Negatives (Peter Medak)
1968 BFI Flipside Blu Ray
Negatives is set in a London antiques shop stuffed with Edwardian clothes and Victorian artefacts which provide a meagre business for its owner Theo (Peter McEnery). It functions more profitably as a set for the sexual fantasies of Theo and his partner Vivien (Glenda Jackson) who dress up and act out the relationship of the murderer Dr. Crippen with both his wife and mistress.
The couple are both disturbed and charmed by Reingard (Dianne Cilento) a German photographer who moves in with them. Her obsession is the German WW1 air ace Manfred von Richthofen (nicknamed The Red Baron). Riengard presents this hero as more positive than the pathetic Crippen. Vivien becomes bored playing against the infamous doctor and then objects to Reingard introducing the legendary flyer. Sexual tensions erupt. After purchasing, from a junk yard, a real antique plane Theo gradually succumbs to the stronger fantasy role of the Baron.
Negatives has been described as bizarre and erotic. It’s certainly odd, quirky and very late 1960’s in mood when films like Blow Up, Deep End and Secret Ceremony where hitting our screens. The film shares their psycho-sexual intent but unfortunately not their depth of expression. Negatives has a beautifully filmed atmosphere and style, but lacks dramatic coherence. It’s a curios oddity embellished with erotic design (Not much explicit sex here apart from shots of the naked breasts of Glenda Jackson). Despite the excellent performances of Jackson and Cilento I was never fully convinced of them being sexually turned on by Mc Enery (equally excellent) as he switched between his fantasy personalities.
Instead of a full back story of why they’re playing such games (those kinky happenings, on and off screen, that where fairly commonplace back then) I wanted more plot development to psychologically deepen, rather then necessarily explain the mysterious obsessions of Negatives. Sadly it becomes all too predictable as Theo ‘finds himself’ as The Red Baron, climbs into his plane, bursting with phallic symbolism, and takes off from his roof in South London to fly into the newsreel and staged air combat footage of WW1.
Negatives is neither a confidently good nor a confidently bad film.
It’s stuck in an undeveloped middle promising so much yet delivering so little. Entertaining and watchable but what did it all add up too? I cared for its characters but finally not for their eventual fate: Vivien moans about being bored from dressing up and Theo’s frustrated by the control of Vivien and then Reingard. My sympathy ran out when the plane arrived. The absurdity of their character games was intriguing. But somewhere the script, or its source, the 1961 novel by Peter Everet, went off the rails.
This could have been such an interesting exploration of misogynist behaviour, an analysis of sexual role play and a feminist critique but first time director Peter Medak and his scriptwriter hold back in a muted drama, glossing over its potential darkness. Negatives never lifted off from its 60’s generic strangeness to weirdly excite me enough.
Alan Price©2026.
Negatives (Peter Medak)
1968 BFI Flipside Blu Ray
Negatives is set in a London antiques shop stuffed with Edwardian clothes and Victorian artefacts which provide a meagre business for its owner Theo (Peter McEnery). It functions more profitably as a set for the sexual fantasies of Theo and his partner Vivien (Glenda Jackson) who dress up and act out the relationship of the murderer Dr. Crippen with both his wife and mistress.
The couple are both disturbed and charmed by Reingard (Dianne Cilento) a German photographer who moves in with them. Her obsession is the German WW1 air ace Manfred von Richthofen (nicknamed The Red Baron). Riengard presents this hero as more positive than the pathetic Crippen. Vivien becomes bored playing against the infamous doctor and then objects to Reingard introducing the legendary flyer. Sexual tensions erupt. After purchasing, from a junk yard, a real antique plane Theo gradually succumbs to the stronger fantasy role of the Baron.
Negatives has been described as bizarre and erotic. It’s certainly odd, quirky and very late 1960’s in mood when films like Blow Up, Deep End and Secret Ceremony where hitting our screens. The film shares their psycho-sexual intent but unfortunately not their depth of expression. Negatives has a beautifully filmed atmosphere and style, but lacks dramatic coherence. It’s a curios oddity embellished with erotic design (Not much explicit sex here apart from shots of the naked breasts of Glenda Jackson). Despite the excellent performances of Jackson and Cilento I was never fully convinced of them being sexually turned on by Mc Enery (equally excellent) as he switched between his fantasy personalities.
Instead of a full back story of why they’re playing such games (those kinky happenings, on and off screen, that where fairly commonplace back then) I wanted more plot development to psychologically deepen, rather then necessarily explain the mysterious obsessions of Negatives. Sadly it becomes all too predictable as Theo ‘finds himself’ as The Red Baron, climbs into his plane, bursting with phallic symbolism, and takes off from his roof in South London to fly into the newsreel and staged air combat footage of WW1.
Negatives is neither a confidently good nor a confidently bad film.
It’s stuck in an undeveloped middle promising so much yet delivering so little. Entertaining and watchable but what did it all add up too? I cared for its characters but finally not for their eventual fate: Vivien moans about being bored from dressing up and Theo’s frustrated by the control of Vivien and then Reingard. My sympathy ran out when the plane arrived. The absurdity of their character games was intriguing. But somewhere the script, or its source, the 1961 novel by Peter Everet, went off the rails.
This could have been such an interesting exploration of misogynist behaviour, an analysis of sexual role play and a feminist critique but first time director Peter Medak and his scriptwriter hold back in a muted drama, glossing over its potential darkness. Negatives never lifted off from its 60’s generic strangeness to weirdly excite me enough.
Alan Price©2026.
By Alan Price • added recently on London Grip, film • Tags: Alan Price, film