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TCM 'Screened Out' festival question - please only serious answers

posted 17 years ago by Plumpien
21 replies | jump to latest

This movie was recently shown on TCM as part of their "Screened Out" festival in honor of gays and lesbians in film (history). I taped it and missed the intro to the movie; that's where my question comes in: what was the official explanation given by the "experts" why this movie was in the festival? I can't for the life of me figure out who was supposed to be a lesbian.

Every **sincere** answer will be very much appreciated! (I.e.: every nonsense will be reported/deleted/ignored...)

[–] pengbear 17 years ago

I recorded this as well, there was no intro to the movie.
No one ever addressed why this was selected as a gay or lesbian
issue. The only thing I can think of is that when the weird little
poet guy had some strange lines with the psychiatrist - maybe there were some
double entendres going on. If so, they were pretty subtle.
Sorry I don't have a better answer! But there was no intro to the movie to
explain the selection.

[–] Plumpien 17 years ago

Hi,
Thanks for your reply - meanwhile I found again the program for this festival they had published as a pdf on the accompanying AOL micro site. I had marked this movie early in June as "watchable for lesbian content/characters" and then all forgotten about the program itself. It says there:

"Also from Greenwich Village, and also lesbian, are the chic devil-worshippers in The Seventh Victim (1943), one of the most affecting and subtle of the Val Lewton horror classics."

Well, the subtlety of the horror is debatable but the subtlety of anything lesbian is extremely obvious. So subtle, even I can't see it (and I usually read subtext into EVERYTHING).

Here's to hoping somebody still coming up with an answer -- not that I liked that movie so much, it's just my curious nature -- and that they'll pick better movies next year. :-)

[–] startlepoint 14 years ago

Hey, Hollywood had to be subtle about homosexual themes back then because the industry's code forbade them from ever being overt. There are lesbian overtones between Mary and the blonde hairdresser; some could also see a romantic bond between Jason and Judd. I laugh sometimes when people want "proof" of gayness in movie plots from a time when such proof would have been impossible to show, anyway.

[–] boxerrebellion 7 years ago

The blond did profess love for Jacqueline during the poison scene.

[–] jimbenben 17 years ago

The Time Out Film Guide also refers to the film's "strong lesbian theme." I think "strong" is a bit much, but there is some sort of undercurrent when Jacklyn's woman friend swats away the poison drink and sobs about how much she loves her.

[–] 17 years ago

[deleted]

[–] O'Malley 16 years ago

The woman who runs the company and "visits" Kim Hunter while she's taking a shower (I think her name is Miss Redi) is a pretty masculine woman. Tough broad.

Jean Brooks as Jacqueline also has my lesbian gaydar up. And the cultists themselves, well the men are rather effete, the women on the butch side.

[–] marbleann 16 years ago

Ok other then the obvious Lesbian undertones. The poet IMO is Gay. The artry Greenwich Village stereotype.

[–] Mr_Ectoplasma 16 years ago

I figured it out fairly easily because it seemed fairly obvious- Frances says something of the sort that "she and Jacqueline were intimate" (whether or not it was meant in a sexual sense), and she seemed to have a strangely close relationship with her, so I definitely picked up on the slight lesbian subtext there.

With gorilla gone, will there be hope for man?

[–] andriaandco 16 years ago

I too thought that the "intimate" comment was interesting. But before reading this thread, i just figured it was a phrase from that period-- like, how my grandmother calls my female friends my "girlfriends", and how gay used to mean "happy".

[–] bob_gilmore1 15 years ago

The strongest lesbian themes were noticeable in the film opening frames, when the heroine was given permission to go to New York to find her sister.

[–] kreen 14 years ago

I think some people are reading way too much into this. The poet guy was in love with Mary, and there's even a reference to his previous girlfriend. The blonde woman who tries to save Jacqueline refers to her boyfriend taking her to a restaurant.

The only oblique reference is when one of the devil-worshippers talks about the naughty things she used to do with Jacqueline, but I read that as a reference to her and Jacqueline's promiscuity -- with men.

[–] winonaforever2 12 years ago

Sometimes people read too much into the lines. Seriously, just because a character doesn't end up married it doesn't make her/him gay. Just because two men are friends and one says to the other 'I'll always be there for you' or 'you can count on me' doesn't make them gay lovers. Just because a woman plays hard to get with a man she's not into it doesn't make her a closeted lesbian. Seriously, films like Johnny Guitar, or Little Caesar, have been labelled as gay. I don't get it. And then there's the films in which a certain actor appears, then they're automatically labelled as gay. Every Joan Crawford movie is gay, every Rock Hudson movie is gay. Can someone explain this.

[–] Eponymous-too 11 years ago

The 1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die book also refers to "...a gaggle of varied lesbian characters (not all unstmpathetic)..."

I came here to see if anyone else was wondering "what lesbians?"

My guess is that someone, sometime, made the argument that most of the women in the film were lesbians and people have just parroted this opinion ever since.

The most "lesbian" anyone is in the film is the part where two women ran the cosmetics factory - a typical position for men. Even that is a stretch.

"My name is Paikea Apirana, and I come from a long line of chiefs stretching all the way back to the Whale Rider."

[–] lastmidnite2 11 years ago

Before I even read this thread, I felt that Frances was in love with Jacqueline.

[–] sistermayhem31 11 years ago

Wiki States that the movie was cut up quite a bit so maybe we only see bits of a watered down script.