The Past in Petulia

Petulia (1968) has a visual style which makes it difficult to tell whether director Richard Lester is trying to conform or not. The film begins with the juxtaposition of two very different shots which frequently alternate to provide a comparison of the old and the new. In one group of shots include a loud Grateful Dead concert with youthful concert-goers dancing. The other group of shots focuses on the wealthy victims of highway accidents being pushed in wheelchairs through the absolutely silent hallways of the same hotel. Eventually the two shots come together and Lester takes this opportunity to show that older high-society citizens clearly disapprove of the behavior of the youth.

One of the key themes in Petulia is that living in America, even in San Francisco, “the best the country has to offer” is like living in prison (359). Archie, Polo, and Petulia all are imprisoned by the present and it seems that they were only truly “living” in the past. Lester frequently inserts shots to reflect the past of each of the characters, but there is no coherent order to the shots. In one instance Petulia is staring off into space in the present when we are suddenly transported to her last visit to Tijuana. When she sees a new car on display she is taken back to the day she saw a young Mexican boy get hit by a car. Petulia was happy with David in the past, but his abusive nature has made her a prisoner of life. David is abusive and his family denies the truth, so Petulia does not have the means of escaping from her situation. She becomes determined to save Olivar, Archie, and anyone else because she has no way of saving herself.

Archie is living in the past because everyone in his life reminds him what a “handsome couple” he and Polo were. When Archie and his friends are looking at a slideshow from a family camping trip from a year before Wilma mentions that she cannot look at him without thinking of Polo. Another interesting aspect of the storytelling is that both of the women in Archie’s life seem to see the other in his face before they’ve even met each other. Petulia says that she already knows who Polo is by reading Archie’s expression when he’s thinking about her. Polo mentions that she knows what kind of condition Petulia’s in by looking at his face. All of these incidents indicate that Archie’s face reveals everything about his past. Lester’s portrayal of San Francisco and life within his version of San Francisco both seem artificial. Lester deliberately used filters reduce the beauty of the lights of San Francisco City (359). The citizens of San Francisco are also portrayed as disconnected and apathetic hippies who are not surprised to see a woman who has almost been beaten to death. When two workers are installing a greenhouse in Archie’s apartment they tell him not to let any real sunlight hit the flowers. To allow the flowers to grow there is no substitute for artificial light.

Artificiality also has a strong presence in Archie’s clinic. The rooms are furnished with dummy televisions to encourage the patients to purchase a real one, and the doctors who explain this hospital policy to the patients seem to think that it is quite a clever idea. Petulia’s father in-law is a particularly superficial character. It seems that he is visiting her in the hospital to show that he is being supportive, but it is obvious that he has no idea how to speak with her, and he doesn’t say anything that could pass for reassuring. He instead becomes outraged upon discovering that the curtains in her room are dirty, and takes it personally only because he has donated money to the hospital.

Archie’s son says, “Alcatraz taught the world that you can get out of anything if you want to bad enough.” This quote prophetically serves to tell us that we will see all these characters break out of their prisons by the end of the film. In the end the situations of each character have not changed much, but they all change the way in which they see their lives, and this is how they free themselves.

In her essay titled “Trash, Art, and the Movies” Pauline Kael criticizes many mainstream American films not for fitting into the category of film that she calls trash, but rather for the tendency of trash films to attempt to disguise themselves. “A critical success that is also a hit makes the director a genius; he’s a magician who made money out of art” (359). The need for movies to make money pressures directors to justify their film’s existence by making the film seem more serious, more consequential, and of more social significance than it really is. Lester’s attempt to make the film morally and socially significant is one of Kael’s key criticisms about Petulia. Calling the film Lester’s “hate letter to America” (359) Kael says, “What’s terrible is not so much this feeble conventional trash as the director’s attempts to turn it all into scintillating art and burning comment” (361). According to Kael these films are not “honestly crummy, they’re very fancy and they take their crummy ideas seriously” (359). Kael’s main problem with this tendency for trash films to be dishonest about their purpose is that they create the assumption in society that films which exist simply to be enjoyable or entertaining are not good enough. Not all film needs to be high-society art. Films should allow both the filmmakers and the audience to escape the conventions and expectations set by society.