Review: 'Passing Strangers' is A Backwards Glance At A Bygone Era

Two of the erotic films that director Arthur J. Bressan, Jr. made in the 1970s are coming back. The first of them – 1974's "Passing Strangers" – easily justifies the work that went into its 2K original camera negative scan, including as it does high-quality color footage of the 1972 inaugural Gay Freedom Day Parade from 1972, as well as the 1974 edition of the event.

These images are the documentary pearl embedded in this cinematic oyster, but that's not to say the rest of the film isn't a juicy, briny experience. "Passing Strangers" has a certain literate (and literary) feel to it, starting with a personals ad that riffs on a Walt Whitman poem. The ad has been placed by Tom (Robert Carnagey), a 28-year-old gay man who (as he relates in a letter) spends his weeknights at the Stud, his weekends at the baths, and his Sunday afternoons "cruising on Polk Street."

Tom's letters are written in answer to those sent him by 18-year-old Robert (Robert Adams, also the star of Bressan's 1979 film "Forbidden Letters"). Tom's personals ad has caught Robert's eye, and fired his imagination. "It's been very difficult for me to enter the gay world," the young man writes, and that's not a wonder – he's still in school, he lives with his parents, and he's never "gotten outside my head" when it comes to entering into a romantic relationship.

Through a series of letters (and the illustrative scenes, many of them sexual, that unfold as the letters are voiced aloud), Tom and Robert edge toward an in-person meeting. When they do connect, the world lights up: Bressan switches from black and white to color, following the two as they fly a kite on Angel Island, and then observes as they make their way to a secluded spot where they can lay out a blanket, shuck off their kit, and get busy.

Many of Bressan's stylistic and thematic interests are on display here; as with the later "Forbidden Letters" we see a romance between an older man and a younger one; we're shown the characters' fantasies and hookups; we're told the story not through dialogue but through an epistolary reading of correspondence (with the occasional phone call).

We also get Bressan's sarcastic takedowns of the cheaply-made, artless porno films of that (and any) era. Bressan himself cameos as a projectionist in an "art cinema," where the bill of fare includes a blockbuster with the Russ Meyers-esque title "Fuck Me, Fuck Me, My Sweet." Complaining to Tom about the week's new films, Bressan's character gripes about "washed out color, shitty prints, lousy soundtracks" – all of which Bressan pointedly avoids, as do the people behind this high-def scan (prepared press notes for this release say, "by Vinegar Syndrome in partnership with The Bressan Project and the Outfest UCLA Legacy Project for Moving Image Preservation").

Jeff Olsted scores the film, which also boasts some period-specific songs that fit well with the Gay Freedom Day Parade sequence, which serves as a capstone to Tom and Robert's revelatory day of companionship. This film feels like a fond backward glance at a vanished time – a pre-AIDS, almost-legendary San Francisco in which the phrase "gay mecca" was less a half-snarky jibe than a sincere and grateful description of a place were gay people could be themselves, forging their own specific culture and history. To borrow from another poet, this film – lovingly resurrected and streaming now at PinkLabel.tv – shines with the light of other days, a light we can only try our best to preserve against the darkness.

"Passing Strangers" is streaming now at PinkLabel.tv.