the other side of hopper
Dennis Hopper in Night Tide (1961)
Relive the early (and non-psychotic) days of Dennis.
If you only know Dennis Hopper from the stoned hoople heads he played in films like Blue Velvet and River's Edge, you're in for a surprise.
As Johnny Drake in Curtis Harrington's Night Tide - his first lead role - Hopper is a fresh-faced, scrubbed-up youth at his most innocent and vulnerable. Johnny is a sailor on leave in Santa Monica who falls for the mysterious Mora (Linda Lawson). Mora works as a mermaid at a local sideshow, and she's mysterious because she may or may not be a siren of the sea, luring men to their death.
Screening in First Look in a newly-restored print, Night Tide was the first feature directed by Harrington, known for his avant garde and experimental shorts and his elegant, eerie and at times macabre films (Time magazine once called him "Poe with a megaphone"). The story goes that as a child Harrington dived under his seat when watching his first horror film, and the suggestive terror in Night Tide has obvious influences. The film pays homage to Val Lewton's frosty psychological thrillers of the 1940s, particularly Cat People; its depiction of the seaside carnival is reminiscent of Tod Browning's Freaks; and a scene in which Johnny follows his muse recalls James Stewart's obsessive trailing of Kim Novak in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.
But on its own, Harrington's film is an atmospheric, hallucinatory experience that beautifully evokes Annabel Lee, Edgar Allan Poe's haunting ode to love, beauty and death to which the film owes its title: "And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side / Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride / In the sepulchre there by the sea / In her tomb by the sounding sea."
Night Tide is screening at ACMI on Thursday 5 and Saturday 7 February at 7pm, and Sunday 8 February at 5.30pm. For full screening details click here
Published Thursday, 29 January 2009
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