Guest
In 1966, while still in his teens, Sonbert wrote an essay, “Alfred Hitchcock, Master of Morality” for Film Culture magazine. The publication appeared in the same year as the production of his first film, AMPHETAMINE (1966). In his article, Sonbert considered VERTIGO (1958) to be “Hitchcock’s greatest and one of the best films ever made”. He was so entranced by that film that he inscribed homages to VERTIGO in his very first movie. “The film focuses on a party of drugs and sex – young men with a deadpan expression injecting amphetamines. Sonbert shows it in a very detailed and meticulous way that makes the viewer almost feel the pain physically, while the joyful pop music creates a counterpoint that adds a playful aspects to these scenes. In this film, Sonbert pays tribute to VERTIGO (1958) [which he had first seen at the Bleecker Street Cinema in New York (see WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO?)]--- with its spiral and circular motifs. The film begins with a woman’s portrait (framed inside a circle) like the portrait of Carlotta at which Madeleine (Kim Novak) gazes in the museum scene. The music and the structure of AMPHETAMINE are also repetitive, and in one scene the camera moves in a circle around two men embracing, similar to the famous kissing scene between James Stewart and Kim Novak in Hitchcock’s VERTIGO. It’s an homage, but Sonbert subverts gender conventions, showing a homosexual kiss, three years before the Stonewall riots. If Madeleine represents Scottie’s obsessive fantasy world, the party in Sonbert’s film reflects the fantasies and desires of a decade later, the 1960s era – with its forbidden paradise.”
