MovieChat Forums > Two-Faced Woman (1942) Discussion > Gay references in opening... (?)

Gay references in opening... (?)

posted 10 years ago by cookiela2001
2 replies | jump to latest

So George Cukor was one of the only openly gay directors in Hollywood...I was going to say "in the Golden Era," though perhaps it's more like "ever". (He even used to slip men he'd picked up into small roles in his films, as a favor/barter.)

Maybe I'm imagining it, but I was struck by a kind of gay vibe in the very first scene, where the husband comes into a ski lodge, crosses the room, then looks rather hard at a male couple sitting on a couch, one with his arm around the other. Then, as he's signing in, there's a handsome man standing nonchalantly behind him, STARING at him the whole time.

We later learn this is an employee at the lodge, but in this opening, it's like, "Who's HE, and what's with this lingering STARE??"

Did anyone else think this?

[–] cbest4 9 years ago

Well, I can't speak for the lingering stare from the guy at the front desk, but Douglas' "hard look" at the male couple prior (as well as a lady just a second before that) pertained to the fact that they were wearing casts. I would certainly welcome some blatant gay subtext, but I believe it is all, unfortunately, rather innocent. Still, we can pretend about the guy at the front desk, right? 😀

[–] liscarkat (16483) 2 years ago

Every movie is implicitly gay, right? Even if it's Toshiro Mifune and Lee Marvin trying to kill each other for two hours, it's actually gay.