Post by klep on Jun 18, 2018 7:14:55 GMT -6
MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 6/18: Strangers on a Train
FILMS IN THE CLOSET WEEK!
It used to be that in Hollywood you couldn't make a film that openly dealt with queer issues, or even acknowledge the existence of homosexuality. Of course, filmmakers saw that as a challenge, looking for ways to surreptitiously tell the stories they wanted to tell. So homosexuality would be coded - for men this would mean things like hating their fathers while loving their mothers, dressing in a particularly fancy or ostentatious manner, and speaking in an affected way with a higher register.
If these traits sound like a certain character in Strangers on a Train, well that's not surprising. The novel the film was based on was written by Patricia Highsmith, herself a notable writer of stories with gay themes and characters - either in text or subtext, and Alfred Hitchcock himself had a number of films in which some characters were coded as gay. In Strangers on a Train the most prominent such character is the antagonist, Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker).
Bruno is a disturbed individual - also, unfortunately, a frequent characteristic of these coded gay characters. His hatred of his father has curdled into something pathological - he wants to kill him, but is afraid of being caught. So when he chances upon someone he read about in the society pages - tennis player Guy Haines (Farley Granger). Guy has a problem himself - an unfaithful wife from whom he's seeking a divorce so he can marry his girlfriend.
Bruno proposes an exchange - an exchange of murders. Bruno will kill Guy's wife and Guy will kill Bruno's father. Guy puts him off, not realizing how serious Bruno is. But Bruno is deadly serious, and more than that infatuated with Guy. Throughout the film, Bruno keeps telling Guy how much he likes him, would do anything for him, and repeatedly invades Guy's personal space in overly familiar ways. So he not only sees the murders as a way to deal with his father, but it's also a way to bind himself to Guy.
But as love and hate are both sides of the same coin, so does Bruno turn on Guy when it finally gets through to him that Guy will not carry through his end of a bargain he didn't agree to. If Bruno can't have Guy, then no one can. So he goes to plant a lighter Guy left behind - one he has carefully held on to - at the scene of the murder. It leads to a violent confrontation between the two which ends tragically, but Bruno maintains the fiction of the connection between him and Guy until his dying breath, the lighter clutched tightly in his hand.
OUR NEXT MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 6/25: BPM (Beats Per Minute)
FOUND FAMILIES WEEK!
For Found Families Week - and the end of Pride month - we'll be covering last year's BPM, a film about a close-knit group of AIDS activists in Paris during the height of the epidemic. Bound together by the fight to save the lives of their community, these men and women show what family truly is. Join us next week for our discussion; BPM is available for rent on Amazon Video, though it is not free for Prime members.
NEXT PICTURE SHOW PODCAST for 6/14: First Reformed
While Paul Schrader wrote Taxi Driver, for the second part of last week's podcast he takes the director's chair as well with the new film First Reformed. We'll have a thread up for discussion on Wednesday, hopefully with an essay from someone who's been able to see it. First Reformed may be in a theater near you, if you're lucky.
FILMS IN THE CLOSET WEEK!
It used to be that in Hollywood you couldn't make a film that openly dealt with queer issues, or even acknowledge the existence of homosexuality. Of course, filmmakers saw that as a challenge, looking for ways to surreptitiously tell the stories they wanted to tell. So homosexuality would be coded - for men this would mean things like hating their fathers while loving their mothers, dressing in a particularly fancy or ostentatious manner, and speaking in an affected way with a higher register.
If these traits sound like a certain character in Strangers on a Train, well that's not surprising. The novel the film was based on was written by Patricia Highsmith, herself a notable writer of stories with gay themes and characters - either in text or subtext, and Alfred Hitchcock himself had a number of films in which some characters were coded as gay. In Strangers on a Train the most prominent such character is the antagonist, Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker).
Bruno is a disturbed individual - also, unfortunately, a frequent characteristic of these coded gay characters. His hatred of his father has curdled into something pathological - he wants to kill him, but is afraid of being caught. So when he chances upon someone he read about in the society pages - tennis player Guy Haines (Farley Granger). Guy has a problem himself - an unfaithful wife from whom he's seeking a divorce so he can marry his girlfriend.
Bruno proposes an exchange - an exchange of murders. Bruno will kill Guy's wife and Guy will kill Bruno's father. Guy puts him off, not realizing how serious Bruno is. But Bruno is deadly serious, and more than that infatuated with Guy. Throughout the film, Bruno keeps telling Guy how much he likes him, would do anything for him, and repeatedly invades Guy's personal space in overly familiar ways. So he not only sees the murders as a way to deal with his father, but it's also a way to bind himself to Guy.
But as love and hate are both sides of the same coin, so does Bruno turn on Guy when it finally gets through to him that Guy will not carry through his end of a bargain he didn't agree to. If Bruno can't have Guy, then no one can. So he goes to plant a lighter Guy left behind - one he has carefully held on to - at the scene of the murder. It leads to a violent confrontation between the two which ends tragically, but Bruno maintains the fiction of the connection between him and Guy until his dying breath, the lighter clutched tightly in his hand.
OUR NEXT MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 6/25: BPM (Beats Per Minute)
FOUND FAMILIES WEEK!
For Found Families Week - and the end of Pride month - we'll be covering last year's BPM, a film about a close-knit group of AIDS activists in Paris during the height of the epidemic. Bound together by the fight to save the lives of their community, these men and women show what family truly is. Join us next week for our discussion; BPM is available for rent on Amazon Video, though it is not free for Prime members.
NEXT PICTURE SHOW PODCAST for 6/14: First Reformed
While Paul Schrader wrote Taxi Driver, for the second part of last week's podcast he takes the director's chair as well with the new film First Reformed. We'll have a thread up for discussion on Wednesday, hopefully with an essay from someone who's been able to see it. First Reformed may be in a theater near you, if you're lucky.