By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Word and Image: Hoberman on Whitehead
Peter Whitehead‘s a key filmmaking observer of the 1960s, and J. Hoberman describes his Anthology Archives retro in the VOICE: [T]he High Sixties are the historical moment on which no one has any perspective—least of all those who lived through it… As much scene-maker as filmmaker, Whitehead personified the late-’60s breakdown of boundaries in postwar Britain. This working-class 
Cambridge grad was the original rock’n’roll documentarian; with reckless camerawork matched by tumultuous editing, he plunged into London’s sex-drugs-and-protest counterculture with a frenzied there-ness.” Hoberman surveys the near-complete survey, including a Led Zeppelin concert film. “Made in collaboration with artist Niki de Saint Phalle, Daddy… is an elaborate psychodrama in which the elegant, imperious de Saint Phalle revisits the moldering gothic site of her childhood. The artless style suggests early John Waters and so does the material, which—genteel but shocking—restages de Saint Phalle’s childhood abuse before careening into an elaborate s/m fantasy that involves setting up Mummy as a whore and humiliating “Duddee” as a dog. Payback reaches its uncomfortable climax when Niki tantalizes her nemesis with schoolgirl jailbait (Mia Martin, a teenage model-cum-heiress who was Whitehead’s current inamorata). Spanking and masturbation verge on the pornographic until Niki decides that Daddy, already killed off a dozen times, is “just a girl in disguise.” Face painted, he gives birth to some broken dolls. This unforgettably unpleasant movie—more cathartic for de Saint Phalle than the viewer—was Whitehead’s last to receive any American notice… A few years later, Whitehead would reinvent himself as a falconer, employed at one point by the House of Saud.”
