As regular Shuker In MovieLand readers will have surely discovered by now, I'm a devoted aficionado of extremely obscure, exceedingly strange movies, especially from within the fantasy film genre. I'm also a longstanding fan of the late great David Bowie's music. So imagine my delight a couple of days ago when, after long being aware of it but never having seen it (or expecting to), I finally tracked down online a truly extraordinary TV fantasy mini-movie musical dating back over 50 years that starred the Thin White Duke himself in one of his first on-screen roles! And to make things even more bizarre, I discovered it not on any Western website but instead on a Japanese one! And what is the title of this delightful discovery? Pierrot In Turquoise Or The Looking Glass Murders (to give it its full title).
Directed by Brian Mahoney, written by David Bowie and Lindsay Kemp (both of whom also star in it), and produced by Scottish Televison Enterprises who released it on the UK TV channel Scottish Television in 1970, Pierrot In Turquoise Or The Looking Glass Murders has a running time of 27 minutes, and is described in its credits as a pantomime (devised by the afore-mentioned Lindsay Kemp). Yet even given the characteristically surreal nature of pantomimes, I can honestly say that this production is fundamentally unlike any pantomime that I've ever seen or heard about!
As you may have guessed from its title, Pierrot In Turquoise (as I'll refer to it from now on for brevity) draws its inspiration from Italy's Commedia Dell'Arte theatre traditions, with three of its five characters derived directly from the latter (namely, Pierrot, Harlequin, and Columbine), but also incorporating all manner of abstruse and absurd visual and aural novelties along the way. In addition, it is categorized as a musical (albeit a short one), because it includes four Bowie songs all specially written for it, and which contain its only dialogue, in the form of their lyrics as sung by Bowie. Indeed, prior to being filmed for this 1970 Scottish Television production, Pierrot In Turquoise had existed as a mime improvisation theatre play of the same title first staged three years earlier by Bowie and Kemp. But I digress.
SPOILER ALERT! Because of how very obscure and little-known this mini-movie musical is, I'm presenting a resume of its full plot below, so if you don’t wish to know about it, please read no further.
This TV version of Pierrot In Turquoise loses no time in confirming the oddness that is about to descend upon its viewers by opening with a brief scene featuring a pianist (played by Michael Garrett) who is playing his piano silently. In fact, the entire scene is completely without sound, an initially unexpected but recurrent gimmick in this very quirky mini-movie – to such an extent, moreover, that I wondered at first if the copy that I was watching online on the Japanese website (more about that site later) was faulty, with breaks in its soundtrack. Happily, however, my subsequent researches confirmed that these sequences in silence were indeed intentional.
Anyway, once the pianist has completed his soundless recital the camera pans to the right, into a relatively sparse yet ornately-adorned bedroom setting, with an as-yet-unseen Bowie singing the first of his quartet of songs. Entitled 'When I Live My Dream' (click here to watch on YouTube the scene that first features it – it also appears but with different lyrics at the movie's end), this is my favourite Pierrot In Turquoise song – a plaintive, dreaming ballad augmented perfectly by a sonorous organ keyboard accompaniment and Bowie's wistful vocals, creating for it a quasi-medieval tone.
While this song plays, we see a seriously tousle-headed Pierrot (Lindsay Kemp) lying bloomers-attired but bare-chested on his bed, the camera focusing upon his white-powdered clown's face, and especially his dark mascara-heavy eyes, as he stares listlessly into it, lost in thought or dreams. Paradoxically, however, these take the form not of anything in context to Pierrot's life but instead of photo-stills depicting this mini-movie's performers in early, pre-dress rehearsals for it, wearing their normal, 1960s/70s clothes.
When the song ends, Pierrot shakes off his reverie and walks over to his dressing table at which he sits and begins to apply even more white powder to his already heavily-powdered face, gazing into its mirror as he does so. In the meantime, and for no reason that I could discern, the pianist is now hiding underneath the piano with an alarmed look on his face, while sitting on the side of Pierrot's bed is Harlequin (Jack Birkett), absent-mindedly knitting what looks like a long thin blue scarf (no, me neither!) and wearing yellow spandex tights with more holes in them than spandex. Also seen (and heard, regrettably!) is a small yet decidedly eerie-looking Pierrot marionette with half-closed eyes and outstretched tongue, playing a violin but only producing a cacophonous series of scratchy scraping noises. I did warn you that this was a strange movie!
Eventually, the pianist stops crawling about under the piano and stands up, and Pierrot stops applying ever more powder to his thickly-caked face and also stands up, putting on a richly-decorated jacket of gold (not turquoise!) and looks at himself in a full-length looking glass – where to his surprise he sees a green/blue-frocked Columbine (Annie Stainer) peering back at him and pirouetting seductively. Cue Song #2, 'Columbine', sung by a still-unseen Bowie (click here to view on YouTube the scene from Pierrot In Turquoise featuring it).
After flouncing around for a while, transfixing poor Pierrot with her wiles and guiles, Columbine gives him a last lingering look and then vanishes like a vixen in the night within the sable depths on her side of the looking glass, leaving behind a bereft Pierrot only to stand and stare – until he reaches out and discovers to his amazement that he can actually step through the looking glass. So he does.
The other side of the looking glass is a bizarre spangle-floored, black-walled world, seemingly consisting almost entirely of an admittedly plentiful supply of silver step-ladders. Perched near the top of one of these is this movie's hitherto-elusive narrator-in-song, an enigmatic elfin character named Cloud (Bowie at last!), still singing 'Columbine' and showering its title character with a handful of spangles as she dances around wearing her usual dazed, crazed expression (but nonetheless engaging in some serious twerking long before the likes of 21st-Century twerking exponents Ying Yang Twins and Beyoncé were even born!).
The pace, and temperature, soon rises in Looking Glass Land, however, once Pierrot turns up and finds Columbine there, as they swiftly engage in some wild, passionate, but demurely fully-dressed love-making – this is early 1970s mainstream UK TV, after all!
Meanwhile, back in the real world (if the world in which this movie takes place can ever be called real!), Harlequin is still knitting his blue scarf (which by now has all but acquired the dimensions of Doctor Who's in his Tom Baker incarnation!). Unsurprisingly unable to deal with any more excitement of this kind, he finally takes a walk around the bedroom, cursorily examining some of its outré accoutrements, before standing in front of the looking glass and gazing into it. We don't see what he sees, but whatever it is sends him recoiling in shock, before he gingerly tests the looking glass's surface with the palms of his hands and, just like Pierrot, is able to step through it, finding himself in the very same ladder-laden Looking Glass Land. Cue Song #3, entitled 'Harlequin' (aka 'The Mirror') (click here to view on YouTube the scene from Pierrot In Turquoise featuring it), and performed by Bowie as usual.
(Incidentally, is it just me or does this particular Harlequin bear more than a passing resemblance to Rex Ingram's genie in the classic 1940 movie The Thief of Bagdad, with Sabu in title role?)
Anyway, after walking between a number of full-sized shop-window-style female mannequins, some wearing stockings but all lacking arms yet all sporting creepy Grey Alienesque eyes, who should Harlequin find there but – surprise, surprise! – Pierrot and Columbine. There they are, for all to see, lying together in exhaustion after their steamy session of rolling about and writhing around – have they no shame? To say that Harlequin is shocked and upset would be putting it mildly, because, let's not forget, in the original Commedia Dell'Arte plays, Columbine is Harlequin's true love, not Pierrot's.
Just to make matters even worse, the peculiar pianist is back – this time he's lying on his back on the floor, his billowing red-lined cape giving him a very Dracula-like look, heightened by his fraught attempts to prevent a sword grasped in his hands from staking him through the heart. What – if any – relevance does this have to the rest of the picture? I have no idea – indeed, I began to suspect while watching it that perhaps this seemingly unhinged character had wandered here by mistake from some other production, because he certainly does not seem to belong to this picture's plot at all.
Back to the main storyline, and by now Columbine has recovered sufficiently to begin seducing Harlequin – she may possess a floral name, but she ain't no wallflower, as they say, that's for sure! At this point, I'm assuming that the producers must have forgotten to put some coins in their antiquarian sound system's slot meter (or wind it up!) because we are now treated to Harlequin's pursuit of Columbine in complete silence. Then, without warning, the music comes back on again – this time in the form of a fast staccato piano piece resembling the kind of background music accompanying a car chase in vintage silent comedies – as they run into a Punch and Judy-like stage set (remember, Punch and Judy also derive from the Commedia Dell'Arte). Here they perform a sprightly cod-ballet dance in front of an audience represented by old engravings of people. And guess who was playing that piano piece – yes indeed, none other than the apparently-unstaked vampire pianist, finally contributing in some coherent, relevant fashion to the proceedings!
After the audience cheer boisterously at the end of their ballet, Harlequin and Columbine reconvene to the floor where Columbine carries on with Harlequin where she left off earlier with Pierrot – what a gal! Speaking of Pierrot: unaware of what is happening with H & C, he blissfully steps back through the looking glass into his bedroom, all lit up and loved up, his heart almost bursting with happiness. His joyful mood is accompanied by the suitably jaunty strains of this movie's fourth and final song, 'Threepenny Pierrot' (click here to view on YouTube the scene from Pierrot In Turquoise featuring it), sung by Bowie but not seen doing so, because as Cloud he is lying on Pierrot's bed and conversing with him via mime.
Suddenly, Cloud gestures to Pierrot, who looks round to see Harlequin and Columbine gaily dancing into his bedroom (though not via the looking glass). At first, Pierrot is happy to see them, but then, while looking into the mirror on his dressing table as he applies still more powder to his face (what's with this make-up mania, Pierrot??), he sees H & C getting it on, and on his bed too, whose springs are squeaking in an increasingly loud, rhythmic manner – uh-oh! His face crumbles, and if a few tears – or even a flood – could somehow manage to course a way through the layers of polyfilla-like powder on his face, they would (but they can't!).
Enraged, Pierrot turns round and races over to his bed, but the lovers are gone – and so too, seemingly, are the coins in the sound system's meter again, as we are treated to yet another silent scene, in which Pierrot sinks to the floor in despair, shaking his head in grief. Yes, Pierrot, I agree – you would indeed think that the sound people would have enough coins on hand to keep their sound system operating. What? Oh…
Anyway, the scene changes and the music returns, now a stark dissonant offering, but this time the visuals are wonky, with Columbine's dancing around the step ladders in Looking Glass Land apparently filmed through a gold filter, because apart from her green dress, everything is either black or gold. Very psychedelic, but then again, it had been filmed in 1969, so what can you expect? It reminded me of some of the pseudo avant-gardish pop music videos that would start appearing a decade later on MTV in post-'Video Killed The Radio Star' times. So, as with Columbine's twerking, this oddball mini-movie musical was actually years ahead of its time, anticipating major music trends that were still far in the future.
Returning to the bedroom, and Pierrot has recovered sufficiently by now to get dressed, wearing a loose lappet-collared confection in powder blue (not turquoise! – and Pierrot evidently has a major powder fetish!). Sitting at his dressing table, he picks up the single large yellow bloom that has been on it all through the movie, and as Columbine dances by him he offers it to her, with the pianist both seen and heard to be tinkling the ivories in the background. She stares at the flower and at Pierrot in amazement until in best Chaplinesque manner he shyly offers it to her. She tenderly accepts it from him in spite of her face exhibiting a disturbingly deranged expression. Even so, all seems to be going swimmingly well between them – and then Harlequin muscles in, literally, his brawny arms bearing a veritable flower garden of blooms, which he offers to Columbine.
To quote the title of a canzone composed by Verdi for his famous opera Rigoletto, la donna è mobile ('woman is fickle'), and none more so than the callous Columbine. Without a thought for poor Pierrot, she tosses his precious bloom away and sweeps up the splendiferous display from the arms of Harlequin. Not a wise move, Columbine!
For enough is enough as far as the by-now psychotically jealous Pierrot is concerned, who, after staggering back in horror at Columbine's ungracious, ungrateful actions, smashes Harlequin's showy blooms out of her hands, pulls a long slender epée-like sword from beyond the upper edge of the set (clever, that!), and vengefully stabs Harlequin to death with it!
And when Columbine falls to the ground in shock, trying to embrace her late lover, Pierrot points the sword at her too, inciting her to flee in terror, back into Looking Glass Land. Here, Cloud sits on his step-ladder, calmly watching the grim proceedings taking place below as Pierrot pursues his petrified betrayer, chasing her hither and thither around the ladders, before finally seizing her, kissing her – and then chopping off her head! Actually, what you see is not Columbine herself being decapitated, but a dramatic substitute scene featuring one of the alien-eyed female mannequins – but it is clear that Columbine's beheading is what the mannequin's is meant to represent.
Bowie sings a version with different lyrics of his first song, 'When I Live My Dream', its words now despondent and despairing, in keeping with the final scene, in which an insane Pierrot, lying on the floor in Looking Glass Land, dies of a broken heart, clutching to his mouth the head of the mannequin, representing that of Columbine. But it's not quite over yet. The pianist walks into shot, looks down at the dead Pierrot, shakes his head, then walks back through the looking glass into Pierrot's now-deserted bedroom and sits down at the piano, where, just as it began, Pierrot In Turquoise ends with the pianist playing in total silence as the end credits roll.
What to say about this mad mini-movie? A major masterpiece or pretentious piffle, a phantasmagorical fantasy or a tour-de-force in tosh and twaddle, a spellbinding spectacle or a cryptic curiosity, an exercise in existentialism, an incomprehensible illusion – or, most likely, a complex combination of all of these interpretations, and many others too. Moreover, even though it only has two main sets – Pierrot's bedroom and Looking Glass Land – the exquisite beauty of the former's design and the spangled strangeness of the latter's instantly and lastingly imprint themselves upon the viewer's memory – a telling testimony to the flair and flamboyance gifted to this production by its very talented designer, Ken Wheatley. Oddly, however, Pierrot never wears his most famous outfit, with which he is intimately associated – his white jacket, white ruff, white trousers, and bobble-topped white hat, against which his hat's black bobble and his jacket's large black buttons yield a very distinctive contrast (NB - sometimes, his black-bobbled white hat is replaced by an all-black brimless cap). The same applies to Harlequin, not wearing the multicoloured spangled costume in which this fellow Commedia Dell'Arte character is traditionally garbed. Strange.
My verdict? I absolutely loved Pierrot In Turquoise (even though he was never actually in turquoise!), its unequivocally weird but also very wonderful visuals, its inspiration drawn from the Commedia Dell'Arte (of which I've always been a major fan), and even the spasmodically macabre, even sometimes sinister quality of its mime, its grotesque mannequins, and ghostly powder-faced Pierrot all appealed to my sense of the uncanny and unaccountable. If I'm honest, I could have done without the inane interruptions by the pianist, not to mention the senseless scenes of silence, but the latter was more than compensated for by Bowie's songs, most especially 'When I Live My Dream' which has instantly taken its place alongside my longstanding favourites from his vast catalogue of compositions, such as 'Ashes To Ashes' and 'Loving The Alien'.
How I wish that this all-but-forgotten, rarely-seen curiosity could be made readily available on DVD and/or Blu-Ray – Bowie fans would undoubtedly pounce upon it with glee, but so too, I feel, would a much wider audience, which it has long deserved but never received. Then again: as I mentioned at the beginning of this review, I did happen to locate a copy of it purely by chance on a Japanese website, the website in question being Bilibili.com (click here to view Pierrot In Turquoise on it). So if one site has it, perhaps others do too (YouTube doesn't, I've checked!). And sure enough, as is so often the way of things, not long after discovering it on Bilibili.com I found that it was also on Vimeo (click here to view it there).
So even if Pierrot In Turquoise is never released in physical disc format, for the time being at least you have the choice of two different sites where it is available to watch legally and free of charge. So if you'd like to view this early formative Bowie appearance while you can, I recommend that you take this opportunity to do so now, without delay, and experience yet another fascinating facet of his unique, multi-talented, chameleonic character. Also well worth viewing (click here to do so) is a video uploaded onto YouTube to accompany Bowie singing his song 'After All', which doesn't actually appear in Pierrot In Turquoise, but this video consists of visual clips from it.
Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.
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