FILM REVIEW: CRAZY HORSE

A scene from Crazy Horse.

Shut up and dance

By Ed Rampell

It’s doubly ironic from a schoolboy-ish point of view that the latest documentary by venerable filmmaker Frederick Wiseman is called Crazy Horse, since his first documentary was titled Titicut Follies, which was shot at the State Prison for the Criminally Insane in Bridgewater, Massachusetts in 1967. Of course, the follies in Crazy Horse are quite different from those of the madmen in Titicut Follies, as the new work is about the world famous Parisian striptease club of that name.

Film historian David Thomson has described Wiseman’s nonfiction films as “hand-held eavesdropping records of actuality,” and there’s plenty of that cinematic surveillance in Crazy Horse. The octogenarian documentarian was given wide access to the nightclub for 10 weeks, and even allowed to go where no man has gone before: Inside the strippers’ dressing and undressing rooms, which is usually strictly off-limits to males. Over the course of his coverage Wiseman shot plenty of  backstage material, offstage meetings, rehearsals, costume (or lack thereof) fittings, makeup sessions, and the like, as choreographer Philippe Decoufle prepares for the new show “Desirs.”

Crazy Horse may appeal to voyeurs who desire to ogle females of a certain type jiggling about, but curiously, although a few of the dance routines are mildly arousing, this doc is mostly quite non-erotic. First of all, it is not true that the women are entirely naked; they all wear what looks like a pirate’s eye patch over their genitalia, and not a pubic hair, let alone labia, is to be glimpsed in this entire two hour-plus film. (And believe me, I looked – for purely journalistic purposes, but of course, in my endeavor to better serve you, Dear Reader.) In addition to these pubic patches, all of the strippers look almost exactly alike, and this is by design. The women are carefully selected to meet the “aesthetic” measurements prescribed by Alain Bernardin, who established the cabaret in 1951.

The women are almost all Caucasian (although from a variety of European nations) with the same body types. So viewers hoping to behold the wonderful world of women in all of their glorious varieties, ethnicities and shapes are bound to be disappointed. At one of the club’s weekly auditions, a tranny tryout is rejected on the grounds that employing transvestites, transsexuals, etc., is against Crazy Horse’s rather conservative code. On the other hand, this orthodoxy doesn’t rule out a dance number that arguably borders on sexual harassment. (The recent case of alleged rape of a hotel maid by IMF big wig Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a Frenchman, shined a light on France’s different attitudes towards harassment in comparison to stricter U.S. standards.)

Onscreen there are interviews with costumers, choreographers and the artistic director, Ali Mahdavi, who is obviously sexually obsessed with Crazy Horse. Mahdavi appears to be gay, and it’s bizarre to think that a gay male is in a position of power in order to co-create and co-present the supposed image of female sexuality. (This could explain those pesky pubic patches.) Lest you think this is a homophobic remark, let me quickly add that the same thing also applies visa versa: It would likewise be strange for straights to determine what is meant to be sexy to and for gays. The result of this process is icons like Rock Hudson, celluloid stereotypes of heterosexual “virility,” who are, in reality, homosexual offscreen. All of this causes lots of confusion and ambivalence for people finding and seeking his or her own sexual identities.

In any case, audience reactions are barely touched upon in Crazy Horse, and none of the strippers are ever interviewed. And why would they be? The audiences who have flocked to the Paris’ “nude chic” club for the past 60 years are going for the “girls’” bodies, not their brains. They are just pieces of flesh, tits and assess meant to titillate and amuse audiences. In one scene where they watch the missteps a video of a male ballet dancer they come across as being silly and vapid, if not stupid.

But I for one would have been interested in finding out more about these women: Why do they strip? Is it for the money? If so, how much do they make? Are they working their way through medical school to become neurosurgeons? Where do they come from? Is this a way to escape the grinding poverty of post-socialist Eastern Europe? What are their sex lives like? Are they exhibitionists? Do the nearly nude rehearsals and performances turn them on? (We’re told that touching during the all-female dance routines makes them uncomfortable.)

But the film, apparently like the club, is unconcerned with the women’s minds. And perhaps this is the sly point that Wiseman is wisely making in this behind the scenes look at yet another institution and its power relationships, in the maestro’s 37^th documentary. Wiseman remains the filmic fool who goes where angels fear to tread and dance.