Prick Up Your Ears (1987)

DVD Pick Up Your Ears

DVD arrived in goodly time and in great quality... the movie itself wasn't as good as I had remembered it, but the service was A-1. July 9, 2007

What a Way to GO

"PRICK UP YOUR EARS"

What a Way to Go

Amos Lassen and Literary Pride


"Prick Up Your Ears" is a gem of a movie. It tells the true story of English playwright Joe Orton and his homosexual relationship with his talented but not so successful partner, Kenneth Halliwell. It is a solid drama and most amazing is that it is twenty years old.
Joe Orton was a daring and rebellious writer. Told through flashbacks, Orton's literary agent, played wonderful by the incomparable Vanessa Redgrave, relates her memories and reads entries from Orton's diary, beginning and ending with his horrible murder.
Born into the lower class, Orton (Gary Oldman) teamed up with an ambitious writer, Halliwell (Alfred Molina) at the Royal Academy of Drama in England,. They collaborated for years and when Orton broke out on his own, fame bit him on the neck. His plays include "loot" and "What the Butler Saw" and the charmed the critics and the public with his black comedies. At the same time he was living in a homosexual relationship which, back then, was illegal. He was also extremely sexually adventurous. The competition between he and hi s lover heightened and Halliwell dejected, feeling rejected, and very jealous hammered Orton to death in 1967 and took his own life immediately afterwards.
It was not only success de t talent that brought Orton fame. His personal charisma and luck also helped. The two men, who seemed to be talented equally were split apart when one of the pair became an award winning playwright and the other had no luck whatsoever.
Orton's death in 1976 caused quite a stir not only by the way he dies but by the fact that the nature of his relationship with Halliwell was revealed to the public.
It was Halliwell that seduced Orton when they were students and it was Halliwell who was more imaginative but a bit disturbed. After the two had begun their relationship each spent half a year in prison for defacing library books and while there Orton`s agent discovered his talent and guided him to success while Halliwell stayed behind in the shadows of his lover.
The acting in the movie is far above anything else dealing with homosexuality at the period in which it was made. In many cases, it is far above what we see today. The script is brilliant and it is very sad that the movie did not get the exposure it deserved. At times it is very raw and the death of Orton is shocking as we watch it from beginning to end. As is typical of so many British movies, it is literate and beautifully acted and photographed. Were it to be re-released today, I am sure it would find its rightful audiences and acting prizes would be handed out to the entire cast.
December 31, 2006

A Well-Acted, Fascinating Biography

I've been a huge fan of both Gary Oldman and Alfred Molina for years and I think they are both outstanding in this biography of the late British playwright Joe Orton.

Although most people think of Oldman from films like AIR FORCE ONE or the Harry Potter films and Molina from SPIDER-MAN 2, they are both some of the most dependable and most talented actors in films today.
PRICK UP YOUR EARS would be worth seeing for either one of these actors, but both of them make this an excellent film.

I would recommend it to anyone who likes them but I would also warn anyone about the film's openness about their characters' homosexuality. If you have a problem seeing men kissing, then you might want to take a pass (or just turn your head). I don't know. I wouldn't trick anyone into watching this movie without letting them know that the main characters are gay--and one of them loves to pick up strange men in London public bathrooms (called "cottages").

But this is a good movie with great performances. If you see and like this film, I would also recommend CARRINGTON with Jonathan Pryce and Emma Thompson. September 26, 2006

Ken and Joe were lovers. ..

. . . . well, maybe not lovers but more like two men who
shared a sexual history. When Ken hammered Joe to death,
it was hardly an act of love, but it was certainly an
act of history.

Unravelling the history of Ken and Joe is what Prick Up
Your Ears is about. Joe was playwright Joe Orton. Ken
was first his mentor, then his lover and finally-when
Joe's fame exceeded his-his depressed and angry drudge.
Prick Up Your Ears doesn't unravel the history of this
relationship so much as it caresses its surface,
playing with issues of wit and style. The play is
attractive, even funny, but it never hellps us to
understand what kept this unlikely pair together
for 16 years.

The movie rises above the level of morbid peep
show only by standing on the shoulders of three
great performances. Alfred Molina as the tormented
Ken and Gary Oldman as the sociable and heartless
Joe keep the somewhat superficial screenplay together.
Julie Walters (Educating Rita) as Joe's crazed kin
almost steals the show.

In the end, Orton's inability to recognize the value
that Ken had added to his life and Ken's refusal to
live without that recognition leads the grisly murder-
suicide with which the film begins. September 25, 2006

A great biographical representation.

Joe Orton was the, "bit of rough", Leicester lad who became the voice of edgy, sexual charged playwriting in the 60's, exactly the kind of representaions peole were seeking at the time.
The film depicts his life and rise to fame beautifully, exploring his sexually charged adoloscence,his early admission to RADA, his emerging and confident sexuality and meeting with Halliwell, throught to his final success and the destruction of his realtionship with Halliwell which led to their deaths; Halliwell battered Joe to death with a hammer before overdosing himself on a barbiturate cocktail (bizarrely Halliwell died first). The casting is perfect and the lead actors are immensley evocative and emotive. There is a delicious cameo by Julie Walters as Orton's Mum, too afraid to answer the door to a theatre offical seeking Joe because she has left her teeth upstairs. Frances Barber is excellent and loyal as Joe's Sister, Vanessa Redgrave is slightly cold and bitchy as his agent, particularly with women. An excellent depiction of Joe's high octane, interesting and sadly short life, I was only sorry that the "Morrocan Holiday" scene did not feature a representaion of the comic actor Kenneth Williams(of "Carry On" fame), a dear freind of Joe's who often holidayed with Joe and Halliwell. Not an easy film but a very good and beautifully depicted one.
Fnas of Joe may wish to know that Leicester City Council have now marked the council house he grew up in with a blue plaque, it is situated off Saffron Lane, an estate of houses bulit in the 1930's. June 28, 2005

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