Sixties Filmmaking is Decadent and Depraved: Candy

By J. Lawrence Scholer | Monday, May 13, 2002

Take a twenty year-old Swedish beauty queen with minimal acting experience and cast her in the role of the All-American high schooler. Take a novel by the man who wrote the screenplays for movies like Dr. Strangelove, Barbarella, and Easy Rider. Add an obscure French director making his directorial debut. The result is Candy, the 1968 film based on the novel of the same name by Terry Southern. The film was released on DVD last year, having been virtually extinct for three decades.

When Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg published Candy, controversy ensued to no one's surprise. Southern, who was working on a children's book at the time, and Hoffenberg, both expatriates in Paris, wrote under the pseudonym Maxwell Kenton, whom Southern described as an 'American nuclear physicist.' The deviant content of the book drew it both praise and scorn—Candy was initially banned in England. Nevertheless, it made Southern famous, selling thousands of copies.

Christian Marquand adapted the novel into a motion picture ten years later. The film, however, was received coldly and largely ignored by audiences. Audiences criticized the lack of a coherent plot and bashed the embarrassing roles played by respectable actors—like Richard Burton slurping whiskey from the floor of a limousine and Marlon Brando as a sleazy guru. Candy was a by-product of the psychedelic Sixties, done by filmmakers immersed in the prevailing culture and, according to rumors, high on acid.

Candy Christian (Ewa Aulin) is the blond, blue-eyed All-American girl—one must ignore her Germanic accent. She exudes innocence and naivete, incredibly attractive but not too bright. Highly impressionable, Candy adopts the philosophy of the famous poet McPhisto (Richard Burton)—'to give myself...to whatever needs me.' And, with a cast of lusty men, what Candy gives to nearly everyone she meets is no surprise.

The great poet McPhisto spots Candy as he prepares to recite poetry at her high school auditorium. He invites Candy into his limousine to give her a ride home. There it is established that a drunken McPhisto 'needs' young Candy and he forces himself upon the poor girl despite her pleas of 'I'm not ready.' Candy and McPhisto struggle on the glass-bottomed limousine—glass-bottomed for no reason other than to provide some interesting cinematography and some shots up Candy's dress. Candy thrives on the unnecessary; the filmmakers seem to bask in their power, suggesting, 'We'll have a glass-bottomed limousine because we can. Plus, it looks cool.'

Moments after escaping from McPhisto, Candy again must give herself—this time to her Mexican gardener, Emmanuel (Ringo Starr). This was Ringo's first role outside of his films with the Beatles, and that he was cast as a Mexican gardener must be some kind of inside joke. His attempt at a Mexican accent is no match for the prevailing Liverpudlian drawl. When McPhisto identifies Ringo as 'You with the face of an Aztec,' one can't help but grimace and laugh uncomfortably. McPhisto urges Emmanuel to give himself to Candy, and he does, yelling 'La Revolucion,' throwing her onto a pool table, and violently attempting to remove her dress and undergarments. Candy urges Emmanuel to relent to no avail, but she relents and appears to enjoy Emmanuel's advances.

Such is the progression of the movie. Candy travels across the country never failing to give herself to whoever needs her. She encounters an extremely frustrated general (Walter Matthau), an insane physician (James Coburn), a hunchback (Charles Aznavour), and a false guru (Marlon Brando), all of whom partake of Candy's generosity. Candy also gives herself to her uncle (she's sleeping), her father (he's disguised in a robe and plaster), and a statue of a Hindu god.

Candy is a satire of the prevailing culture of the 1960s—strange for a film that sates itself with the excesses of the period. The cynicism of the film is overwhelming. The public schools are framed as patriotic citizen builders—Candy is assigned an essay on 'the citizen's responsibility to his government, his church, his school, his parents, his community, and his local police force.' Artists are portrayed as publicity hungry and drunken fools. McPhisto (inspired by Dylan Thomas), upon hearing Candy's name, says, 'Candy, beautiful name. It has the spirit, the sound of the Old Testament.' The medical profession is portrayed as exploitative and experimental. Candy's father has an operation in front of a crowd of New York's finest where the surgeon says 'We're going to throw the book away and dig in,' before prodding recklessly in the man's skull. Even filmmakers take a drubbing. Candy meets a Cuban filmmaker named G3, who is busy gathering material for his new work of people saying 'no.'

After an hour and a half of watching Candy fall victim to every male she encounters, the episodes become somewhat tiresome and one begins to feel bad for the poor girl. The film is relentless as Candy becomes a student of a guru who resides in the trailer of a eighteen-wheeler. The guru, Grindle, wants to lead Candy to the 'void' by taking her through the necessary steps—the 'seven stages.' Stage one attempts to locate the center of all breath—not Candy's lungs—and stage two is the removal of Candy's clothes. The rest of the stages follow a natural progression.

Critics and audiences panned Candy for lack of a coherent storyline, and, at one point in the film, Candy asks rhetorically, 'What does it all mean?' as she faces a underground chamber of Hindu icons. Is this a question for the director? Did Marquand just piece together a series of random acts with the theme of Candy getting violated in each? Or, is the film suggesting something? Perhaps, Marquand is indicting his society, one where the most innocent of people is corrupted by hungry monsters. Marquand's is a society where no remnant of idealism can survive, except for Marquand's idealism as portrayed in this film.

Candy is distinctively Terry Southern—quirky with strange sexual mores. Anyone who has seen Barbarella (which Southern adapted to the screen) can immediately connect these two films. Both feature extremely na've and attractive female leads who end up mingling with strange men and eventually sleeping with them. Barbarella takes place in space while Candy takes place on earth.

One's first impulse is to think, 'What sluts!' but that really doesn't seem to fit. Both Candy and Barbarella, however, seem to have transcended traditional morals in their search for themselves. All the men who take advantage of Candy are real scumbags, but Candy's virtue is unquestionable.

Marquand, while getting Southern's main point, often neglects Southern's voice in the film. In the novel, Southern scatters throughout the dialogue small details that recall Southern's earlier work—such details that reflect very much on Candy's character and basis. In the novel, Candy frequently remarks, 'N...O...spells NO!' Not much of a detail—except that it is drawn from Southern's Gonzo piece (done years before Hunter S. Thompson coined the term), 'Twirling at Ole Miss,' in which he observes a baton twirling camp in Oxford, Mississippi. The phrase was uttered to Southern when he offered one teen baton twirler a bottle of moonshine. Could these five hundred pubescent girls in skimpy baton twirling outfits have inspired the character Candy? They might have done just that, and it is unfortunate the filmmakers neglected this.

Despite its shortcomings Candy provides for an strangely enjoyable two hours. What many viewed as lack of coherent plot can be attributed to the influence of Voltaire's Candide. So when someone asks, 'How can those cops be racing across the California desert—I thought they crashed into that bar of transvestites back in New York?' just remind them of all the strange places that Professor Pangloss appeared. The film, by naturem, is not supposed to be rational—it is anti-rational.

Candy is a deeply cynical film, bashing nearly every American establishment possible. The characters in Candy are incredibly depraved and selfish (except for Candy, of course). The filmmakers, however, are conscious of what they are doing—conscious of their excesses. In the final sequence, the crazed filmmaker G3 stands in a grassy meadow and begins filming himself in a giant mirror that rises out of the grass. The film crew is seen behind him—cameramen, grips, gaffers. Yes, Candy pokes fun at Sixties establishments and excesses, but, at the same time, Candy is guilty of the same things. But the filmmakers don't seem to care—after all, it is the Sixties.

Sixties Filmmaking is Decadent and Depraved: Candy

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