There are at least two ways to answer the question: “What is LGBTQ film?” Firstly, a movie might be considered queer if it includes queer characters. Although more recent films feature LGBTQ leads, most films before the 1960s rarely acknowledged the existence of queer people – whether they be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. The Hollywood Production Code, which regulated and censored the content of Hollywood films from 1934 to the mid 1960s, demanded that cinema depict married, procreative heterosexuality as the only proper sexuality. However, classical Hollywood filmmakers found ways to connote, or slyly suggest, that certain characters might be queer, using subtle mannerisms, costuming and speech patterns. As Vito Russo’s now famous book turned film, The Celluloid Closet (1995), highlights, these connotations were recognized by closeted queer audiences who were hoping to find representations of themselves on the silver screen.
Another way to define LGBTQ film is via its authorship – films might be queer when they are made by queer people. Even if their films are about straight characters, there nevertheless lingers a queer sensibility, a queer way of seeing the world. This Pride month, TCM invites audiences to see from this point of view by highlighting and celebrating the cinematic contributions of gay, lesbian and bisexual directors. With a timespan that covers pre-Code films to the heyday of what B. Ruby Rich in 1992 famously called, “new queer cinema,” this special theme show how LGBTQ directors have been integral to cinematic production.
The special theme kicks off with Mitchell Leisen’s Death Takes a Holiday (1934), a romantic drama in which Death takes on human form as Prince Sirki (Frederic March) for three days so that he can mingle among mortals. When he falls in love with a beautiful young woman, Grazia (Evelyn Venable), her family and friends beg him to give her up and leave her among the living. Death is torn between seeking his own happiness or sacrificing it so that Grazia may live. To queer audiences, Death Takes a Holiday could be seen as an allegory for the futility of same-sex love. After all, queer life has long been associated with non-reproductive relations – essentially, death. It may not be a coincidence that the film was released on the cusp of Code censorship which worked to make married heterosexuality appear natural and feel compulsory. Leisen made a name for himself in Hollywood as Cecil B. DeMille’s art director, receiving an Academy Award nomination in 1930 for Dynamite (1929). He went on to direct over 35 films. Though married, Leisen was reported to be gay or bisexual, having both affairs with actresses and a very long relationship with dancer, actor and choreographer, Billy Daniel.
Leisen’s more out contemporaries are also featured this month. James Whale, perhaps best known for his horror films with gay subtext – Frankenstein (1931), The Old Dark Horse (1932) and the Bride of Frankenstein (1935) – is honored this month with a screening of his early World War I film, Waterloo Bridge (1931) about a soldier who falls in love with a prostitute. The film was remade as the drama Gaby (1956) which unfaithfully removed much of its salacious subtext. Whale served in World War I himself and was openly gay throughout his film career and was sometimes called “The Queen of Hollywood.”
Known for directing celebrated movies such as Little Women (1933), Adam’s Rib (1949), A Star is Born (1954) (which TCM is screening in its special on Judy Garland this month) and My Fair Lady (1964), George Cukor was known as a “woman’s director,” a title he resented, but has been embraced by queer audiences. It was an open secret in Hollywood that Cukor was gay and the unofficial head of Hollywood’s gay subculture. At least once, he was arrested on vice charges, but MGM studio executives managed to get the charges dropped and all records of it expunged. This month’s special theme includes his early film The Women (1939) based on Clare Boothe Luce’s 1936 play of the same name. It continues the play’s all- female tradition – the entire cast of more than 130 speaking roles was all female, and throughout it, not a single male character is seen or heard. Filmed in black and white, it includes a six-minute fashion parade featuring “Gowns by Adrian” (designer, Adrian Adolph Greenburg who also did the costumes for The Wizard of Oz,1939). Often cut in modern screenings, the fashion show has been restored by TCM.
No special theme on LGBTQ directors would be complete without filmmakers for whom their primary aesthetic is camp. In her now famous essay, “Notes on Camp,” Susan Sontag suggests that a “hallmark of camp is the spirit of extravagance,” “a glorification of character” and a sensibility of “failed seriousness.” In the early 1960s Los Angeles, a group of gay men and recreational cross-dressers known as the Gay Girls Riding Club rose to prominence in California’s homosexual underground, and in addition to their actual equestrian outings, they GGRC made their name with a series of campy 16 mm short films that spoofed Hollywood. This month TCM screens four of these send-ups: Always on Sunday (1962), What Really Happened to Baby Jane? (1963), The Roman Springs on Mrs. Stone (1963), and the Bond/Mission: Impossible-themed drag parody, Spy on the Fly (1967) – all directed by Ray Harrison.
John Waters – the King of Camp, the Prince of Puke, the Pope of Trash – holds royal status in the world of queer cinema. Often called his Citizen Kane, Female Trouble (1974), which runs this month, is the second installment of the so-called “trash trilogy,” which, along with Pink Flamingos (1972) and Desperate Living (1977), are the most notorious, noxious and beloved comedies of the director. Female Trouble is a dark comedy about the lengths an American misfit might go for her 15 minutes of fame. It is an example of Waters’ signature irony: a camp aesthetic that exaggerates bodies, costuming, color, performance and of course, hair. As a result, he reverses our tastes – bad is good and ugly is pretty – and subverts conventional politics as they pertain to gender, sexuality, marriage, family and class. Divine, a popular drag queen and Waters' larger than life muse, performs the protagonist, Dawn, to these ends, even crooning the jazzy title song in character. Female Trouble's playful vulgarity is unlike films of the 1960s with openly gay content which were, by and large, tragic melodramas and cautionary tales about about the sorrows of being homosexual.
Classic Hollywood and camp are the stuff of prolific Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar who adapts and remixes these queer cinematic hallmarks in his films. This special theme features his dark comedy, Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down! (1989), about a recently released psychiatric patient who kidnaps an actress in order to make her fall in love with him. The film follows the myth of Beauty and the Beast and the themes in the Spanish play, “Life is a Dream.” The abduction narrative has some similarities with the film The Collector (1965), directed by William Wyler. Almodóvar is considered the premier filmmaker of La Movida Madrileña, the countercultural movement that arose in Madrid after the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975. In Spain, homosexuality has been legal since 1979 and all of Almodóvar’s films from the 1980s on have offered nuanced portrayals of queer desire and the country’s transgender lives.
By the 1990s, homosexuality was a mainstream discussion, owing in large part to the HIV/AIDS crisis. Its mismanagement in the United States contributed to a startling number of deaths and fueled rampant homophobia, impacting Hollywood in ways that are even felt today. TCM runs A Taste of Honey (1961) to remember its director, British “kitchen sink realist” Tony Richardson, who acknowledged that he was bisexual after contracting HIV and subsequently died of AIDS-related complications in 1991 at the age of 63.
Also featured is Todd Haynes’ dark psychological allegory of the epidemic, Safe (1995), about Carol White (Julianne Moore) a suburban housewife whose monotonous life is abruptly changed when she becomes sick with a mysterious illness. Of the film Haynes has said: “I wanted to bring up the behavior that we all exhibit around illness, particularly in the way we try to attach meaning and personal responsibility to illness, and how much illness and identity are mixed up with each other.”
Also showing is David France’s landmark documentary on the AIDS epidemic, How to Survive a Plague (2012) which uses more than 700 hours of archived footage about HIV/AIDS. France said that he knew many of his subjects might die while making the film. He dedicated the film to his partner, Doug Gould, who died of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1992. France was recently embroiled in controversy over his Netflix documentary, The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson (2017), about the Black transgender activist who served and fought for trans youth. Black trans filmmaker Tourmaline has accused France of stealing her footage of Johnson – a claim that is illustrative of the deep political and artistic rifts not only between gay and transgender communities, but between differently racialized queer groups.
The special theme also beautifully charts the history of lesbian cinema, starting with Dorothy Arzner’s Dance, Girl, Dance (1940), a comedy-drama about two dancers who strive to preserve their own integrity while fighting for their place in the spotlight – and for the affections of a wealthy young suitor. Upon its release, the film was a critical and commercial failure, but in the 1970s it was deemed a “feminist masterpiece” on the male gaze; the film includes a lecture about the evils of viewing women as objects.
Chantal Akerman’s avant-garde documentary, News from Home (1976) consists of long takes of locations in New York City set to Akerman’s voice-over as she reads letters that her mother sent her between 1971-1973. Akerman was born in Brussels to Holocaust survivors. Akerman acknowledged that her mother was at the center of her work and admitted to feeling directionless after her death. Maternal imagery can be found throughout all of her films as an homage and attempt to reconstitute the image and voice of the mother. Akerman resisted labels relating to her identity like "female", "Jewish" and "lesbian," choosing instead to immerse herself in the identity of being a daughter.
Largely considered one of the first wide released films to present a positive portrayal of lesbian sexuality, TCM highlights Donna Deitch’s, Desert Hearts (1985) about a university professor awaiting a divorce who finds her true self through a relationship with another, more confident woman. Vito Russo famously wrote: “Deitch's refusal to feature the straight world's reaction to lesbianism as the focus of her film made all the difference in the way the relationship between the women was perceived by audiences.”
Another triumph in queer cinema is Cheryl Dunye’s remarkable metacinema docufiction film, The Watermelon Woman (1996), starring Dunye as Cheryl, a young black lesbian working a day job in a video store while trying to make a film about Fae Richards, a black actress from the 1930s known for playing the stereotypical ‘mammy’ roles relegated to black actresses during the period. When Cheryl learns that Fae might have been a lesbian too, she becomes excited, turning to the camera and announcing, “our stories have never been told.” As Dunye attempts to tell the story, she offers a meditation on the possibilities and limits of the black queer film archive.
