Dir. Jacques Tourneur, 1942
Starring: Simone Simon, Tom Conway
A thrilling tale about the power of
sexuality to unsettle social norms
Not as
well known as it should be, this film stands amongst the most beautiful,
exciting, original, and provocative films ever made. And it is a lesbian
classic. Val Lewton, who wrote the story and produced the movie, knew all
about lesbians — he’d been raised by a famous one, his aunt Alla Nazimova, a
superstar of the silent screen and the daring mastermind behind the queer
film Salome (1923).
After 1930 in the USA, with the Hays Film
Censorship Code in place, it became almost impossible to discuss sexuality
(or politics) on film, so people like Val Lewton had to get really creative.
Enter “Irena”, a Serbian woman from a strange race of creatures, half-human
and (unknown to the world) half panther.
Does it sound daft? Well, the film is actually
very stylish, performances are flawless, the camera work and editing are
magic, and the story is so compelling that you’ll be glued to the screen from
start to finish.
Irena knows it is not in her nature to marry,
because she is likely to kill her husband when her ‘true self’ returns. When
she foolishly ties the knot with unsuspecting Oliver, not only she finds it
impossible to have sex with him, but she can’t help herself either from
‘hunting’ women – including complete strangers in public swimming pools and
desserted night streets.
Actress Simone Simon, who went on to make an
openly lesbian film, is absolutely magnetic. But momentarily, Elizabeth
Russell steals the show… as a fellow panther alerted by her ‘gaydar’, who
approaches Irena: “Are you my sister?” We predict that after this
screening you’ll be uttering those very words to unsuspecting punters in the
Front Launge and Pantibar… and you’ll do it in Serbian! An irresistible
film.
Film Qlub
© Dublin Film Qlub 2012
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Les Amitiés Particulières
(This Special Friendship)
17 Nov 2012
French with English Subtitles
Dir. Jean Delannoy, 1963
Starring: Jean Aurenche, Pierre Bost
A beautiful and tender tale of
adolescent love
From Oscar Wilde to Xena the Warrior Princess,
the term “special friend” has been used to discretly refer to a loved one
in a gay relationship. Les Amitiés Particulières, literally meaning
‘those special friendships’, tells the story of two young boys at a
Catholic boarding school, who develop a bond stronger than anything they
have ever experienced.
They know that their love for each other has
nothing to do with the rules about right and wrong in the “normal” world,
even if the school master and the education committee see their
relationship as ‘wicked’ and ‘dangerous’, and try to separate them. The
boys have entered a different world, and there are difficult issues they
need to deal with in their own terms: does their age difference matter?
(one of them is almost a child, the other barely an adolescent); and, is
sex necessary in a union of two souls?
Roger Peyrefitte, the author of the
autobiographical novel the film is based on, was a fierce campaigner for
gay rights, an apasionado of gossip, a fan of controversy and, surprisingly,
a far-right conservative. Nicknamed “the homosexual pope” for his atacks on
the Vatican, he famously ‘outed’ the homophobic pope Paul VI. Peyrefitte
may have been a waspy ‘larger than life’ character, but in Les Amitiés he
gave us a disarmingly tender story.
By contrast with the Hollywood films of the
same period, European films —and particularly those made in France—
show a disarming candour about homosexual love. This film is a great
example. Les Amitiés never explains itself, it is never ever contrived,
it refuses to even be complex… Its aim is to simply show us the development
of the relationship from the point of view of the boys, and then without
flinching, with the same matter-of-factness, it shows us the deadly
consequences of homophobic oppression, and the devastation it can bring
into the lives of the gestlest and most vulnerable among us.
Film Qlub
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Sylvia Scarlett
15 Dec 2012
[Xmas Screening!]
Dir. Geoge Cukor, 1935
Starring: Catherine Hepburn, Cary Grant
A classy comedy of trans-gender-bending!
Sylvia
and her dad are on the run from the French police, because of his shoddy
dealings. They decide to change their identities, leave France, and start a
new life in England — what better way for Sylvia to avoid suspicion
than… to dress as a man and call herself Silvester?!
Katharine Hepburn was born to play this role.
As a young girl, she demanded to be called “Jimmy”, and as a young star
(after a career-defining role in a film by lesbian director Dorothy
Arzner), her impetuous and athletic image, together with the androgynous
look she cultivated, turned her into a gay icon. Cagey about her personal
life, she encouraged people to think she had had a life-long affair with
Spencer Tracy (conveniently, he was dead at this point) which had to be
kept secret because he was married. But her true leanings were known by a good
few. At least 150 of them… We mean the over 150 young women whose services
Hepburn paid for through the infamous Hollywood escort agency run by Scotty
Bowers (who finally spilled the beans in a book published this year).
But leaving aside the megastar Miss Hepburn,
the film Sylvia Scarlett is a queer constellation, with George Cukor
behind the camera and co-starring Cary Grant. Look out for the gay ‘men’
cruising in the first minutes of the film (appropriately enough, in a
cruise ship). Watch out for Hepburn’s gender switches every time she
changes her clothes: gender is something we put on, like a hat, she seems
to say. Keep an eye on Sylvia’s prowess as an athlete on the rings, a
formula-one racer, and an Olympic swimmer. Check out the erotic currents
criss-crossing all characters and all sexes. And marvel at how they got
away with it all in 1935!
Film Qlub
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Anders als du und ich
(Bewildered Youth)
19 Jan 2012
Presented in co-operation with the
Goethe-Institut Irland
;)
German with English subtitles
Dir. Veit Harlan, 1957
Starring: Paul Dahlke, Hans Nielsen
Homophobic drivel, or gay
propaganda? Take your pick!
Veit
Harlan had been a prominent director of nazi propaganda films for the Third
Reich — so what on earth is he doing in 1953 making an educational film to
(supposedly) instruct parents on how to recognise and erradicate
homosexuality in their kids?
Here’s a little known and rather surprising
fact: while the nazi regime was crushed and then collapsed in every front,
the nazi film industry remained almost intact. A brilliant German director
like William Dieterle (you may remember him from our Season One), who had
gone to the USA to escape the nazis and had devoted his energy to
antifascist activism, discovered upon returning home that he couldn’t find
work as a filmmaker because the old guard was still in charge of the film
studios. People like Leni Riefenstahl and Veit Harlan managed to ellude the
War Crimes courts despite their dubious
CVs. So, why should we still watch
their films?
Many would point to the need to separate art
and politics, but images are never neutral, they are always the product of
the ideas and beliefs of those who make them. Yet we shouldn’t ignore these
films, nor should we burn them, like the nazis did themselves with many
‘degenerate’ artworks (including a few gay movies) which are now forever
lost. We need to face this legacy, and do it with our eyes wide open.
All of these issues may be important, but they
wont quite prepare you for this rather ambiguous and often very enjoyable
film. Is Veit Harlan for real when he suggests that cubist painting and
electronic music (the then new ‘musique concrète’ style) are
sure signs of homosexual tendencies? Is he for real when he claims that
naked Graeco-Roman wrestling is all the rage at underground gay parties?
How come his film-queers are more intelligent, sensitive, and articulate
than his heteros? Is his sympathetic portrait of a concerned homophobic
father not in fact a pisstake on a ridiculous and hysterical patriarch who
is ruining everybody’s fun and wrecking his own family’s sanity with his
outdated
prejudices?
Well, you will have to watch the film to decide for yourself.
Film Qlub
© Dublin Film Qlub 2012
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Caged!
16 Feb 2013
Dir. John Cromwell, 1950
Starring: Eleanor Parker, Agnes Moorhead
Hard-hitting prison drama with
stunning performances
The ‘women’s prison’ drama has been so popular
that it has become a subgenre. Dozens of films since the 1930s have thrown
a bunch of unruly women into a cell to watch them howl and scratch each
other’s eyes. Most of these films have been exploitative, voyeurististic,
and totally unconcerned with the realities of life in prison. And most of
them have been made to amuse and titilate straight men. There have been a
handful of exceptions to this: the ITV series Bad Girls, the Ida
Lupino-starring Women’s Prison, or —in the ‘incarceration of lunatic
ladies’ sub-group—, the Oscar winning Girl, Interrupted, and Sarah
Watters’ Affinity. All of these treated with respect the perennial
lesbian fantasy of a world made exclusively of strong women living in close
quarters. All of them, while thriving on melodramatic registers, were
interested in showing some psychological depth. None of them, however,
raised above the bar of the ‘interesting but not outstanding’ film. And so,
we come to John Cromwell’s Caged, of 1950, which
distinguishes itself from all its cell-mates by being utterly and
absolutely brilliant.
Eleanor Parker plays a young innocent who has
drifted to the wrong side of the law. In prison, she will learn that the
penal system is not interested in reforming anyone, but only in erasing
every single trace of humanity from the inmates. Inside these walls,
cruelty and coldness are the only choices on the menu. And lesbianism is
the only currency, making all the difference between helplessness and
safety, if you are lucky enough to become the ‘favourite’ of one of the
lady-gangster-pimps who runs this joint.
Real-life-lesbian Agnes Moorhead (the camp
Endora in Bewitched) plays the somewhat human prison
director, and the remarkable Hope Emerson plays the sadistic warden, and
they are both wonderful in this film. But at the end of the day, Caged is
Eleanor Parker, because the core of the movie is the transformation of the
gentle and shy Mary Ellen into an amoral version of the flesh-and-bone
machine that was Sarah Connor in Terminator-2. Parker’s portrayal of
the character is stunning, a masterpiece of dramatic acting.
Director
John Cromwell got in trouble with Hollywood censorship again and again, but
here, he managed to give us a moving, earnest, and hard-hitting mainstream
film about the ongoing disgrace of our ‘democratic’ penal system, which
does nothing but put people away and destroy them.
Film Qlub
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The Leather Boys
9 March 2013 [note 2nd sat]
Dir. Sidney J. Furie, 1964
Starring: Rita Tushingham, Colin Campbell,
Dudley Sutton
A queer celebration of
working-class biker culture
Bikers, who doesn’t find them sexy? They are
free, unconventional, they make their own roads. And there’s the leather
gear, or at any rate the body-hugging pants and blazers that keep the chill
at bay. Most importantly perhaps, their know-how of all those mysterious
mechanical bits seems to promise competence in every other department…
The early 1960s marked the reign of the
Harley-Davidson and —on this side of the pond— the Triumph Bonneville.
We’ve all seen the classic American biker buddy movie Easy Rider, an
epic which defined a generation and a favourite film with the boys. Then
there is the cheeky and often disturbing film Scorpio Rising, an
obscure and experimental gay ode to bikers, directed by Californian queer
underground hero Kenneth Anger. And now, we would like to introduce
you to the third film in the gang, a quiet, modest, semi-mainstream British
movie of the same period, which tends to be overlooked in gay film
histories: The Leather Boys.
In the film, young biker Reggie is disappointed
with married life, but fellow biker Pete is happy to provide the support
and love that Reggie needs… In some ways, The Leather Boys is a film
about marriage, and how it can artificially change people’s behaviour. In
other ways, the film is concerned with gender, and the absurd expectations
on women and men of a certain generation, who thought themselves free but
were only repeating old patterns. The Leather Boys is also about
friendship, and the support and loyalty which only comrades (whether they
are our buddies or our spouses) can offer us. Of course, what we love most
about the film is that this biker gang is a transparent metaphor for the
gay community and for gay culture, thriving on the margins, beautiful, and
proud. Also, we love the film’s
suggestion that there is a ‘queer biker gene’ dormant in everyone, which
may just awaken if you throw that damned GPS away.
Film Qlub
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Young Man With a Horn
20 April 2013
Dir. Michael Curtiz, 1950
Starring: Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall
A musical Noir on compromise
versus tough choices
Lauren Bacall was famous for her smokey voice,
intense gaze, glamurous appearance, and for her portraits of sexually
assertive and sharply intelligent women. In Young Man with a Horn,
she plays a sexually ambiguous woman who tries to live the lie of a proper
heterosexual marriage, but has to struggle with her ‘wicked’ side.
Her story appears to be a subplot in a film
about the life of… a trumpet player. A dazzling Kirk Douglas plays the
title role, based on the life of Bix Beiderbecke, the white boy who fell in
love with the emerging black-American jazz scene in the 1920s, and who
eventually became a virtuoso of ‘the horn’. But the film is not just a
biopic, or an opportunity to listen to some absolutely gorgeous music. Young
Man with a Horn is actually a meditation on the pull to conform and fit
in in society, in terms of creativity, and in terms of sexuality. Rick
(Douglas) has to struggle between, on the one hand, his passion for an
underground music style and a downtrodden culture, and on the other hand,
the mainstream music circuit with its formulaic commercial showbands. This
last is represented with suitable ‘straightness’ by the perfectly cast
wholesome-looking Doris Day (herself an underrated but wonderful singer).
The
original novel did not have openly queer characters, and its author, the
great Dorothy Baker, was not impressed by the liberties taken by the film.
However, she had published a groundbreaking lesbian novel in 1943, and she
was reportedly lesbian, so the film seems a rare case of retrospective lesbianization
of a book! Baker shouldn’t have complained; they did a wonderful job,
expanding and deepening the theme of the original book. Young Man with a
Horn is definitely a gay film, not because of a thrilling lesbian
subplot, but because the subplot ultimately becomes the main story:
look inside yourself — most of us live a life of compromise,
but isn’t the prize just too high?
Film Qlub
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Reflections on a Golden Eye
18 May 2013
Dir. John Huston, 1967
Starring: Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor
A magnificent film on the evils
of internalised homophobia
Carson McCullers may or may not have been
lesbian, but she certainly wrote a truckload of brilliant queer literature,
including the novel adapted for the screen as Reflections on a Golden
Eye. This extraordinary film also features two of the greatest actors
in history, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando, and the direction of a
master filmmaker, John Huston. And yet, perhaps the most memorable of all
the magic ingredients which make this film so magnificent is the
cinematography of Aldo Tonti, who had begun his career twenty five years
earlier working on a queer film by Luchino Visconti.
Tonti’s
golden lighting lingers in the mind long after the film is over… long after
the pulse has quietened down, the fever has receded, and we have stopped
trembling. To watch this film is to share in the scorching passions and the
childhood terrors the characters experience. We walk with them on a tight
rope — we feel their frustration, their hopelessness, and their
determination. Sex is in the air, sex is
the air, and we can’t breath. We know were to find
what we need, but we may as well be up to our necks in quicksand, because
we cant reach it. We are buried in our own internalised homophobia. No one
will come to rescue us. We will have to perform this impossible feat by
ourselves, we will have to pull ourselves up and
out. But how? How?
Brando —bisexual in real life— is
absolutely compelling as the repressed Major Weldon Penderton, and Taylor
shines as Leonora Penderton, in a reprise of her Cat on a Hot Tin Roof role
as the neglected but resourceful wife to a closet case.
But why is it that the film is wrapped in a golden hue,
says you? Ah, because for better or worse being queer is
another way of seeing.
Film Qlub
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The Haunting
15 June 2013
Dir. Robert Wise, 1963
Starring: Julie Harries, Claire Bloom
~ ‘Creepy Mansion’ B&B ~
Rooms Available.
Discounts for Queer Groups.
This isn’t the first or last film to tell the
story of a bunch of strangers thrown into a creepy mansion for a few
nights, but it may well be the cleverest and gayest of them all!
By the late 1950s, Freudian psychology had well
reached the masses. Ordinary people were familiar with the theories that
there are different parts to our psyche (roughly, a moral side and a wild
side), that humans can only function in society because they repress their
instincts, and that a lot of what we repress is floating in the
‘unconscious’ —haunting us— and is likely to come out
somehow… One way of enjoying The
Haunting is by seeing this mad house as a metaphor for an individual
psyche: each character in this motley crew represents one aspect of human
nature. Needless to say, since we are talking about repression and the
unconscious here, sex plays a big part. The film is peppered with queer
clues (watch out for the lesbian statues!), and one of its main storylines
concerns the seduction of a woman by another woman. Didn’t Freud himself
say that fundamentally we are all bisexual? Well, there you are. If this
mansion is a person’s head, the person is lesbian. And the thing she is
most afraid of, and the cause of all the 'supernatural' disturbances in the
film, is actually her own lesbianism.
Considered to be one of the best horror films
ever made, The Haunting is actually full of wickedly funny moments,
much like a bar of dark chocolate stuffed with unexpected crunchy nuts. And
lets not forget the camera work! This is a masterclass on how to create
unbearable tension without CGI monsters or buckets of blood. Today’s
filmmakers are still trying to catch up with this great film from 1963.
Film Qlub
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The Detective
20 July 2013
Dir. Gordon Douglas, 1968
Starring: Frank Sinatra, Lee Remick
Detecting the gays: Sinatra is on
the case!
The Detective was first released on 28 May
1968, exactly a month before the riots in the Stonewall Inn marked the
beginning of the modern gay rights movement. You can see in this film that
something was on the brink of changing, or, to put it another way,
that change had already creeped in and it was ready to topple things over.
The most surprising thing about this film is
the absolute gusto with which Frank Sinatra plays detective Joe Leland, the
unlikely champion of the persecuted gay criminals, psychos, and lost souls
he encounters in his watch. We think of Sinatra as a right-wing Reaganite
with little time for progressive causes and strong mafia connections, but
up to the late 1960s he had been an active campaigner for the American
Democrat Party, was a tireless supporter of the civil rights movement,
seems to have assisted some communist organisations, and was vocal on
issues such as women’s rights. Here’s a gay-friendly Sinatra to add to the
picture.
The Detective is, unexpectedly, a political
film disguised as a who-dun-it. It is a plea for tolerance and
understanding for those poor homosexuals, who have enough to contend with
without having to deal too with the savagery of prejudice. Yes, a few of
them are crazy, but isn’t it because society has pushed them to the limit?
In the detective novel that is our life, aren’t we all clueless? How much
of what we do and what we are is really our choice? Each time a crime is
committed, or a person is hurt, aren't we all responsible?
Detective Leland may be experienced, sharp, and
eagle-eyed, but he does not even know what he is detecting. He thinks he is
filing a murder case, but there is a whole lot more going on. There are the
criss-crossing lines of the gay underground network in New York City.
There’s the back-stabbing in the Police Department. There are the trickster
pychoanalists who claim there is only one truth to each of us. And
there is the love of Joe Leland’s life, Karen, a messed up woman with a
‘sexually perverse’ side (played by the great Lee Remick). She is the one
to teach the detective that, straight or gay, we are all in the gutter, and
the only faint light anyone can hope to see, can only ever come from a
place deep within ourselves.
Film Qlub
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