George Kuchar on 16mm: The Devil’s Cleavage

(George Kuchar, 1973, USA, 122 minutes)

The second of our two programs celebrating George Kuchar and screening his films from 16mm prints on loan from the Anthology Film Archives, The Devil’s Cleavage is one of the director’s few feature-length works. It was described by Chuck Kleinhans in program notes for a Film Center screening as being “a camp parody that sometimes steals from the [melodrama], sometimes burlesques it, and often travesties it. … We end up with a marvelous hybrid, as if Sam Fuller and Sternberg had collaborated in shooting a script by Tennessee Williams and Russ Meyer. … Kuchar reminds us that cinema, like life, is also bedpans, earwax, sleazy fantasy, ineptness, compromise, and laughter.”