Older Movies with Gay Sub-Themes

[Guest fountainhall]

After writing about Peter O’Toole and Lawrence of Arabia, I started thinking about those moments in older movies with a gay sub-theme which were amongst the most memorable I have seen. In the last 20 years or so, Hollywood has almost embraced gay themes. But it was not always so.

 

Lawrence certainly has at least one such moment (but not gay-related) – that amazing scene where one of the Arabs emerges as a mirage from the shimmering haze rising from the desert. Simply quite stunning cinematography!

 

Others include two from Visconti’s Death in Venice. Not a great film in my view, it still had some marvellous direction. The very long, lingering opening shot (almost 90 seconds) of the steamer with its black smoke gently emerging from the morning mist as it nears Venice (shades of that earlier shot from Lawrence!) with the Adagietto from Mahler’s 5th Symphony in the background is amazing.

 

The moment when Aschenbach is leaving the dining room and locks eyes with the beautiful Tadzio is, like much of the movie, laden with symbolism. Both Visconti and Dirk Bogarde were gay, but this is a moment of wonderment at physical perfection and a longing to capture that beauty in art (music in the case of the movie and writing in Mann’s original novella) – although Aschenbach’s bewilderment and perspiring face compared to Tadzio’s innocence do betray a sexual undertone.

 

Then there’s that kiss between Peter Finch and Murray Head in John Schlesinger’s 1971 Sunday, Bloody Sunday. No quick peck, but a real mouth-to-mouth kiss. That such a macho straight actor as Finch could play an open and untroubled gay figure was quite new, I believe. Strangely, the music was also classical – a gorgeous Trio from the first Act of Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte.

 

Or the scene of the two fully naked young men making love in A Bigger Splash, the mid-1970s movie about one of the relationships of the painter, David Hockney. I remember seeing it at a mid-week afternoon showing in the UK – very few patrons in attendance, yet there were still audible gasps!

 

In some ways similar to the nude wrestling scene with its homoerotic undertones in Ken Russell’s 1969 Women in Love – although these were two of the most macho actors in Oliver Reed and Alan Bates.

 

Were there any such moments in American movies of the time? Cabaret, of course, but most I can think of were much more overtly gay-themed – like Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy.

[kokopelli]

Fountainhall; do you eat oysters or do you prefer snails? Do you remember Spartacus and the scene between Crassius and Antoninius?

[kokopelli]

Does anyone remember Ben Hur? A very gay glance by the Roman Centurion, Massala, toward Ben-Hur.

[Guest thaiworthy]

Fountainhall; do you eat oysters or do you prefer snails? Do you remember Spartacus and the scene between Crassius and Antoninius?

 

I don't know if FH likes oysters or snails, but I do know another poster who likes to eat crow.

 

 

Are we limited to films with gay sub-themes only? Otherwise, don't forget Arthur Hiller's Making Love with Michael Ontkean and Harry Hamlin (1982), and oh yeah, Kate Jackson. I'll never forget these two men. They make the perfect set of bookends.

 

I'm just wild about Harry.

 

 

http://orvel.me/?p=7611

 

He looked even better in Clash of the Titans, made a year earlier, and not gay, but when Harry was in his prime. Yes, this is almost an old movie, and alas, dear Fountainhall is too young to remember this one when it played in the theaters!

 

[Rogie]

Does anyone remember Ben Hur? .

 

Of course, and the bit when the Jack Hawkins character (the captain of one of the galleys) eyes up all the half naked slaves down in the galley tugging on their oars and spots Ben Hur.

When he says "Your eyes are full of hate, 41 - That's good. Hate keeps a man alive". It might not seem the most promising chat up line, but . . . later Hur saves him from drowning and becomes his adopted son. There is never any suggeston that anything sexual happened between them, but there's no harm in thinking it might just have been a possibility.

[Guest fountainhall]

do you eat oysters or do you prefer snails?

 

I remember that scene, but only because GB posted it here some time ago. Can't recall when or the context, though.

 

The Romans got up to all sorts of hanky-panky. The Greeks almost made it a fine art. How about movies set in more modern times - also made around the 60s and 70s?

[Rogie]

Taking things a stage farther, beyond the nude wrestling of Oliver Reed and Alan Bates, into clothed territory, one ingredient of the western movie as often as not was a fist fight.

 

Here are three good examples IMO.

 

Alan Ladd and Van Heflin in Shane. I love the way Shane's hair gets all disheveled (btw I'm not entirely sure it was all his own! Maybe Gaybutton can answer that one).

 

Rock Hudson and the big guy in the diner (sorry, can't remember the actor) in Giant.

 

Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston in The Big Country.

 

Charlton Heston went on to star in Ben Hur of course. Both The Big Country and Ben Hur were directed by William Wyler. Apparently Wyler was sufficiently impressed with Heston's role in The Big Country he was offered the lead in Ben Hur. Heston was lucky in more ways than one - I read somewhere he wasn't originally going to play the Steve Leech character as he wasn't the lead, Peck was. Luckily for him he decided to swallow his pride and it paid off handsomely.

 

Does anyone else see anything homoerotic in two men squaring up to one another in this way?

[bkkguy]

how subtle is the gay theme allowed to be? it is based on a play by Tennessee Williams after all but it was Hollywood in the 1950's!

 

Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) with Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn and Montgomery Clift

 

the BBC TV remake in 1993 was just as subtle and was an interesting production but while Maggie Smith could take on Hepburn's role, Taylor and Clift are not greatly threatened by Rob Low and Natasha Richardson, but this version is probably closer to the original play script so I keep both on my media player!

 

if you don't know the movie don't be too put off by the crap on IMDB - possibly the best plot summary (complete with significant spoilers) is

 

http://www.imdb.com/...053318/synopsis

 

and an interesting quote from the IMDB Trivia page

 

Screenwriter Gore Vidal credits film critic Bosley Crowther with the success of this film. Crowther wrote a scathing review denouncing the film as the work of degenerates obsessed with rape, incest, homosexuality, and cannibalism among other qualities. Vidal believes advertising such salacious detail made audiences flock in droves to the film.

 

and from wikipedia (same spoliers)

 

the Production Code Administration gave the filmmakers special dispensation to depict Sebastian Venable, declaring, "Since the film illustrates the horrors of such a lifestyle, it can be considered moral in theme even though it deals with sexual perversion."

 

bkkguy