The Lost Film Stigmata

by Jeffrey Greene

Table of Contents

Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3

conclusion

“There is a brief shot of a barred window through which we see barren grounds sloping down to a jungly hillside, and then another piece of notebook paper bearing the words: STIGMATIC ‘MARIA.’ PRIZE PATIENT OF DR. STAUPITZ. The next image we see is fortunately in focus: sitting in a straight-backed chair is an albino girl with an abnormally high, bulging forehead and long, matted hair. Her eyes are rolled back, her skin gleams with perspiration, and her lips seem to form the words of an incessant prayer. Her hands are outstretched in front of her at arm’s length, like those of a sleepwalker, revealing fingernails several inches long that twist and curl back on themselves.

“The same doctor with the rigid neck — probably Staupitz — is sitting facing her, his back again to the camera. This time, he is holding a beaker and a pair of surgical scissors. With deliberate care, he cuts through one of the fingernails, a good two inches from the quick, and then holds the beaker to catch the blood that flows in a shocking jet from the nail.

“Involuntary tremors pass through the girl’s wasted frame; the skin of her forehead shudders like a horse’s hide; her lips writhe back from rotting teeth; and her face is transfigured by an expression that one might poorly describe as tortured ecstasy. When the blood ceases to flow, the doctor stands up and, as he turns toward the camera, the screen goes black and FIN flickers briefly and disappears.”

Howard finished his beer, then went into the kitchen and brought back two more. When he sat down again, I said, “I like the idea of a sleazy Mondo director stumbling on some dangerous secret, at least the way you’ve told it. But you were obviously disappointed.”

He smiled. “Well, if we lay aside the wretched execution and think of it, for the sake of argument, as a ‘documentary disguised as fiction,’ two problems occur to me. First, several scenes, such as the narrator’s panicky flight after the scary phone call, had to have been shot by a fifth crew member whom we never see and who apparently stands outside the cycle of fatality that we are led to believe only the narrator escapes.

“Second, if such a clinic really did exist where experiments were being conducted in the same kind of ethical vacuum as those of Nazi doctors, and if the people behind such a project had the power and willingness to kill over great distances in order to keep their secret, then why is the film being shown anywhere, especially in Mexico?”

I ventured a hypothesis: “They probably thought — correctly, if you take Curry’s review as an example — that no one would believe it wasn’t fiction.”

“That’s what I thought,” Howard replied, frowning. “I... suppose I ought to tell you the rest of what happened.” There was reluctance in his voice, and an expression of distaste twisting his mouth.

“When the lights came up in the theater, I was forcefully reminded of my affliction. The bathroom in there... well, toilets in Hell could be no fouler than that one was. I was in the last stall, for the moment finished with my business, holding the broken door shut with one hand and breathing through my mouth, when I heard two men come in.

“One of them went into the stall next to mine; the other began washing his hands. I’m pretty sure they were unaware of my presence. The man at the sink began speaking in German to the other man. Now, my grandparents spoke nothing but German around the house and, though I don’t speak much myself, I understand it pretty well. He said, ‘Geduld. Er kommt. Am Ende.’ (‘Patience. He’ll come. Eventually.’)

“Answering in a harsh bass voice, the man in the stall said: ‘Aber ich bin mir nicht ganz sicher. Wir haben uns vielleicht zu sehr auf seine künstleriche Eitelkeit verlassen.’ (‘But I am not so sure. We may have relied too much on his artistic vanity.’)

“Having been to the Yucatan yourself, you know that German tourists are everywhere. There was nothing unusual about the fact that these two had seen the movie and were now in the bathroom discussing something unrelated to it. But remember: I had just seen a film that, in spite of its atrocious editing and tiny budget, had had an undeniable effect on me. That Stigmata was thrown together with such loving carelessness argued something more than mere incompetence: it bespoke desperation.

“And then there was that three-minute clip at the end, the disturbing authenticity of which reminded me of those famous fragments of assassinations and disasters that would ring less true if they were filmed by a professional with a mounted camera instead of a quick-thinking bystander with a hand-held eight-millimeter. Combine this unsettled mood with a slight fever and the unbreathable atmosphere of the toilet, and you’ll understand why my imagination was so easily nudged into paranoid channels.

“Cansinos behauptet, er hat Ihn in San Christóbal gesehen,’ said the man at the sink. (‘Cansinos claims to have seen him in San Christóbal.’)

“‘Cansinos!’ snorted the other man contemptuously. ‘Wo hat er Ihn nicht gesehen?’ (‘Where hasn’t he seen him?’)

“What occurred to me after hearing that exchange was simply this: the ‘Brazilian distributor’ that had supposedly bought the rights to Stigmata was either acting as the agent for the organization behind the mysterious clinic or never existed at all. It’s doubtful that the film was ever released in South America. They could have covered their tracks by destroying the prints, but someone, as I imagined it — Dr. Staupitz or one of his superiors — decided that the anonymous director remained a threat to them.

“A film can always be faked, but the possibility existed that some government official might believe his story if he told it often enough. Since it was imperative to kill Anonymous, and he had so far eluded his pursuers, my improbable logic ran, why not show the film selectively, in areas where they would have reason to believe he was hiding, and seed the audience with their agents, and wait for his vanity to overcome his vigilance? They would reason that, never having seen the finished work on the big screen, he would be irresistibly drawn to view his creation and observe its effect on a movie audience. It might take months, even years, but eventually he would come and they would be waiting.

“Then something else occurred to me: suppose they were still ignorant of his identity, or had no recent photographs to go by? What if Anonymous just happened to be about my age and height, with dark hair and gray eyes? Admittedly, it was a great deal to infer from a few snatches of conversation overheard in a bathroom. But I carefully lifted my feet off the floor and sat very still, in no hurry at all to quit my hiding place. They left without detecting my presence and, after cowering in the privy for several minutes longer, I left the theater and scurried back to the hotel.”

“You weren’t followed?” I asked with a smile. “No attempts on your life since you got back?”

“None that I’ve noticed,” he drily replied.

“Well, you have to admit that, taken out of context, there really isn’t anything sinister in what you overheard.”

“Of course!” he said. “The whole thing sounds like the plot of one of those ridiculous wartime serials: a secret neo-Nazi group trying to introduce the Fourth Reich in pill form. Of course it’s absurd. Which doesn’t alter the fact that I was afraid. But it isn’t the fear that troubles me; that part of it was exhilarating, at least in retrospect. It’s the resentment I felt... feel.”

“Resentment?” I asked.

“At him... Anonymous. For having the effrontery, the indecency, to pull me out of my seat and into his bad movie. I could never forgive Costa-Gavras in his films Z and State of Siege for trying to politicize me. Of all the blind cave-fish in the world, he wants to drain my pool and give me an eye transplant.

“And this Anonymous; what the hell does he expect me to do? Start putting cryptic ads in the personals of major newspapers? ‘Message received. Awaiting orders.’ He should have the sense to know that some of us prefer to watch our movies alone and leave by the rear exit. How dare he involve me in his cause, even if there isn’t any cause? Who does he think he is?”

Howard had worked himself up to that peculiar indignation I had seen on other occasions, which was both artificial and very real to him. I nodded sympathetically but made no reply and, a few moments later, he left his chair and knelt before the fan, thrusting his face close to the blades, so that when he spoke his voice was curdled.

“You know, it’s strange, but if I were alone in a theater and a man in the seat in front of me were to turn around — exhibiting a marked stiffness in his neck — and say something corny like, ‘At last we meet, Anonymous. I am Dr. Staupitz,’ I would be relieved. And if you were to hear that I’d mysteriously disappeared, then you would be relieved. We would both be relieved of the exhausting burden of ambiguity. We would have the blessed symmetry of Real/Not-real, documentary and fiction, the simple division that makes action possible. I could be content to live a repetitive celluloid existence at twenty-four frames per second, or sit happily in a movie theater forever, but this cross-pollination of reality and film is intolerable. Kenneth Curry was right after all: Stigmata is an abomination. I have no pity for Anonymous, whatever his fate.”

* * *

We parted soon afterward, unaware that it was our last conversation. As far as I know, Howard never told anyone else about Stigmata. I doubt he would have approved of this transcription; he wouldn’t have wanted his friends to know how fragile his solitude really was. Since his natural dwelling place was at a fixed critical distance from the world of film, which was the only world that had any substance for him, he could remain content as a spectator just so long as that distance was not violated.

Stigmata’ and the incident in the bathroom — regardless of whether it was real or imagined — reminded him how far he was from the sphere of action, any action, fictional or documentary. I have the smallest particle of doubt that his death was an accident but, if it wasn’t, if his random brush with a reality that too often resembles the plot of a B-movie was fatal to him, then I can only hope that the knowledge affords his ghost both ironic amusement and a measure of relief from his exhausting burden.