In 1963 – the year Andy Warhol started making films, Kenneth Anger made Scorpio Rising and Jack Smith finished Flaming Creatures – physique photographer James Bidgood began working on his first film, Pink Narcissus. The film follows an extremely handsome, self-involved, brooding young man who escapes the realities of his street life through a series of fantasies of incredible beauty. Obsessed with his own perfection, he lives in a dream world of fantastic colors, magnificent music, elaborate costumes and strikingly handsome males. In a series of Walter Mitty-like sequences he imagines himself as a Roman slave chosen by the emperor, as a triumphant matador vanquishing the bull (who is really a black leather clad cyclist), an innocent wood nymph gamboling in the woods, a diaphanously dressed harem boy in the tent of the sheik. He imagines his room as an exquisite jewel-encrusted retreat. But reality constantly intrudes through the depraved lives of the other street people, through the harsh and ugly sounds outside and through the visits of his “johns”. His narcissistic enchantment with his own beauty and lifestyle is marred by one great fear – aging and loss of his youth and good looks, and a final terrible glimpse of reality. Shot on 8mm and 16mm, Pink Narcissus was edited in 16mm and blown up to 35mm for its original release. For several decades, a 35mm print served as the primary source for additional 35mm prints, which were of inferior quality, and available copies were several generations removed from the original. As the camera original elements for Pink Narcissus are lost, the best-surviving elements located and identified as primary sources for the restoration were a 35mm internegative and a 35mm print. While the digital restoration addressed the most noticeable dirt and splice lines, the majority of the film’s patina remains intact, preserving the viewing experience as audiences might have encountered it over five decades ago.

Michael Lumpkin