Synopsis -

 

This story follows the life of one gay man and a mishcling, Anthony, throughout most of the 20th century, where we witness his experiences in relation to gay social and political history. Aside from his father’s death in late 1916, a man who Anthony never knew, we first encounter a sentient artist Anthony at an art exhibition in 1923, Berlin, featuring the remarkable work of Otto Dix, entitled the Trench, an anti-war piece that offended many despite its honest depiction of modern warfare. This is the first time that Anthony is introduced to the wild theory of a complete cellular rebirth which he is told by his aunt Miriam, occurs in a human every seven years.

 

Next we see a fourteen year old Anthony, ridiculously young to be at the El Dorado night club, where he first meets an older boy Manfred, a Jewish dancer and the love of his life. The club is raided at this time by the Brown Shirts and he and Manfred only just escape capture. As the Nazis’ rise to power continues, Anthony returns to London, the home of his mother but without Manfred.

 

Seven years later Anthony can bear this separation no longer and an opportunity arises for him to return to Berlin one more time, to see a Nazi sponsored Degenerate Art exhibition and meet up with Manfred again. This he does and he and his lover, find a place to stay and both join the Resistance. This leads to their arrest and imprisonment in a variety of jails and concentration camps, where Manfred is mercilessly slaughtered on the infamous steps of Mauthusen Concentration Camp.

 

Anthony is subsequently liberated by American troops and he forms an alliance with a gay soldier Todd, who manages to get him a visa into America. They stay together for a further seven years and then a combination of homesickness and his epic love for Manfred forces his retreat from his lover and his return to London, to pursue is creativity and design items for the Festival of Britain. At this time Anthony narrowly escapes capture by the police for cottaging, and starts to create a vast collection of portraits of Manfred.

 

In 1959 Anthony is caught cottaging again and undergoes a chemical castration. He is a broken man now and disappears from view for some years until the Wolfenden Report is launched and his life as a gay man can be finally improved. The first Gay Pride event happens in 1972 and Anthony takes part with an immense amount of pride.

 

Seven years later Todd makes contact with Anthony as he is visiting London for the tenth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots at London’s Gay Pride. This meeting does not go well but Todd manages to barge into a small group of Anthony’s friends, and ends up having an affair with one of them but unfortunately passes on AIDS to him and his partner, who both die in 1986.

 

We next see Anthony in 1993, an ageing and depressed man, ably supported by a carer now and having given up painting. His carer Jimmy persuades him to let him model for him, which he does and this sparks a resurgence of his creativity and leads to his meeting with a man who would help to explain all the things that he has been through. This man is Tony, a twenty-eight-year-old man and actually Anthony himself, or rather another version of himself that he left in limbo in 1944. Tony poses for a double portrait of Manfred and a young Anthony which gives Anthony final closure.