Short Notices: 'I, a Man'
What is enjoyable in Warhol, as usual, is the mixture of humor (conscious or unconscious?) and perversion. Hence the best moments [in I, A Man] are the staircase misunderstanding between Baker and a Mao-capped girl who resists his pressing advances, the close-ups of four feet playing with each other under a bed where Baker and girl two are trying out new amorous techniques, or the scene where Baker weighs the breasts of a girl as if they were apples. Because of the number of seduction scenes one man performs with changing female partners, the female species is reduced to an object to be moulded without conviction. Warhol achieves the negation of femininity through the epidermic game of ambivalence—in which he is unbeatable. The final session of the film between a rather unattractive guilt-ridden married woman and the obsessive Baker is an unexpected study of the psychology of a frustrated women which goes a bit deeper than the rest of the film….
Technically, I, A Man is Warhol's best film to date with an almost consistently focused photography and an interesting attempt at doing the editing inside the camera. (p. 59)
Claire Clouzot, "Short Notices: 'I, a Man'," in Film Quarterly (copyright 1968 by The Regents of the University of California; reprinted by permission of the University of California Press), Vol. XXI, No. 4, Summer, 1968, p. 59.
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