Private Property (1960)

[StevePulaski]

Private Property (1960)
Directed by: Leslie Stevens

Kate Manx and Corey Allen.

Rating: ★★★

One of the handful of impressive things about Leslie Steven's Private Property besides its recent restoration and re-release coming to fruition is the way it nicely, often elegantly, interweaves the look and convictions that came with the bridge-period between New Hollywood and the previous Golden Age with the themes and premise of an exploitation film. Directed with a focus on craft and written with a cognizance of suspense over shocks, Stevens' film shows how the limits can be pushed to great effect when it appears that they are not being pushed at all.

Shot with a $59,000 budget in ten days at Steven's home, Private Property was the brain-child that came from both Stevens and producer Stanley Colbert's love for the ongoing French New Wave, particularly the work of French director Francois Truffaut. After a successful release in Europe, the film failed to gain distribution in America and for years remained largely inaccessible to the American public, with the exception of a famous screening for John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie Kennedy, who were both disturbed and disgusted by the film. The film was "some awful, sordid thing," Jackie would remark in an interview with Arthur Schlesinger.

For years without known distribution, the film was presumed lost, until a print was rediscovered, purchased by Cinelicious Pictures in 2016 and given a world-class digital restoration for theatrical and home video release. On that note, those looking for a shock film that was lucky to see the light of day will need to refer to the recently cleaned up print of John Waters' Multiple Maniacs for more disturbing content. Private Property is a different kind of film in the regard that it doesn't pander to the standards of shock and awe, but instead opts for quiet, surmounting discomfort and intrigue thanks to its minimalist premise and sole setting.

Set in Los Angeles, the film encounters two Beatnik-drifters named Duke (Corey Allen) and Boots (Warren Oates) as the two traverse the Pacific coast with little money in search of opportunity any way they can get it. They fondly recall past sins of robbery and rape in very ambiguous detail, but after harassing the owner of a local service station, Duke makes a pact to Boots that he will allow him to have "his turn" with the next woman they meet.

That woman turns out to be the attractive, wealthy housewife Ann Carlyle (Kate Manx), who spends most of her days cooped up inside the mansion in which her and her husband live. Duke and Boots hitch a ride in pursuit of the woman to her home, where she suntans when Boots approaches her after the two snoop around her house. In effort to make his time feel well spent, Duke searches the house for belongings and jewelry that could be sold or pawned for cash while Boots' facetious attempts at courtship slowly manifest into genuine interest and lust for Ann. Ann is too smitten by attention and conversation to see his or his pal's obvious manipulative intentions; she's just amazed she finally has someone to talk to after what appears to be years of loneliness.

Stevens, who also serves as the film's screenwriter, is wise to let a majority of the film's middle-section be dedicated to the courtship between Ann and Boots, as stunted and as awkward as it initially is. He constructs the now-familiar trope of the audience knowing more than one of the characters in a sense of what kind of danger they are presently in, and positioning Manx's dame (Manx was also the real-life spouse of Stevens) as both the center of the film and the unaware victim is an unsettling move on Stevens' behalf. Manx and Oates play their characters effectively, Manx speaking with a voice that's identifiable in its affluent tone marked by her own inflections and intellect while Oates' linguistical beat feels much more jarring and blurted, not to mention his vocabulary being layman. Allen is given a lot of time to slither around the immaculate home, meaning his body language and facial characteristics are what remains the most attractive about his performance.

Another character so ever-present in the film is the gradual ominous aura that overtakes the film's premise and turns recognizable character archetypes as well as an ordinarily unassuming setting into elements that complete a successful potboiler of a film. Added doses of psychological instability of the two main characters, in addition to the semiotic and symbolic interactions of the trio create a film that will resonate with you depending on how willing you are to dig deep into its undertones.

Private Property really compliments its era nicely. During a time where films like Burt Topper's terrific thriller The Strangler slipped under the radar while playing to a similar tune, Private Property exists like a demented, sociopathic version of Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop, where all there really is, at the end of the day, are two characters and a device, in this case, Ann, who is just as much a character as she is an object of lust, passion, and exuberant wealth and opportunity for the boys to exploit. Stevens plays to a beat of balance in making this film look like a sleeker production than what its premise leads on, and it functions as a terrific, early example of the wonders and potential of independent American cinema.

Starring: Corey Allen, Warren Oates, and Kate Manx. Directed by: Leslie Stevens.