The Celluloid Closet
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
There's two things got me puzzled —"Foolish Man Blues" (1927) by Bessie Smith, "Most of our pictures have little, if any, real substance. Our fear of what the censors will do keeps us from portraying life the way it really is. We wind up with a lot of empty fairy tales that do not have much relation to anyone."—Samuel Goldwyn, 1938 "The movies didn't always get history straight. But they told the dream."—Charlton Heston, narrating America on Film, 1976 Yeh, it's sad, believe me, Missy --"If I Only Had the Nerve" (1939) in the film The Wizard of Oz "This chapter is concerned primarily with the genesis of the sissy and not the tomboy because homosexual behavior onscreen, as almost every other defined "type" of behavior, has been cast in male terms. Homosexuality in the movies, whether overtly sexual or not, has always been seen in terms of what is or is not masculine. The defensive phrase "Who's a sissy?" has been as much a part of the American lexicon as "So's your old lady." After all, it is supposed to be an insult to call a man effeminate, for it means he is like a woman and therefore not as valuable as a "real" man. The popular definition of gayness is rooted in sexism. Weakness in men rather than strength in women has consistently been seen as the connection between sex role behavior and deviant sexuality. And while sissy men have always signaled a rank betrayal of the myth of male superiority, tomboy women have seemed to reinforce that myth and have often been indulged in acting it out."--The Celluloid Closet (1981) by Vito Russo "Suddenly the "real" problem, the one that is never talked about in the film, becomes the ultimate culprit—because it seems to be the one subject that is so ostentatiously avoided. A review in Time said that audiences seeing The Strange One "will learn what goes on inside a sadist—mostly repressed homosexuality." But who is doing the repressing here? The author certainly made Jocko a sexually repressed character, but the sexuality that characters repress shows itself in their behavior in certain ways—ways that were then repressed by the censors."--The Celluloid Closet (1981) by Vito Russo "A lesbian relationship involving another screen madam (Shelley Winters), in an adaptation of Jean Genet's The Balcony (1963), featured a kiss between Winters and her bookkeeper (Lee Grant) that earned the description a "lesbian letch" in Variety's review. In Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker (1965), Brock Peters played an imperious, sadistic pimp who is clearly having an affair with a man (whom Newsday called his "white underling"). These combinations of newly visible losers thrown together in the sexual jungles of major cities did not demystify homosexuality; they only paid tribute to its mysterious, lowlife nature. What disappeared was the restriction on saying "it" out loud."--The Celluloid Closet (1981) by Vito Russo |
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The Celluloid Closet (1995) is a documentary film on the portrayal of gays in film. It is directed and written by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. The film is based on the 1981 book of the same name written by Vito Russo, and on previous lecture and film clip presentations given in person by Russo 1972-82. Russo researched the history of how motion pictures, especially Hollywood films, had portrayed gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender characters. It was given a limited release in select theatres, including the Castro Theatre in San Francisco in April 1996, and then shown on cable channel HBO.
The documentary interviews various men and women connected to the Hollywood industry to comment on various film clips and their own personal experiences with the treatment of LGBT characters in film. From the sissy characters, to the censorship of the Hollywood Production Code, the coded gay characters and cruel stereotypes to the progress made in the early 1990s.
Vito Russo wanted his book to be transformed into a documentary film and helped out on the project until he died in 1990. Some critics of the documentary noted that it was less political than the book and ended on a more positive note. However, Russo had wanted the documentary to be entertaining and to reflect the positive changes that had occurred up to 1990.
Films
List of film excerpts in Celluloid Closet.
- The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)
- Advise and Consent (1962)
- Another Country (1983)
- A View from the Bridge (1962)
- Basic Instinct (1992)
- Ben-Hur (1959)
- The Boys in the Band (1970)
- Boys on the Side (1995)
- Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
- The Broadway Melody (1929)
- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
- Cabaret (1972)
- Call Her Savage (1932)
- Calamity Jane (1953)
- Car Wash (1976)
- Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
- The Children's Hour (1961)
- The Color Purple (1985)
- Cruising (1980)
- The Crying Game (1992)
- Desert Hearts (1985)
- The Detective (1968)
- Dickson Experimental Sound Film (1895)
- Dressed to Kill (1980)
- The Fan (1981)
- The Fox (1967)
- Freebie and the Bean (1974)
- Fried Green Tomatoes (1991)
- Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)
- Gilda (1946)
- Go Fish (1994)
- The Hours and Times (1991)
- The Hunger (1983)
- In a Lonely Place (1950)
- Johnny Guitar (1954)
- The Living End (1992)
- Lianna (1983)
- Longtime Companion (1990)
- Lover Come Back (1961)
- Making Love (1982)
- The Maltese Falcon (1941)
- Midnight Cowboy (1969)
- Midnight Express (1978)
- Morocco (1930)
- My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)
- My Own Private Idaho (1991)
- Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976)
- Night Shift (1982)
- Parting Glances (1986)
- Personal Best (1982)
- Philadelphia (1993)
- Pillow Talk (1959)
- Poison (1991)
- Queen Christina (1933)
- Rebecca (1940)
- Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
- Red River (1948)
- Rope (1948)
- The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
- Some Like It Hot (1959)
- Spartacus (1960)
- Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
- Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971)
- Swoon (1992)
- Tea and Sympathy (1956)
- Teen Wolf (1985)
- Thelma & Louise (1991)
- Torch Song Trilogy (1988)
- Vanishing Point (1970)
- Victim (1961)
- Walk on the Wild Side (1962)
- The Watermelon Woman (1995)
- The Wedding Banquet (1993)
- Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974)
- Windows (1980)
- Wings (1927)
- Wonder Bar (1934)