DVD/150: THE CELLULOID CLOSET (Rob Epstein/Jeffrey Friedman, 1995)

This HBO film was inspired by Vito Russo's 1981 book "THE CELLULOID CLOSET: HOMOSEXUALITY IN THE MOVIES" showing how cinema had presented gay characters, primarily in Hollywood.

Narrated by Lily Tomlin, it starts with William Dickson's 1895 short film of two men dancing while a violinist plays and ends with PHILADELPHIA from 1993.

It includes some insightful interviewees: performers like Quenton Crisp, Tony Curtis, Shirley MacLaine, and Tom Hanks, and writers like Gore Vidal, Arthur Laurents, Jay Presson Allen and Harvey Fierstein, and academics like Richard Dyer and Susie Bright.

The emphasis on Hollywood of course skews the argument: apart from a few soundless clips the only British films mentioned are VICTIM, THE HUNGER and SUNDAY, BLOODY SUNDAY and European cinema is represented by one soundless clip of LA CAGE AUX FOLLES!

It's remit also mostly excludes US independant cinema so John Waters' only representation is a clip of HAIRSPRAY!

Shelf or charity shop?  Currently living in the plastic storage box, THE CELLULOID CLOSET is still a keeper - the balance was redressed two years later when Channel 4 (who co-financed CELLULOID CLOSET) produced A BIT OF SCARLET which looked at British cinema's representation of gay characters. 

 

Dvd/150: SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER (Joseph L Mankiewicz, 1959)

Tennessee Williams' one-act play is expanded by screenwriter Gore Vidal into a fevered Southern Gothic horror classic (Williams recieved a co-writing credit but did no work on it).

Mankiewicz's overwrought film doesn't do the play justice but it's worth it when you have Elizabeth Taylor and Katharine Hepburn going at each other, leaving Montgomery Clift's doctor a mere onlooker.

Hepburn is fantastic as the possessive Mrs Venable, offering to bankroll Clift's hospital providing he lobotomize hysterical niece Taylor, the only witness to her son's death "suddenly last summer..."

Taylor looks magnificent and gives us full 'star' acting, but it's in her quieter moments that she really delivers; her manic scenes show off her vocal limitations too much.

Taylor demanded Clift play the doctor but only three years after his near-fatal car crash, he is a hesitant, stumbling shadow of his former self.

For all it's flaws, unmissable!

Shelf or charity shop?  Katharine Hepburn was so disgusted with Mankiewicz's on-set bullying of shaky Montgomery Clift that when he yelled 'cut' on her very last scene, she asked him if that was definitely her last moment on the film, when Mankiewicz said it was she spat in his face.  One to keep but living in the limbo of my plastic DVD box.  It's worth keeping for the crazed cameo of comedy harridan Rita Webb as a knitting asylum inmate!