Sen­su­al queer shorts from before Stonewall

A new sea­son com­pris­ing 23 fea­ture and 25 short films made before 1969, the year of the Stonewall riots, pro­vides a fas­ci­nat­ing insight into the evo­lu­tion of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and oth­er queer themes through the his­to­ry of cinema.

The selec­tion of fea­tures – dat­ing as far back as 1916 (Mau­ritz Stiller’s Vin­gar­ne) – is intrigu­ing, high­light­ing the mea­sures queer film­mak­ers had to take to address their sub­jects in a hos­tile cli­mate. Basil Dearden’s Vic­tim, from 1961, stars Dirk Bog­a­rde (always a delight). The fears of the film cen­tre around a black­mail­er who tar­gets homo­sex­u­al men, threat­en­ing to expose them. It’s almost hys­ter­i­cal when viewed today, but at the time Vic­tim was con­sid­ered bold and huge­ly con­tro­ver­sial sim­ply for men­tion­ing homosexuality.

Pier Pao­lo Pasolini’s doc­u­men­tary, Love Meet­ings, in which the direc­tor inter­views Ital­ians about their opin­ions on sex, is as frank, colour­ful and enter­tain­ing as it is dispir­it­ing from a fem­i­nist point-of-view. The pro­gramme goes back to a more the­atri­cal time in Clara Bow talkie The Wild Par­ty, it goes sul­try in Charles Bryant and Alla Nazimova’s Salome, and con­tro­ver­sial again in Jack Smith’s Flam­ing Crea­tures. It goes inside a girls’ school in Jacque­line Audry’s Olivia and shows that Ed Wood was explor­ing cin­e­mat­ic trans­sex­u­al­ism in Glen or Glen­da long before Tom Hoop­er noticed Eddie Redmayne’s androg­y­nous poise and thought, ​‘Ker-ching!’

Andy Warhol is on the bill, along with Ken­neth Anger, Ger­maine Dulac, George Cukor, Shirley Clarke and Alfred Hitch­cock. For all this tal­ent, how­ev­er, the films that most cap­tured our imag­i­na­tion are two shorts which, in their own dis­tinc­tive, dif­fer­ing ways, explore desire.

Who hasn’t pur­sued an object of desire, only to redis­cov­er them­selves, made strange by the pur­suit? At the end, the amorous muse is whisked back to the mys­tery from whence they came, prov­ing that the whole episode was as much about the dream­er, as the dreamed-of. Cur­tis Harrington’s 16-minute film from 1946 is slight­ly emp­ty. The spaces the main char­ac­ter silent­ly stalks are devoid of peo­ple, save from the blonde ingénue – who flash­es up here and there – with her robust beau.

Har­ring­ton him­self stars, wear­ing bot­tle-cap glass­es that often bleach out his eyes, a trench coat with the col­lar turned up and a large hat. He is a man pos­sessed by the image of a woman. There she is, on the roof! Is that her knock­ing on the door of his room? Despite his obses­sion, Harrington’s face is impas­sive. He is a robot pro­grammed to fol­low. Fol­low he does, walk­ing alone, but always dream­ing of one woman.

The film is slow and there is scope to let your mind wan­der, or to fill time with your own inter­pre­ta­tion of a loose frame­work that is assured­ly about want­i­ng some­one you can’t have. The per­spec­tive of the lead as onlooker/​voyeur/​fantasist, invites us to explore our own mar­gin­al instincts, and the ele­gant­ly eerie clas­si­cal score dig­ni­fies the plight of this long­ing-fuelled wanderer.

A Frag­ment of Seek­ing screens 26 April with Willard Maas’ Geog­ra­phy of the Body and Reuben Siegel’s The Case of Mr Lynn.

Wel­come to an overt­ly sex­u­al film that is a mash-up of men’s bod­ies and their long­ing. We’re in a prison, which is pos­si­ble to inter­pret as a metaphor­i­cal prison because of the charged way that events progress – and because want­i­ng oth­er men in 1950, when this film came out, was a kind of prison.

Word is that anoth­er Jean – a cer­tain Mon­sieur Cocteau – was the cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er on this film. Who­ev­er he is, the DoP shoots a mon­tage of sen­su­al close-ups: lips, shoul­ders, tat­toos, faces, penis­es. There is so much danc­ing, whether rapid, pro­fes­sion­al move­ments or closed-eyed roman­tic sway­ing. Pris­on­ers in adjourn­ing cells act like they can hear Un Chant d’Amour’s sound design, which is ancient, erot­ic trib­al music.

A prison guard spies on all his inmates, and then choos­es one to pun­ish with a gun-in-the-mouth act that arous­es him. It feels like just more sug­ges­tive imagery in a sequence that already had a pris­on­er pok­ing a cig­a­r­il­lo through a hole in his wall and blow­ing smoke through it.

The main draw is the atmos­phere, which is bold, sexy and indif­fer­ent to whether any­body is shocked or not. Today, 60 years lat­er, penis­es on film are a rare sight. Here there are a pletho­ra of them, for no oth­er rea­son than it suits the sto­ry (and suits the director’s appetite for this part of a male anato­my). It real­ly shouldn’t be shroud­ed in secre­cy, because it’s just part of the song of love.

Un Chant d’Amour screens 23 April with Ken­neth Anger’s Fire­works and Jean Cocteau’s Blood of a Poet.

‘An Ear­ly Clue to the New Direc­tion: Queer Cin­e­ma Before Stonewall’ runs at New York’s Film Soci­ety of Lin­coln Cen­ter from Fri­day 22 April until Sun­day 1 May. Check out the full pro­gramme at film​linc​.org