Throughout cinema history, there have been some iconic nude scenes that have transcended the bounds of the films in which they appeared. Our weekly column Anatomy of a Scene's Manatomy will take an in-depth look at these scenes, their history, their deeper meanings, and their legacy. This week, complete unknown Jaye Davidson becomes the talk of the town thanks to the Oscar-winning film The Crying Game!
Irish director Neil Jordan began his career as a novelist in the late 70s before moving to the world of film by working as a "creative consultant" on John Boorman's Excalibur. He then embarked on a directing career, making some critically acclaimed genre pictures in the 80s like The Company of Wolves and Mona Lisa, before coming to America and floundering as a comedy director with two consecutive high profile bombs, High Spirits and We're No Angels. Feeling creatively bankrupt, he returned to the UK to continue work on a script he had shelved titled "The Soldier's Wife."
The film's story borrowed a conceit from the 1931 Frank O'Connor short story "Guests of the Nation," and centered around a British soldier captured and held for ransom by some IRA operatives, one of whom befriends the soldier. In Jordan's version, however, the captive soldier Jody (Forest Whitaker), entreats the friendly IRA agent Fergus (Stephen Rea) to seek out Jody's significant other Dil (Jaye Davidson) in London should he not make it out alive. Jody is killed and Fergus is presumed dead following a raid on his unit's headquarters, but Fergus survives and travels to London to keep his promise to Jody. He meets and eventually falls for Dil, a gorgeous nightclub singer unaware of Fergus' past history with Jody. However, Dil has a secret she is also keeping from Fergus, and that's the twist on which the entire film hinges.
During rewrites, Jordan had the idea to change the character of Dil from a woman to a transgendered man, a decision that made it very difficult for the director to get his film financed. Nearly every studio Jordan approached with the project wanted him to cast a woman in the role, but Jordan refused. One change he did make, at the behest of none other than Stanley Kubrick, was the change the title of the film. Kubrick told Jordan that "The Soldier's Wife" made it sound like a war film, which it decidedly was not, and Jordan eventually borrowed his title from an old Dave Berry tune from the 60s,The Crying Game. The song would be re-recorded for the film by Boy George, giving the androgynous pop star his first hit since 1987...
Jordan's dogged determination to cast a man in the role of Dil was almost doomed when his casting calls failed to turn up a single male actor who could convincingly portray a character who appears to be a woman in most scenes. It seemed as though Jordan might actually have to give in to studio pressure to cast a woman when filmmaker Derek Jarman (Caravaggio, Edward II) recommended Jaye Davidson, a completely unknown non-actor who was Jarman's friend. Jordan met with Davidson and knew almost immediately that he had his Dil, though Davidson later admitted that he only took the role to buy a pair of leather riding boots he had seen in Vogue Magazine.
Due to nearly every studio's insistence that the film's twist was a dealbreaker, the film went into production on a shoestring budget that only got tighter as shooting continued. After discovering that she and Davidson were the same size, costume designer Sandy Powell actually provided nearly all of Dil's wardrobe from her own closet. Looking at the film today, you'd hardly believe it was made for a little more than two million pounds, as Jordan cleverly kept nearly all of the major "action sequences" in the film off camera. It's a true testament to his work as a director that the film looks as good as it does considering how much budgetary adversity the film had to overcome.
Upon the film's release in the UK in October, 1992, it was far from successful, mostly due to the film's political overtones which hit much closer to home, thanks in no small part to the film taking a sympathetic approach to an IRA fighter. In the US, however, Miramax acquired the film's domestic distribution and their promotional campaign centered heavily around the film's twist—without revealing it, of course—and the film became a sleeper hit. Critical praise and word-of-mouth helped the film secure a $60 million box office take, as well as seven Oscar nominations, including one for Jaye Davidson in the Best Supporting Actor category.
One might think that this would have given up the game and spoiled the film's mind-blowing twist, but audiences somehow didn't put two and two together until they actually saw it for themselves. Dil's big reveal comes roughly halfway through the film. Fergus, now calling himself Jimmy, is wracked with guilt over the death of Jody, and pursues Dil to the point of fending off a potential attack against her. A little past the one hour mark, Dil and "Jimmy" finally go to her place to have sex, and "Jimmy" gets the surprise of his life when he comes face to face with Dil's Jimmy...
Fergus' reaction is to shove Dil out of his way as he goes to vomit, a potentially terrifying harbinger of how his retribution toward Dil might manifest itself. Instead, Fergus eventually determines that he loves Dil, regardless of her gender, and ultimately takes the fall when Dil murders Fergus' former IRA partner Jude (Miranda Richardson). The moment launched a thousand pre-internet memes, finding itself spoofed in well over a hundred other pieces of pop culture from 1994's Ace Ventura: Pet Detective all the way up to 2018's Game Night. It's perhaps the most talked about twist of the 90s after The Sixth Sense, but unlike that flick, the film doesn't necessarily hinge on that twist.
The Crying Game's twist does change the temperature of the film and obviously affects the plot, but it doesn't fundamentally change everything that came before in the same way other big twists of the 90s do, like the ones found in The Sixth Sense and The Usual Suspects. Instead, it gives the film's characters—Fergus in particular—time to reflect on their life choices to that point and present them with a clear path forward to actually doing the right thing rather than paying that notion a lot of lip service. Jordan would win the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for his efforts and the film continues to be one of the more honest and sympathetic films of the 90s in terms of presenting transgendered characters. A true watershed moment if ever there was one.
Join us again next week when we dig into the dueling male nude scenes of Nicolas Roeg's 1976 sci-fi masterpiece The Man Who Fell to Earth!
Catch up with our other editions of Anatomy of a Scene's Manatomy...
—Two of History's Manliest Men Wrestle Naked in Women in Love
—Ewan McGregor Has Got It, Flaunts It in Velvet Goldmine
—A Pair of Stars are Born in Y Tu Mamá También
—Harvey Keitel Goes Hog Wild in Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant
—Viggo Mortensen is Naked From Every Imaginable Angle in Eastern Promises
—There's No Shame is Michael Fassbender's Dick Game
—Kevin Bacon Steals the Show Going Full Frontal in Wild Things
