The legendary film is both beloved and hated by generations of gay men for its groundbreaking portrayal of sex, beauty and life, both in and out of the closet. There’s no shortage of drama when a (presumably) straight guy is invited to the gayest party in New York City. See Angelina’s Dad in Midnight Cowboy – an ode to the Times Square hustler It also comes with a brilliant soundtrack courtesy of A.M.
The movie captures the seedy side of Times Square, and features some interesting cameos – like underground New York legend and Warhol friend Sylvia Miles. Ogle Angelina Jolie’s daddy – Jon Voight – as he plays a naïve trick decked out as the ultimate urban cowboy. The film stars Dirk Bogarde, who also played another very frustrated gay man in the film adaptation of Thomas Mann’s bleak Death in Venice (1971). In this wild ride of a movie, the closet opens up plenty of fear and loathing after a blackmailer threatens to expose a gay man’s deep, dark secrets. Bonus: It stars a very young (and gay) Farley Granger.įarley Granger (left) and John Dall in Rope. They didn’t call him Hitchcock for nothing. While most films from the pre-Stonewall era only ever allude to gay life with a wink and nod, this thriller centers on two young men who strangle their classmate and stash his body in their apartment – before having the perfect dinner party. But they are all in some way groundbreaking for their time period and considered in sequence they provide a record of mainstream culture’s changing attitudes towards gay men.įeeling nostalgic? Can’t get enough body hair? Want to experience the celluloid life pre-Stonewall? Here’s our guide to some of the most notable (and gayest) old-school flicks from before the millennium.
In fact, some are downright offensive by today’s standards.
Just as your favorite TV series may be getting ready to take the summer off – or get canceled (goodbye, The New Normal) – entertainment buffs needn’t look too far to find a wealth of memorable gay movies that are well worth watching again and again. Rather, consider this a primer that helps illustrate the relationship between queer culture and the silver screen.Cruising stars Al Pacino as a leather-clad undercover cop… who’s not a member of the Village People It is nowhere near a comprehensive rundown of every great movie to feature out-and-proud heroes and villains, or a queer sensibility, or even just visible (and/or risible) examples of gay life in cinema we could have easily made this list twice as long. In honor of LGBTQ Pride Month, we’re singling out 50 essential LGBTQ films - from comedies to dramas, documentaries to cult classics, underground experimental work to studio blockbusters. Some have been documents of a moment or era of gay history, some have been used as correctives to decades of negative clichés, and others have simply celebrated the fact that the movies can be queer, they’re here, get used to it. But since those two men first danced, there have also been scores of stories, characters, and filmmakers that have presented the varied, multitudinous aspects of LGBTQ experiences 24 frames per second that have gone past those stereotypes, or flipped them on their heads. That clip appears in The Celluloid Closet, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s documentary based on Vito Russo’s study of homosexuality in the movies, along with countless examples of how gay characters showed up, per narrator Lily Tomlin, as “something to laugh at, or something to pity, or even something to fear.” The history of representation is long, and extremely storied, often shaping how the public viewed “the love that dare not speak its name” for better or worse. It’s considered by many to be one of the first examples of gay imagery in film, and a reminder that homosexual representation has been with the medium from the very beginning. While there’s nothing to outright suggest that these men were romantically involved or attracted to each other during the roughly 20-second length of their pas de deux, there is nothing that contradicts that notion either.
It’s known as “The Dickson Experimental Sound Film,” and dates back to 1895, the same year movies were born.
It was an experimental short made by William Dickson, designed to test syncing up moving pictures to prerecorded sound, a system that he and Thomas Edison were developing known as the Kinetophone. But this brief footage is not so ancient that you can’t clearly make out two men, waltzing together, as a third man plays a violin in the background. It’s grainy, faded, and, given the clip is now 125 years old, more than a little worse for wear.