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Writer's pictureJarek Kupść

Cruising – Through a looking glass

Updated: May 16, 2020


Cruising (1980) is my favourite Al Pacino picture, as well as my second favourite William Friedkin film after Sorcerer (1977). Cruising has been bashed by the gay community rather heavily when it came out. But I always thought it had displayed a lot of sympathy for the leather scene. Sure, the film uses that culture as a backdrop for crime, but not any differently than, say, A Few Good Men employs the Marines – which is to say, bad things happen in all walks of life. I will go even further and say that Cruising equalises the leather scene with all scenes – straight or gay.


I also consider Cruising one of the top 3 thrillers of all time, and possibly the best of all erotic crime films ever. Pacino has never been better – Friedkin clearly knew how to handle him well – all the usual screaming and snarling is nowhere in sight. Pacino builds his character from outside in, then holds it in tightly. The open ending is one of the most disturbing finishes in my filmgoing experience...

I admit that, for a straight man, the leather world of Cruising could be disturbing and perceived as threatening in a cheap sensational way. But Friedkin portrays it with honesty and respect. The strength of Cruising is such that one cannot really pinpoint its allegiance to either side – which testifies to Friedkin's objectivity. Perhaps due to the director's background in documentaries, the film displays a "medium-cool" detachment bordering on anthropological. Of course, when the dust settles, Pacino is faced with discovering his desires – he is about to walk right through the looking glass. But not necessarily like Alice – perhaps more like Jean Marais in Orphée (given the story behind Cocteau and Marais).

I read an interview with Friedkin where he'd stated that Pacino didn't fully grasp the part he was playing, which happens to a lot of actors faced with complexities of their characters. They are, after all, just vessels for ideas. Granted, Cruising is a magnificently complex study of self-discovery, wrapped in a convoluted murder-mystery package. It took me several viewings to decipher its textures. I also talked to a very eloquent leatherman in my further attempt at digging deeper into those layers. Here is what LetherCol had to say:


I wonder whether at the heart of the gay reaction to the film at the time was, as you set out, a feeling that it can be difficult enough to accept who you are in a world that makes it hard to discover who you are, and for that identity then to be perceived as related to the plot of Cruising felt unfair (and I mean unfair in the proper adult sense of the word... not foot stamping five year old behaviour).

I talked about this with a couple of mates, and we - with the benefit of history and being that bit younger - wondered whether actually it did us, or them, no favours: they might have played their protest better had they been more leathermen about it and less leatherqueens (I can, I think, get away with saying that because we can be both, never mind how butch we may be...).

But we are of a different generation so have to think ourselves into their shoes (or big daddy boots)...honestly, however, I still think my reaction would have been the same at the time if, for the sake of argument, I had been one of the men Friedkin had actually talked to (as per his documentary approach our mate Kemster draws out) while he tried to get the leather scene as it was then.

Funnily enough, I am re reading Edmund White’s "A Boy’s Own Story" and came across this sentence last night:

"For I was possessed with a yearning for the company of men, for their look, touch and smell, and nothing transfixed me more than the sight of a man shaving and dressing, sumptuous rites."

Leaving aside the wonderful prose that so clearly captures the internal state of being a gay man (or does so for me), it immediately - because of what we had been discussing - made me think of the last scene with Pacino shaving (I don’t think it had occurred to me on former readings). I have no idea whether Friedkin ever, at any point, read the book but it was a brilliant piece of film that caught the peculiar intimacy of shaving as a profoundly masculine and narcissistic act (I say this as a man whose relationship with shaving began young giving me chudos at school but has since become almost obsessive...beard/ no beard/ moustache/ which moustache/ no moustache...it never stops...).


That was from LeatherCol.

Which brings me to the basic existential reading of the film. Stripping the surface, however complex the leather scene is, we are left with a primal story of a person who goes through the motions of life without second-guessing his motivations. He is conditioned by the prevailing norms like most people are. He doesn't question himself nor his environment, happily pursuing a path predetermined by circumstances. Then, there is a point of discovery of the "other" – whatever you want to call it – the true self. In Cruising, it manifests itself through physicality and erotic, previously unexplored desire. But it could really be anything – a discovery of, say, desire to write, or paint, to be creative, to go outside the norm. For the unprepared, such discoveries can be frightening – suddenly the whole world seems to turn against you. Some manage to break through the fear, some go slowly insane (van Gogh, perhaps), some resort to destructive behaviour. In that regard, Pacino in Cruising begins to fear himself in the mirror. He is not prepared for honestly accepting his passions, and he turns that angst toward others. At least, that is one possibility suggested by the ending. And that is what I love about the film: the devastating confusion of Pacino's character – we hope he is not the killer, but we sense that he might be.

To me, Cruising is a cry for tolerance – bigotry is at the core of life's mores. The world makes it hard for us not only to discover ourselves, but also to accept who we are once the discovery is made. When we turn that bigotry toward ourselves, the outcome is truly tragic.



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