High (1968)

A stylish, freewheeling work set against the drug counterculture of the 1960's, High offers a surprisingly hard-edged look at the nastiness behind the sunny facade of the summer of love. Tom, an amoral Montreal drifter who supports himself by peddling dope and fleecing lonely woman, hooks up with Vicky, a straight-laced librarian, and initiates her, all too well, into his criminal ways. The film is more experimental than Kent's earlier features, with shifts from monochrome into color, liberal use of color tints, overexposures, and still photos, and a psychedelic credit sequences. Replete with Kent's characteristically frank sex scenes and nudity, High became a cause celebre when, just prior to its premier at the Montreal Film Festival, it was banned by the Quebec censors, prompting the likes of Warren Beatty, Jean Renoir and Fritz Lang to speak out in praise of the film. In a gesture of solidarity, Alan King and Jean-Pierre Lefebvre, co winners of the festival's Canadian competition, shared their prize money with Kent. The film was banned in Ontario and B.C. "Kent's best film... In retrospective {it} offers an interesting comparison to the contemporaneous Bonnie and Clyde" (Peter Morris)