The Celluloid Closet, and a few more movies

THE NEVERENDING
FILM FESTIVAL
#205  [archive]
10/31/2023

The Celluloid Closet (1995)
Streaming free 

This is a devastating documentary about the damage done to gay people by Hollywood's depictions of them.

Almost from the invention of movies, LGBTQ people were not allowed on screen except for laughs — look at the sissy man prancing, ha ha.

On rare occasions when a moviemaker tried to present LGBTQ folks a little more fairly or sympathetically, a censor named Joseph Breen (at what's now the Motion Picture Association) altered scripts, and changed words, personalities, and plots to make movies blander, including even the classics. 

"The Lost Weekend, a novel about a sexually confused alcoholic, became a movie about an alcoholic with writer's block. Crossfire, a novel about gay-bashing and murder, became a movie about antisemitism and murder."

Wow — those are two great movies, both of which I've seen numerous times, and I never knew the gay had been snuffed out of them.

As Harvey Fierstein explains, "There are lots of needs for art and the greatest one is the mirror, of our own lives, and our own existence. And that hunger that I felt as a kid, looking for gay images, was — to not be alone."

Imagine going to the movies with friends, family, and never seeing anyone like yourself on-screen. Or when there is someone in the movie you can identify with, it's a joke and you're the punchline. And if it's not a joke, being a-little-like-you inevitably leads to scandal, shame, or suicide in the film's storyline. Or that character turns out to be the film's crazed killer.

As time rolled on and restrictions began loosening, still, you couldn't actually say gay.

In The Children's Hour (1961) — a movie about the guilt and internal torture of being lesbian (!) — the L-word is never spoken. Even when what the film is about is revealed, it's a whisper the audience can't hear. Shirley MacLaine makes an apologetic appearance here, confessing that "None of us were really aware," and that she and co-star Audrey Hepburn never even talked about what the film is about.

With well-chosen interviews on camera and clips from more than a hundred movies, The Celluloid Closet is an education but never a lecture. Lily Tomlin narrates text written by Armistead Maupin, and it's been a long while since a movie affected me so.

Along the way, I kept pausing the video to add movies to my watchlist: Call Her Savage (1932), which had Hollywood's first peek at a gay bar; Victim (1961), with Dirk Bogarde as the screen's first gay protagonist; Advice and Consent (1962), where a Senator faces allegations of gayness; The Boys in the Band (1970), the first drama about gay people where none of them die; and the grand Caberet (1972), the first movie where LGBTness is simply accepted.

The Celluloid Closet is based on years of research and a 1981 book by Vito Russo, co-founder of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), who died of AIDS in 1990.

It was made in 1995, but even so close to our 'modern era', it must've been a difficult pitch — the credits say it's a presentation of HBO, but also list almost a hundred individual, small business, and foundation funders, and then thank "4,000 other donors who helped get this project off the ground."

Anyone lesbian gay bisexual transgender or questioning will be moved by The Celluloid Closet, but you do not have to be LGBTQ to watch it, cry, and understand.

Verdict: BIG YES.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

A Better Tomorrow (1996)
Streaming free 

Widely hailed as a classic of Hong Kong action flicks, until tonight I'd never seen this. Sorry, my taste generally runs toward kung fu more than John Woo's famous bullet ballets.

He's the cinematic son of Sam Peckinpah, making movies full of tough guys being tough, with shootouts and doublecrosses and then another, bigger shootout. If the bullets don't get you, the toxicity of the accumulated lead will.

This one guy is a high-ranking gangster and counterfeiter, but his younger brother is training to become a policeman. Their father wants the gangster to go legit, and he agrees to retire after one last score. But the last score goes all wrong, and then the gangsters send someone to kidnap the father, but that goes wrong too, and Dad dies saying, "Even as boys, you two played cops and robbers."

After that, of course, it's time for the guns — lots of guns, all of which shoot more bullets than a gun can hold. Lots of mega-masculine drama, too, with brother-on-brother arguments, a despicable bad guy, a big-eyed girlfriend who's not going to simply scream.

Chow Yuen-Fat plays the gangster guy's co-gangster and best buddy, and walks away with the film.

Pretending to be a nice guy, usually I don't want to see people being shot through the bloody guts, or being beaten brutally about the head so blood spurts like a slow-mo fountain from the mouth and out both nostrils, all filmed against a lovely midnight sky and under neon lights. When I am in the mood, though, nobody does such things better than writer-director John Woo.

A Better Tomorrow has been remade twice, but I can't fathom why. This one's the real deal.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

A Night in Casablanca (1946)
Streaming free

Years after their most famous films, the Marx Brothers messed with their format in this comeback flick. Gone are all the musical numbers, except for two brief, not unpleasant performances of "Who's Sorry Now?" The Marxes seem less anarchic, more in service of the plot.

The movie is a spoof of war melodramas like Casablanca, and everyone whose last name isn't Marx takes the proceedings very seriously. Nazis are afoot, with stolen treasure hidden somewhere in the hotel.

Chico plays Corbaccio, proprietor of the Yellow Camel Company. Harpo plays Randy, an incompetent valet at the Hotel Casablanca, and Groucho is the hotel's new manager — but the last two managers have been murdered.

Chico and Harpo are a bit wrinkled, and Groucho is seriously balding, but the brothers are still funny, plus there's mystery and intrigue. Staged to look and feel like Algiers or Casablanca, it almost works as one of that genre, but the Marxes won't stand for it.

I'd been led to expect lesser Marx here, but this is quite good. Chico is still the only guy who can play a piano both funny and beautiful. Harpo with the harp, ditto. And Groucho makes any joke better with his delivery. The brothers have been funnier, but the non-Marx parts are better than in most of their movies. Fewer laughs, but far fewer yawns.

Written by Joseph Fields (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) and Roland Kibbee (who wrote two good episodes of Columbo).

Directed by Archie Mayo (Moontide, The Petrified Forest).

Produced by David Loew, whose dad orchestrated the three-way merger of the Metro, Goldwyn, and Meyer film companies, and founded the long-running Loew's chain of cinemas.

Verdict: YES.

10/31/2023   

• • • Coming attractions • • •

The Gorilla (1939)
The Green Girl (2014)
Hiroshima (1953)
Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966)
Popeye (1980)
Reflections of Evil (2002)
Truck Turner (1974)

... plus occasional schlock and surprises 

    • • • And then • • •

A Gnome Named Gnorm (1990)
Alexander Nevsky (1938)
The Bat People (1974)
The Beatles: Get Back (2021)
Berkeley in the Sixties (1990)
Brainwaves (1983)
The Card Counter (2021)
Cellular (2004) 
The Dark Glow of the Mountains (1985)
Dark Star (1974)
The Day My Parents Became Cool (2009)
The Decline of Western Civilization (1980)
Downsizing (2017)
Frankenhooker (1990)
The General (1926)
Get Shorty (1995)
Hugo (2011)
The Importance of Being Earnest (1952)
The Internet's Own Boy (2014)
Kids in the Hall (debut episode; 1988) 
Kids in the Hall (reunion debut episode; 2022)
The Killing of America (1981)
The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) 
Line of Duty (debut episode; 2012)
Love Happy (1950)
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
The Man Who Thought Life (1969)
The Man with Nine Lives (1940)
The Manhattan Project (1996)
Not Wanted (1949)
Nothing But a Man (1964)
Phone Booth (2002)
PickAxe (1999)
Poison (1990)
Revelations (1993)
Ride in the Whirlwind (1966)
Romper Stomper (1992)
Room Service (1938)
Same Kind of Different as Me (2017)
Saved! (2004)
Scared to Death (1947)
Secret Weapons (1985)
The Shooting (1966)
The Soloist (2009)
Sons of the Desert (1933)
Street of Crocodiles (1986)
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)
Taken for a Ride (1996)
The Train (1964)
Welcome to New Orleans (2006)
Who Farted? (2019)
Who's That Girl? (1987)
Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006)

There are so many good movies out there — old movies, odd or artsy, foreign or forgotten movies, or do-it-yourself movies made just for the joy of making them — that if you only watch whatever's on Netflix or playing at the twenty-plex, you're missing out.

To get beyond the ordinary, I recommend:

Alter • Cineverse • Criterion • CultCinema Classics • DocsVille • Dust • Fandor • Films for Action • Hoopla • IHaveNoTV • IndieFlix • Internet Archive • Kanopy • KinoCult • Kino Lorber • Korean Classic Film • Christopher R Mihm • Mosfilm • Mubi • National Film Board of Canada • New Yorker Screening Room • Damon Packard • Mark Pirro • PizzaFlix • PopcornFlix • Public Domain Movies • RareFilmm • Scarecrow Video • Shudder • ThoughtMaybe • Timeless Classic Movies • VoleFlix • WatchDocumentaries • or your local library. 

Some people even access films through shady methods, though of course, that would be wrong.

— — —

Illustration by Jeff Meyer. Reviews are spoiler-free, or at least spoiler-warned. Click any image to enlarge. Arguments & recommendations are welcome, but no talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff. 

 

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