"Negatives" (1968) with a screenplay by Peter Everett and Roger Lowry based on Everett's novel deserves some kind of backup as reviewers so far have missed its intrinsic quality of imagination in the aspect of role playing, that the movie is about on the surface. The characters do have negative aspects but I was definitely drawn into caring about them. Peter McEnery is, as always, quite excellent as Theo, who is ensnared into a role-playing sexual involvement with an transient played by the great Glenda Jackson. Yes, Jackson knows how to "chew the scenery" but she is really outside the real core of the story as, like many of Jackson's performances, comes across as a shrew. The ever-beautiful Diane Cilento does come between them because Theo needs the vitality she brings to his life and liberates him, not merely by a sexual conquest, but by enabling him to break free of role playing that frustrated him and kept him unhappy. We are all actors and the film mines the potential of this fact exceptionally. The director, Peter Medak makes the most ostentatious debut here. He later directed the acclaimed "The Ruling Class" which I have yet to see, but here he creates by using so brilliantly the art direction and props, music, etc. with so much style and, perhaps, what "Negatives" is about, the searing power to imprint on the emulsion of life, the expanse available to us by our imaginations. I saw the official Continental/Walter Reade VHS which wasrather murky transfer from prints by Movielab, which are faded. But why people give the film a bad rap claiming they do not understand something that is rightly left as limitless is beyond me. I feel I had to defend this film for the power to fascinate it always has for me.
Review of Negatives
