Cinema: A British Threesome

The Leather Boys, made in England in 1963, offers still another slice of working-class misery, teeming with crises over teen-age marriage, lonely old age, youthful disengagement and incipient homosexuality. Though its plot ought to guarantee mediocrity, this colorful catchall of familiar problems turns out to be a prime showcase for some very splashy talent.

Topping the film’s unholy triangle, Rita Tushingham deserts her waif roles to play a strident Teddy girl, sexwise and pound-foolish. Partly because housewifery sounds easier than getting a job, she marries a boyish motorcycle enthusiast, Colin Campbell. Their formal wedding, with cyclists revving up outside the church, is a travesty of gracious living. And Director Sidney J. Furie (The Ipcress File) weaves lively, sharp-eyed observation into a rowdy reception followed by the couple’s honeymoon at a dreary resort.

Marriage, they slowly discover, means piling up dishes, stretching pennies, squabbling over whether or not to move in with Colin’s aging grandma. But Rita’s only real concern is the precise shade of her hair. “They done it pink champagne instead of pink platinum,” she whines, grieving over a fake-blonde pompadour that makes her look like a malicious caricature of Princess Margaret. Her young husband eventually finds more comfortable companionship with a motorcycling mate, Dudley Sutton, who all but steals the movie as a butchy, baby-faced homo in hood’s clothing. In the boys’ scenes together, Director Furie explores a touchy subject with restraint, letting his camera discreetly suggest that the lads’ playful roughhousing is a series of love taps in disguise. When the truth of their relationship becomes overt—at a pierside bar frequented by seagoing queens−Colin shrinks from his sickening discovery. The two part, in a wordless, compassionate sequence that leaves only one of them doomed to the wretched half-world of homosexuality.

The film is flawed by oversimplification and contrivance, for the script makes Colin’s latent homosexuality more credible than his unsuspecting innocence. And the dice are conveniently loaded against marital sex, since Actress Tushingham’s shrill, seriocomic strumpet is written and played in a manner guaranteed to subdue passion in any red-blooded youth. Most of the time, however, the characters in Leather Boys seem stronger than the pat fiction imposed upon them. In the hands of Director Furie and his exuberantly wayward cast, their lives unreel with a moment-to-moment immediacy that is funny, fascinating and human.