A collage of imagery from the world of pop art, including
references to classical painting, horror comics and films, pop art itself,
underground films, pornography, and surrealism, among others. Show full synopsis
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Size M is more sinister in tone than the other underground films made by Tony
Sinden at the end of the 1960s. Arcade (1970) uses sunny Brighton locations and
up-beat garage rock music. Size M, in contrast, is dark, murky and soundtracked
with reversed speech and atmospheric tones.
Sinden's actors are very relaxed in front of the camera but still manage to
convey something peculiarly transgressive. The man with a shotgun and his masked
accomplice led on all fours like a dog are unsettling, but the identity- and
gender-shifting 'Size M' is more peculiar still. Our sense of him keeps changing
as he moves between different landscapes, adopting different masks and
hairstyles. The final revelation that 'he' is a woman, however, still fails to
provide any kind of neat, unifying resolution. The uncertainty surrounding both
who he is and what he has done is as much a chase as the one contained in the
narrative.
The film's air of transgression and many of its stylistic tropes, such as the
cross-cutting and superimpositions, have parallels with the work of the
celebrated New York underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger, whose Scorpio Rising
(1964), among others, presented a series of pop tunes cut to images, in a way
mirrored by Sinden's Arcade. Like Scorpio Rising, Size M fetishises gang culture and the rebel; both films make a prominent feature of the leather jacket,
archetypal signifier of the rebel. In Anger's film, the hero, Scorpio, has his
name written on his jacket with studs. In Sinden's, the name 'Size M' is boldly
emblazoned on a T-shirt worn underneath the character's heavy leathers. The use
of 'Size M' - a clothing size (medium) - as the name of a rebel, as well as the
reference to Scorpio Rising creates a dynamic play to counter the otherwise
sinister tone of the film. It also adds a stamp of British quirkiness to
something of American origin.
Size M is one of several films made by Sinden with support from the BFI
Production Board in the 1960s and 70s. Many were made in Brighton in the orbit
of fellow experimental filmmaker, Jeff Keen. Keen worked with some of the same
people and also used fantasy and costume.
William Fowler
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Complete film (8:07)
