Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Warner Brothers
EAN: 0794051290823
Format: Closed-captioned
Item Dimensions: Array
Label: BBC Warner
Languages: Array
Manufacturer: BBC Warner
MPN: WARDE2908D
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: BBC Warner
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2007-05-29
Running Time: 78
Studio: BBC Warner
Theatrical Release Date: 1975

The Naked Civil Servant created a furor in 1975 when it premiered on PBS in North America with viewers threatening to yank their support of their local stations. It was a film ahead of its time about a man even more ahead of his time. The Naked Civil Servant is based on the autobiography of Quentin Crisp, a man struggling to live an openly flamboyant, gay lifestyle during a time when homosexuality was against the law in Britain. His outlandish behavior shocked the intolerant pre-WWII British society and provoked frequent homophobic attacks, but Crisp staunchly refused to compromise his lifestyle and went on to become a cult celebrity and an international gay icon, a 20th-Century Oscar Wilde. This colorful, heartwarming coming of age tale is by turns funny and tragic.
Between Oscar Wilde and Boy George, Quentin Crisp was the most important gay icon in England. The TV movie The Naked Civil Servant, adapted from Crisp's autobiography and broadcast in 1975, had a significant social impact in the cause of gay rights, and it's easy to see why. Packed with witty aphorism but also unflinching in its portrayal of the verbal and physical abuse Crisp received for being an openly effeminate homosexual; throughout most of Crisp's life, simply being flamboyant was a political statement, one not always appreciated by other gay men who sought to pass unsuspected. The film briskly moves from when he stumbled into London's gay demimonde to his bohemian social world and career as an artist's model to a particularly superb scene when he was put on trial for solicitation. The Naked Civil Servant also brought the brilliant John Hurt, who played Crisp with intelligence and humanity, to wide acclaim. Hurt has since appeared in movies as diverse as Alien, The Elephant Man, V for Vendetta, and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, but Crisp remains a signature role for this unique actor. The fortuitous combination of Crisp and Hurt makes The Naked Civil Servant essential viewing. Extras on the dvd include a short television piece in which Crisp interviewed Tina Brown when she was editor of Vanity Fair and a sweet, reminiscing commentary by Hurt, director Jack Gold, and producer Verity Lambert. --Bret Fetzer

Customer Rating:
Summary: So Gay. So What?
Comment: How many people have led better lives thanks to dear Quentin Crisp? As a young fey gay man in the 1980's coping with AIDS and society that basically thought my friends and I deserved to die, Crisp was a gift from above. I read ALL of his books and he saved my life- not with gooey "gay is great" style PC posturing, but with an unvarnished wisdom that taught me the gay facts of life.

Like how I would never lead a normal life and that I should be gratful for that because normal life is bloody awful.

Crisp taught me not to be a slave to idealized romantic love that doesn't exist for anyone let alone femme queens like us. He taught me how to use my wits, he taught me how to behave and how to get invited to parties and get free dinners. He taught me the joys of Greta Garbo pictures.

He taught me to wise up and be fabulous.

For me, this classic film version is all about John Hurt- who delivers one of the greatest performances of the 1970's here.

This movie softens Quentin- it is also somewhat facile and very 70's rainbow flag in it's gay rights agenda which is fine and works on that level but isn't really Quentin.

The real Crisp was somewhat prickly about middle class "gay rights" and was somewhat reluctant to be the movement's posterboy. Perhaps he'd been burned a few too many time by middle class gay men and knew better.

Read Crisp- and discover his hard-boiled fabulousness- his glamorous nihilism and his pluck. Sadly most of his books are out of print but don't let that stop you and in the meantime, by all means, get this movie.

It's a great place to start.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Quentin Crisp (and John Hurt): A fine combination of wit, honesty, humanity and mascara
Comment: "Do you think a homosexual elephant has a terrible time of it?" Most of us undoubtedly have asked that question at one time or another, but I doubt if any except Quentin Crisp have asked it with such innocent interest. Crisp was, in his own words, an unregenerate degenerate. He was an English homosexual who saw no reason why he shouldn't be who he was. He was effeminate. He dressed flamboyantly, favoring broad-brimmed fedoras and flowing scarves. He wore make-up and hennaed his carefully coifed hair. He was witty but not malicious. He was willing to take people as they were, and saw no reason why he shouldn't expect the same for himself. Says Sting, who wrote a song about Crisp, "Quentin is a hero of mine, someone I know very well. He is gay, and he was gay at a time in history when it was dangerous to be so. He had people beating up on him on a daily basis, largely with the consent of the public. Yet, he continued to be himself."

The Naked Civil Servant, with a wonderfully nuanced performance by John Hurt as Crisp, takes us through Crisp's life until he was in his mid-seventies. Crisp died in 1999 when he was 90. Crisp apparently knew his own skin even as a child. As a young man, he tells us with innocent frankness, "I had already discovered for myself one fact of life, the only fact of life I've ever fully understood. I have a message for those who, like me, inhabit a world of make believe...sexual intercourse is a poor substitute for masturbation." That has to be one of the great autobiographical lines in English literature.

Crisp is important because he simply would not become what he wasn't. He also seemed to be a remarkably sympathetic person, amusing and perceptive without the burden of seeming to be wise. "Does he love you," a female friend asks about an awkward lover. "You are a woman," Crisp says. "You speak a language I do not understand. If love exists, which is something I wouldn't know, then love is never closing my hand even to the unlovable." He's not only realistic ("The sex was alright in a domestic sort of way, but never share a narrow bed with a wide, single man."), but also practical ("I have discovered a great labor-saving secret. After the first four years, the dust doesn't get any worse.").

For a year he was a prostitute. For years he made a small living as a paid model in art classes. "Being a model requires no education, no references and no previous experience. You have only to say `I do' and you're stuck with it for life...like marriage. I became a naked civil servant." He came to admire America and, at 71, moved permanently to a small bed-sitter in the lower East side. "The great difference between the Americans and the English is that Americans want you to succeed because they feel you may drag them forward with you, while the British want you to fail because they fear you may leave them behind."

Fame comes when he writes his autobiography, "The Naked Civil Servant." The book is turned into a British television movie starring John Hurt, which achieves great acclaim. Crisp finds an admiring audience for his wit and for the honesty of his life. When he is accosted by some nasty children because of how he looks, he stares at them and says, "I defy you to do your worst. It can hardly be my worst. Mine has already and often happened to me. You cannot touch me now. I am one of the stately homos of England!"

Still, when he enthusiastically agrees to have a movie made about him, he says, "Any film, even the worst, is better than real life." He says it with a smile, but it's an unsettling judgment.

I finished the movie with a great deal of admiration for Quentin Crisp. And if anyone doubts that John Hurt is a superb actor, watch Hurt's performance. The DVD looks just fine. The extras include a commentary track with Hurt, the director Jack Gold and the associate producer Valerie Lambert.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: The Sublime John Hurt...
Comment: .
This made-for-television BBC film from the mid-'70s is worth viewing for John Hurt's acting skill alone.

I saw this on PBS' Masterpiece Theater over thirty years ago and was mesmerized.
Hurt was hot off the set of I, Claudius where his portrayal of Caius ("Caligula") is a wonder of the art of acting wherein he combined hubris, langour, madness, and humour--what a confection!
I, Claudius

Hurt is of course a working actor, and unfortunately he has not always been given the excellent rôles he richly deserves. But, for example, his realization of Montrose in Rob Roy is the purest gold worth any amount of dross.
Rob Roy

Cheers to John Hurt who was born to play Quentin Crisp--"one of the great queans of England!"
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See too:
Wilde (Special Edition) (Oscar Wilde)
Carrington (Lytton Strachey)
.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Revisiting Quentin Crisp
Comment: "The Naked Civil Servant"

Revisiting Quentin Crisp

Amos Lassen

Last night I figured it was time to drop in on Quentin Crisp again as I hadn't seen "The Naked Civil Servant" in about 12 years. The film was first broadcast on Public Television in about 1975 and caused quite a sensation. Quentin Crisp was a British gay man who came out in the 1920's and he, himself, introduces the film about his life but with John Hurt playing him. The film follows his life as he found his place in the gay community of the time as well as his quest for fame and fortune. There is no sugarcoating; we see Crisp as he was--flamboyant and arrogant. The movie is as powerful now as it was when it was first shown. We see a man's determination to stand up for his right to be himself and this is what the film is about--an individual who would not give into the standards of society. He was ostracized by many but he did not stop being himself.
John Hurt gives an amazing performance and took the role to heart, Crisp, like Oscar Wilde, was the brunt of many jokes and nasty gossip, all because he wanted to be himself. Hurt gives us the spirit of the man who did not grovel to the conventions of society. In this way, Crisp gave the world a free spirited soul. Hurt's Crisp is a bon vivant and a serious determined man, who beneath his camp trappings is certainly not frivolous. He uses his wit and his dress as weapons against society and the smugs and stabs of the mainstream British establishment and society. Hurt shows him as a crusader who is appealing because of his own moral force in the way he faces prejudice. He has a wonderful sense of humor and he never loses his belief in humanity and lives his life undaunted and surrounds himself with friends. His world is eccentric and he speaks with authority. He busted out of the closet long before it was the fashionable thing to do and he was, quite simply, the most remarkable man. The film too is quite remarkable.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Done to a Crisp
Comment: I knew Quentin Crisp at the end of his life (for about twenty-six months, we ending up going out to a dinner, flick or play with a party of friends practically every weekend), and John Hurt has him down pat in this glorious film. CIVIL SERVANT, in either its English tv incarnation or book version, was most Americans' introduction to the unique Mr. C., and remains both a great jumping-off place to begin exploring Crisp-World, and one of the best film biographies ever. Like Henry Higgins' definition of good manners, Quentin was always the same to everyone, in every circumstance; public or private, the man remained his own spectacular creation, and the marvelous Hurt shows the origins of what was to become an internationally celebrated life. Thoroughly enjoyable, and highly, highly recommended.

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