cold and arid film that is often extremely serious, even when it is at its most absurd. It is a magnificent queer odyssey, which is remarkable considering how restricted the production of this film was. It embodies everything experimental and independent cinema should strive to be – daring, complex and against conventions. It attempts to take us on a brief excursion into the psychological state of an ordinary man who is driven by his desires rather than any tangible ambitions, which gives the film its distinctive dreamlike nature. An indulgent, fascinating exploration of the visceral qualities that define the human condition, but are rarely exhibited in such an unhinged way, Pink Narcissus is a triumph of avant-garde filmmaking and an intriguing representation of culture in a way that very few filmmakers would dare to attempt. Magical, twisted and unquestionably beautiful, this is a masterful foray into something much deeper than we see normally represented, and the exact kind of fearless filmmaking that should be widely celebrated for its unhinged brilliance.