Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
Other gay-themed movies
moremojo:
--- Quote from: Impish on March 03, 2006, 11:22:39 am ---
--- Quote from: Phillip on March 02, 2006, 08:07:32 pm --- I think the worst mainstream gay film out there was that awful Al Pacino piece of garbage from the 1970s whose name escapes me.
--- End quote ---
That was "Cruising." I've never seen it, but I remember people telling me how negative it was.
--- End quote ---
I saw "Cruising" some while ago, on cable television, and do agree with the general consensus that it is disturbingly homophobic. This has less to do with the fact that the story involves a gay male serial killer than how Al Pacino's character evolves in the course of the tale. Pacino acts the role with conviction, but the characters' motivations are muddled and the specifically gay characters are depicted with little sympathy or understanding.
While on this topic, I wish to cite three other titles not yet mentioned here:
--"Der Tod der Maria Malibran" ("The Death of Maria Malibran"), a 1972 production for West German television, directed by Werner Schroeter and starring one of cinema's greatest actresses, Magdalena Montezuma, in the title role. This largely non-narrative experimental feature is ostensibly the story of the legendary opera singer Maria Malibran (1808-1836), but conveyed in such a refracted, fantastic way as to render any biographical verisimilitude inscrutable outside the specialist's purview. What Schroeter is really interested in here is evoking the world and aura of female performers, and specifically the special hold these ladies have long held over the imaginations of gay men. Although almost everyone in the film is a woman or a man playing a woman, this is one of the gayest films I have ever seen. It's also a masterpiece, and one of my favorite movies.
--"Loads" (1985), directed by Curt McDowell. This is the greatest film I have seen to date from the late McDowell, who was an independent filmmaker based in San Francisco. A powerful, experimental documentary of the artist as a sexual being, rawly exposing his hunger for physical intimacy with men. A masterwork of erotic film.
--"Beau travail" (1999), directed by Claire Denis. A loose adaptation of Herman Melville's novella 'Billy Budd', with the action transposed to the modern French Foreign Legion and Djibouti as the setting. This stands with "Brokeback Mountain" as one of the most hauntingly beautiful homoerotic films I have seen. The story shows how repressed homosexual desire can poison and destroy the lives of men. Denis Lavant, here playing the equivalent of Melville's Claggart, delivers a superb performance, and contributes unforgettably to making the film's closing moments both harrowing and enthralling at once.
Best regards,
Scott
Impish:
Thanks, Scott, for making me aware of all three films. I had never heard of them before, and I'll definitely be checking them out.
Are they available on DVD?
moremojo:
--- Quote from: Impish on April 07, 2006, 09:47:48 am ---
Are they available on DVD?
--- End quote ---
To the best of my knowledge, "Beau travail" is the only one of these three currently available in DVD format. There is a Region 1 DVD put out by New Yorker Video, and a Region 2 DVD produced by Artificial Eye.
"Loads" exists in a VHS transfer, but I'm not sure if it's ever been commercially released that way. A print of the film can be leased through Canyon Cinema, based in San Francisco.
Cheers,
Scott
JCinNYC2006:
--- Quote from: moremojo on April 07, 2006, 10:46:58 am ---
--- Quote from: Impish on April 07, 2006, 09:47:48 am ---
Are they available on DVD?
--- End quote ---
To the best of my knowledge, "Beau travail" is the only one of these three currently available in DVD format. There is a Region 1 DVD put out by New Yorker Video, and a Region 2 DVD produced by Artificial Eye.
"Loads" exists in a VHS transfer, but I'm not sure if it's ever been commercially released that way. A print of the film can be leased through Canyon Cinema, based in San Francisco.
Cheers,
Scott
--- End quote ---
Thanks Scott! I was looking up Loads, but could only come across another movie from the same director that's coming to DVD. It's called Thundercrack, and it looks like it has a real John Waters feel. The movie Loads sounds pretty sexy, reminds me that a movie called Sex In The 70s that I missed in theaters is also coming out soon.
Juan
moremojo:
--- Quote ---Thanks Scott! I was looking up Loads, but could only come across another movie from the same director that's coming to DVD. It's called Thundercrack, and it looks like it has a real John Waters feel. The movie Loads sounds pretty sexy, reminds me that a movie called Sex In The 70s that I missed in theaters is also coming out soon.
Juan
--- End quote ---
Hi, Juan,
Yes, "Thundercrack!", I've seen that one, on a VHS transfer that was missing about eleven minutes of the original edit. It is very much in the John Waters spirit--in fact, Waters was a friend of McDowell's. The film's screenplay was written by George Kuchar, a legendary figure in the New York underground film scene of the 60's, who by that time had relocated to San Francisco and had become McDowell's lover. Kuchar was one of the figures who influenced Waters's early aesthetic.
Kuchar's script is zany and poetic at the same time--I can't think of any other movie with dialogue quite as idiosyncratic as this. The film is also distinguished by a lively piano score written and composed by Mark Ellinger, and some beautiful black-and-white cinematography courtesy of the director, replete with strikingly evocative lighting effects served up by Kuchar. Perhaps chief among the film's assets is the brilliant central performance by Marion Eaton as Mrs. Gert Hammond, the lady of the isolated farmhouse in which the story takes place. Eaton is extraordinary in delivering what is, in my opinion, one of the greatest performances in cinema history, and it's a shame that relatively few people will ever discover it due to the film's graphic sexual content.
I saw a movie quite recently called "Gay Sex in the 70s" that I think is the film to which you refer in your post. It was interesting, but was primarily limited to the gay scene in New York during that era. I would have enjoyed a broader geographical scope of the subject, but the film is still valuable for documenting and preserving the remarkable air of freedom and celebration that marked the immediate post-Stonewall period.
Very truly,
Scott
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