The Celluloid Closet

"The Celluloid Closet" is a necessity to understand film history in the USA. From the earliest days of cinema (a rare clip of an 1895 Thomas Edison experimental film shows two men dancing in an embrace!) up to the modern era, this film details how gays were depicted in the cinema (from the sissy fashion designer to the bull-dyke prison guard) and the problems film-makers had to deal with due to the restrictions of the Hayes Office and the self-proclaimed Legion of Decency.

An incredible piece of cinematic history shown in the film is the (now restored) "oysters and snails" scene in "Sparticus", where Marcus Licinius (Sir Laurence Olivier) tries to seduce his slave Antonius (Tony Curtis) in the bath.

This documentary changed the way I look at cinema, and now I often find myself seeking for the "hidden messages" in the characterization ("Calamity Jane", "The Maltese Falcon", "Johnny Guitar", "Rebel Without A Cause", "Ben Hur"...I can never see the scene where Judah and Mesalla drink that wine and glance into each other's eyes the same way again!). My only complaint is that the film does not mention the 1919 German silent film "Anders als die Anderen" ("Different From the Others"), one of the first to seriously deal with homosexuality.

Marvelous film! (To the film-makers: k.d. lang singing "(Once I Had A) Secret Love" at the end is a crowning touch!)

I agree that this film is perfect and here's why. It details its subject in a thorough and sweeping manner. It explores films and details the homosexual portrayals in an intelligent and non-catty manner. It's clever, well presented, no it's not a typical documentary but it's a very moving piece nonetheless, and it tells a story throughout. I was really thrilled by this film and all the research and effort that went into it. In interviews the filmmakers said that the only section they wish they could have kept was one about gay historical figures whose biographical lives were depicted on film as heterosexual. Certainly this would have been wonderful, but as is, the Celluloid Closet is an incredible film.

I think this documentary is a total eye-opener. It gave me an insight into the American film history with respect to the particular topic of homosexuality. There are many original film clips as examples, and also have actors who performed the respective roles to comment on their views of this topic. This makes the documentary so convincing and credible.

A documentary that follows the appearance of gays in the history of the movies, the film takes a talking heads approach with interviews, splicing in some terrific film pieces. We get to see Marlene Dietrich, in "Morocco," kiss another woman while dressed in tails -- and looking better than any man ever could. There's a brilliant in-joke clip from "Red River" where Montgomery Clift is told about the beauty of a Swiss watch and a woman -- and then asked if he's ever had a Swiss watch. The film looks at gay stereotypes such as the pansy or the sissy, the characters that Franklin Pangborn used to play. Some of the interviewees are exceptional, namely Harvey Fierstein, Gore Vidal, and the incredible Quentin Crisp. Vidal gives a hilarious recount of including a gay backstory in "Ben Hur" which Charlton Heston of course denies.

The film is also touching and kind of heartbreaking. You realize that in the century we've had movies how enormously they've shaped our culture and our perception of people, and how if the filmmakers and studio heads hadn't been pressured by the horrible Hayes code, society's collective view of gays might not be so troublesome. There's a great moment where Quentin Crisp talks about census takers in England, asking about homosexuality. They were asked whether they knew any homosexuals. If the answer was yes, they were asked what they were like, to which they replied, "just like everybody else." If they answered no, they were asked what they would expect to meet, to which they replied, someone with grand gestures and flamboyance and bright colors. So that there are two images we have in our minds -- one of what homosexuals are like, and one of what homosexuals should be like. And movies played a huge role in that. 8/10

"The Celluloid Closet" is a history of the treatment of homosexuals and gay themes in the cinema from the silent days to 1995, but it is a very partial account, focusing almost exclusively on Hollywood. The strength of the film is a huge number of clips from a vast range of films which show that, after a fairly liberal early period, homophobia reigned supreme until the late 1960s, and still can be seen in mainstream movies today. One of the great gay clichés is the homosexual movie buff in love with the likes of Judy Garland, so it is ironic that so many gay people should turn to the Hollywood product for distraction, given how anti-gay that product was. Some of the industry people interviewed for the film boast of how the censors were outsmarted on occasion, for example Gore Vidal's account of how Charlton Heston was fooled into acting gay in "Ben Hur", but it was not until "Boys in the Band", the film of a successful stage play in 1970, that homosexuality broke through as a topic for candid treatment.

With "Brokeback Mountain" in line for an Academy Award or two this year gay themes can clearly now be mainstream. This film reminds us that cinema reflects the society from which it springs, and the United States has not historically been tolerant to what we might call sexual minorities. Somehow things loosened up in the 1960s and film-makers followed the trend (though not the lawmakers in most states). The genie is now out of the box, gay rights are reasonably well established and there is no going back. It will be interesting to see how American gay cinema retains its edge, now that homosexuality has become domesticated.