The Celluloid Closet

Robert Epstein en Jeffrey Friedman selected dozens of film fragments for this informative insight into the gay subtext in mainstream Hollywood films, from early slapstick to Ben-Hur and Thelma and Louise. The examples offered are as bewildering as they are amusing. Starting with portrayals of the caricature 'sissy' in the silent film (two men dancing in a Thomas Edison production) and 'tough women' (lesbians) in the early sound film, we are taken to the 1950s, when gay characters on the whole were still firmly in the closet (William Wyler's Ben-Hur ). We then move on to a more positive approach in the 1970s ( Cabaret by Bob Fosse), to end with overt homosexuality in the cinema of the 1990s (Jonathan Demme's Philadelphia ). The filmmakers alternated the fra