French
actor Christian Marquand’s 1968 directorial debut Candy is a film that
could only have been made in the late 1960s. It’s one hundred percent a product
of its time. It’s a largely plotless, psychedelic hullabaloo with enough
gratuitous sexual misadventures to satisfy even the cultiest of cult movie fans
or the perviest of sexploitation fans. It’s the type of hippie counter-culture film
that seemingly oversaturated this era in cinema but has almost completely disappeared
as a style in subsequent decades. It’s been a favorite film of mine ever since
I first saw it as a very young man and I’m confident it will soon be one of
yours too.
What I love about Candy is not
necessarily that it’s such a great film. In fact, the screenplay, written by The
Graduate screenwriter Buck Henry, and adapted from the Terry Southern novel
of the same name, is for the most part meandering and lackluster. And it’s not
even the fact that a strangely large number of amazing, high-profile actors
threw caution to the wind and decided that the script wasn’t total schmaltz
either (more on this later). No, for me, this film’s role and influence on my
life has everything to do with being in the right place at the right time. In
fact, if there was ever a moment that I could pinpoint in my life that was my
absolute coaxing, albeit perhaps too early, into manhood, I may cite the time
that I inadvertently (but intently) watched Candy for the first time.
I must have been ten or eleven years old. I don’t really even remember how I
stumbled across it. It could’ve been one of those deals where Cinemax was
offering a promotional free weekend, or maybe just a routine viewing of USA
Up All Nite (for you younger readers, that was a delightful late night
trashfest that aired on the USA cable network, hosted by either Elvira or
Gilbert Gottfried depending on the night, in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s,
which played wonderfully horrible B-movies and exploitation films). All I
remember is that I happened upon it quite by accident and even now, in my 40s,
I still feel like maybe I’m doing something wrong when I watch it.
Of course,
I, like every male character in the film, was immediately transfixed by the
film’s lead, the mesmerizingly beautiful Swedish actress and model Ewa Aulin. Aulin,
just 18 years old at the time Candy was filmed, was not very adept at
acting in general yet, let alone portraying an American girl, so her acting seems
a bit flat. Ultimately though, this doesn’t matter. Contrary to the rest of the
cast, this isn’t a film to be watched for its brilliant thespianism. Candy
should be watched because it is incredibly sexy, totally weird and beautifully shot
by famed Italian cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno.
As I mentioned, there isn’t much to
sift through plot-wise. Candy is a young ingénue who materializes from space
(because: drugs). She then sets off on a series of bizarre adventures where she
encounters a range of different men, each weirdly needy and pervy in their own
way. Her first encounter is with a drunk, lecherous celebrity poet named
McPhisto (Richard Burton) who, after a speaking engagement at her school,
coerces Candy to get into his car where he proceeds to make grabby sexual
advances at her. This sets off a string of similar confrontations. Among
Candy’s conquests are a depraved army general (Walter Matthau), a depraved hunchback
(Charles Aznavour), a depraved surgeon (James Coburn), a depraved bullshit-artist
calling himself an Indian mystic (Marlon Brando) and a (you guessed it:
depraved) Mexican gardener played by the decidedly non-Mexican Ringo Starr at
his most delightfully (and not-so-subtly) racist best. Candy struggles her way
through all these encounters in an almost dreamlike - or, more accurately,
drug-induced - state, evidently learning more and more about the nature of life
and love as she goes along. Candy seems blissfully unaware of the power she has
over these men, which to the chagrin of her parents (John Astin and Elsa
Martinelli), leads her into increasingly more troublesome situations the more
men she meets. Her sojourn concludes in a large field populated by the entire
cast, (which looks remarkably like the last Pitchfork Festival I went to, but I
digress), Candy makes her way through everyone and on to the desert where she eventually
dissolves, presumably back into space.
What Candy
lacks in narrative structure it more than makes up for in charm and aesthetic
feel. The film was undoubtedly made for a ‘60s audience, but if you’re a fan of
the look and feel of that decade, or the sound for that matter (among the
contributors to the killer soundtrack are The Byrds and Steppenwolf), or if
you’re familiar with the films of, say, Roger Corman or Russ Meyer, then Candy
might be right up your alley. It’s an incredible piece of ‘60s exploitation
celluloid that fits totally at home alongside any of those cult classics.
