Perhaps at first glance, the filmography of Silvio Narizzano appears unremarkable. Thanks to his sleeper hit Georgy Girl (1966), he's known largely as a "one-hit wonder" director. Upon closer inspection, however, likely no other filmmaker used cinema as effectively to exorcise personal demons in ways both ugly and beautiful. And few directors' sensibilities were more gay, both overtly and covertly. Film historian Daniel Kremer is your tour guide through an obscure, perplexing body of work heretofore ignored and often unfairly shunned. Cruel, Usual, Necessary: The Passion of Silvio Narizzano is an essay documentary of discovery.
Silvio Narizzano is among the vanguard of early English Canadian filmmakers that also included Sidney J. Furie, Ted Kotcheff, Norman Jewison, Lindsay Shonteff, and Arthur Hiller. Born in Montreal, his first theatrical work was with the city's Mountain Playhouse before joining the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He was the first among the aforementioned Canadian filmmakers to emigrate to England to work in British television, and was creatively instrumental in the formation of Granada Television. In transitioning to cinema later than Furie, Kotcheff, and Jewison, he made his debut with the Hammer Studios classic Die! Die! My Darling (1965), before scoring his greatest acclaim as director of Georgy Girl (1966). He followed that up with Blue (1968), a misunderstood critical and commercial flop, but a film that remained, to him, the most personal film of his career. He continued making films in mainland Europe throughout the 70's, before returning to Canada to make Why Shoot the Teacher? (1977) and England to make The Class of Miss Macmichael (1978). Narizzano spent his twilight years in relative seclusion, having immersed himself in religious studies.