Kinsey

Screening: 27 February 2006

USA/Germany 2004
Directed by Bill Condon
Leading players ~ Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Peter Skarsgaard.
118 minutes

Synopsis

Regarded as the instigator of the so-called 'Sexual Revolution', Kinsey was a difficutly, domineering man, driven by the need to rebel against his repressive Methodist schoolteacher father. He was also that strange mix - the judgmental non-judgementalist and an anti-Christian humanist with the ability to accept people of all faiths or none.

The audience is led through Kinsey's early years, the birth of his radical ideas and the impact thet had on society and those around him. The film succeeds because it does not thoroughly relish the subject matter and manages to stand at some distance from what is, at times, disturbing material.

Before turning his attention to human sexuality, Kinsey was a world expert on the gall wasp and these studies taught him that diversity and experimentation were biologically inevitable. This same idea is what shocked so many. His first report, in 1948, challenged not only the prevailing idea of what was "normal" but also the laws and moral codes that enforced that normality.

The film has been criticized for failing to address, or even mention, Kinsey's reliance on what most people regard as morally offensive methods of research to further his studies, especially those into the sexuality of men and children. A significant flaw but only terminal if the audience takes no interest in the biography of the subject and relies wholly on the director for an objective view. That would surely be the death of many films.

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Film Facts

The film's 37-day shoot had to cover the scope of Dr. Kinsey's 15 years of research during which he interviewed 18,000 people across the USA.

Prior to international fame Kinsey was best known for an obscure 1929 volume about gall wasps.

Bill Condon interviewed many of Kinsey's colleagues before he started writing the script.

Kinsey developed a seven-point continuum based on the degree of sexual responsiveness people have to the members of the same and other sex.

Cole Porter wrote the song Too Darn Hot for the Broadway musical Kiss Me Kate, which premiered in 1948, the same year as the publication of Kinsey's book Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male. The song contains the lyrics "According to the Kinsey report / every average man you know / much prefers to play his favourite sport / when the temperature is low." The Ella Fitzgerald recording of this song is played on the soundtrack.

Sexual Behavior in the Human Male was the first bestseller about sex.