20 queer movie clas­sics you need to see – part 1

We’ve tak­en a look back over a cen­tu­ry of cin­e­ma and select­ed 20 impor­tant films that explored gay rep­re­sen­ta­tion on screen. Our choic­es range from the silent era, where this was a love that (lit­er­al­ly) couldn’t be spo­ken of, through to a neo-west­ern which brought same-sex love to a main­stream audi­ence. The count­down starts below, then check out the sec­ond part.

In 1919, long before 1927’s The Jazz Singer, Dif­fer­ent from the Oth­ers already point­ed to the pow­er of sound, and did so by toy­ing with the medium’s lim­i­ta­tions –or should we say, unique pro­pri­eties? – of silence. Indeed, silence here speaks vol­umes, but can also become sti­fling. It reveals the neces­si­ty of speak­ing voic­es and com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Paul and Kurt dis­cov­er their mutu­al appre­ci­a­tion in exchange of looks only. Kurt’s gleam­ing eyes stand out in a clas­sic, lumi­nous close-up against a black cur­tain while he stares at his crush play­ing the vio­lin. Each facial expres­sion is mean­ing­ful, com­mu­ni­cat­ing over­whelm­ing and con­flict­ing emo­tions. When Franz, a man Paul was try­ing to seduce, extends his open palm towards him, Paul does not need to hear an expla­na­tion: he knows he’s been black­mailed. The silence of both men reveals the shame and taboo sur­round­ing homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. Yet when the cou­ple seeks the help of a sex­ol­o­gist, inter­ti­tles mul­ti­ply as he explains their sex­u­al­i­ty as nor­mal but mis­un­der­stood by soci­ety. This sur­pris­ing­ly mod­ern approach – despite a few obvi­ous­ly anti­quat­ed points – cries for the help of sound to break the silence and start a con­ver­sa­tion about the real­i­ty of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. Manuela Laz­ic

Few film­mak­ers under­stood the pow­er of the close-up like Dan­ish mas­ter, Carl Drey­er. Michael, one of his great ear­ly works, is the embryo of many exper­i­ments to come. It’s a des­per­ate­ly sad tale of unre­quit­ed love, chart­ing the one-sided rela­tion­ship between a painter and his epony­mous, ungrate­ful muse. Drey­er piles on the humil­i­a­tions afford­ed the old­er artist as Michael runs off with a pen­ni­less Russ­ian princess out for all she can get. The artist’s skills dwin­dle with­out the young man by the side, yet final­ly pro­duces his mas­ter­piece out of pure heart­break: ​“The work of a man who has lost every­thing.” Implic­it though the affair may be, the film was way ahead of its time (and per­haps pre­dictably unfavourably received), and the dig­ni­ty with which the artist bears his tragedy is noth­ing short of shat­ter­ing. Matt Thrift

“I was rather sur­prised,” says an audi­ence mem­ber after the all-girls board­ing school pro­duc­tion of Don Car­los in Mäd­chen in Uni­form,“Schiller can be rather frank.” It’s a self-aware acknowl­edge­ment of the all-too-appar­ent on the part of Leon­tine Sagan, a film­mak­er forced into exile soon after her (banned, ​‘deca­dent’) debut was released in Ger­many. ​“All the girls love Fraülein von Bern­burg,” not least Manuela, a vul­ner­a­ble new stu­dent whose obses­sive case of amour fou takes her to the brink of tragedy. If the school’s demands of ​“total dis­ci­pline” frame it as a micro­cosm for wider polit­i­cal read­ings, its ground-break­ing depic­tion of same-sex attrac­tion between teacher and stu­dent pulls no punch­es, not least in an erot­i­cal­ly-charged bed­time kiss. Remade with Romy Schnei­der in 1958 by Géza von Rad­ványi and swap­ping out con­text for sym­bol­ism, the orig­i­nal remains the more potent­ly expres­sive arti­cle. MT

Fem­i­nin­i­ty in 1930s Amer­i­ca was not as free as it is today. Soci­ety left women of all class­es with lit­tle inde­pen­dence when choos­ing how to behave. All had bet­ter be attrac­tive to men, using their fem­i­nine attrib­ut­es either with excit­ing vul­gar­i­ty or sug­ges­tive restraint. Josef Von Sternberg’s Moroc­co is strik­ing in how it responds to this qui­et oppres­sion with con­ser­v­a­tive notions of mar­riage, suc­cess, desire and sen­su­al­i­ty. Amy Jol­ly (Mar­lene Diet­rich) sure­ly exudes fem­i­nin­i­ty, yet it stems from her inde­pen­dent spir­it. More­over, she does not stop at typ­i­cal female behav­iour when try­ing to impress, instead explor­ing her mas­cu­line side by wear­ing a suit and bowtie, walk­ing non­cha­lant­ly and giv­ing the eye to both men and women. Yet she is nev­er fooled by the kind­ness of men attract­ed to her physique. The only man she desires is legion­naire Tom Brown (Gary Coop­er), for not only does he find her blur­ry sex­u­al­i­ty excit­ing, he also accepts it unques­tion­ably. Bored by easy local women attract­ed to his sta­tus, he him­self isn’t the clichéd, hyper-mas­cu­line sol­dier. For him, Amy will at once fur­ther resist the pres­sure to mar­ry well, and rede­fine her fem­i­nin­i­ty into a more com­pli­ant form in order for this romance to bet­ter face the tough con­di­tions of the times. ML

It’s the job of the femme fatale to cre­ate cas­tra­tion anx­i­eties among male char­ac­ters and audi­ence mem­bers, anx­i­eties that are then oblit­er­at­ed at the end of the film by her being pun­ished in some way. In con­trast, Gil­da (Rita Hay­worth) suf­fers through­out Charles Vidor’s 1946 film, and not because of her promis­cu­ous behav­iour. On the con­trary, she suf­fers because her love for a man, John­ny Far­rell (Glenn Ford), is not rec­i­p­ro­cat­ed. This cre­ates an inter­est­ing spin on the clas­sic femme fatale, as Gil­da only pre­tends to be one in the hope of mak­ing Far­rell jeal­ous. The film focus­es on her unsolv­able pain and frus­tra­tion, not out of pure film noir sadism, but as a clever way to indi­rect­ly indi­cate the rea­son why Far­rell doesn’t love her: he is attract­ed to Gilda’s hus­band, Ballin (George Macready). All of Gilda’s attempts to make Far­rell jeal­ous only annoy him, because Ballin express­ly asked him to keep an eye on her. Although Gil­da is the title of the film, she doesn’t rep­re­sent its heart. Nei­ther of these two men love her; she is only used as a vehi­cle for them to express their for­bid­den love to one anoth­er. Ele­na Lazic

Despite remov­ing any explic­it ref­er­ence to the pro­tag­o­nists’ homo­sex­u­al­i­ty present in Patrick Hamilton’s play, Alfred Hitch­cock trans­forms Rope into a nev­er-end­ing parade of fetish objects, the most glar­ing being the famous sequence-shot visu­al scheme itself. The film’s one hard cut, com­ing straight after the cred­its to take us inside the apart­ment – and face-to-face with the mur­der – presents us with the first of a series of cer­e­mo­ni­al objects that both John Dall and Hitchcock’s lens will fawn over and caress for the next 80 min­utes. ​“It’s a muse­um piece now,” says Dall, pick­ing up a glass, ​“Out of this David Kent­ley had his last drink.” A glass. A chest. A length of rope. A gun. All are re-pur­posed in one way or anoth­er, twist­ed fab­ri­ca­tions of func­tion and mean­ing. Hitch­cock invests his film about sur­faces with a dev­il­ish wit, toy­ing with ideas of rep­re­sen­ta­tion every step of the way. MT

The nucle­us of so many of Howard Hawks’ films is a group of men at work. From the jad­ed air­men of Only Angels Have Wings to the rag­tag band of chancers trav­el­ling upriv­er in The Big Sky, their lives are con­sumed by work, and thus their fra­ter­nal depen­dence on one anoth­er verges on the spousal. With 1953’s Gen­tle­men Pre­fer Blondes, Hawks offers an inge­nious rever­sal of gen­der roles, with show­girls Lorelei (Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe) and Dorothy (Jane Rus­sell) as the cen­tral char­ac­ters, bound by for­tune to nav­i­gate mid-cen­tu­ry roman­tic mores. Their poten­tial para­mours are inef­fec­tu­al car­i­ca­tures, and Hawks makes no effort to hide the fact that the romance is pur­sued sole­ly for mate­r­i­al com­fort – a notion made explic­it with Monroe’s barn­storm­ing ren­di­tion of ​“Dia­monds Are a Girl’s Best Friend”. The only pure rela­tion­ship in the film is Lorelei and Dorothy’s, a pair joined by cir­cum­stances per­haps, but bound by unshake­able affec­tion. Craig Williams

Queer icon Doris Day reached the apogee of her queer icon­ness when star­ring as tongue-twist­ing tomboy Calami­ty ​‘Clam’ Jane in David Butler’s camp musi­cal mas­ter­work from 1953. Whip-crack­ing away right from the exhil­a­rat­ing open­ing sal­vo in which Clam’ cavorts into town on the Dead­wood Stage, it’s a film which pos­i­tive­ly drips with queer dou­ble enten­dre and saucy inti­ma­tions, con­stant­ly mak­ing you won­der whether its mak­ers were aware of the sub­ver­sive sub­text. Aside from the fact that the rough­est, tough­est town in the Old West is peo­pled by thigh-slap­ping good-ol’-boys who like noth­ing more than to watch cabaret shows, the high­light of the film is the ​‘A Woman’s Touch’ sequence, where Clam is taught to sup­press her man­ly instincts and become hap­py house­wife to Allyn Ann McLerie’s dom­i­nant Katie Brown. And that’s all before Day gets to sing the film’s chart top­ping bal­lad, ahem, ​‘Secret Love’… David Jenk­ins

Unscrupu­lous, libidi­nous and macho crim­i­nal men in cin­e­ma haven’t sur­prised any­one in a long time. So it’s a shame that fifty years after its orig­i­nal release, the badass, kick­ass women of Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussy­cat! Kill! Kill! remain shock­ing and unique in the extrem­i­ty of their ruth­less­ness and gen­der play. More than a sim­ple exper­i­ment in revers­ing gen­der roles, the film grap­ples with con­flict­ing ver­sions of wom­an­hood, from inno­cent vir­gin to whore. It is only Ver­la (played by the strik­ing Tura Satana) who is ready to whol­ly assume the prin­ci­ples usu­al­ly attrib­uted to men – a taste for mon­ey, speed, vio­lence and women. Indeed, she’s the only one in the pack to ready to reject the male influ­ence com­plete­ly. Her trag­ic end does not sign the cus­tom­ary neu­tral­i­sa­tion of an inde­pen­dent woman, but rather the expect­ed ter­mi­na­tion of the bad ​‘guy’.
EL

If the genius of Claude Chabrol can be reduced to a sin­gle notion, it’s the way he appro­pri­at­ed the milieu of his century’s great crime nov­el­ists, and imbued it with a psy­cho­log­i­cal exac­ti­tude which ran counter to more con­ven­tion­al genre films. The cen­tral female pair of Les Bich­es – Stéphane Audran and Jacque­line Sas­sard – are, on the sur­face, a prod­uct of sala­cious pulp impulse. Audran glides through her opu­lent vil­la, slinky and insin­u­at­ing. But Chabrol’s pro­fil­ing betrays their frag­ile posi­tion in the world. Theirs is a ten­u­ous inti­ma­cy, furtive yet pal­pa­ble. While it may lack the chill­ing resolve of his 1995 fea­ture, La Céré­monie, or the bound­ary-push­ing frisk­i­ness of 1960’s Les Bonnes Femmes, it brings steely pur­pose to mate­r­i­al that is con­stant­ly flirt­ing with baser impuls­es. CW

Check out part two of our 20 film count­down of great queer cinema.