Dir: James Bidgood. BFI 4k restoration 2026
Reviewed by Peter Herbert
Fifty-five years have passed since Pink Narcissus first saw the light of day in New York sex cinemas in 1971. Time has not diminished James Bidgood’s labour of love that has grown into an even more immersive experience inspiring generations of filmmakers, set designers and imaginative purveyors of all sorts of gay fashionista.
The source of this film is the febrile creative imagination of James Bidgood (1933-2022) a shop window dresser by day and drag artist by night in the twilight world of New York. Pink Narcissus is a fantasy dream world created in the living room of Bidgood’s Manhattan flat where he brought back shop window props, materials and discarded objects including foam blocks turned into urinals. These created a fantasy dream world for the male beauty of Bobby Kendall who was the muse for Bidgood. During ten-years of filming, Kendall inspired the director’s idea of burgeoning sexuality fighting demons out to crush a young man’s sexual awakening.
The key element that emboldened Bigwood was not only Kenneth Anger’s Fireworks (1947) but also Michael Powell’s Black Narcissus (1948) which fascinated Bidgood for the inventive ways that Powell created, the intoxicating air of the Himalayas on an English film set. Bidgood’s imagination was also inspired by teenage love of Maria Montez and Jon Hall in colourful 1940s bargain basement recreations of tales from the Arabian Nights. He also created a world of matadors in Spanish bullfighting rings and evoked the myths of Bacchus, Narcissus and Orpheus in the underworld.
The new BFI 4k restoration elevates the sound track with heightened sound effects, music by Mussorgsky, Prokofiev and scratchy vinyl recording of a crooner song with the lyric ‘I’ve grown so lonesome thinking of you tonight’. Restoration preserves the original grainy texture of 1960s 8mm cameras although opens up details not seen before including strings that bring to life the flapping wings of butterflies which all add to the film’s charm and beautiful artifice.
Close-ups reflecting the power of the eye to watch, look and see, and as with Powell, these confront the viewer’s complicit eye. Neon lit petals of flowers dappled by rain drops and the sound of broken glass heard while looking at a white cobweb shimmering before the moon at night are very inventive. The mouth agape with the movement of lips, the flow of liquid and rows of beads caressed by a hand are imaginatively filmed with Pink Narcissus pulling off explicit images of nudity involving the penis in ways that circumvent restrictions imposed by censorship.
The film had production issues with the film’s backers. This was due to Bidgood’s bold concept of the sensual beauty of a young man’s sexuality threatened and damaged by the corrupting power of consumer materialism bringing plagues of disease and the prophecy of AIDS to come. These scenes anchor the film and prefigure ideas and images to be found in Pasolini’s Salo 120 Days in Sodom (1975) and Coppola’s Megalopolis (2025). They are ground breaking for a film of fantastique phantasm initially screened in downtown sex cinemas.
Pink Narcissus began filming in 1962 through to 1970. First screened in 1971, it was rediscovered in the mid 1980’s with legendary screenings at London’s Scala Cinema. Although Bidgood disowned the film, with his name replaced as Anonymous, he eventually welcomed the film and its belated success. Peter Strickland has since created Blank Narcissus:A Passion of the Swamp in 2022 with the director’s (imaginary) voice over commentary for a lost film.
Pink Narcissus is widely admired and accepted as a notableexample of immersive independent cinema built out of the imaginative use of poverty row image and sounds. The influence on Pierre and Giles, David LaChapelle, Jean Paul Gaultier and artwork including design of the 2026 BFI LGBT Flare Festival is very clear as is the way observant eyes can see traces of Bidgood while passing shop window displays.
BFI FLARE 18-29 MARCH 2026
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