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 beginning, with one of Edison's first reels. 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.
Film clips are interspersed with Lily Tomlin narration and celebrity interviews about the progression of gay characters in film, for better and for worse: the censored flirtation in Spartacus, the landmark gays-are-people-too sensibility of The Boys in the Band, the psychotic queer murderers of '90s horror films. Rumor has it that the filmmakers deleted a segment on biopics that turn gay characters straight, because they couldn't retain rights to the film clips; says Roger Ebert in his review:
Richard Burton's estate refused the rights to show scenes from "Alexander the Great.'' Goldwyn wouldn't license clips from ``Hans Christian Andersen'' (Epstein says "somehow they got the idea we were outing Danny Kaye as opposed to Hans Christian Andersen''). Lawyers stepped in at the possibility that the film would identify Cole Porter as homosexual (!). And Charlton Heston refused permission to use scenes from "TheAgony and the Ecstasy'' ("because he'd done a lot of research for his role andhe assured us that Michelangelo was not homosexual'').
Watch the film in its entirety here.
(Also streaming for free: The Lavender Lens, a documentary montage of film clips featuring queer characters.)