Years ago, Al Pacino made a few films, sometimes directing as well as acting, that he never released for theatrical showing; some were shown to friends or at a festival or museum, but never generally released. A while ago, he released a DVD box with 2 or 3 of these. (The films are mentioned in an interesting piece on Pacino in September’s Smithsonian magazine; that’s where we learned of them.)
Last night we watched one of those, The Local Stigmatic, made in the late ’80’s. It’s just under an hour long and is essentially the filming of an enactment of a mid-60’s one act play by Heathcote Williams. It’s a play that Pacino had acted in from time to time over the 2 decades before filming it, and stars him, Paul Guilfoyle and Joseph Mayer.
The acting is wondrous; the language rich; the intensity extraordinary — the play’s not so pretty! A couple of very smart, very working class, very knowledgeable about both dog racing and stage and film stars, very violent Brits, talk, tell anecdotes, go out, drink and beat up a guy.
If you like Pacino, dark humor and great dialogue, you’ll relish the movie; similarly, if you like mid-’60’s working class, angry young man British drama!
If you get the DVD, there’s both a prologue and an epilogue of Pacino talking about the play and the film. Make sure to watch both.