INTRODUCTION

This is the second part of a two-part essay on Queer Cinema spanning the years 1934 to 1981. Part One examined Queer Cinema during the years of the notorious Hays Code, 1934-1967. Part two examines Queer Cinema during the New Hollywood, also known as the Hollywood Renaissance or the American New Wave.

Spanning approximately fourteen years, from 1967 to 1981 and encompassing the Entire 1970s, this was a movement in American cinema where a new generation of filmmakers came to prominence, in which the film director, rather than the studio, assumed a key authorial role. The watershed year of 1967 gave us “The Graduate” and “Bonnie and Clyde,” while 1969 gave us “Easy Rider.” The seventies gave us such masterpieces as “Chinatown,” “The Godfather Parts I and II,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” and “Apocalypse Now.”

Unfortunately, just like the death of the old studio system was marked by just catastrophes, such as “Star,” “Doctor Dolittle,” and “Tora, Tora, Tora,” as the New Hollywood entered its second decade, the arrogance of this new batch of directors started to manifest itself in gigantic financial failures that dwarfed their predecessors. Amongst these were Martin Scorsese’s “New York, New York” at the end of 1977 and Francis Ford Coppola’s “One From the Heart” which was finally allowed a limited release in early 1982 after a series of delays. However, it was the disastrous release of Michael Cimino’s “Heaven’s Gate,” the follow-up to his Oscar-winning “The Deer Hunter” at the end of 1980, that, for most people, marked the end of this era. The power and money transferred back to the studios, and for the past four decades, the producer, not the director, has been the guiding force in Hollywood. I have decided to end this essay in 1981 with the release of the writer/director Frank Ripploh’s landmark queer movie “Taxi zum Klo.”

With the death of the Hays Code in 1967 and the formation of the MPAA rating system, Queer Cinema was ready to come out of the closet. The years 1967 to 1981 gave us an astonishing seventy Queer Films, a flowering that is the cinematic equivalent of the landmark Stonewall riots in New York City in 1969, which marked the beginning of the gay rights movement. Among the notable events of this period are:

• In 1967, the first documentary that dared to focus on an American gay man was released. Directed by Shirley Clarke, it is now regarded as a masterpiece of cinéma vérité.

• In 1970, the first movie in which all the characters are gay men was released, echoing “The Women” thirty years earlier.

• In 1969, a gay man directed the only Oscar winner for Best Picture to get an X-rating from the MPAA. The movie is about a gay hustler and his tubercular best friend.

• In 1962, we had seen the inside of a gay bar in “Advice and Consent.” In 1968, we saw the inside of a lesbian bar in “The Killing of Sister George.” Cheers!

• Between 1968 and 1971, Italian Cinema gave the world four gay classics: Bertolucci’s “The Conformist,” Visconti’s “ The Damned, “Death in Venice,” and De Sica’s “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis.” Film would never look the same under the influence of cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and art director Nando Scarfiotti.

• Beginning in 1968, Queer Cinema and the New German Cinema merged magically in one masterpiece after another, thanks to the genius and astonishing productivity of actor/writer/director/producer Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

• In 1972, the irrepressible John Waters and his gorgeous star Divine took the New York art scene by storm with “Pink Flamingoes.”

• Also in 1972, one of the seminal American movies of the seventies about the rise of fascism in Nazi Germany had a gay character in the leading role and was based on the works of two gay writers. Thanks to two gay songwriters, it had some of the greatest musical numbers to ever grace the silver screen.

• In 1975, director Sidney Lumet gave us his gay masterpiece, “Dog Day Afternoon,” with Al Pacino in one of the all-time great performances.

• In 1975, famed documentary filmmakers David and Albert Maysles focused their cameras on Big and Little Edie Bouvier. Forgotten by Long Island society and living in squalor, Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis’s first cousins captured the hearts of gay men, who, almost from the outset, began to champion the documentary Grey Gardens as the masterpiece it is recognized as today. Over the years, it has become a gay cult classic.

• In 1975, producer/director Clint Eastwood gave us the first Queer Canine in “The Eiger Sanction.”

• In 1975, Belgian director Chantal Akerman explored queer and feminist sensibilities in the iterative life of a single mother turned prostitute in “Jeanne Dielman”, which the readers of Sight and Sound have recently voted the greatest movie ever made.

• In 1976, the notoriously Queer British director Derek Jarman made his directorial debut with “Sebastiane.”

• In the mid-1970s, Australian director Peter Weir, American director Brian De Palma and Italian director Dario Argento gave us three classic horror movies filtered through a queer lens: “Picnic at Hanging Rock,” “Carrie,” and “Suspiria.”

• In 1978 in London and 1981 in Berlin, directors Ron Peck and Frank Ripploh, respectively, used raw documentary-like realism to explore the lives of two men who are schoolteachers by day and openly gay at night, navigating the tension between professional respectability and an uninhibited personal life.

About half of the seventy narrative features listed are from original screenplays, and the other fifty percent are adapted from another medium. Source material in the latter category includes novels by Christopher Isherwood, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Frederick Forsyth, William Goldman, James Leo Herlihy, Stephen King, Thomas Mann, Philip Roth, William Makepeace Thackeray, and two novels by D. H. Lawrence. There is a song by Bobbie Gentry, as well as plays by Mart Crowley, Charles Dyer, John Van Druten, Joe Orton, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Enjoy!

SEVENTY QUEER FILMS – ONE OF THE MOVIES LISTED WON BEST PICTURE

– NINE MORE WERE NOMINATED IN THIS CATEGORY

1. Portrait of Jason (1967)

A

Shirley Clarke

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER:

*Jason Holliday (né Aaron Payne, playing Himself)

.

A true breakthrough and a film that has only improved with age, documentary filmmaker Shirley Clarke interviews gay African American hustler and aspiring cabaret performer Jason Holliday in his apartment at the Hotel Chelsea. Jason is a STAR in his own living room. He is magnetic and the sole screen presence in the film. As he narrates his troubled life story to the camera, with several songs and numerous costume changes, Clarke and her partner behind the camera, Carl Lee, employ cinéma vérité techniques to reveal the sadness underlying Jason’s theatrical, exaggerated persona. Like so many, Jason was ahead of his time.

Clarke was the sister of the novelist Elaine Dundy and, from 1951 to 1964, the sister-in-law of the theatre critic Kenneth Tynan

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2. No Way to Treat a Lady

(1968)

B-

Jack Smight

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Christopher Gill aka “Dorian” (Rod Steiger)

THE SWISHY MINCING FAG | FAIRY | QUEEN WAS A STAPLE OF HOLLYWOOD FROM THE MID-SIXTIES TO THE MID-EIGHTIES STEIGER’S DORIAN IS THE FIRST OF FOUR FAIRY QUEENS IN THIS ESSAY

Christopher Gill (Rod Steiger) is a serial killer fixated on his late mother, a noted stage actress. Gill preys on older women who remind him of Mama. A Broadway theatre owner and director, he adopts various disguises, such as a priest, policeman, plumber, hairdresser, etc., to put his victims at ease (and avoid being identified) before strangling them!

“Dorian,” Gill’s hairdresser persona, is gay with a classic sibilant-rich delivery. In the movie’s best scene, just as he is caressing the neck of his next intended victim, Miss Belle Poppie (a wonderful Barbara Baxley who has a house full of cats) during a wig fitting – “Isn’t that fantastic and breathtaking” – he is interrupted by the arrival of her sister Sylvia (Doris Roberts, always so good at putting someone in their place) who knows that something is not quite right. Dorian reacts with “Well, honestly, the suspicion of some people,” and after Sylvia’s “you homo” delivers the movie’s classic line, “Well, that doesn’t mean you’re a terrible person.” As a gay man, I should be disturbed by Steiger’s Queer turn. However, this scene always ends with me rolling on the floor with laughter.

“No Way to Treat a Lady” was adapted by John Gay from William Goldman’s novel of the same name and directed by Jack Smight. It also stars George Segal, Eileen Heckart, and the underused but still captivating Lee Remick.

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3. The Fox (1968)

B+

Mark Rydell

LGBTQ CHARACTERS

*Jill Banford (Sandy Dennis)

*Ellen March (Anne Heywood)

Director Mark Rydell (“The Rose,” “On Golden Pond”) moves the location of D.H. Lawrence’s short story to rural Canada, where our lesbian couple Jill Banford (Sandy Dennis) and Ellen March (Anne Heywood) support themselves by raising chickens. They are happy and content. There is genuine chemistry between the two actresses without things being overtly physical. Then, unexpectedly, in the dead of winter, merchant seaman Paul (Keir Dullea) arrives on the property in search of his grandfather.

Yes, a fox keeps killing the chickens, and there is a dying oak tree, which we begin to realize is the Canadian equivalent of Chekov’s gun. Like John Huston’s “Reflections in a Golden Eye,” released the previous year, “The Fox” does interesting things with color saturation (Bill Fraker was the cinematographer), and the Lalo Schifrin score has deservedly entered the jazz canon.

All three leads are impressive, and although the ending is a disappointment from a gay perspective, the movie is well worth seeing.

“THE FOX” IS NOT AVAILABLE FOR STREAMING. THE DVD CAN BE PURCHASED FROM AMAZON.

4. The Detective (1968)

D+

Gordon Douglas

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Colin MacIver (William Windom)

LGBTQ+ COSTUME DESIGNER

Donald Brooks

Frank Sinatra does his best under the circumstances, playing a policeman investigating the deaths of several gay men in New York City. Unfortunately, the condescending screenplay by Abby Mann, which does for Queers what he did for Jews in “Judgement at Nuremberg” in 1961 (he accepted his 1962 Oscar in the name of intellectuals everywhere) and the mediocre direction by Gordon Douglas put the kibosh on everything. William Windom plays the type of gay character that makes every adolescent gay boy want to jump off a bridge. Although it rates a D+, it is (almost) worth seeing as a pre-Stonewall period piece.

Rumor has it that the underperformance of “The Detective” relative to “Rosemary’s Baby” played a significant part in the Farrow-Sinatra breakup.

Adapted from the novel by Roderick Thorp

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5. The Boston Strangler (1968)

C-

Richard Fleischer

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Terence Huntley (Hurd Hatfield)

*Eve Collyer (Ellen Ridgeway)

*Alice Oakville (Gwyda Donhowe)

LGBTQ+ ACTOR

Hurd Hatfield

Released the same year as “The Detective,” “The Boston Strangler” is another serial killer movie that, although not part of Queer Cinema per se, is filled with “queers” and “faggots” as the police comb the Boston demimonde in search of the strangler (Tony Curtis, whose brave performance is the film’s only redeeming feature). A long way from his Dorian Gray days, Hurd Hatfield has a good scene in a gay bar where Henry Fonda’s detective is questioning him. He has been fingered by two nasty dykes, played by Eve Collyer and Gwyda Donhowe in a gay-turning-on-gay scene that has to be seen to be believed. Let’s hope both actresses live to regret ever making this movie. The screenplay by Oscar-winner Edward Anhalt (“Becket”) is so nonchalantly homophobic that it makes you glad you live in a more enlightened era. Richard Fleischer directs with so many split screens that it’s distracting. It’s a nasty piece of filmmaking, voyeuristic, but not in the cinematic sense. It makes you feel like a Peeping Tom! It makes you feel dirty. And, it turns out, very little of what is documented here actually happened.

Adapted from the novel by Gerold Frank.

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6. The Killing of Sister George

(1968)

B

Robert Aldrich

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*June “George” Buckridge (Beryl Reid)

*Alice “Childie” McNaught (Susannah York)

*Mercy Croft (Coral Browne)

LGBTQ+ ACTOR

Carol Browne

THE FIRST LOOK INSIDE A LESBIAN BAR

Beryl Reid is marvelous as “George.” That’s not her name. It’s the name of the character she plays in a beloved long-running BBC series. She is in a lesbian relationship with the much younger Childie (Susannah York) and thinks she is about to get canned from the show. Enter Carol Browne as a BBC executive with the hots for Childie, and George cannot get a break.

Robert Aldrich does an excellent job here, just like he did with Bette and Joan in “Baby Jane.” The relationship between George and Childie seems precisely right, and Browne is also very believable as the predatory suit who holds all the cards – the film’s only significant error is a gratuitous and embarrassing seduction scene that should have been left on the cutting-room floor.

Still, Reed and Andrews are marvelous, both giving deliciously devious performances (with Reed gamely suffering through some very unflattering costume changes) right up to the delightful ending where Ed presides over the marriage of Kath to the protesting Mr. Sloane, and she repays the favor by marrying the lovely gay couple! This scene is initially framed as being outrageous. However, there is also an air of WHY NOT about it! It’s a beautiful forecast of Queer triumphs to come.

“The Killing of Sister George” follows in the footsteps of “Advice and Consent” six years before, only this time, it’s a lesbian bar. Cheers!

Lukas Heller, who also adapted “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”, did a respectable adaptation of Frank Marcus’s 1964 British novel.

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7. Rachel, Rachel (1968)

B-

Paul Newman

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Calla Mackie (Estelle Parsons)

Paul Newman produced and directed (his debut) Rachel, Rachel,” a slight tale about a schoolteacher’s (Newman’s wife Joanne Woodward) sexual awakening in her mid-thirties in a small Connecticut town. Highly regarded at the time of its release (with NYFCC awards going to Newman as Best Director and Woodward as Best Actress), it seems somewhat underwhelming today. However, it does offer one of the first sympathetic portraits of a lesbian character in an American Film: Rachel’s fellow schoolteacher, Calla. Calla, who has a crush on Rachel, is nicely played by Estelle Parsons, coming off her Oscar in “Bonnie and Clyde.” Stewart Stern adapted the screenplay from Margaret Laurence’s novel “A Jest of God.”

.

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8. 2001: A Space Odyssey

(1968)

A

Stanley Kubrick

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*HAL 9000 Computer voiced by actor Douglas Rain.

I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do

HAL TO DAVE – 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

THE BEST USE OF CLASSICAL MUSIC IN A MOVIE.

In Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”, HAL 9000 is the psychotic gay computer (brilliantly voiced by Canadian actor Douglas Rain with just the right amount of Queerness!) aboard Discovery One. The starship is bound for Jupiter with mission pilots and scientists Dr. David “Dave” Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Dr. Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood). HAL is in love with Dave and quickly dispatches Frank and the other three astronauts, who are journeying in suspended animation.

From the stunning opening sequence in which our ape-like ancestors discover a black obelisk in the sands to Dave’s journey through a series of rooms where he encounters the same object, Kubrick’s direction never falters. His use of classical music, predominantly that of Richard and Johann Strauss, and including the famous opening “Thus Spake Zarathustra”-after dispensing with Alex North’s original score — is the most inspired in the history of Cinema.

Its plot was inspired by several short stories by Arthur C. Clarke, most notably “The Sentinel” (1951). For this reason, although the book and the screenplay for “2001” were written simultaneously, the latter is considered an adaptation rather than an original.

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9. The Sergeant (1968)

C+

John Flynn

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*MSgt Callan (Rod Steiger)

Master Sergeant Callan was Rod Steiger’s second gay role of 1968, but unlike “Dorian,” his mincing hairstylist persona in “No Way to Treat a Lady,” hardly anybody saw it.

The subject matter, its release during the Christmas season of 1968, and a couple of scathing (and homophobic) reviews by some of the foremost critics of the time (Kael, Crist, and Canby were among them) that resembled a shark-feeding frenzy, quickly sealed its fate. The film is not terrible. Directed by John Flynn, making his directorial debut, and produced by his former boss, director/producer Robert Wise, it is eerily similar, in so many ways, to John Huston’s “Reflections in a Golden Eye,” which was released the previous year with Marlon Brando.

Both movies feature a martinet who revels in the life of men among men. Callan rules over his military camp (in this case, rural France in 1952) with an iron fist, all the while lusting after a beautiful young man. A black-and-white pre-credit sequence sets the scene during the closing days of World War II. In “Reflections,” that obscure object of desire was Robert Forster, mostly bare-assed and riding Elizabeth Taylor’s favorite horse. Here it is, John Phillip Law, looking beautiful between his star-making role in “The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming” and the blind angel in Roger Vadim’s “Barbarella.”

But while “Reflections” had the genius of Carson McCullers and Huston (not to mention Brando, Taylor, Julie Harris, and Brian Keith), “The Sergeant” can only rise above its pedestrian screenplay on occasion. The sanctimonious parallel heterosexual romance between Law and a young French woman (Ludmila Mikael) does not help matters. The best moments are thanks to the above-average performances of both leading men. Steiger – arguably the most flamboyant of all the great American actors – has a few memorable scenes, all of which border on camp.

There is a kiss, but it’s more of the Judas than the Cupid variety.

Adapted from the novel by Dennis Murphy.

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10. The Damned (1969)

B-

Luchino Visconti

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Martin von Essenbeck (Helmut Berger)

LGBTQ+ DIRECTOR

Luchino Visconti

LGBTQ+ ACTOR 

Dirk Bogarde

LGBTQ+ ACTOR

Helmut Berger

LGBTQ+ SCREENWRITER

Luchino Visconti

Many of the old German families sided with Hitler in the closing days of the Weimar Republic. Luchino Visconti’s “The Damned” centers on the Essenbecks (loosely based on the Krupp family) on the night of the Reichstag fire in early 1933. Unfortunately, after a grand opening, the film misfires. Part of the reason is that Visconti edited the film around his then-lover Helmut Berger, who does his famous Marlene Dietrich impersonation. However, the major insult came when Hollywood censored between fifteen and thirty minutes from Visconti’s original cut for the American release. As a result, Dirk Bogarde, Charlotte Rampling, and Helmut Griem, despite giving their all, fade in and out of the picture.

Original, Oscar-nominated screenplay by Nicola Badalucco, Enrico Medioli and Visconti

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11. Staircase (1969)

C-

Stanley Donen

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Charles Dyer (Rex Harrison)

*Harry C. Leeds (Richard Burton)

LGBTQ+ SOURCE MATERIAL

Charles Dyer (based on his play “The Staircase”)

Richard Burton and Rex Harrison are Harry C. Leeds and Charles Dyer (the names are anagrams of one another), an aging gay couple who own a barber shop in the East End of London. The shop is always empty, but that’s the least of their problems. Charles is about to go on trial for dressing as a woman in public! The movie is essentially a two-hander, adapted by director Stanley Donen from Charles Dyer’s play “The Staircase.” Although it has been “opened up” to include the character’s mothers (Kathleen Nesbit as Harry’s bedridden mum and, in a horrific piece of overacting, Beatrix Lehmann, as Charles’ mother from hell) and various passers-by, the film consists mainly of the two leads discussing their loving but often volatile past together and pondering their possible futures without each other.

They have their tender moments, but they mostly bicker, and while the same could be said of the gay couple played by Hume Cronyn and John Randolph in “There Was a Crooked Man” (see below), the two relationships are light-years apart. You immediately fall in love with the two old queens in an Arizona prison circa 1883 and believe in their love for one another. Not so with this relationship. Harrison’s performance is all affectation and condescension. Burton does better, though. His character has alopecia, and he spends the entire movie wearing a towel as a turban, which is funny. He even has the occasional moment of emotional clarity. Unfortunately, the film is never really taken seriously by its director. This man has consistently shown a light and gay-friendly touch throughout his career, from “Singing in the Rain” to “Funny Face” to “Charade.” That touch is missing here, and the soufflé falls flat. What a pity!

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12. Z (1969)

B-

Costa-Gavras

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Vago (Marcel Bozzuffi)

Director Costa-Gavras’s “Z,” a thriller about the fall of an elected democratic government in an unnamed country – which is obviously Greece – and the establishment of a military junta, was feted by one award ceremony after another and one film critics association after another in the Winter of 1969/1970. However, few seemed to have noticed, or if they did, they didn’t seem to care that this is a homophobic film in which the main villain, Vago (Marcel Bozzuffi) – the man who strikes down Deputy Gregoris Lambrakis (played by Yves Montand) with a club from a speeding van – is a homosexual and convicted pedophile who trades sexual favors with other gay deviants such as the newspaper editor. These scum of the Earth perverts are contrasted with our handsome, intellectual and heterosexual heroes, Montand and the examining magistrate Jean-Louis Trintignant. Some may give it an A+, but from a gay perspective, the most I can summon is a B-.

Cinematography by Raoul Coutard. Music by Mikis Theodorakis. Editing by Francoise Bonnot. Adapted Screenplay by Jorge Semprún and Costa-Gavras from the novel by Vassilis Vassilikos

“Z,” which means “he lives” (referring to Lambrakis) in Greek, was the first film to be nominated for both Best Film and Best Foreign Language Film. It won in the latter category. A French-Algerian coproduction.

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13. Midnight Cowboy (1969)

A

John Schlesinger

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Joe Buck (Jon Voight)

*Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman)

*Towny (Bernard Hughes)

*Young Student (Bob Balaban)

LGBTQ+ DIRECTOR

 John Schlesinger

LGBTQ+ SOURCE MATERIAL

James Leo Herlihy (adapted from his 1965 novel “Midnight Cowboy”)

I’m Walkin’ Here

RATSO RIZZO – MIDNIGHT COWBOY

John Schlesinger’s American debut is the only X-rated movie to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Dated now, it still boasts two great performances courtesy of Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman. The gay thing is a bit primitive, with tortured souls getting killed by their tricks and numerous queer types from The Village in small parts so that the audience can contrast the real fags from the subtler queer dynamics of the Joe Buck/Ratso Rizzo relationship. And like “Darling,” “Midnight Cowboy” falters during that long Warhol-inspired psychedelic party scene with Brenda Vaccaro.

The film also features Bob Balaban, Bernard Hughes, and Sylvia Myles, who received an Oscar nomination for a few minutes’ work. The movie is based on the novel by gay writer James Leo Herlihy, who took his own life with an overdose of sleeping tablets in Los Angeles in 1993. He was sixty-six.

John Barry’s haunting harmonica score gets no screen credit. It’s a rearrangement of the orchestral score he wrote two years earlier for the James Bond movie “You Only Live Twice” and was therefore not eligible for Oscar recognition. The same applies to Harry Neilson’s famous recording of Fred Neil’s “Everybody’s Talkin’,” which was not written directly for the screen and, therefore, also ineligible for Academy consideration.

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14. Goodbye Columbus (1969)

B-

Larry Peerce

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Ron Patimkin (Michael Meyers)

Ali McGraw’s movie debut was a box office success and paved the way for her sensational turn in “Love Story” the following year. Directed by Larry Peerce and based on the 1959 novella of the same name by Phillip Roth, with an adapted, Oscar-nominated screenplay by Arnold Schulman, the movie centers on Neil Klugman (Richard Benjamin), a nice middle-class Jewish boy from the Bronx who falls under the spell of Brenda Patimkin, a wealthy Radcliffe student whose parents are nouveau riche Jews who have grown rich in the plumbing business. There are similarities between this movie and Neil Simon/Elaine May’s “The Heartbreak Kid” from 1972, except in that movie, the golden girl, played by Cybill Shepard, is a Shiksa. In contrast, Ali McCraw’s character is a Jewish American Princess.

The Queer element in the film comes from Brenda’s older brother, Ron (played by the late Michael Meyers, a name that would later become synonymous with a horror franchise). Ron is a star athlete – the film’s title alludes to a song he plays when he gets nostalgic for his glory days at Ohio State in Columbus – and he has his mind set on being a college coach. However, he has the hots for Neil, whom he keeps inviting back to his room and slapping on the butt. And then there is the scene outside the bathroom where Ron, having just washed his jockstrap in the sink, regards Neil- or is it the game on the TV behind him – with such a goofy grin that he appears to be enraptured with him/it/them. To seal the deal, he is an avid collector of what he calls “semi-classical” music, and he prides himself on his extensive collection of Andre Kostelanetz and Montovani!

Unfortunately, Schulman and Peerce aren’t interested in Ron’s character. He marries a nice, rich Jewish girl whom Brenda supposes he has never slept with. And that’s that! The straight audiences who saw this in 1969 probably had no clue that Ron was a closeted homosexual. They were left feeling sorry for him because he was forced to work for his father-in-law’s business and, as a result, had to give up on his athletic dreams. It is unlikely that they would be grieving for his life in the closet and his loveless marriage.

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15. The Sterile Cuckoo (1969)

B-

Alan J. Pakula

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Charlie Schumacher, Jerry’s roommate (Tim McIntire)

In so many ways, Liza Minnelli’s Oscar-nominated turn as quirky, oddball, and very needy “Pookie” Adams in producer Alan J. Pakula’s directorial debut is a preview of her Oscar-winning performance three years later in Bob Fosse’s “Cabaret.” But while Sally Bowles was a creation for the ages, Pookie is a half-formed character that comes at you in spurts. Her justly famous telephone monologue comes to mind. However, sometimes, she seems lost in the moment and can be irritating and cruel. What she does have on Sally, though, is her gaydar. Sally was clueless about whether her lover and her (male) best friend were lovers. Pookie thinks that her shy boyfriend (Wendell Burton in his film debut) ’s roommate, Charles (played by Tim McIntire), is gay. I think she was correct on this point. McIntire, the son of actors John McIntire and Jeanette Nolan, had made three movies before this one, and he appears to be more comfortable on screen than his costars. It’s a lovely, understated performance; you can feel his love for Jerry. The fact that she outs him in a most uncaring fashion makes us care about him all the more. Quite a coup in the year of Stonewall!

Adapted from the novel by John Nichols.

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16. Something for Everyone (1970)

C-

Harold Prince

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Konrad Ludwig (Michael York)

*Helmuth von Ornstein (Anthony Higgins)

LGBTQ+ ACTOR

Anthony Higgins

LGBTQ+ SCREENWRITER

Hugh Wheeler

Was legendary Broadway director and impresario Harold Prince gay? He had a long and supposedly happy heterosexual marriage, which resulted in two children. Of course, the marriage could have been of the lavender variety. Does it matter? As he was more commonly known, Hal Prince collaborated with and mentored the crème de la crème of America’s artistic gay community for approximately seven decades. The man who directed the original Broadway productions of Stephen Sondheim’s “Company” and “Follies,” directed the original stage version of Kander and Ebb’s masterpiece “Cabaret,” and co-produced the original staging of “West Side Story,” will always have a very special place in the hearts of the Queer community. Why he never set his sights on Hollywood is a mystery. Maybe he knew that the world of Cinema was not for him.

He only made two films. One was a weak translation of Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music,” from 1977, which he had directed on Broadway. The other, “Something for Everyone,” his cinematic debut, was made seven years earlier. Unfortunately, what should have been a gay romp and a fabulous showcase for its star, gay icon Angela Lansbury, fizzles out after a promising opening chapter.

Adapted by gay writer Hugh Wheeler (billed as a “research consultant” on Bob Fosse’s ‘Cabaret,” Wheeler wrote the books for “A Little Night Music” and “Sweeny Todd” and wrote the screenplay for George Cukor’s “Travels with My Aunt”) from the novel “The Cooke” by Harry Kressing, the film opens with a strapping pre-“Cabaret” Michael York in short pants bicycling across the Bavarian countryside. York plays the aptly named Konrad Ludwig, a Tom Ripley in Leiderhosen who, like his namesake, wants to live in a castle and will go to any lengths to do so. It just so happens that the widowed Countess Herthe von Ornstein (Lansbury) has an opening in her kitchen and a brooding gay son, Helmuth (gay actor Anthony Higgins, billed as Anthony Corlan, a long way from “The Draughtman’s Contract”), who is just waiting to be seduced by Konrad.

It’s a promising beginning. Sadly, after about thirty minutes, you begin to feel the bloom fade from the rose, and with ninety minutes to go, it never returns. Neither Lansbury nor York nor an exceedingly boring and miscast Higgins can save it. Only Jane Carr, as Lotte, Helmuth’s annoying little sister who also has the hots for Konrad, manages to keep her character interesting until the end. Although the gay community turned out in droves to see their idol, who had just caused a sensation on Broadway in “Mame,” the disappointment must have been palpable.

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17. Entertaining Mr Sloane (1970)

B-

Douglas Hickox

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Ed (Harry Andrews)

*Mr Sloane (Peter McEnery)

LGBTQ+ SOURCE MATERIAL

Joe Orton (adapted from his 1964 play of the same name)

The talented gay British playwright Joe Orton burst onto the scene in the swinging sixties with his brilliantly dark, satirical, and comedic masterpieces “Loot” and “Entertaining Mr Sloane.” Tragically, his career was cut short when he was murdered by his lover, Kenneth Halliwell, in 1967. Halliwell then tragically took his own life. Gary Oldman and Albert Molina portrayed these events in the captivating 1987 film “Prick Up Your Ears” directed by Stephen Frears.

This 1970 cinema adaptation of “Entertaining Mr Sloan,” which was written by the esteemed British TV writer Clive Exton and directed by Douglas Hickox, loses some of its impact in translation mainly because it tones down the sense of danger that should have emanated from Peter McEnery’s title character, a morally ambiguous wanderer with a striking allure. Sloane is willing to go to any lengths, including sleeping simultaneously with his siblings, Kath and Ed, portrayed by Beryl Reid and Harry Andrews, if he can continue to live the spoiled life to which he has become accustomed. However, in this adaptation, he is portrayed as a bland, unassuming figure, rather than the powerful force he was intended to be. (I have not seen the 1968 ITV adaptation starring Sheila Hancock, Edward Woodward, and Clive Francis.)

The fourth cog in Orton’s wheel is Alan Webb doing his best Barry Fitzgerald impersonation as “the dado”, Kath and Ed’s grouchy father who, having witnessed some of Mr. Sloan’s shenanigans, is quickly disposed of in the first act. However, his corpse, complete with rigor mortis, “lives on” to become an essential part of the happy nuptials at the film’s finale.

McEnery had previously played the gay character “Boy Barrett” in the groundbreaking Queer film “Victim” opposite Dirk Bogarde in 1961 (please see the previous essay “Seventy Queer Films made under the Hays Code 1934-1967).

NOW STREAMING ON BFI CLASSICS

18. Performance (1970)

B-

Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Chas (James Fox)

*Turner (Mick Jagger)

*Pherber (Anita Pallenberg)

This psychedelic ménage à trois involving a gangster (James Fox), a reclusive rock star (Mick Jagger), and the lady he lives with (Anita Pallenberg) was made in 1968. Still, Warner Bros. held it back from release because of its sexual content and graphic violence. Although the reviews were unfavorable upon release, the film has gained in stature over the years, and rightly so.

With obvious references to the Harold Pinter/ Joseph Losey masterpiece “The Servant,” the casting of the boyish Fox (who also starred in “The Servant”) opposite the androgynous Jagger (slipping into Dirk Bogarde’s shoes) works, the latter playing the role of a jaded rock star to perfection.

There will always be an argument about who the genuine auteur behind the camera was. Nicolas Roeg, one of the few great cinematographers (“The Masque of the Red Death,” “Petulia”), to transition to the great director (“Walkabout,” “Don’t Look Now”) is the obvious choice. Unfortunately, Donald Cammell’s post- “Performance” career was a series of failed projects (many involving Marlon Brando), with only the less than stellar “Demon Seed” (1997), White of the Eye” (1987), and “Wild Side” (1995, with the director’s cut in 1999) seeing completion before he died in 1996. As an iconoclast and a Hollywood outsider, however, he has his champions.

The Movie is based on an original screenplay by Cammell with obvious influences from Pinter and Losey.

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19. Women in Love (1970)

B-

Ken Russell

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Rupert Birkin (Alan Bates)

LGBTQ+ ACTOR

ACTOR: Alan Bates

LGBTQ+ SCREENWRITER

Larry Kramer

Future gay activist Larry Kramer’s (founder of both GMHC and ACT UP) adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s 1920 novel was an enormous critical and commercial success, earning four Oscar Nominations:

• Best Actress: Glenda Jackson (won).
• Best Director: Ken Russell (nominated).
• Best Adapted Screenplay: Larry Kramer (nominated)
• Best Cinematography: Billy Williams (nominated).

The film takes place in 1920 in the Midlands mining town of Beldover. Two sisters, Ursula (Jennie Lindon) and Gudrun (Glenda Jackson), discuss marriage on their way to the wedding of Laura Crich, daughter of the town’s wealthy mine owner. At the village church, a particular wedding party member fascinates each sister – Gudrun by Laura’s brother, Gerald (Oliver Reed), and Ursula by Gerald’s best friend, Rupert Birkin (Alan Bates). Ursula is a schoolteacher, and Rupert is a school inspector; she remembers his visit to her classroom, interrupting her botany lesson to discuss the sexual nature of the catkin. A mutual friend later brings the four together, and as Jennie and Rupert start dating, so do Gudrun and Gerald.

What makes this a queer film is the famous nude wrestling scene by firelight between Redd (Gerald) and Bates (Rupert). Rupert enjoys their closeness and says they should swear to love each other. Still, Gerald cannot understand Rupert’s idea of wanting to have an emotional union with a man and an emotional and physical union with a woman.

Oliver Reed would refer to this scene – his apotheosis on film – in every one of his drunken talk show appearances on both sides of the Atlantic for the next thirty years.

NOT AVAILABLE FOR STREAMING. THE DVD IS CURRENTLY NOT AVAILABLE FROM AMAZON.

20. There Was a Crooked Man (1970)

B+

Joseph L. Mankiewicz

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Dudley Whiner (Hume Cronyn)

*Cyrus McNutt (John Randolph)

Well-Adjusted Gay Couple, Arizona Territory 1883.

The “marriage” of Hume Cronyn’s Mr. Whiner and John Randolph’s Mr. McNutt in JLM’s “There Was a Crooked Man” is Hollywood‘s first presentation of a happy and “well-adjusted” gay couple. Yes, they often fight and bicker. However, it is plain to see that they are madly in love. No, Cronyn and Randolph are not in We-Ho or the Hamptons. They are in a feeble excuse for a HC jail or, as Scarlet O’Hara would put it, a horse jail! We are in the Arizona territory circa 1883. The main plot involves a $500,000 loot hidden by Kirk Douglas, who also ends up in jail and is being hunted by Henry Fonda‘s Sheriff Woodward W. Lopeman.

This was director Joe Mankiewicz’s only Western, and it is a marvelous ride with a witty, intelligent script by David Newman and Robert Benton. The boys were fresh from their triumph with “Bonnie and Clyde,” and every word was savored.

However, in many ways, it’s like Mankiewicz has been transported back to an alternate “All About Eve,” with Cronyn and Randolph taking over from Bette Davis and Thelma Ritter, respectively. Two of the greatest character actors in Hollywood history, they play their roles with great knowingness and respect while being brilliantly funny. Cheers!

NOW STREAMING ON Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, YOUTUBE

21. The Boys in the Band (1970)

A

William Friedkin

DIRECTOR: William Friedkin

BOTTOM LINE: As we saw in the 2020 remake, Mart Crowley’s play “The Boys in the Band” has stood the test of time beautifully. The original adaptation, directed by William Friedkin before he made “The French Connection,” “The Exorcist,” and, unfortunately, “Cruising,” is essential viewing for every gay man. The story unfolds at a birthday party for Harold, attended by his gay friends.

Michael, the host, provokes the group with a cruel party game that forces each man to call someone they’ve loved. The arrival of Alan, Michael’s ostensibly straight college roommate, heightens tensions and exposes the fragility of the group’s self-images. The standouts are Kenneth Nelson, Leonard Frey, and Cliff Gorman. Gorman gets extra kudos for playing the flamboyant Emory – he is stunningly good, and he was straight! The tragic epilogue is that the five real-life gay actors – and, to some extent, the straight actors, Cliff Gorman, Peter White and Laurence Luckinbill – were all unemployable in major roles after the film’s release, and all died of AIDS-related illnesses within seven years of one another in the late eighties and early nineties.

GAY CHARACTERS

*Michael (Kenneth Nelson) *Harold (Leonard Frey) *Emory (Cliff Gorman) *Donald (Frederick Colms)

*Hank (Laurence Luckinbill) *Larry (Keith Prentice) *Cowboy Tex (Robert La Tourneaux)

*Bernard (Reuben Greene)

AND

Michael’s ostensibly straight roommate Alan (Peter White)

GAY ACTORS

The tragic epilogue is that the five real-life gay actors were all unemployable in major roles after the film’s release – this included Leonard Frey, who was Oscar-nominated for his supporting role in “Fiddler on the Roof” – and all died of AIDS-related illnesses within seven years of one another in the late eighties and early nineties.

ACTOR: Kenneth Nelson (RIP 1993 AIDS-related illness)

ACTOR: Leonard Frey (RIP 1988 AIDS-related illness)

ACTOR: Frederick Combs (RIP 1992 AIDS-related illness)

ACTOR: Robert La Tourneaux (RIP 1986 AIDS-related illness)

ACTOR: Keith Prentice (R.I.P. 1992 AIDS-related illness)

The gay writer of the play, Mart Crowley, died of a heart attack at the age of 84 in 2020.

Straight actor Peter White, who played Alan, Michael’s ostensibly straight roommate, died from melanoma in 2023 at the age of 86.

Straight actor Cliff Gorman, who played the flamboyant Emory, died from leukemia in 2002, aged 65.

Straight actor Laurence Luckinbill is alive and well and happily married to Lucie Arnaz since 1980.

Actor Reuben Greene, who played Bernard, always insisted that he was straight. He gradually drifted under the radar and was last heard from around 2000.

NOW STREAMING ON AMAZON PRIME AND APPLE TV+

22. Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970)

A+

Frank Perry

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*George Prager (Frank Langella)

The last movie that director Frank Perry and his screenwriter wife Eleanor made together was their best. An excellent adaptation of the bestselling novel “Diary of a Mad Housewife” by Sue Kaufman, it stars Carrie Snodgress as Tina, an upper-middle-class housewife who gets no respect from either her whining and demanding husband (Richard Benjamin, highly sought after at this point in his career before he turned director) or her arrogant and demanding lover (Frank Langella making his film debut). The movie’s only sour note, a product of its time, is that Langella’s character turns out to be gay, thus explaining all the nasty things he did to Tina throughout their relationship.

Snodgress is breathtakingly good and should have won the Best Actress in a Leading Role Oscar. Instead, she lost to Glenda Jackson in “Women in Love.”

CURRENTLY NOT AVAILABLE FOR STREAMING. AVAILABLE TO PURCHASE FROM AMAZON ON DVD AND Blu-ray FORMATS.

23. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes

(1970)

A-

Billy Wilder

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Sherlock Holmes (Robert Stephens)

Director Billy Wilder has said he originally intended to portray Holmes explicitly as a repressed homosexual, stating:

I should have been more daring. I have this theory. I wanted to have Holmes homosexual and not admitting it to anyone, including maybe even himself. The burden of keeping it secret was the reason he took dope.

Billy Wilder: Gemünden, Gerd (2008). A Foreign Affair: Billy Wilder’s American Films. Brooklyn: Berghahn Books. p. 147. ISBN 978-1-78533-475-7.

Billy Wilder’s affectionate look at the Holmes-Watson relationship. It’s August 1887, and Holmes is approached by a famous Russian ballerina, Madame Petrova, who wants to have a child and proposes that Sherlock Holmes be the father, hoping that their offspring will inherit her beauty and Holmes’s intellect. Holmes extricates himself by claiming that Watson (Colin Blakely) is his lover, much to the doctor’s embarrassment.

This is, without a doubt, the underrated gem in the Wilder canon. Excellent work by Robert Stephens (his best screen performance) and Blakely, while Geneviève Page gives a beautiful, melancholy performance as a German spy secretly in love with Holmes.

The Russian Ballet/Tchaikovsky sequence is a classic and represents Wilder at best.

Original screenplay by Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond.

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24. The Conformist (1970)

A+

Bernardo Bertolucci

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Marcello (Jean-Louis Trintignant)

*Anna (Dominique Sanda)

*Lino the chauffeur (Pierre Clementi)

LGBTQ+ PRODUCTION DESIGNER

Ferdinando Scarfiotti

One of the most influential films ever made, Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Conformist” tells the story of a sexually repressed gay man who, because of his relationship with a household servant in his youth, desperately wants to conform in society to the point of working for Mussolini’s Fascist secret police.

The film left an indelible impression on the young directors of the New Hollywood of the early 1970s, particularly Francis Coppola’s “Godfather” Trilogy and Paul Schrader’s “American Gigolo” and Mishima.” Cinematographer Vittorio Storaro’s visuals had a profound influence on Gordon Willis and John Bailey. Schrader also utilized Bertolucci’s production designer, Ferdinando Scarfiotti, as his visual consultant on many of his early films. Using Art Deco, the dominant architecture of the day, as a backdrop to the film’s narrative, the partnership of Bertolucci, Storaro and Scarfiotti changed the look of Cinema forever.

It’s 1938, in Paris, and Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant) leaves his wife Giulia (Stefania Sandrelli) in their hotel room and finalizes his preparations to assassinate his former college professor, Luca Quadri (Enzo Tarascio), an anti-Fascist who has fled Italy for safety reasons. From here, the film goes into a series of flashbacks. In one, we see Marcello as a boy picked up from school by the family chauffeur, Lino (Pierre Clementi). Lino is both a Fascist and a pedophile, and he tries to rape Marcello. There is a gun, Marcello shoots Lino and runs away, thinking that he has committed murder. During their visit to Paris from Italy, the two couples have become friendly, with Marcello having a romantic fling with Quadri’s wife Anna (Dominique Sanda), who in turn has a crush on Giulia. The two women have a slow dance with one another, which is another seminal moment in Cinema. Nothing like this had been seen since the days of Marlene Dietrich. From today’s perspective, the scene reeks of the male gaze, but it still packs a punch.

Bertolucci is a contradiction. His tastes were catholic, but he was raised Catholic. And while he revels in the risque value of a lesbian dance, he cannot quite get his head around homosexuality and its perceived relationship to pedophilia and Fascism. The conformist conforms because of his sexuality, and when Fascism collapses, he has nothing left.

Adapted by Bertolucci from the novel by Alberto Moravia of the same name. Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.

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25. Vanishing Point (1971)

C-

Richard C. Sarafian

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Male Hitchhiker #1 (Anthony James)

*Male Hitchhiker #2 ( Arthur Malet)

LGBTQ+ ACTOR

Arthur Malet

Director Richard C. Sarafian’s film stars Barry Newman as a disaffected ex-policeman and race car driver delivering a muscle car cross-country to California at high speed while being chased by the police. Along the way, he meets various characters, some more interesting than others. In the movie’s most memorable yet nauseating scene, he is briefly held captive at gunpoint by two exceptionally sleazy-slimy Queers played by gay British actor Arthur Malet (“Mary Poppins”) and the unusually creepy Anthony “the skull” James, whose visage is pictured above. James, who comes across as pure evil, had just come off a memorable role as the diner counterman in “In the Heat of the Night,” which, strangely enough, also featured Malet as the undertaker. After a few minutes, Newman overpowers these pitiful excuses for human beings, resulting in a knee-jerk standing ovation by the spoon-fed audience. The cinematography by John Alonzo (“Chinatown”) is praiseworthy, and the movie has developed a cult following over the years. The original screenplay by Guillermo Cabrera Infante (credited as Guillermo Cain) is from a story outline by Malcolm Hart. The film also stars Charlotte Rampling.

CURRENTLY NOT AVAILABLE FOR STREAMING. AVAILABLE TO PURCHASE FROM AMAZON ON DVD.

26. Death in Venice (1971)

A-

Luchino Visconti

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Gustav von Aschenbach (Dirk Bogarde)

LGBTQ+ DIRECTOR

Luchino Visconti

LGBTQ+ ACTOR

Dirk Bogarde

LGBTQ+ PRODUCTION DESIGNER

Ferdinando Scarfiotti

LGBTQ+ SCREENWRITER

Luchino Visconti

WOULDN’T YOU DIE WITHOUT MAHLER? – Maureen Lipman as Trish in “Educating Rita”

After “The Damned,” director Luchino Visconti and actor Dirk Bogarde collaborated on adapting the Thomas Mann 1912 novella “Death in Venice.” The result is a gorgeous, if somewhat slow-moving, tour de force. Visconti’s (and co-writer Nicola Badalucco) brilliant idea was changing the leading character, Gustav von Aschenbach’s profession, from a writer to a composer, thus opening up the movie to the magnificent Gustav Mahler Adagietto from his Symphony No.5. Aschenbach has come to Venice to recover from personal and artistic stresses. Instead, overtaken by an unrequited passion for an unattainable boy, he courts death by failing to heed warnings about the cholera epidemic sweeping the city. Tadzio, the composer’s object of beauty, was presented to the world after a massive Visconti-led talent search. The actor’s name is Bjorn Andresen, who, contrary to general opinion, did NOT vanish from the face of the Earth after the movie was completed. He was recently seen, to great effect, in Ari Aster’s “Midsommar”.

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27. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

(1971)

A-

Vittorio De Sica

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Alberto Finzi Contini (Helmut Berger)

LGBTQ+ ACTOR

Helmut Berger

LGBTQ+ SOURCE MATERIAL

Giorgio Bassani (based on his novel)

Directed by Vittorio De Sica, “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis” is based on the semi-autobiographical novel by gay Italian writer Giorgio Bassani. His character, Alberto, in the book and in the film, is also gay, and he is played by gay actor Helmut Berger, fresh from Visconti’s “The Damned”. And it’s a very different performance. Alberto is reserved and shy, and clearly in love with his friend Malnate, a young man with an imposing physical presence and communist leanings, played by Fabio Testi. He delights in Fabio’s company and even reacts jealously when he senses that his sister Micol (Dominique Sanda) and Malnate may be getting closer.

Will Alberto’s love be reciprocated? Of course, the Finzi Contini’s are living on borrowed time. Beyond their wall-off compound, the Jews of Mussolini’s Italy are being rounded up with an express ticket to the concentration camps.

Oscar-nominated Best Adapted Screenplay by De Sica and Ugo Pirro.

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28. Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971)

A

John Schlesinger

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Daniel Hirsh (Peter Finch)

*Bob Elkin (Murray Head)

LGBTQ+ DIRECTOR

John Schlesinger

FEATURES THE FIRST AFFECTIONATE ON-SCREEN KISS BETWEEN TWO MEN IN A TALKING MOTION PICTURE

In “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” Murray Head plays a free-spirited bisexual man who is having simultaneous relationships with a divorced recruitment consultant (Glenda Jackson) and a gay Jewish doctor (Peter Finch). Although you always feel that Glenda’s character will “win out,” Peter Finch gives a beautiful, thoroughly convincing performance. He is also one of the first gay characters on film to be unapologetic about being himself. Compared to Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo in Schlesinger’s previous film, “Midnight Cowboy,” Finch’s doctor is positively walking on sunshine. He also gets an excellent monologue at the film’s end – “I am happy, apart from missing him” – which is spoken directly to the camera. It’s an acting tour de force that has never been bettered. Look out for Daniel Day-Lewis in a small role.

Original, Oscar-nominated screenplay by Penelope Gilliatt.

NOW STREAMING ON AMAZON PRIME, APPLE TV+, YOUTUBE (SCREENPIX)

29. The Anderson Tapes (1971)

F

Sidney Lumet

I WILL NEVER GET THIS TIME BACK AGAIN

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Haskins (Martin Balsam)

FAIRY QUEEN NUMBER TWO THE SWISHY MINCING FAG | FAIRY | QUEEN WAS A STAPLE OF HOLLYWOOD FROM THE MID-SIXTIES TO THE MID-EIGHTIES BALSAM’S FAIRY IS THE SECOND OF FOUR FAIRY QUEENS IN THIS ESSAY

Just three years before they made their landmark gay movie “Dog Day Afternoon,” director Sidney Lumet and writer Frank Pierson gave us a nasty gay stereotype in Haskins (played by heterosexual actor Martin Balsam), an antique dealer (of course!) who helps a just-out-of-jail Sean Connery carry out the robbery of a luxury apartment building – his job is to show, with a very limp wrist, his fellow robbers the best pieces to steal. Hamming it up and mincing all over the place, this is a cringeworthy performance made all the worse by the fact that the character is rarely referred to by his given name, just “The Fag.” As for the movie, it’s a bore – its only claim to fame is the credit, “Introducing Christopher Walken,” who makes his film debut here.

One of director Sidney Lumet’s 26 unwatchable movies! I

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30. The Music Lovers

(1971)

D

KEN RUSSELL

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Richard Chamberlain)

LGBTQ+ ACTOR

Richard Chamberlain

LGBTQ+ SOURCE MATERIAL

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Composer

Perhaps director Ken Russell’s most flamboyant film, “The Music Lovers,” is a landmark in early 1970s Queer Cinema, but for all the wrong reasons. Although notable for its frank (if stylized) depiction of Tchaikovsky’s sexuality, it’s one vulgar over-the-top Russell sequence after another. MTV avant la lettre. The “1812 overture” montage, a delirious mix of sexual frustration and nationalistic bombast, is for Russell freaks only.

THE “1812 OVERTURE” MONTAGE, A DELIRIOUS MIX OF SEXUAL FRUSTRATION AND NATIONALISTIC BOMBAST, IS FOR RUSSELL FREAKS ONLY!

Starring gay actor Richard Chamberlin as the gay composer, the film concentrates on the year 1877, when he entered into a disastrous bearded marriage of convenience. Glenda Jackson’s Nina is portrayed as both victim and villain, and Jackson, the actress, is debased on every possible level. You feel for her. The train sequence alone is grounds for an artistic lawsuit.

Chamberlin gives what can only be called a non-performance. All ham and no depth. A noted pianist, he does wonders on the piano.

The screenplay, if you can call it that, is by Melvyn Bragg. The gorgeous cinematography is by Douglas Slocombe.

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31. Cabaret (1972)

A+

Bob Fosse

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Brian (Michael York)

*Baron Maximillian (Helmut Griem)

LGBTQ+ SOURCE MATERIAL |MUSIC ARRANGEMENT | SONGWRITERS (MUSIC &LYRICS) |RESEARCH CONSULTANT

SOURCE MATERIAL: Christopher Isherwood (based on his book “Berlin Stories”)

SOURCE MATERIAL: John Van Druton (based on his play “I am a Camera”)

MUSIC ARRANGEMENT: Ralph Burns

SONGS (MUSIC): John Kander

SONGS (LYRICS) Fred Ebb

RESEARCH CONSULTANT: Hugh Wheeler

WINNER OF EIGHT OSCARS, THE MOST ACCUMULATED BY A FILM THAT DID NOT WIN BEST PICTURE

Fuck Maximillian !

BRIAN to SALLY – CABARET

I do!

SALLY to BRIAN – CABARET

So do I!

BRIAN to SALLY – CABARET

For a gay man, these are some of the sweetest words ever spoken on film.

The setting is Berlin in 1931, in the closing days of the Weimar Republic. The Nazi Party will be in power in less than two years. We are with Brian (Michael York), the delectable Miss Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli), and Baron Maximilian (Helmut Griem).

The film is based on the 1966 Broadway musical “Cabaret” by Kander and Ebb, which was adapted from Christopher Isherwood’s semi-autobiographical novel “The Berlin Stories” (1945) and the John Van Druten play “I Am a Camera” (1951), also adapted from the same work. With Bob Fosse’s revolutionary choreography and direction and Liza’s stunning performance, this is one of the best films ever made.

Don’t forget Joel Grey’s irrepressible host at the Kit Kat Club and those amazing Kander and Ebb songs.

Adapted by J. Presson Allen from all three sources – gay writer Hugh Wheeler is credited under the heading “Research Consultant”.

OSCAR 1972

Best Film: Cy Feuer, producer (Nominated)

Best Director: Bob Fosse (WIN)

Best Actress: Liza Minnelli (WIN)

Best Supporting Actor: Joel Grey (WIN)

Best Adapted Screenplay: Jay Presson Allen (Nominated)

Best Cinematography: Geoffrey Unsworth (WIN)

Best Editing: David Bretherton (WIN)

Best Production Design: Hans Jurgen Kiebach and Rolf Zehetbauer (Art Direction), Herbert Strabel (Set Direction) (WIN)

Best Music Adaptation: Ralph Burns (WIN)

Best Sound: Robert Knudson and David Hildyard (WIN)

Of its ten nominations, it won eight, losing to “The Godfather” in the Best Film and Adapted Screenplay categories. Astonishingly, costume designer Charlotte Fleming was not nominated for her incredible wardrobe. Some say it was because she was based in Berlin and not Hollywood. However, this also applied to the Production Design team, and it did not stop them from not just getting nominated but also winning. Michael York was also unlucky in not being nominated (he never has). Still, it was a particularly competitive year in the Best Actor category, with even Al Pacino being ridiculously moved into the Best Supporting category. The eventual lineup consisted of Marlon Brando (“The Godfather”), Laurence Olivier (“Sleuth”), Michael Caine (“Sleuth”), Peter O’Toole (“The Ruling Class”) and Pete Winfield (“Sounder”). Brando won the award, which he refused to accept, sending Native American actress Sacheen Littlefeather as his proxy.

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32. Pink Flamingos (1972)

Rated C (Solo)

High Camp at a Midnight Screening

John Waters

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Babs Johnson (Divine)

LGBTQ+ DIRECTOR

John Waters

LGBTQ+ ACTOR

Divine né Harris Glenn Milstead

After two under-the-radar curiosities, John Waters and his star, the fabulous drag queen Divine (né Harris Glenn Milstead), arrived on the scene in the fall of 1972 with “Pink Flamingos,” a very sick-and-twisted black comedy and the first part of his “Trash Trilogy”, which also includes “Female Trouble” (1974) and “Desperate Living” (1977). Divine plays a criminal named Babs Johnson, who is proud to be the filthiest person alive. While living in a trailer with her mother, Edie (Edith Massey), and companion Cotton (Mary Vivian Pearce), she is confronted by the Marbles (David Lochary and Mink Stole), a pair of criminals envious of her reputation who try to outdo her in filth. The scene in which Divine eats dog poop is not for the faint of heart.

Like “Valley of the Dolls” and “Rocky Horror,” the ONLY way to see “Pink Flamingos” is as a GROUP EXPERIENCE with a very gay crowd. Like the majority of his films, “Pink Flamingos” is set in Waters’s hometown of Baltimore, which he affectionately calls the “white trash capital of the world.” Original screenplay by Waters.

Pink Flamingos” is not available for streaming. However, the DVD can be purchased on Amazon.

Please see the table in the companion piece of this essay. https://thebrownees.net/seventy-queer-films-of-the-new-hollywood-1967-1981-table

33. The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant

(1972)

A+

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Petra von Kant (Margit Carstensen)

*Marlene (Irm Hermann)

*Karin Thimm (Hanna Schygulla)

LGBTQ+ PRODUCER

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

LGBTQ+ DIRECTOR

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

LGBTQ+ SCREENWRITER

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

LGBTQ+ PRODUCTION DESIGNER

Kurt Raab

In the city late tonight
Double feature, black and white (sic)
Bitter Tears and Taxi to the Klo
Find a bar, avoid a fight
Show your papers, be polite
Walking home with nowhеre else to go

Tom Robinson “Atmospherics” from the 1984 album “War Baby”

QUEER CINEMA MEETS NEW GERMAN CINEMA

AFTER FASSBINDER’S UNTIMELY DEATH IN 1982, AN ENTIRE MICROECONOMY OF GERMAN FILMMAKING COLLAPSED OVERNIGHT

SORRY, TOM ROBINSON. BOTH “BITTER TEARS’ AND “TAXI ZUM KLO” ARE IN COLOR!

A landmark in both Queer Cinema and the New German Cinema, writer/director/producer/ Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s examination of the dynamics of a lesbian love triangle was shot, in true Fassbinder fashion, over a few hours in der Wunderkind’s apartment. However, “Petra Von Kant” remains as influential today as it was in 1972. Based on Fassbinder’s play, it takes place entirely in the home of its eponymous heroine, an outrageously spoiled fashion designer. When a new sexually fluid young thing arrives from Australia (Hanna Schygulla), Petra (Margit Carstensen) begins to turn her attention away from her loyal friend and caretaker, Marlene (Irm Hermann), leading the viewer down avenues of emotional codependency you never knew existed. If the plot sounds familiar, it was remade in 1998 by Lisa Cholodenko as “High Art” with Ally Sheedy, Patricia Clarkson, and Radha Mitchell.

Singer/songwriter Tom Robinson immortalized the movie in his song “Atmospherics: ListentotheRadio”(co-written with Peter Gabriel) from his 1984 album “Hope and Glory.” He pairs it with another gay classic, Frank Ripploh’s “Taxi zum Klo” (see below – film number 68, the last one in this series). Presumably, for rhyming, Gabriel and Robinson say that both movies are in black and white. Sorry, guys, they are both in color.

Michael Ballhaus did the cinematography. Kurt Raab, famed German actor and frequent Fassbinder collaborator, designed the production. Maja Lemcke designed the astonishing costumes.

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Please see the table in the companion piece of this essay. https://thebrownees.net/seventy-queer-films-of-the-new-hollywood-1967-1981-table

34. Pete ‘n’ Tillie (1972)

B-

Martin Ritt

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Jimmy Twitchell (René Auberjonois)

Tillie (Carol Burnett) is single in her late thirties. At a party, she is introduced to Pete (Walter Matthau), a confirmed bachelor. On their first date, given a choice of beverages from Burnett, Matthau answers, “Whatever’s the most trouble.” It’s the best line in the movie, and it occurs too early.

Next thing you know, they are a married couple and are doubly blessed – or have good fortune – since Pete is an avowed atheist. When Tillie gives birth to a little boy, they call him Robbie (Lee Montgomery). The years go by, and although they have problems, the marriage is stable until one day, when he is nine, Robbie is diagnosed with a fatal illness.

Both Burnett and, particularly, Matthau were at the top of their game when this movie came out in 1972. Matthau’s next film, Don Siegel’s “Charley Varrick,” contains his most outstanding performance. However, “Pete’ n’ Tillie” is flat. The two stars seem afraid to let go, and the script gives them nothing to hold on to. It looks and feels like the TV movie of the week when that term was derogatory.

They each deal with the tragedy in their own way. Pete moves out, starts having affairs, and drowns his sorrows in alcohol. Tillie finds comfort in the company of her best friend, Gertrude, played by Geraldine Page. This was Page’s fifth of her eight Oscar nominations. She gets a lot of mileage out of the fact that Gertrude never divulges her age. Then there is the long-drawn-out catfight with Burnett, which inspired the Anne Bancroft-Shirley MacLaine brawl in “The Turning Point” five years later (see “The Turning Point, below). However (and I am a huge fan), she did not deserve the nod. It’s one of her least impressive performances. And then there is her other best friend, Jimmy, the film’s token gay guy, played by René Auberjonois, who had one of the most memorable names in cinema.

There is nothing special about Jimmy except that he knows Gertrude’s actual age (well, he is the token gay guy). Meanwhile, director Martin Ritt and screenwriter Julius J. Epstein (of “Casablanca” fame) make him a kind of saint with no life of his own. All he wants to do is take care of Tillie, and he even offers to marry her if that would make her happy (she wisely refuses). It’s not precisely a gay stereotype, but it’s a bit one-dimensional.

Original, Oscar-nominated screenplay by Epstein.

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35. Play It As It Lays (1972)

C-

Frank Perry

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*BZ. Mendenhall (Anthony Perkins)

LGBTQ+ ACTOR

Anthony Perkins

Director Frank Perry’s first film following his divorce from his screenwriter wife, Eleanor, is sorely missed. His choice was Joan Didion’s novel of the same name.

Adaptation: Perry with Didion’s husband, John Gregory Dunne.

Production: Perry with Didion’s brother-in-law, Dominick Dunne

Tuesday Weld’s Maria is a movie actress who strolls on the grounds of a mental hospital, recalling the traumatic events that led to her breakdown. She is married to an unfaithful, self-engrossed director (Adam Roarke) who neglects her. Following a series of one-night stands, she becomes pregnant. Her husband divorces her, and she has an illegal abortion. Maria’s only friend is B.Z., a homosexual movie producer played by Anthony Perkins. World-weary, he tells Maria that he has discovered the meaning of life is nothing. He invites her to commit suicide with him. However, she decides to live and cradles him as he dies after overdosing on sleeping tablets.

Unfortunately, despite a good performance by Weld, the film only comes alive when she drives endlessly around LA’s spectacular freeways, which, in the 1970s, were considered one of the city’s great engineering and architectural achievements. Perkins is passable in the underwritten role of another doomed homosexual.

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36. Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams

(1973)

B-

Gilbert Cates

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Bobby Walden (Ron Rickards)

In 1973, four years before we became accustomed to Woody Allen presenting us with various versions of Manhattan in all his movies, from “Annie Hall” (1977) to “Melinda and Melinda” (2004), Gilbert Cates gave us a very Allenesque avant la lettre film “Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams.” A Manhattan where our leading lady shops at Saks, goes to excellent restaurants, and whose idea of a pleasant afternoon is seeing a screening of Ingmar Bergman’s “Wild Strawberries” at a revival house with her mother.

That person is Rita Walden, played beautifully by Joanne Woodward in what may be her finest performance (her third Oscar nomination and the second of her three NYFCC awards for Best Actress). Rita is about to go through a midlife crisis triggered by the death of said mother (a marvelous Sylvia Sidney who was also Oscar-nominated). There’s her mother’s estate to be taken care of. Then, Rita questions her choice to marry her ophthalmologist husband, played by Martin Balsam, in a beautifully understated performance – so different from “The Fag” in the previous year’s “The Anderson Tapes” – that dominates the latter half of the film.

Her son Bobby (Ron Rickards), who has moved incommunicado to Amsterdam, is gay. Bobby only gets one scene, and it’s of the very creepy, homophobic variety. Woodward accidentally intrudes on a potentially intimate moment between him and his “friend” in Bobby’s bedroom. Bobby behaves abominably in that nasty way that only gay male characters can muster in Hollywood films. All the while, his friend, a ballet dancer (of course!), keeps doing his little pirouettes and demi plies, maintaining eye contact with Joanne in a vaguely confrontational manner. Well! This flashback occurs as part of Rita’s dream after she nods off at the above “Wild Strawberries” screening.

The original screenplay is by Stewart Stern, who dealt more sympathetically with homosexuality in films such as Rebel Without a Cause (original) and Rachel, Rachel (adapted).

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37. The Day of the Jackel (1973)

A

Fred Zinnemann

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Jules Bernard (Anton Rodgers)

LGBTQ+ ACTOR

Derek Jacobi

What we have here is another example of a gay character whose sole purpose in the movie is to be killed.

In director Fred Zinnemann’s superb edge-of-your-seat 142-minute adaptation of Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 novel of the same name, two innocent people are murdered as the French and English police – led by French actor Michel Lonsdale – try desperately to find “The Jackal” of the title. That is the code name of the hit man for hire who plans to assassinate President Charles de Gaulle as he hands out medals on the Place du 18 juin 1940, in Paris, on Liberation Day, 1963. The first murder results from a heterosexual affair, so it gets more attention. Additionally, the first victim is an upper-class French woman, Madame de Montpellier, played by the stunning French actress Delphine Seyrig. At the peak of her stardom, following “Last Year at Marienbad,” “Muriel,” and “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,” with “Jean Dielman” on the horizon, “The Jackal,” brilliantly played by Edward Fox, meets her at an expensive hotel. Later, as the police close in around him, he follows her to her mansion, and after she tells him that the police have been to see her, he kills her.

The second murder results from a homosexual affair, so it gets less screen time. Back in Paris, with the murder of Madame de Montpellier on the news stations and the police now knowing his nom de guerre and having alerted all of the hotels in Paris, “The Jackal” knows that he must find somewhere else to stay. So, barely escaping the police at the train station, he asks the taxi driver to take him to a Turkish Bath where, as he hoped, he is hit on by a French man named Jules Bernard (played by English actor Anthony “Anton” Rodgers) who invites him back to his home to spend the evening. All seems to go as planned until Jules overhears the newsflash on the television, and like Madame de Montpellier before him, he is immediately dispatched, in his case, to that great gay sauna in the sky.

Our consolation is that Zinnemmann and Rodgers treat him with a modicum of respect – we get a glimpse of his life outside the bathhouse, and Rodgers manages to do his best with his few minutes of screentime. That his murder is a mirror image of Seyrig’s also eases the pain (a little).

Otherwise, I always sit back and enjoy this beautifully made film, which reminds me of what a great director Zinnemmann could be when working with the right material.

Openly gay actor Derek Jacobi is among the marvelous cast, a virtual who’s who of excellent English and French character actors.

Oscar nomination for Best Editing.

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39. A Touch of Class (1973)

C–

Melvin Frank

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Cecil (Timothy Carlton Congdon Cumberbatch – uncredited)

FAIRY QUEEN NUMBER FOUR THE SWISHY MINCING FAG | FAIRY | QUEEN WAS A STAPLE OF HOLLYWOOD FROM THE MID-SIXTIES TO THE MID-EIGHTIES CARLTON’S FAIRY IS THE FOURTH OF FOUR FAIRY QUEENS IN THIS ESSAY

The year is 1973. The setting is London.

Our stars are Glenda Jackson and George Segal in Melvin Frank’s déclassée “ A Touch of Class,” a movie nobody sees today because the bloom has faded from the rose. Jackson’s Oscar for Best Actress is on a par with Jack Lemmon’s Best Actor for “Save the Tiger” that same year – utterly undeserved and the worst of that year’s five choices -Joanne Woodward’s reaction to her being named the winner is priceless. Her character works in the garment industry, so we are on “fairy alert.” And, wouldn’t you know it, one of them does descend on her office just as Segal is visiting. He’s got a swishy fairy attitude, which he unwisely unleashes on Jackson as he minces about her desk. His name is Cecil, and he is played, believe it or not, in an uncredited part by Benedict Cumberbatch’s dad, Timothy Carlton Congdon Cumberbatch, who is known professionally as Timothy Carlton. Jackson wonders why a particular document is not typed. The dialogue is as follows:

You know I only type with one finger and (pause), I’ve hurt it

Cecil

Don’t tell me how!

Jackson, dripping contempt.

The, ahem, Oscar-nominated original screenplay is by Frank and Jack Rose.

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40. The Last of Sheila (1973)

B

Herbert Ross

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Tom Parkman (Richard Benjamin)

LGBTQ+ DIRECTOR

Herbert Ross

LGBTQ+ SCREENWRITERS

Anthony Perkins

Stephen Sondheim

LGBTQ+ COSTUME DESIGNER

Joel Schumacher

On a one week pleasure cruise on the Mediterranean aboard the yacht of movie producer Clinton Greene (James Coburn), the guests include actress Alice Wood (Raquel Welch); her talent-manager husband Anthony Wood (Ian McShane); secretary turned talent agent Christine (Dyan Cannon); screenwriter Tom Parkman (Richard Benjamin) and his wife Lee (Joan Hackett); and film director  Philip Dexter (James Mason). The trip is, in fact, a reunion; except for Lee, all were together at Clinton’s home one year before, on the night a hit-and-run resulted in the death of Clinton’s wife, gossip columnist Sheila Greene (Yvonne Romain). Once the cruise is underway, Greene, a parlor game enthusiast, informs his guests that each will be assigned an index card with the following titles: HOMOSEXUAL | SHOPLIFTER | EX-CONVICT | INFORMER |LITTLE CHILD MOLESTER. One of the cards is blank. The game aims to uncover everyone else’s secret while keeping one’s own private.

Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim, who teamed up to write this movie’s original screenplay, were good friends who liked throwing lavish parlor games in their fabulous Manhattan apartments. They also loved clues, riddles and crosswords, and anyone who has seen old episodes of “Password” on TV can attest to how clever Perkins was with words. Ditto for Sondheim, arguably the most excellent wordsmith of the 20th century. Both men were gay, as was the film’s director, Herbert Ross (despite being married to both Nora Kaye and Lee Radziwill). And that massive gay sensibility does come through. The actors are all in good form, with Raquel Welch being particularly impressive in her one genuinely good film. Dyan Cannon also has a great time playing a character that was clearly modeled on uber-talent agent Sue Mengers. The movie ultimately disappoints, however, in that it’s only moderately entertaining. With this level of talent and queerness, we should have had the time of our lives.

The song “Friends” is sung by Bette Midler.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Gerry Turpin

Warner Bros.

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41. Freebie and the Bean (1974)

F

Richard Rush

I WILL NEVER GET THIS TIME BACK AGAIN

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*The Transvestite (Christopher Morley)

LGBTQ+ ACTOR

ACTOR: Christopher Morley

AUDIENCES CHEER THE DEATH OF THE FAG

Noted female impersonator Christopher Morley may have tried to give his character “The Transvestite” – he is not given a name, even though he is the story’s central villain – some semblance of dignity in director Richard Rush’s off-the-scale homophobic/transphobic buddy-cop movie “Freebie and the Bean.” Our heroes, James Caan (“Freebie”) and Alan Arkin (“The Bean” – he is supposed to be Hispanic!), first encounter Morley in a bathtub. He’s preening and lisping, and you can see he disgusts them. Freebie, who is not on screen five minutes before he utters the word “fag”, clearly has a problem with anything that isn’t macho. However, it’s never clear whether Morley’s character has gender identity issues or just dresses in women’s clothes as a disguise when he is robbing people! After he shoots Bean, seriously injuring him, he is chased by Freebie, who corners him in a public bathroom. They fight it out with Morley, who has briefly incapacitated Caan and is taking time to look in the mirror and freshen up! However, Freebie recovers and grabs a gun, which he empties into Morley’s character, when just one bullet would have done. And the audience cheers! Not because of the villain’s demise but because the fag is dead.

The original screenplay, written by Robert Kaufman, is based on a story by Floyd Mutrux.

Rush later directed a much superior film, “The Stunt Man” (1980), with Peter O’Toole.

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42. A Very Natural Thing (1974)

D+

Christopher Larkin

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*David (Robert Joel)

LGBTQ+ DIRECTOR | ACTOR

DIRECTOR: Christopher Larkin (RIP 1988: Suicide following the diagnosis of end-stage AIDS)

ACTOR: Robert Joel (RIP 1992: AIDS-related illness)

Christopher Larkin directed and co-wrote this film about a gay man in his late twenties searching for love in mostly the wrong places (in Manhattan and the Hamptons), aiming to market it to a general audience. It didn’t work. Possibly because it was ahead of its time, but mostly because it’s pretty awful. The hackneyed script, the terrible acting, the wall-to-wall padding, and all those dreadful haircuts! The lead character in the film was once a monk, as was the director, and the opening scene, where he bids farewell to his monastery brothers, is the only moment with genuine pathos. There is massive footage of NYC pride parades that lends nothing to the proceedings except to tell us that the director did not have enough material or ideas to fill his movie. Today, it’s nothing more than a failed curiosity. It would be over ten years before such infinitely superior Queer Films as “Buddies” and “An Early Frost” (both in 1985), “Parting Glances” (1986) and “Longtime Companion” (1990) were released. Unfortunately, all of those films showed gay culture in the context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Tragically, the lead actor in this movie, Robert Joel, died from an AIDS-related illness at the age of 48 in 1992, while the director took his own life after being told he was in the latter stages of AIDS in 1988. The writer of “The Celluloid Closet,” Vito Russo, who also died from an AIDS-related illness in 1990, has a blink-and-you-will-miss-it cameo appearance in the film.

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43. The Great Gatsby (1974)

B+

Jack Clayton

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Nick Carraway (Sam Waterston)

*Jordan Baker (Lois Chiles)

I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a – of a rose, an absolute rose

Daisy Buchanan – The Great Gatsby

I hope she will be a fool

Daisy Buchanan – The Great Gatsby

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together and let other people clean up the mess they made

Nick Carraway – The Great Gatsby

THE THIRD FILM VERSION OF THE GREAT GATSBY WAS PRODUCED BY DAVID MERRICK AND DIRECTED BY JACK CLAYTON.

Francis Ford Coppola adapted it from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age masterpiece.

A novel of astonishing economy and grace was stretched out into a bloated 150 minutes.

The first two versions of Gatsby were also filmed at Paramount Studios: as a silent film in 1926 with Warner Baxter, which is now lost, and in 1949 with Alan Ladd as Gatsby.

The film, despite its excessive length, has its charms. Sam Waterston is superb as the narrator and our first gay character, Nick Carraway. He is more overtly gay in the novel, as evidenced by his detailed physical descriptions of the other male characters, particularly Tom (played by Bruce Dern), which catch our attention. His sensitive, almost asexual presence here is equally striking, so much so that even Robert Redford’s Jay Gatsby, a performance so understated it barely registers, comes alive in their scenes together. People were sharply divided by Mia Farrow’s Daisy Buchanan. I think that Farrow made an endlessly fascinating Daisy, her charm barely disguising the emptiness and selfishness lurking underneath the surface.

Then there is the supporting cast, led by Dern, his mistress, Karen Black, and her struggling, poor husband, played by the always underrated Scott Wilson. This brings us to the film’s more overtly gay character, Jordan Baker, who drives a car, is a professional golfer, and whose last name is a reference to a certain sexually fluid American ex-pat who, at the time of Gatsby’s publication in 1925, was the toast of Paris. Lois Chiles is beautiful but bland, and she brings this blandness to her character, who exudes a devil-may-care invincibility. Jordan seems astonished at how liberating it is to be a woman of any sexual orientation in this fantastic new decade. And unlike Daisy, whose choice is limited to choosing between Gatsby or Tom, a scandal or a trophy wife, her future as a newly liberated woman seems limitless. Chiles and Farrow would be paired again four years later in another famous adaptation, this time John Guillermin’s delightful version of Agatha Christie’s “Death on the Nile” (1978).

Meanwhile, there are endless parties at Gatsby, including plenty of shots of female couples doing the Black Bottom. I would have to watch the film again to see if there are any quick cutaways to male-on-male shenanigans, but I don’t think so.

The film won two Oscars. One was for Theoni V. Aldredge’s striking costumes, which instituted a brief Gatsby fashion craze and beat out an astounding Best Costume Design lineup that year, including Anthea Sylbert for “Chinatown,” Theodora Van Runkle for “The Godfather Part II,” Tony Walton for “Murder on the Orient Express” and John Furness for “Daisy Miller.” The second was for Nelson Riddle’s adapted score, which used the plaintive refrain from Irvin Berlin’s 1923 song “What’ll I Do” to profound effect.

The gorgeous cinematography is by Douglas Slocombe, who should have been nominated but wasn’t. Notable in the cast are Brooke Adams, who is very striking as a party guest (uncredited), and Patsy Kinset as Daisy and Tom’s daughter.

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44. GOING PLACES

(Les Valseuses)

(1974)

A

BERTRAND BLIER

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Jean-Claude (Gérard Depardieu)

*Pierrot (Patrick Dewaere)

Co-written and directed by Bertrand Blier and based on his own novel with the same title, “Going Places” (1974) – originally titled Les Valseuses (direct translation from the French: the testicles) – is a landmark in both New French Cinema and Queer Cinema as we follows Jean-Claude (Gerard Depardieu) and Pierrot (Patrick Dewaere) two aimless, anarchic young men who roam across France in stolen cars. Their journey is marked by petty crimes and random acts of violence, all portrayed with a disturbingly casual tone. They are joined by Marie-Ange (Miou-Miou), a passive hairdresser who becomes their companion, lover, and emotional sounding board. Her own quest for sexual fulfillment adds a layer of melancholy to the trio’s chaotic escapades.

Four sequences stand out:

The first is where Depardieu and Dewaere encounter a woman on a train (Bridget Fossey, who was the little girl in director René Clément’s 1952 masterpiece “Forbidden Games”) while she is breastfeeding her baby. They then partake in the milk themselves! This scene, in particular, is beautifully handled by Blier and his three actors. Shocking at first, it transforms itself into a moment of great tenderness.

The second is where the boys wait outside a women’s prison and pick up a newly released prisoner who they think is going to be sex starved. She is played by Jeanne Moreau, who gives the movie a touch of class. Although the film has been described as misogynistic – and it is, in places – I found these scenes to be both beautiful and sad.

The third is where the boys are horsing around and, wouldn’t you know it, next thing they are pounding one another. Very sexy, and the reason for the movie’s inclusion in this essay.

The fourth is where Depardieu, Dewaere and Miou-Miou encounter a bourgeois French family at a campground and seduce the very willing teenage daughter, played by a bratty Isabelle Huppert, much to the consternation of her parents.

Not for the faint of heart, the film is almost as sensational as it was fifty years ago.

Stars Gérard Depardieu, Patrick Dewaere, Miou-Miou and Isabelle Huppert gained significant recognition from this film.

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45. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

Rated C (Solo)

High Camp at a Midnight Screening

Jim Sharman

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry)

LGBTQ+ ACTOR

ACTOR: Tim Curry

Adapted from the West End musical by Richard O’Brien.

Every boy and every girl, whether gay or straight, must see Richard O’Brien’s fantastical creation, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” It has been running continuously on one stage or another/one film theatre or another, for almost 50 years since its debut in London’s West End in 1973 and the release of the Lou Adler-produced movie in 1975. It is a GROUP EXPERIENCE with those inspired zingers returning to the screen, resulting from two generations of audience members’ brilliant responses, which is the real entertainment. So, let’s join Brad (Barry Bostwick) and Janet (Susan Sarandon) as they find themselves in the world of Dr. Frank-N-Furter (the incredible Tim Curry), Riff Raff (O’Brien), Magenta (Patricia Quinn), Columbia, a Groupie (Nell Campbell aka Little Nell), Dr. Everett V. Scott, a rival scientist (Jonathan Adams), Eddie, an ex-delivery boy (Meat Loaf) and, finally, The Criminologist, An Expert (Charles Gray) to do …….

Science Fiction/Double Feature – The Lips (those of Patricia Quinn; the voice of Richard O’Brien).

Dammit, Janet – Brad, Janet, and Chorus.

There is a Light (over at the Frankenstein Place): Janet, Brad, Riff Raff, and Chorus.

The Time Warp – Riff Raff, Magenta, The Criminologist, Columbia, and Transylvanians.

Sweet Transvestite – Frank.

The Sword of Damocles – Rocky and the Transylvanians.

Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch Me – Janet with Magenta, Columbia, Rocky, Brad, Frank, and Riff Raf.

Rose Tint My World– Columbia, Rocky, Janet, and Brad.

Fanfare/Don’t Dream It. Be It – Frank with Brad, Janet, Rocky, and Columbia.

Wild and Untamed Thing – Frank with Brad, Janet, Rocky, Columbia, and Riff Raff

I’m Going Home – Frank and Chorus

The Time Warp (Reprise) – Riff Raff and Magenta

Science Fiction/Double Feature (Reprise) – The Lips

NOW SHOWING AT A LATE-NIGHT MOVIE THEATRE NEAR YOU EVERY FRIDAY AND SATURDAY NIGHT!

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46. Barry Lyndon (1975)

A

Stanley Kubrick

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Lt. Jonathan Fakenham, gay British soldier (Jonathan Cecil)

LGBTQ+ ACTOR

ACTOR: Murray Melvin

In times like this, I realize how much I care for you and how impossibly empty life would be without you.

Lt. Jonathan Fakenham – BARRY LYNDON

In Stanley Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon” (1975), there is a moment where Barry (Ryan O’Neal) finds two soldiers naked and holding hands in a pond as they confess their love for each other. Barry overhears their conversation, and he takes advantage of the situation, stealing the clothes of one of the men and assuming his identity. The scene is humorous. But does it mock the lovers? The first time I saw it, I thought so. However, I have come to look at the scene more favorably over the years. Although only an incidental moment in the film, and we never see these characters again, the expression of true love remains with the viewer.

Gay Actor Murray Melvin plays the Reverend Runt, who, by all appearances, is devoted to Lady Lyndon (Marisa Berenson) but is cruelly dismissed by Barry’s mother (Marie Kean).

Oscar-winner John Alcott shot the movie’s famed candlelit card game sequence with all-natural lighting. The scene features O’Neal, Berenson and Melvin and also introduced the general public to Schubert’s haunting “Piano Trio in E Flat.”

Adapted by Kubrick from the novel “The Luck of Barry Lyndon” (1844) by William Makepeace Thackeray.

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47. Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

A+

Sidney Lumet

LGBTQ CHARACTERS

*Sonny Wortzik (Al Pacino)

*Leon Shermer (Chris Sarandon)

WITH BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, THE BEST QUEER MOVIE EVER MADE.

1975: OSCAR WINNER FOR BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

(FRANK PIERSON)

1975: OSCAR NOMINATED FOR BEST FILM, BEST DIRECTOR, BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE, AND BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE.

Sidney Lumet’s masterpiece is based on actual events. On a hot August afternoon in 1972, Sonny Wortzik (Al Pacino) and Sal Naturile (John Cazale) attempt to rob the First Brooklyn Savings Bank but only find $1,100 in cash and end up being surrounded by the police. Sonny wants the money to get his lover Leon a sex change, and as a long day journeys into the night, things turn into a circus.

Pacino is magnificent. With Michael Corleone in “The Godfather,” it’s his defining role. Director Sidney Lumet, who works in an enclosed space, gets the scenes between Sonny and Leon (Chris Sarandon, excellent) precisely right. Funny but endearing. Not a trace of condescension. Can this be the same team that gave us the rancid “The Anderson Tapes?”

Great work, as well, by Charles Durning as the head police officer.

The superb Oscar-winning screenplay is by Frank Pierson.

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48. Fox and His Friends (1975)

B+

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Franz “Fox” Bieberkopf (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)

*Eugen (Peter Chatel)

*Max (Karlheinz Böhm)

LGBTQ+ ACTOR | PRODUCER | DIRECTOR | SCREENWRITER

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

QUEER CINEMA MEETS NEW GERMAN CINEMA: PART TWO.

Fassbinder’s companion piece to “Bitter Tears,” which he had made three years previously. Here, he casts himself against type as a working-class gay man who wins the lottery and then falls in love with the elegant son of an industrialist (Peter Chatel) who ultimately swindles the easily flattered “Fox” out of his fortune.

It’s a fascinating look at gay life in the 1970s, and it’s one of at least a dozen great movies Fassbinder wrote and directed in the decade leading up to his untimely death. Karlheinz Böhm, who starred in Michael Powell’s “Peeping Tom” in 1960, is the older sophisticate who introduces Fox to his circle of wealthy friends.

The name of Fassbinder’s character was taken from Alfred Doblin’s 1929 novel Berlin Alexanderplatz, which the director later adapted for television.

Photographed by the great German cinematographer Michael Ballhaus before he immigrated to the United States.

Original screenplay by Fassbinder.

NOW STREAMING ON AMAZON PRIME, APPLE TV+, The Criterion Collection, MAX (YOUTUBE)

Please see the Table in the companion piece to this essay.

https://thebrownees.net/seventy-queer-films-of-the-new-hollywood-1967-1981-table

49. Grey Gardens (1975)

A+

Grey Gardens: Albert and David Maysles

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

None.

But Big and Little Edie Bouvier have entered the hearts of gay men everywhere! Well, maybe not everywhere!

I need profesional music!

Big Edie Bouvier

Special mention to the TV movie “Grey Gardens” (2009)

Special mention to the TV Limited Series” Feud: Capote vs The Swans” (2024)

The film “Grey Gardens” tells the story of Big Edie and Little Edie Bouvier, the aunt and cousin of former First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. When the brothers Albert and David Maysles discovered them in the early seventies, Big Edie, who was almost eighty at the time, and Little Edie, who was fifty-six, appeared to be stuck in another era, holding onto their aristocratic past while living in a crumbling house and caring for numerous cats and raccoons.

The Maysles were already famous for their unique style of filmmaking, which they had used in such classics as “Salesman” (1969) and “Gimme Shelter” (1970), where, at the Rolling Stones Altamont Free Concert, they unexpectedly captured on film the altercation between Altamont attendee Meredith Hunter and Hells Angel Alan Passaro that resulted in Hunter’s death. Their film footage showed Hunter drawing and pointing a revolver just before being stabbed by Passaro, who was later acquitted of Hunter’s murder on self-defense grounds after the jury viewed the film. They christened their style Direct Cinema, a type of cinéma vérité with no directorial interference, although some critics, such as Pauline Kael, accused them of staging and more!

The filmmakers gained the trust of Big Edie and Little Edie and filmed at Grey Gardens for several weeks. They, along with their co-directors, Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer, then carefully edited their footage to create a remarkable documentary that captured the essence of the women and their unique lifestyles. After its release, the film’s high campiness—a tragic story set in the faded milieu of New York high society and featuring some deliciously bitchy one-liners between mother and daughter—developed a significant gay following. Little Edie had a unique fashion sense, particularly with her head scarves, and, over time, some gay fashion designers credited her as an inspiration for their work. She was also a wanna-be cabaret artist, and after her mother’s death, she did achieve her goal of signing in some of Manhattan’s top Cabaret venues, mainly to the gay audiences who had grown to love her over the years since the film’s release.

The documentary received a Criterion Collection DVD release in 2001, where it is now available for screening. By the turn of the century, it had become a definitive gay cult classic, inspiring songs such as Rufus Wainwright’s “Grey Gardens.” In 2006, the documentary was adapted into a musical play by three gay men: Doug Wright, Scott Frankel, and Michael Korie. In 2009, it was adapted into a highly successful TV movie of the same title by gay writer/directors Michael Sucsy and Patricia Rozema. It starred Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore as Big and Little Edie, respectively; Jeanne Tripplehorn as Jacqueline Kennedy; and Ayre Gross and Justin Lewis as Albert and David Maysles.

The Maysles brothers have returned in high style, thanks to the conceit behind the third episode, “Masquerade 1966,” of Ryan Murphy’s new limited series “Feud: Capote vs the Swans.” Written by Jon Robin Baitz and directed by Gus Van Sant, the episode brilliantly interweaves the footage the brothers filmed (with Charlotte Zwerin) for their documentary “With Love from Truman” in which Truman Capote, having just published his masterpiece, “In Cold Blood,” has reinterred New York society and is sorting the invitations (who is in and who is out) to his famous 1966 Masked Ball at the Plaza Hotel. In what has to be some of the most mesmerizing moments in television history, the entire episode – apart from the closing moments, when Truman (the excellent Tom Hollander) dances with the ghost of his dead mother (Murphy’s muse, the incredible Jessica Lang back after playing Joan Crawford in “Feud: Bette and Joan”) while The Swans – Babe Paley (Naomi Watts), Slim Keith (Diane Lane), C. Z. Guest (Chloe Sevigny) and Lee Radziwell (Calista Flockhart) look on – is shown as part of the brothers’ black-and-white “footage” giving The Swans ample time to bitch and moan about Truman. Pawel Szajda plays Albert, and Yuval David plays David. There is a scene where Truman flirts outrageously with Albert in the back seat of a car and another where Truman and Albert slow dance in Truman’s living room. It’s during this scene that Albert quotes Saint Theresa of Avilla: “More tears are shed over Answered Prayers than unanswered ones,” giving Truman the title of his new book on New York society that he would never publish – apart from the articles in Esquire Magazine in 1975 in which he betrayed the trust of The Swans and for which Paley and Keith never forgave him. David Maysles died from a brain hemorrhage at age 55 in 1987. Albert died at age 88 in 2015.

GREY GARDENS, THE DOCUMENTARY BY ALBERT AND DAVID MAYSLES, IS NOW STREAMING ON AMAZON PRIME, APPLE TV+, YOUTUBE and THE CRITERION COLLECTION

GREY GARDENS, THE TV MOVIE, IS NOW STREAMING ON AMAZON PRIME, APPLE TV+ AND YOUTUBE THROUGH MAX.

FEUD: CAPOTE VS. SWANS IS CURRENTLY STREAMING ON HULU (FX)

50. THE EIGER SANCTION (1975)

D+

Clint Eastwood

LGBTQ CHARACTERS

*Miles Mellough (Jack Cassidy)

*FAGGOT (uncredited)

CINEMA’S FIRST QUEER CANINE

Special mention has to go to the cinema’s first Queer Canine. The lovingly named Faggot was a tiny little rascal – you know, the breed of dog only a homosexual would own – who vigorously humps the legs of any male who comes in contact with his owner, Miles Mellough, an effete Jack Cassidy, doing a variation on one of his legendary “Colombo” villains but with a Queer turn!

Directed by and starring Clint Eastwood and based on the 1972 novel of the same name by Trevanian (the nom-de-plume of Rodney William Whitaker), the film is about Jonathan Hemlock (Eastwood), an art history professor, mountain climber, and former assassin (wow!) once employed by a secret government agency, who is blackmailed into returning to his deadly profession – and joining an international climbing team – for one last mission.

When we first meet Faggot he is pleasuring himself on Eastwood’s shoe. Who was the dog that played him? Did he know that the audience probably hated him as much as they hated his master? Was he the go-to pooch in Hollywood for playing queer canine characters in the mid-seventies? Was it nature or nurture? Since he was uncredited, we will never know. Due to a series of continuity glitches, it’s difficult to understand what happened to his character in the movie after Hemlock leaves him and Mellough in the hot Arizona desert to die of sunstroke. As Eastwood drives away, we see him abandoning his master and leaping into the passenger seat of Eastwood’s car. However, in the next shot, he is nowhere to be seen. Later, we hear that Cassidy has eaten him to stay alive. So much for loyalty between faggots!

However, Faggot may have had the last canine chuckle since all of those famously hyped Alpine scenes that followed his supposed demise were a bore. Eastwood, the director, matured enough over the years to fashion a sympathetic, if not altogether successful, treatment of J. Edgar Hoover’s long-term relationship with Clyde Tolson in “J. Edgar.” Have we forgiven him?

NOW SHOWING ON AMAZON PRIME, APPLE TV+ AND YOUTUBE

51. Jeanne Dielman (1975)

“”Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles””

A+

Although released in Europe in 1975, Chantal Akerman’s feminist/queer masterpiece “Jeanne Dielman” was not shown in the USA until 1983.

We, the audience, observe three days in the iterative daily life of a widowed woman and single mother. The duration of 3 hours and 21 minutes requires a significant commitment from the viewer. However, like many classic “SLOW MOVIES,” it rewards us with many pleasures. The film’s everyday details of this loving and caring mother contrast with her life as a prostitute. She welcomes clients into her home with the detached and mechanical demeanor that is also evident in her other daily activities.

There is no backstory, and we never know how or why Jeanne arrived at this point. No one speaks her name in the film. We only catch a glimpse of it in a letter she reads to her son.

QUEER AND FEMINIST SENSIBILITIES RESONATE IN CHANTAL AKERMAN’S MASTERPIECE.

There are a few brief scenes where she shops and stops for coffee. However, the film is primarily a closed-door affair, taking place mainly in Jeanne’s apartment, with most of the action occurring in her kitchen. In a series of long takes, the camera captures Jeanne in a medium shot. We see her making coffee, washing dishes, making the bed, taking out the garbage, and bathing after sex. As the viewer settles into the film, Jeanne’s routines fascinate us. And they are all the more hypnotic because Delphine Seyrig (“Last Year at Marienbad”) does something unique. Although she disappears into her role as Jeanne, she remains an actress of style and great beauty—an exceptional star.

By the second day, however, you notice subtle changes in Jeanne’s rituals. Trivial things at first, like the dropping of a newly washed spoon. After that, as the movie progresses, we realize that Jeanne is slowly losing her mind before our eyes. A sense of unease settles over us. We have a hunch that something terrible will happen, and it does.

Akerman, who committed suicide in 2015, was born in Brussels to Holocaust survivors. Her mother, unlike her grandparents, survived Auschwitz. They would be exceptionally close throughout their lives. The daily details of Jeanne’s life were influenced by those of her mother and her beloved aunt. The Jewish religious rituals of her childhood also played a role. That said, Akerman hated labels, whether they were “feminist,” “Jewish,” or “lesbian.” Although “Jeanne Dielman” predates Ruby Rich’s coining of the term “New Queer Cinema” in “Sight & Sound” in 1992, Akerman was considered by many to be a vital representative of that movement.

“Jeanne Dielman” was shot with an all-woman crew, as Akerman insisted. Cinematographer Babette Mangolte does some astonishing work here. From her lighting, you can feel the hours go by. Fifty years before the Academy nominated its first two female cinematographers, she pioneered and innovated in the careful design and lighting of interiors. She is now a professor at the University of California, San Diego.

“Mrs. America’s” Haunting Final Scene.

Recently, on Hulu, “Jeanne Dielman” inspired the closing scene of “Mrs. America.” After hearing from Reagan that she will not be part of his cabinet, Cate Blanchett’s Phyllis Schlafly, defeated, retreats to the kitchen. There, she robotically peels one apple after another. Right before our eyes, we are witnessing the renaissance of Jeanne Dielman. That Akerman’s feminist/queer masterpiece is used as the inspiration for the conclusion of a series about a woman who considered herself an antifeminist and who distanced herself from her gay son should be antithetical. Yet it is not.

STREAMING ON the Criterion Channel, MAX (YOUTUBE)

52. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

A+

Director Peter Weir’s masterpiece.

The plot revolves around the disappearance of several teenage schoolgirls and their teacher during a picnic at Hanging Rock, Victoria, on Valentine’s Day in 1900, and the subsequent impact on the local community.

Spearheading the then-emerging Australian New Wave Cinema, which included notable directors like Bruce Beresford and Fred Schepisi, the film boasts bravura direction from Weir. Like Hitchcock, Weir showed that horror can occur on the brightest and most beautiful of summer days. There’s a suggestion that it was the young charges’ blossoming sexuality, in concert with some ancient force within those rocks, that led to the girl’s transportation into some other realm.

A sense of something unsettling is there from the beginning as the girls awaken to a beautiful morning. Sara (Margaret Nelson), a young, newly arrived orphan not allowed to go on the outing, is clearly enamored with the gorgeous Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert). When Sara whispers something to Miranda, she is rebuffed and told, somewhat fatalistically, “You must learn to love someone else, apart from me; I will not be around for much longer.”

Miranda has self-possession and knowingness beyond her years. At the picnic, the school’s French teacher (Helen Morse) likens her to a Botichelli angel. It is Miranda who initiates the walk up the rocks and, as some mysterious magnetic force stops everyone’s watch at noon, you begin to feel that maybe sublimated queer desire is at the heart of the events depicted in the film. There are also hints of a romantic relationship between the schoolmistress, Rachel Roberts, and the headmistress, Miss McCraw (Vivean Gray), who was last seen running up the hill in her underwear to join the girls and was never seen again.

Russell Boyd was the cinematographer, and Bruce Smeaton composed the haunting score, incorporating the didgeridoo and other Aboriginal musical instruments. Weir also skillfully used sound design to significant effect, combining the sound waves of earthquakes and other natural phenomena into the mix.

Boyd’s camera operator on the set was John Seale, who would eventually supplant his master and become Weir’s cinematographer on three movies (“Witness,” “The Mosquito Coast,” and “Dead Poets Society”) and Anthony Minghella’s cinematographer on “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” winning an Oscar for “The English Patient.”

Weir and Boyd would eventually reunite in the new millennium for two more movies, one of which, “Master and Commander of the World,” would win Boyd his own Oscar.

The film was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland in 1977, and not until 1979 in the United States.

NOW STREAMING ON AMAZON PRIME VIDEO, APPLE TV+, MAX (YOUTUBE)

53. THE RITZ

(1976)

C+

RICHARD LESTER

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Chris, a bathhouse patron (F. Murray Abraham)

LGBTQ+ SOURCE MATERIAL | SCREENWRITER | ACTRESS

SOURCE MATERIAL: Terence McNally (Play)

SCREENWRITER: Terence McNally

ACTRESS: Kaye Ballard

Part mob comedy and part drag review, this exhausting adaptation of Terence McNally’s hit play wears out its welcome in the first thirty minutes, but the laughs keep coming. Jack Weston is a mob boss on the run who takes refuge in a gay bathhouse in New York City, leading to multiple cases of mistaken identity, not to mention sexual confusion. Rita Moreno gets the most laughs playing Googie Gomez, a hopelessly untalented actress who thinks that Weston’s character is a Broadway producer.

A real curiosity! Directed by Richard Lester, who had seen better days with the Beatles in “A Hard Day’s Night” and with “The Three Musketeers.” With Jerry Stiller, F. Murray Abraham, Kaye Ballard and Treat Williams, all of whom have their moments.

NOW STREAMING ON AMAZON, APPLE TV+ and YouTube

54. Ode to Billy Joe (1976)

C

Max Baer

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Billy Joe McAllister (Robby Benson)

THE QUESTION

Why did Billy Joe McAllister jump off the Tallahassee Bridge?

THE ANSWER

Because he slept with a man.

The mystery behind Bobbie Gentry’s haunting song should have remained a mystery. That was its allure. That was its magic.

.

Unfortunately, in the summer of 1976, screenwriter Herman Raucher (“Summer of ‘42”) and actor-turned-director Max Baer (formerly Jethro in “The Beverly Hillbillies”) solved the mystery, whether we liked it or not.

Robby Benson is sympathetic as the unfortunate title character, as is Glynnis O’Connor, his girlfriend, until the plot overtakes her toward the end. Meanwhile, Joan Hotchkis is perfect as O’Connor’s mother. Unfortunately, the film is reductive and backward-looking, and the final scene, from today’s vantage point, can only be described as outrageous.

NOW STREAMING ON AMAZON PRIME, APPLE TV+, YOUTUBE

55. Carrie (1976)

A+

Brian De Palma

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Miss Collins, the gym teacher (Betty Buckley)

QUOTES

Plug it up! Plug it up! Plug it Up! Plug it up!

In the showers, the girls Sue, Chris, Norma, and Helen (Amy Irving, Nancy Allen, P.J. Soles, and Edie McClurg) throw tampons and sanitary pads at Carrie. They are taking a communal shower after a game of volleyball, which Carrie (Sissy Spacek) is responsible for losing. Carrie, hysterical and covered in blood with her arms outstretched, runs towards the girls after she experiences, at age sixteen, her first period. Her mother (Piper Laurie), a religious fanatic, has never told her about menstruation.

That was a really shitty thing you did yesterday, a really shitty thing!

Miss Collins (Betty Buckley) to Sue (Amy Irving).

Ballots? Ballots anyone? Ballots?

Norma (P. J. Soles) IS collecting the ballots for the King and Queen of the school’s prom. Norma then surreptitiously exchanges these ballotts for Chris’ (Nancy Allen) preprepared ones, all of which have a check mark on the box labelled “CARRIE WHITE AND TOMMY ROSS”.

I should have given you to God when you were born. But I was weak. I was backslidin’!

Margaret White (Piper Laurie) to Carrie White (Sissy Spacek).

He took me, with the stink of filthy roadhouse whiskey on his breath. And I liked it!

Margaret White to Carrie White.

I should’ve killed myself when he put it in me!

Margaret White to Carrie White!

After the blood come the boys!

Margaret White to Carrie White.

Eat Shit!

Chris Hargenson to Carrie White after she causes Chris’ team to loose the vollyball game.

DIALOGUE

Margaret White

 These are godless times. Mrs. Snell. 

Mrs. Snell

(Priscilla Pointer)

 I’ll drink to that… 

Margaret White

 I pray you find Jesus!

Margaret White

 I might have known it would be red. 

Carrie White:

It’s pink, Mama.

Margaret White

 I can see your dirty pillows. 

Carrie White:

Breasts, Mama. They’re called breasts, and every woman has them.

One of the GREAT HORROR MOVIES with tremendous performances from Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie, the latter returning to the screen after a fifteen-year absence. Brian De Palma’s masterpiece, like “Mildred Pierce” and “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane,” works simultaneously as drama and high camp. We feel for Carrie while at the same time reveling in her mother’s treasure chest of unforgettable lines (see above). It’s a list so long that it will satisfy the gay sensibility of any red-blooded adolescent male! The one gay character in the movie is Betty Buckley’s gym teacher, who sets the plot rolling by coming down hard on the girls, Nancy Allen and Amy Irving, after the “plug-it-up” scene in the showers. The unforgettable score, one of the all-time greats, is by Pino Donaggio.

Adapted from the novel by Stephen King.

NOW STREAMING ON AMAZON PRIME AND APPLE TV+

56. Sebastiane (1976)

C-

Derek Jarman

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Saint Sebastian (Leonardo Treviglio)

*Severus (Barney James)

LGBTQ+ DIRECTOR | SCREENWRITER

Derek Jarman

Gay director Derek Jarman’s directorial debut is set in the third century AD, and Sebastian is a member of the Emperor Diocletian’s personal guard. When he tries to intervene to stop one of the Emperor’s catamites (prepubescent boys whose sole purpose is sex) from being strangled by one of his bodyguards, Sebastian is exiled to a remote coastal garrison and reduced in rank to private. He is an early Christian and celibate despite all those naked Roman soldiers swarming around him. Severus, the commanding officer of the garrison, who becomes increasingly obsessed with Sebastian, tries to rape him and ultimately presides over his execution by a phalanx of arrows for refusing to take up arms in defense of the Roman Empire.

It’s a start. However, what seemed revolutionary in 1976 appears somewhat mediocre today. The film is more of a series of tableaux vivants than a narrative feature, and its mostly British cast makes a sad substitution for a sexy Roman garrison. Jarman seems to want to be erotic and anti-erotic, at the same time, having his cake and eating it too. The whole misguided adventure is an exercise in hypocrisy. And the (minimal) Latin dialogue. Oh My! Maybe it would have worked better as a short film.

Jarman clearly found his way here, co-directing with Paul Humfress and cowriting with Humfress and James Whaley. Always a somewhat precious filmmaker, he would go on to better things—and give the world, for better or for worse, the phenomenon known as Tilda Swinton—before his life was tragically cut short by AIDS at the age of 52.

NOT AVAILABLE FOR STREAMING. AVAILABLE ON BLUE-RAY AND DVD FROM AMAZON PRIME VIDEO.

57. Suspiria (1977)

A-

Dario Argento

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Madame Blanc (Joan Bennett)

*Miss Tanner (Alida Valli)

Italian director Dario Argento’s supernatural horror sensation!  The film stars Jessica Harper as an American ballet student who transfers to a prestigious dance academy but realizes, after a series of murders, that it’s a front for a coven of lesbian witches who are presided over by legendary actresses Alida Valli and Joan Bennett in her final role. Both actresses were, in a sense, banished from Hollywood – Valli when she didn’t turn out to be Ingrid Bergman despite her obvious talent and Bennett after her husband of the time, Walter Wanger, shot her agent Jennings Lang, whom he incorrectly supposed was her lover, in the groin. Wanger went to jail for a few months but made a successful career comeback by producing “I Want to Live.” Lang survived and successfully segued into producing. However, as is often the case, there was no sympathy for the woman involved, and Bennett’s Hollywood career was over. Valli was also involved in a scandal after she returned to Italy in the early fifties, when her lover at the time was found dead on an Italian Beach. Both actresses are dressed by Argento and his costume designer, Piero Cicoletti, in beautifully tailored jackets and suits. It is interesting to note that after this movie, Valli went on to play another lesbian character in Bertolucci’s failed collaboration with Jill Clayburgh, the film “Luna,” set in an opera milieu.

As for Harper, she is superb; her opening scene, in which she is stuck in a massive downpour of rain during her journey from the airport to the school in some unknown German city, is one of the grand openings in a horror movie. When she arrives, she notices something is not quite right – another student is leaving the building in a panic -but why? Where Bertolucci failed, Argento’s style is supremely operatic, with a stunning use of editing (Franco Fraticelli), cinematography (Luciano Tovoli), production design (Giuseppe Bassan), sound effects, costume design, and music (written by himself and four other composers collectively known as Goblin).

The screenplay was written by Argento and his partner, Daria Nicolodi, at the time. It is based on “Suspiria de Profundis” by nineteenth-century English writer Thomas De Quincey, who wrote the novel under various stages of opium addiction and withdrawal.

Many of the actors (including Udo Kier) were dubbed into English.

SUSPIRIA CAN BE STREAMED ON AMAZON, APPLE TV+ and YouTube.

58A. THE TURNING POINT

(1977)

C

HERBERT ROSS

58B. THE GOODBYE GIRL

(1977)

C–

HERBERT ROSS

In 1978 gay director and former choreographer Herbert Ross – he had been married to ballerina Nora Kaye and then Lee Radziwill but people in Hollywood knew he was gay – surprised everyone by filling two of the five Best Film of 1977 Oscar slots with the newly married Neil Simon/Marsha Mason lovefest “The Goodbye Girl” and the Arthur Laurents-penned ballet soap “The Turning Point”. Both had gay moments, and both were dreadful. Yet, between the two of them, they garnered an incredible 16 Oscar nominations (”The Turning Point” eleven and “The Goodbye Girl” five), with Ross himself getting a nod for Best Director for “ The Turning Point”.

The latter was a total szoozefest with a risible plotline featuring aging actresses Anne Bancroft and Shirley MacLaine as rival ballerinas. One retired to raise a family while the other remained single. Their big moment is a catfight stolen entirely from the far more entertaining catfight five years earlier between Carol Burnett and Geraldine Page in “Pete ‘n’ Tillie. “When it came away with 0/11 from the ceremony, I rejoiced.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of “The Goodbye Girl.” By the late 1970s and early 1980s, it had become clear that Marsha Mason’s four Oscar nominations in the Best Actress category were an egregious error and that the Mason-Simon relationship was the most nauseating example of nepotism in Hollywood since Norma Shearer and Irving Thalberg.

“The Goodbye Girl” left the ceremony with one Oscar – Best Actor for Richard Dreyfuss. To gay people, like myself, this was insulting. In a Simon script filled with dyke and fag jokes, Dreyfuss plays an aspiring actor whose big break comes when he is cast in the leading role in Shakespeare’s Richard III (the hunchback who lost the War of the Roses and put the Princes in the Tower). Unfortunately, his director (Paul Benedict) is a raving, mincing queen who insists that Dreyfus play the part like Bette Midler. Alright, this may seem momentarily funny, but did Simon stop to think for a second that gay people spend their entire lives trying to fit-in in a straight world? And reversing this process for a few laughs without a hint of irony seems callous and uncaring.

BOTH MOVIES NOW STREAMING ON AMAZON PRIME VIDEO, APPLE TV+ and YOUTUBE

59 CALIFORNIA SUITE

(1978)

C-

HERBERT ROSS

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Sidney Cochran, the gay husband of Diana Barry (Michael Caine)

LGBTQ+ DIRECTOR

Herbert Ross

LGBTQ+ PAINTER

David Hockney

Following their insult to humanity, “The Goodbye Girl” the previous year, Neil Simon and Herbert Ross took their condescending, careless attitude toward minorities to another level with the blatantly racist treatment of the four Black characters in “California Suite.” Maggie Smith has her Oscar-winning moments as Diana Barry, the British actress nominated for an Oscar (she’s the dark horse of the bunch). Her tête-à-têtes with her gay husband, Sidney (Michael Caine), are the only reason to see this charmless four-part anthology comedy set in the Beverly Hills Hotel and complete with paintings courtesy of David Hockney. It’s the companion piece to Simon’s “Plaza Suite,” which was set in New York.

Jane Fonda gets the post-Hanoi Jane rehabilitation treatment in her segment with Alan Alda. Meanwhile, Richard Prior, Bill Cosby and their onscreen partners suffer through one cringeworthy slapstick sequence after another. Sequences that would have been deemed unworthy of the Three Stooges in their prime, Simon’s contempt for other non-Jewish minority groups knew no limits

The fourth segment involves Walter Matthau doing his usual schtick.

With music by Dave Grusin.

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60. MIDNIGHT EXPRESS

(1978)

C-

ALAN PARKER

Based on Billy Haynes’s real-life memoir, director Alan Parker’s highly fictionalized treatment is excruciating. Billy’s long-term gay Turkish prison affair is deemed too much for audiences, yet his chewing through a prison guard’s tongue and spitting it at the camera -something that never happened – is deemed OK! This is the worst kind of filmmaking, vulgar in the extreme. Only Giorgio Moroder’s score lifts the movie above an F. Screenplay by Oliver Stone. When gay actor Brad Davis, who suffered from major substance abuse problems, was not nominated for an Oscar, you knew that something was up. He died a few years later from an AIDS-related illness.

NOW STREAMING ON AMAZON PRIME VIDEO, APPLE TV+ and YOUTUBE

61. NIGHTHAWKS

(1978)

B

Ron Peck

 LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Jim (Ken Robertson)

LGBTQ+ DIRECTOR

Ron Peck

LGBTQ+ SCREENWRITER

Ron PECK

LGBTQ+ SCREENWRITER

Paul Hallam

I just saw this movie on BFI and must sing its praises. How it ran under my radar, as a gay man, for all these years, both in Ireland and here in California—I am at a loss for words. But better late than never, right?

I was skeptical when it advertised itself as the first feature film to portray gay life in London with unflinching realism. However, having been released in 1978, when gay cinema – as you may have read in my series of essays on Queer Cinema – was still being portrayed in various shades of grey, it comes as a revelation.

Directed by Ron Peck and co-written with Paul Hallam, Nighthawks is indeed a landmark in British queer cinema. Influenced by Nicholas Ray’s movies, particularly “Rebel Without a Cause” (see my essay on Queer Cinema under the Hays Code), Peck employs a relaxed cinema verité style, utilizing an innovative handheld camera and judicious close-ups.

The story follows Jim (Ken Robertson, in a brave, understated performance), a secondary school geography teacher who leads a double life. By day, he’s a quiet, professional educator. By night, he frequents gay bars and discos, searching for connection but mostly encountering fleeting encounters. Jim is open about his sexuality, but the film explores the emotional toll of his isolation and the societal pressures he faces.

THE PAST IS A FOREIGN COUNTRY, THEY DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY THERE

– L.P. Hartley – “The Go-Between”

1978, you say. Not that long ago, you say. You had disco and Donna Summer. A gay couple was about to be on the cover of Time magazine, and London’s legendary gay dance club Heaven would open its doors within the year. And then it dawns on you that it was almost 50 years ago, and to paraphrase L.P. Hartley, the past is a different country; boy, did they do things differently there. What you worry about for Jim is his vulnerability and the almost complete lack of protection he has from society. Homosexuality had been decriminalized in Great Britain eleven years previously. Still, there was virtually no way for someone in Jim’s position to blend their daytime and nighttime personas into a healthy unifying whole. And how loneliness and the soul destruction that goes along with it eventually take their toll.

A pivotal moment occurs when Jim’s students confront him directly about rumors of his sexuality. In a powerful classroom scene, he responds with honesty and composure, challenging their prejudices and ignorance. However, despite this moment of courage, the film ends on a sobering note: Jim is still alone, still searching, still navigating a world that offers little emotional refuge. “Nighthawks” doesn’t provide easy resolutions — instead, it captures the quiet resilience of a man living authentically in a society that barely tolerates his presence.

NOW STREAMING ON BFI and on YOUTUBE with FANDOR or DEKKOO

62. THE ROSE

(1979)

B+

MARK RYDELL

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*The Rose (Bette Midler)

LGBTQ+ ACTOR

Allen Bates

Bette Midler made a spectacular movie debut playing The Rose, a rock singer who is emotionally unraveling during what she insists is her final concert tour. Battling exhaustion, loneliness and addiction, she is at the mercy of her manager (Alan Bates), who pushes her relentlessly, and things reach a climax when they visit her hometown.

The film is based on the life of bisexual singer Janis Joplin and is a must-see for fans of the Divine Miss M. Her voice is not suited to the big rock numbers like “Stay With Me Baby,” but she delivers them with gusto. This is star power at its most breathtaking. Nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, she lost to Sally Field in “Norma Rae”.

About thirty minutes into the movie, a candid and well-handled love scene between The Rose, who always refers to herself in the third person, and one of her old lovers, played by Sandra McCabe, is featured, which was quite daring for 1979.

With Oscar-nominated Frederic Forrest giving a sweet performance as an AWOL army sergeant whom The Rose thinks may be her one true love, and Harry Dean Stanton in a great scene playing a country music star who cruelly demands that The Rose stop performing his songs. Meanwhile, Allen Bates hams it up. If ever an actor appeared to be “doing it for the money,” this is it!

Director Mark Rydell keeps things moving, even if the concert sequences resemble outtakes from Spielberg’s “Close Encounters” – Vilmos Zsigmond was the cinematographer on both films.

Bette had a massive hit with the film’s title song, “The Rose,” written by Amanda McBroom, which failed to snag a Best Original Song nomination.

NOT AVAILABLE FOR STREAMING. AVAILABLE ON DVD FROM AMAZON.

63. LA CAGE AUX FOLLES

(1979)

C+

EDOUARD MOLINARO

THEY ARE NOT LAUGHING WITH US, THEY ARE LAUGHING AT US

Renato Baldi (played by Ugo Tognazzi): Owner of a drag nightclub, La Cage aux Folles.

Albin Mougeotte (a.k.a. Zaza Napoli) (played by Michel Serrault): Renato’s longtime partner and the club’s star performer.

Laurent: Renato’s son from a brief heterosexual fling, now engaged to a woman from a conservative family.

To avoid scandal, Laurent begs his father to play it straight and hide his relationship with Albin.

Chaos ensues as Renato and Albin attempt to “de-gay” their home, with Albin even trying to pass as Laurent’s mother. The dinner with Andrea’s parents becomes a riot of mistaken identities, gender-bending performances, and social satire. Ultimately, love and authenticity win out, and the conservative in-laws are forced to confront their prejudices.

What may have seemed like a scream at the time now comes across as jaded, with just the occasional laugh. They are not laughing with us; they are laughing at us. However, it’s still better than the awful American remake.

Surprise Best Director nomination for Eduard Molinaro.

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64. FAME

(1980)

B-

Alan Parker

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER

*Montgomery (Paul McCrane)

LGBTQ+ SCREENWRITER | COMPOSER | SONGWRITERS | ACTOR

SCREENWRITER: Christopher Gore

COMPOSER: Michael Gore

SONGWRITER: Michael Gore

SONGWRITER: Lesley Gore

SONGWRITER: Dean Pitchford

ACTOR: Gene Anthony Ray

Christopher Gore’s script gave us one cliched teenage story after another. However, actor Paul McCrane’s token gay character, Montgomery, stood out as an honest and moving portrayal of a shy, talented young man. Director Alan Parker’s occasionally vibrant take on The High School of Performing Arts in New York was helped immeasurably by Gerry Hambling’s editing and Michael Gore’s score.

The first movie to have two songs nominated from the same film.

Michael and Lesley Gore were brother and sister. Christopher was no relation—pure coincidence. Gore is a common Jewish last name.

Both Christopher Gore and actor Gene Anthony Ray died from an AIDS-related illness in 1988 and 2003, respectively.

Playing the role of a teacher, Anne Meara delivers one of her best performances.

And the incredible voice of Irene Cara, who played Coco.

Spawned the TV series The Kids from Fame.

Nominated for SIX OSCARS AND WON TWO

BEST SONG: FAME (MICHAEL GORE and DEAN PITCHFORD) (WIN)

BEST SONG Out Here on My Own (Michael and Lesley Gore)

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE (MICHAEL GORE) (WIN)

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY (Christopher Gore)

BEST EDITING (Gerry Hambling)

BEST SOUND

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Michael Seresin

MGM

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65. AMERICAN GIGOLO

(1980)

A

PAUL SCHRADER

 LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Leon James (Bill Duke)

*Anne (Nina van Pallandt)

LGBTQ+ COSTUME DESIGNER

Giorgio Armani

LGBTQ+ VISUAL CONSULTANT

Ferdinando Scarfiotti

Julian Kay (Richard Gere) is a high-end male escort in Los Angeles who caters to wealthy, older women. His work supports his lavish lifestyle, but his emotional detachment and materialism leave him vulnerable.

I DON’T DO FAGS, I DON’T DO KINK

While on a job arranged by his gay male pimp Leon (Bill Duke), Julian is sent to Palm Springs for a sadomasochistic encounter with the wife of a wealthy financier. Soon after, she is found murdered, and Julian becomes the prime suspect. His alibi—another client—refuses to come forward to protect her marriage, leaving Julian exposed. Julian’s gay female pimp, Anne (Nina van Pallandt), is unsympathetic, and he is questioned by a Westwood police detective played by Hector Elizondo. As the investigation intensifies, Julian begins a romantic relationship with Michelle Stratton (Lauren Hutton), the wife of a California state senator. Their emotional connection deepens, but Julian’s world unravels as he realizes he’s being framed.

Julian may have broken half of his cardinal rule in Palm Springs. Still, writer/director Paul Schrader, despite his Calvinist instincts, his innate homophobia (at the time), and his seeing things through a Robert Bresson lens, not only encouraged composer Giorgio Moroder to write one of his most gorgeous electronic scores but also allowed his movie to be a blueprint for societal change. This is why “American Gigolo” is Schrader’s masterpiece.

Courtesy of Giorgio and Nando, two gay Italian men, glamor and fashion had returned to the world, not just Hollywood but THE WORLD.

Watching it for the first time as a teenager, I knew that, courtesy of Giorgio (Armani) and Nando (Scarfiotti), two gay Italian men, glamor and fashion had returned to the world, not just Hollywood but THE WORLD. “American Gigolo” altered the way we perceive our day-to-day existence.  Goodbye, 70s.  Hello, 80s.  Is giving pleasure a crime?  No. Hello fashion!  Hello life!  We will be spending an obscene amount of money in the decade ahead! And the magnificent cinematography by John Bailey didn’t hurt either!

CINEMATOGRAPHY

John Bailey

PARAMOUNT PICTURES

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66. DRESSED TO KILL

(1980)

A-

BRIAN DE PALMA

LGBTQ+ CHARACTER:

*Dr. Robert Elliott (Michael Caine)

“Dressed to Kill” (1980) is Brian De Palma‘s stylish homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and Vertigo. Thanks to Ralph D. Bode’s cinematography and Pino Donaggio’s haunting score, it is both a visual and an aural feast.

The movie begins with Angie Dickinson in the shower, as most of Hollywood debated whether she was using a body double – she was! Angie plays Kate Miller, a sexually frustrated housewife who seeks excitement outside her marriage. After a brief affair with a stranger, she is brutally murdered in an elevator by a mysterious blonde woman. The only witness is Liz Blake (Nancy Allen, Mrs. Brian De Palma at the time), a high-end prostitute who becomes entangled in the investigation. With the help of Kate’s teenage son, Peter (Keith Gordon), Liz tries to uncover the killer’s identity. The prime suspect is Dr. Robert Elliott (Michael Caine), Kate’s psychiatrist, who may be hiding a dangerous secret involving split personality disorder.

A stunning sequence in a museum mirrors the early scenes in Hitchcock’s masterpiece Vertigo.

The LGBTQ+ link here is the Caine character. Like Tony Perkins in “Psycho,” he is most definitely Queer.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Ralph D. Bode

FILMWAYS PICTURES

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67. CRUISING

1980

F

William Friedkin

I WILL NEVER GET THIS TIME BACK AGAIN

A serial killer is brutally murdering gay men in New York’s underground leather/S&M clubs. Captain Edelson (Paul Sorvino) recruits rookie cop Steve Burns (Al Pacino) to infiltrate the gay leather community and identify the killer. Burns must adopt the lifestyle, learning its codes and signals, while keeping his cover intact. As Burns spends more time in the clubs, he becomes increasingly disoriented. The assignment isolates him from his girlfriend (Karen Allen)and raises questions about his own identity and desires. Burns befriends several men, including Ted, a neighbor (Don Scardino) while pursuing leads. The killer’s identity remains elusive, and the film deliberately blurs whether Burns himself may be implicated. The investigation culminates in violence, but Friedkin leaves the ending unresolved—suggesting that the cycle of murder and repression continues, and that Burns may have been changed in ways he cannot articulate.

What were they thinking? Gay men in New York protested the making of this movie, and they were right. It boasts not a single redeeming feature. Exploitation, anyone? I will never get this time back again.

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68. CAN’T STOP THE MUSIC

1980

F

NANCY WALKER

BEWARE! THERE IS NO CAMP HERE. JUST BOREDOM. UTTER BOREDOM

I WILL NEVER GET THIS TIME BACK AGAIN

Jack Morell (Steve Guttenberg), an aspiring composer and DJ, wants to break into the music industry. His roommate Samantha (Valerie Perrine), a former model, helps organize a showcase to promote Jack’s songs. They gather a diverse group of performers—construction worker, cowboy, cop, Native American, biker, and soldier—who become the Village People. Samantha’s love interest, Ron, a conservative lawyer (played by Bruce Jenner), reluctantly gets involved in their wild world of disco. All this leads to a wretched let’s-put-on-a-show finale

Directed by Nancy Walker and produced by flamboyant impresario Allan Carr, Can’t Stop the Music was supposed to be a glittering tribute to disco and a fictionalized origin story of the Village People. Instead, dated at its release, it was an enormous flop. Viewer beware! There is no camp here. Just Boredom. Utter boredom. I will never have this time back again.

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69. NIJINSKY

(1980)

C–

 HERBERT ROSS

LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS

*Vaslav Nijinsky (George de la Pena)

*Sergei Diaghilev (Alan Bates)

*Mikhail Fokine (Jeremy Irons)

LGBTQ+ DIRECTOR|WRITER |ACTORS|

DIRECTOR: Herbert Ross

WRITER: Hugh Wheeler

ACTOR: Alan Bates

Director Herbert Ross returns, showcasing the power dynamics within the Ballet Russes and the tragic story of the renowned ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. He is played by American ballet dancer George de la Pena, who is not quite up to the task, even if the ballet sequences are sometimes breathtaking. Alan Bates is shortchanged as his mentor, Sergei Diaghilev, who was a genius; however, in Hugh Wheeler’s script, he is pigeonholed into the role of a jealous lover.

Why does a great artist go crazy? Not a simple question to answer. Ross and Wheeler, however, take a reductive approach, blaming everything on the woman, Rolola de Pulsky (Leslie Browne from “The Turning Point”), who steals him from Diaghilev. With Jeremy Irons, making his movie debut as the great ballet teacher and choreographer, Mikhail Fokine.

The movie was co-produced by Ross’s wife, the ballerina Nora Kaye.

Cinematography by Douglas Slocombe.

PARAMOUNT PICTURES

After a series of mediocre but, in some cases, highly successful movies like “The Goodbye Girl” and “The Turning Point,” Herbert Ross delivered a masterpiece in 1981: his adaptation of Dennis Potter’s BBC series “Pennies from Heaven”. Although it was not a commercial success, it is thrilling, featuring some of the best musical numbers ever produced. Outside of the purview of this essay, it will be reviewed separately.

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70. Taxi zum Klo

(1981)

A

FRANK RIPPLOH

In the city late tonight
Double feature, black and white (sic)
Bitter Tears and Taxi to the Klo
Find a bar, avoid a fight
Show your papers, be polite
Walking home with nowhеre else to go

Tom Robinson “Atmospherics” from the 1984 album “War Baby”

SORRY, TOM ROBINSON. BOTH “BITTER TEARS’ AND “TAXI ZUM KLO” ARE IN COLOR!

Written, directed by, and starring Frank Ripploh, Taxi zum Klo (“Taxi to the Toilet”) is a groundbreaking semi-autobiographical German film that candidly explores the dual life of a gay man in West Berlin at the dawn of the 1980s.

Similar in theme and storyline to Ron Peck’s “Nighthawks” (see above), the protagonist Frank (played by Ripploh) is a Berlin schoolteacher by day and an openly gay man by night, navigating the tension between his professional respectability and his uninhibited personal life. Frank is a dedicated and charismatic teacher, but after hours, he cruises public toilets, bars, and sex clubs for anonymous encounters and Ripploh, the director, films these scenes with a sense of documentary-like realism.

He begins a relationship with Bernd, a more domestically inclined man who desires monogamy and stability. Frank struggles with fidelity and the constraints of a conventional relationship. Like “Nighthawks”, the film explores identity, sexual freedom, intimacy, and the psychological toll of living between two worlds. It’s both a celebration of queer desire and a critique of the emotional isolation that can accompany sexual liberation, and its sexual candor was shocking at the time.

Singer/songwriter Tom Robinson immortalized this movie in his song “Atmospherics: ListentotheRadio” co-written with Peter Gabriel) from his 1984 album “Hope and Glory.” He pairs it with Fassbinder’s “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant.” Presumably, for rhyming, Gabriel and Robinson say that both movies are in black and white. Sorry, guys, they are both in color.

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PLEASE CONTINUE TO THE TABLE

Seventy Queer Films from the New Hollywood (1967-1981) Table Summary

Seventy Queer Films Made Under the Hays Code (1934-1967)

Seventy Queer Films Made Under the Hays Code (1934-1967) Table Summary

Portrait of Jason (1967) Film Review A – TheBrownees

No Way to Treat a Lady (1968) Film Review B- TheBrownees

The Fox (1968) Film Review B+ – TheBrownees

The Detective (1968) Film Review D+ – TheBrownees

The Boston Strangler (1968) Film Review C- TheBrownees

The Killing of Sister George (1968) Film Review B – TheBrownees

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Film Review A – TheBrownees

The Sergeant (1968) Film Review C+ – TheBrownees

Rachel, Rachel (1968) Film Review B- TheBrownees

The Damned (1969) Film Review B- TheBrownees

Staircase (1969) Bring on the Queens C- TheBrownees

Midnight Cowboy (1969) Film Review A – TheBrownees

Z (1969) Film Review B+ – TheBrownees

Goodbye Columbus (1969) Film Review B- TheBrownees

The Sterile Cuckoo (1969) From Pookie to Sally B- TheBrownees

Something for Everyone (1970) Film Review C- TheBrownees

Entertaining Mr Sloane (1970) Film Review B- TheBrownees

Performance (1970) Film Review B- TheBrownees

Women in Love (1970) Film Review B- TheBrownees

There Was A Crooked Man (1970) Film Review B+ – TheBrownees

The Boys in the Band (1970) Film Review A – TheBrownees

Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970) Film Review A+ – TheBrownees

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) Film Review A- TheBrownees

The Conformist (1970) Nando, Vittorio and Bernardo’s Masterpiece A+ – TheBrownees

Vanishing Point (1971) Film Review C- TheBrownees

Death In Venice (1971) Film Review A- TheBrownees

Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) Film Review A – TheBrownees

The Anderson Tapes (1971) Film Review F – TheBrownees

The Music Lovers (1971) Film Revue D – TheBrownees

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1971) Film Review A- TheBrownees

Cabaret (1972) Film Review A+ – TheBrownees

Pink Flamingos (1972) Film Review Trash! Trash! Trash! Rated C (Solo) High Camp at a Midnight Screening – TheBrownees

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) A+ Rated: Seventeen Fassbinder Films – TheBrownees

Pete ‘n’ Tillie (1972) Film Review B- TheBrownees

Play It As It Lays (1972) Film Review C- TheBrownees

The Last of Sheila (1973) Perkins and Sondheim Have Fun! B – TheBrownees

Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams (1973) Film Review B- TheBrownees

Save the Tiger (1973) Film Review C – TheBrownees

A Touch of Class (1973) Film Review C- TheBrownees

The Day of the Jackal (1973) Film Review A – TheBrownees

Freebie and the Bean (1974) Film Review F – TheBrownees

A Very Natural Thing (1974) Film Review D+ – TheBrownees

Going Places (Les Valseuses) (1974) A – TheBrownees

The Great Gatsby (1974) Film Review B+ – TheBrownees

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) Rated C (Solo) High Camp at a Midnight Screening. – TheBrownees

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) Film Review A+ – TheBrownees

Jeanne Dielman (1975) Film Review A+ – TheBrownees

Barry Lyndon (1975) Film Review A – TheBrownees

Dog Day Afternoon (1975) Film Review A+ – TheBrownees

Fox and His Friends (1975) B+ Rated: Seventeen Fassbinder Films. – TheBrownees

Grey Gardens (1975) Film Review A+ – TheBrownees

The Eiger Sanction (1975) Cinema’s First Queer Canine D- TheBrownees

The Ritz (1976) Film Review C+ – TheBrownees

Ode to Billy Joe (1976) Film Review C – TheBrownees

Carrie (1976) Film Review A+ – TheBrownees

Sebastiane (1976) Derek Jarman’s Flaccid Directorial Debut C- TheBrownees

THE GOODBYE GIRL & THE TURNING POINT: 1977 HERB ROSS DOUBLE (C-/C) – TheBrownees

California Suite (1978) Film Review C- TheBrownees

Suspiria (1977) Dario Argento’s Cabal of Lesbian Witches A- TheBrownees

Nighthawks (1978) Film Review B – TheBrownees

Midnight Express (1978) Film Review C- TheBrownees

La Cage aux Folles (1979) Film Review. C+ – TheBrownees

The Rose (1979) Film Review B+ – TheBrownees

Dressed to Kill (1980) Film Review A- TheBrownees

Fame (1980) Film Review. B- TheBrownees

Cruising (1980) Film Review F – TheBrownees

Nijinsky (1980) Film Review C – TheBrownees

Can’t Stop the Music (1980) Film Review F – TheBrownees

American Gigolo (1980) Film Review A – TheBrownees

Taxi zum Klo (1981) Film Review A – TheBrownees