Any day now, I'll start taking it for granted — but for the moment, every time I discover a great film streaming free online, it feels like a visit from Santa. Today's free movie is the eye-opening 1996 documentary The Celluloid Closet, which caters not only to film buffs and gay culture aficionados, but to anyone with a short attention span. Based on Vito Russo's groundbreaking history of homosexuality in the movies, the film shows us how there have always been gay characters in films, literally from the very beginning. Sometimes these references were subtle (the "sissy" archetype in films like The Gay Divorcee) and sometimes overt (Greta Garbo smooching a lady in Queen Christina), as The Celluloid Closet demonstrates through a jaw-dropping series of film clips. Which brings us to that short attention span bit; it's impossible to change the channel (or open a new browser window, as it were) during this film. You want too badly to see the next clip.
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