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Nijinsky
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Context: who sees Nijinsky? What is the audience that silently claims and owns this film as their privileged property? A shot begins, a man (played by Ronald Pickup) feverishly finishes playing a piece on the piano, and decides to name it “Le Sacre du printemps”: this shot is for the spectator who already knows that this man is Igor Stravinsky. The same spectator who sees the audiences depicted in the film go wild with outrage at the sight of modern ballet, but is him/herself unthreatened, possessing a fine, historical appreciation of all things high-cultural. The spectator who understands that the sight of Alan Bates as Diaghilev in white suit and hat, gazing at young boys on the beach, is a homage to Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice (1971) – another film about Art and Love. In short, a spectator who already knows basically the entire biographical story of Vaslav Nijinsky (here incarnated by George de la Peña), and who comes to the cinema for the pleasure of recognition and identification; who, in the darkened theatre, can reflect triumphantly: this film is for me, and for all people like me. Nijinsky: Genius. Madman. Animal. God. Homosexual … oops, how did that last one slip in? Although the advertising has good reason to be silent on the subject of gayness, the film itself adopts it as a central theme. And this is where the problems with it begin. Nijinsky (scripted by Hugh Wheeler, who co-adapted Travels with My Aunt [1972] for George Cukor) is not immediately an offensive or reactionary movie on this level of content. In fact, it declares a sincerely positive/affirmative line, extolling the equality of all things human (“We are what we are”, Diaghilev advises Nijinsky). But its representation and coding of queerness is utterly dependent on a notion of class and social position – even as it vigorously tries to deny the fact. Nijinsky is essentially about Art and Artists – art seen as the one, fundamental truth, and artists presented as outside and above the petty, material transactions of society. This is how sexuality receives a certain value. If an artist is gay, that is simply the expression of his inner Being; if Vaslav simulates masturbation on stage, that simply heralds the birth of a new “plastic art” (!) which audiences, in time, will come to appreciate and accept. All this amounts to a profoundly ahistorical conception of both cultural production (i.e., art) and personal relationships. Herbert Ross’ film seems to want to generalise its portrait of the world: yes, we are all human; yes, we are all free! But no – we are not all bourgeois. An artist, a defined within the movie as one who can be openly gay, is someone who can only exist within the protections and mystifications of a specific middle-class (and “bohemian”) milieu. Nijinsky simply cannot let itself recognise that that there is a socio-cultural norm, and that this norm is heterosexual. It refuses to countenance the notion that gayness can exist in radical opposition to this norm – not hide within some art-for-humanity’s-sake ghetto, declaring itself duly unproblematic. On several occasions, we witness the dancer’s devotion to religion – but with no hint as to how to consider, in this context, the church’s attitude (then and now) toward homosexuality! God is Love is Art … Something similar, though not quite as obvious, happens regarding the film’s representation of modernism in dance, design and music. To put it bluntly, there is no real sense of struggle, the necessary, historic confrontation between modernist and classical forms – everything is swiftly absorbed and recuperated into a very traditional (and utterly bland) conception of art and its functions; the very same perspectival vanishing point of history at which the contemporary spectator of this film implicitly presides. That shot of Stravinsky at the piano – overcome by emotion, stirred by inspiration, sensitivity and soulfulness – conspires with other pivotal recitals in the cinema of the 1970s (Bogarde/Mahler in Death in Venice, Ingrid Bergman as star classical pianist in Autumn Sonata [1978]) to claim music for grand Romanticism (expressiveness, the direct inscription of feeling in form) rather than Modernism (language, signification, reflexive awareness of form). The same goes for dance: there may be a new rhythm and a different set of moves but, as presented, it’s a means to the same old end – art that is deep, meaningful, noble. In other words, already deified – at birth! – as part of the canon of traditional and conservative High Art. But Nijinsky does not find his identity or place in this world – set adrift (by various melodramatic intrigues), he goes insane, eventually surrendering himself to the one parent-figure he has left: God. And, although the film tries to explain, almost glorify, this descent by recourse to a patently absurd piece of humanist-art wisdom – “Madness is the other side of genius”! – the social implications and complications remain, hovering in the air. In fact, the base, material world is always sneaking into the rarefied, supposedly transcendent domain of Art and Artists here, shaping and determining it – note, especially, Diaghilev’s obsession with money (always a giveaway!). And when Mr D. pronounces that “Art is the most expensive mistress”, then all the contradictions – cultural, sexual, worldly – come very close to forcing themselves to the surface and making themselves noticed, once and for all. I cannot let this Nijinsky go without savouring its strange, final scene. [Postscript, 42 years later: Spoiler Alert!] Having concluded, it cuts to sepia-toned stills. These, we immediately assume, are the “true” fragments of the dancer’s life story, the documentation that presumably wishes to verify the preceding movie which has just unfolded. But, within a few seconds, it becomes obvious that this is a sleight-of-hand, and that what we are witnessing is actually a disguised replay of the film’s key moments, designed to return us to the idea of Nijinsky as the deeply feeling, albeit tragic Artist – beyond time, beyond History … Yet isn’t it all too clear, by this point, that such an account of Nijinsky is not truthful in any transcendent sense, but constructed by the film itself – and constructed for a particular audience who, through seeing themselves reflected on the screen, will hopefully not see anything at all? see also: The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky MORE Ross: Undercover Blues, Footloose © Adrian Martin February 1981 |
