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Author: Logan, John |
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Title: Never the Sinner |
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Where seen: Actors Theater of |
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Director: Gregg peterson |
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Performance time: 2 hrs |
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Cast: |
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Recording available: |
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Relevance to doaskdotell: homosexuality and “character” |
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Review: Drama review of John Logan’s Never the Sinner Never the Sinner, by
John Logan, produced by the Actors Theater of Minnesota, performed at the Loring Playhouse in Minneapolis March-April 2001,
directed by Gregg Peterson This non-fiction play is based on the abbreviated trial of
the infamous Leopold-Lobb “thrill” murder in The subject matter will be revolting to some. Two
homosexual “spoiled rich kids” get carried away with Nietzchean
philosophy (as they see it, quite contrary to The Gay Science), their
own narcissism and “philosophical superiority” to murder a little boy “for
nothing” (perhaps out of compulsiveness or “harming obsession”) as the
defense attorney (Jay Nickerson) claims.
It takes a while for it to sink in that the fact of their crimes is
irreversible. Of course, it’s easy to
say that the story panders to the worst stereotypes that can be imagined
about gays, when in fact the incident is very much an anomaly. The technique of script-writing uses encapsulation and flashbacks,
tracing the discovery of the young men’s relationship, and how they talk
themselves into committing the crime, which is shown essentially in
pantomime. The sets are very simple,
with placeholders for the press, the prosecutor and defense, and “the boys”
in court, without the hanging judge. The gratuitous nature of the crime and
the incredulity of an insanity plea make a good case for the death penalty
(as it would have for Damher) but they do wind up
with life + 99 years. At one point, the prosecutor justifies the death
penalty in a circular fashion, by referring to the doughboys that our country
sacrificed in the carnage of World War I. The “boys,” always fully dressed in tweed suits, come
across as all-American. The affection between
them comes across as clearly wholesome, not really sexual. Loeb (Nathan Suprenant)
comes across as more exuberant than the initially nerdy Nathan Leopold
(Stephen Frethem), who, lost in his intellectual
world of ornithology, could hardly have conceived of the crime; but as the
play progresses, Leopold comes across as forceful as Loeb, and turns out to
be almost as amoral. Frethem seems almost too robust to portray the supposedly
skinny, “sissy-boy” Loeb. There was a book about this case called Compulsion by Meyer Levin, with a film by that title, directed by Richard Fleischer from 20th Century Fox in 1959, Another brutal crime film released in 1967, In Cold
Blood, based on a two-man crime (against a whole family) in Review of 2005 film Capote is at this link. In 2002, Sandra Bullock produced (and starred as a detective in) a film with a similar story, Murder by Numbers (Warner Brothers/Castle Rock) in which the two privileged young men are played by Ryan Gosling (the extrovert) and Michael Pitt. Oitt’s character makes the statement in a class debate: “Freedom is a crime because it first thinks of itself instead of the group,” and then Pitt later tells Bullock that he enjoys taking “indefensible positions: (left-wing or not). The victim here is a young woman, and the boys are supposedly openly heterosexual, with an erotic tension between them developing during the movie. There are a couple of confrontations between the two boys where Gosling’s character seems to be teasing Pitt’s into surrendering into an intimate relationship; one wishes they had become lovers and stopped at that that.The film was compared to Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, and has a climax remind one of Vertigo (the greatest film ever made!) Swoon (1992, Strand/Killer Films, dir.
Tom Kalin, 82 min, R) is a film dramatization of
the 1924 Leopold-Loeb case. It is filmed in stark black-and-white to keep a
certain level of abstraction, but the “gay couple” seems more repulsive in
this film than in the stage rendition reviewed above. They went on a crime
spree before the murder, and gloated about not being caught. When they are
suspects and then during the trial, the society around them shows its usual
phobia of what is different. The men are called "inverts" and
"perverts." At one point there is an animated anatomical
explanation of their "pathology." At one point, the testimony
recalls to mind the crimes of Jeff Dahmer in 1991.
The film compares the crimes to other crimes of the day, associated with
Prohibition. The film dwaddles on rather simple things, like typewriter keys. It seems amazing that they
do not get the death penalty, which at the time was hanging, as they are
considered deficient or "insane." Like Dahmer, Loeb would be
"executed" by a prisoner (his body did not get extreme unction
because "he's Jewish"), but Leopold would eventually get out. His
book would be called Life Plus Ninety Nine Years. A famous Alfred
Hitchcock film with this theme is Rope
(1948, Warner Bros., 80 min) in which two men (James Stewart, John Dall) decide to murder another young man and hide his
body in an apartment just to see what it feels like and express their
superiority. A disturbing notion to be sure. The film is shot in one
continuous take, and is famous for that reason. Later critics would consider
the two young men to be homosexual, although that could not be made explicit
in 1948. If so, it is not a good reflection on the gay male community, so I
tend to discount this claim. Related films: Capote, Infamous |
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