settima

lgbt

She-Man: A Story of Fixation (Bob Clark, 1967)

Aug

4

She-Man: A Story of Fixation (1967)

Lt. Albert Rose, now Rose Albert (Leslie Marlowe), strikes a dramatic pose. DP: Gerhard Maser.

Simone Barbès ou la vertu (Marie-Claude Treilhou, 1980)

Jun

19

pâté

Simone Barbès ou la vertu (1980)

Two female porn theatre ushers (Ingrid Bourgoin and Martine Simonet) looking bored. They sit under two large eye-shaped neon lights. Between them a small table with various half-consumed items, including part of a baguette with pâté. DP: Jean-Yves Escoffier.

– Ah, regarde, c'est Tati ! – Tati qui? – Tati, comme Mon Oncle.

Die Konsequenz [The Consequence] (Wolfgang Petersen, 1977)

Jun

17

prison grub

Die Konsequenz (1977)

Thomas (Ernst Hannawald), the warden's son, and convicted homosexual Martin (Jürgen Prochnow) sharing a mug, a meal, a cell. DP: Jörg-Michael Baldenius.

“I think it's really rotten of them to lock you up like this for making love to a boy.”

– Thomas Manzoni

The Leather Boys (Sidney J. Furie, 1964)

Jun

12

wedding buffet

The Leather Boys (1964)

Newlyweds Dot and Reggie and friends and family about to dig into the wedding buffet. DP: Gerald Gibbs.

“I'll be eating frankfurters and onions. Plenty of tomato ketchup. Chips with lots of vinegar. Few cockles and muscles. Jellied eels, Coca-Cola, beer, the old jukebox, lollipops, all the lot.”

– Pete

Rope (Alfred Hitchcock, 1948)

Jun

9

Rope (1948)

A man in a dark suit has his clenched hand on top of a stack of fancy gilded dinner plates. He's holding a piece of rope, just an ordinary household article. DPs: William V. Skall & Joseph A. Valentine.

“Mr. Cadell got a bad leg in the war for his courage. And you've got your sleeve in the celery, Mr. Phillip.”

– Mrs. Wilson

Suddenly, Last Summer (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1959)

Jun

7

Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)

Catherine (Elizabeth Taylor) and a man in white, seen from the back, eating alfresco near a beach. DP: Jack Hildyard.

“My son – Sebastian – and I constructed our days. Each day we would carve each day like a piece of sculpture, leaving behind us a trail of days like a gallery of sculpture until suddenly, last summer.”

– Mrs Vi Venable

Strangers on a Train (Alfred Hitchcock, 1951)

May

16

doubles

Strangers on a Train (1951)

Guy Haines (Farley Granger) and Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker), two strangers on a train. DP: Robert Burks.

“I still think it would be wonderful to have a man love you so much he'd kill for you.”

Compulsion (Richard Fleischer, 1959)

May

16

Compulsion (1959)

Straus (Bradford Dillman) with Steiner (Dean Stockwell) behind the wheel. They're beaming. DP: William C. Mellor.

“Murder's nothing. It's just a simple experience. Murder and rape? Do you know what beauty there is in evil?”

剣 ​(小説) [Ken / The Sword] (Kenji Misumi, 1964)

Dec

29

Tick Tock Day

剣 (1964)

One of the kendōka kneeled on the floor in gruelling punishment faces a clock on the wall, while the other students continue their training. DP: Chikashi Makiura.

A clock face for Tick Tock Day, USA.
After World War II, the Japanese martial arts of #kendo was banished by the occupying forces in an attempt to “remove and exclude militaristic and ultra-nationalistic persons from life”. With that in mind, it makes complete sense that nationalist author and former kendo practitioner Yukio Mishima wrote a short story – Sword, originally published in literary magazine Shincho in 1963 – about the art.

– So what is your goal in life then?

– Satisfaction of the present. The sword, and nothing else.

Both the story and Kenji Misumi's 1964 film adaptation follow arrogant kendo student Jiro, played by sublime kabuki actor Raizō Ichikawa who also appears in an earlier Mishima adaptation, 炎上 [Enjō / The Temple of the Golden Pavilion / Conflagration] (1958).

Fireworks (Kenneth Anger, 1947)

Dec

8

National Christmas Tree Day

Fireworks (1947)

The Dreamer (Kenneth Anger) holding a tinsel-decked Christmas tree in front of his naked upper body. The scene appears to foreshadow Yvonne Marquis getting into her silver dress in Anger's Puce Moment (1949).

A Christmas tree for National Christmas Tree Day.
In August 1942, a Mexican-American man with a broken finger was found semiconscious near Sleepy Lagoon, Ca.. By association, a group of young Latinos was put on trial. This spark, mere months after Roosevelt sent thousands of Japanese Americans to concentration camps and fuelled by Cold War paranoia, eventually set off the Zoot Suit Riots.

 

Zoot Suiters or Pachucos and other “outsiders” like African, Italian and Filipino Americans, were viciously attacked by Anglo-American #sailors. Those suits, all that fabric, this colourful extravagance, they cried out, were hampering the war effort.

“Inflammable desires dampened by day under the cold water of consciousness are ignited that night by the libertarian matches of sleep, and burst forth in showers of shimmering incandescence.”

– The Dreamer

The Dreamer, Anger, dreams of a similar violent attack. The sadism is harrowing, filmed with such exquisite eye that it's impossible to look away. Blood finds its way out, pulsating and spurting. Ambiguous glances. A hand, no finger. A young man awakes, is born. The dreamer is still asleep.