Finding a definition for

queer cinema
Todd Haynes’ Carol is being celebrated as a queer classic, but
what does the term “queer cinema” mean today?

JOÃ O FERREIRA

We cannot give a definition of Queer Cinema locked inside a single format or language – it
cuts across fiction and documentary, animation and experimental film. Were we to consider
framing it as an isolated genre, with its own formal and narrative characteristics, we would
also largely fail – Queer Cinema spans melodrama, comedy, neo-noir, and even westerns.
And what about narrative? If that were so, we would succumb to the canonical and overused
explanation that Queer Cinema is any film whose main storyline represents LGBT characters.
More: these characters are supposed to be represented in a “positive” manner. This
definition of “Queer Cinema” tied to narrative might have been useful in the process of
disengaging from a long history of distorted images of queer characters in film history, and in
the affirmation of a community. Nowadays it sounds extremely narrow in the legitimisation
of Queer Cinema as a genre.

The 1980s was a highly politicised decade, in which a clear attempt was made to project a
“positive” image of LGBT individuals to mainstream audiences, while at the same time
looking for stories and characters for homosexual audiences to identify with. Most of these

1
films were set against an urban, white and affluent background – a clear ploy to reach a
more mainstream audience. In terms of their representation, characters were largely devoid
of sexual desire, and aspired to a heteronormative family life. However, the most relevant
aspect – against which reaction was swift – was the construction of the gay character as
“victim”. Not only of the AIDS epidemics, but also of their surrounding social and political
system, there was a return to the representation of gay characters imposed by the Hays
code. These films were defined as “LGBT Cinema”.

While this “victimisation” model developed in the ’80s, a number of filmmakers were already
seeking alternative models. In 1985, Gus Van Sant’s first feature Mala Noche pointed
towards what was to come. Queer Cinema would only find its new shape in 1991, however,
with the appearance of Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho and Todd Haynes’ Poison. The ’90s
saw the emergence of new film aesthetics and narrative styles, all of which suggest new
negotiations of subjectivities connected to sexual and gender identities, labelled as “New
Queer Cinema” (NQC).

The subversive logic of the NQC makers however did not simply break with the
“victimisation” model of the LGBT Cinema of the ’80s. On the one hand, NQC once again
placed the sexual charge and desire of its characters and their bodies on screen, also harking
back to the aesthetics of experimental cinema and gay pornography of the ’60s and ’70s. On
the other – and this is especially symbolically relevant – the makers of NQC revived the
models of gay and lesbian representation under the Hays code. That is, these characters and
these bodies, who desire and are the objects of desire, are not necessarily nice guys, they
don’t just do good, they do not seek recognition and integration in mainstream society, and
are not particularly interested in repeating heteronormative models. Queer characters are
no more, no less than any other character. Queer Cinema is an expression of freedom.

Subverting and queering a seminal quote by Susan Sontag (who happened to be the first
essayist to define “camp”, back in 1964): “queer” is the opposite of everything.

João Ferreira is the Artistic Director of Queer Lisboa Film Festival.

20 queer movie classics

Inspired by Todd Haynes’ Carol, explore our potted history of
great films that depict gay lives on screen.

2
We’ve taken a look back over a century of cinema and selected 20 important films that
explored gay representation on screen. Our choices range from the silent era, where this was a
love that (literally) couldn’t be spoken of, through to a neo-western which brought same-sex
love to a mainstream audience. The countdown starts below, then check out the second part.

1. Different from the Others (1919)

In 1919, long before 1927’s The Jazz Singer, Different from the Others already pointed to the
power of sound, and did so by toying with the medium’s limitations –or should we say,
unique proprieties? – of silence. Indeed, silence here speaks volumes, but can also become
stifling. It reveals the necessity of speaking voices and communication. Paul and Kurt
discover their mutual appreciation in exchange of looks only. Kurt’s gleaming eyes stand out
in a classic, luminous close-up against a black curtain while he stares at his crush playing the
violin. Each facial expression is meaningful, communicating overwhelming and conflicting
emotions. When Franz, a man Paul was trying to seduce, extends his open palm towards him,
Paul does not need to hear an explanation: he knows he’s been blackmailed. The silence of
both men reveals the shame and taboo surrounding homosexuality. Yet when the couple seeks
the help of a sexologist, intertitles multiply as he explains their sexuality as normal but
misunderstood by society. This surprisingly modern approach – despite a few obviously

3
antiquated points – cries for the help of sound to break the silence and start a conversation
about the reality of homosexuality. Manuela Lazic

2. Michael (1924)

Few filmmakers understood the power of the close-up like Danish master, Carl
Dreyer. Michael, one of his great early works, is the embryo of many experiments to come.
It’s a desperately sad tale of unrequited love, charting the one-sided relationship between a
painter and his eponymous, ungrateful muse. Dreyer piles on the humiliations afforded the
older artist as Michael runs off with a penniless Russian princess out for all she can get. The
artist’s skills dwindle without the young man by the side, yet finally produces his masterpiece
out of pure heartbreak: “The work of a man who has lost everything.” Implicit though the
affair may be, the film was way ahead of its time (and perhaps predictably unfavourably
received), and the dignity with which the artist bears his tragedy is nothing short of
shattering. Matt Thrift

4
3. Mädchen in Uniform (1931)

“I was rather surprised,” says an audience member after the all-girls boarding school
production of Don Carlos in Mädchen in Uniform,“Schiller can be rather frank.” It’s a self-
aware acknowledgement of the all-too-apparent on the part of Leontine Sagan, a filmmaker
forced into exile soon after her (banned, ‘decadent’) debut was released in Germany. “All the
girls love Fraülein von Bernburg,” not least Manuela, a vulnerable new student whose
obsessive case of amour fou takes her to the brink of tragedy. If the school’s demands of
“total discipline” frame it as a microcosm for wider political readings, its ground-breaking
depiction of same-sex attraction between teacher and student pulls no punches, not least in an
erotically-charged bedtime kiss. Remade with Romy Schneider in 1958 by Géza von
Radványi and swapping out context for symbolism, the original remains the more potently
expressive article. MT

4. Morocco (1930)

Femininity in 1930s America was not as free as it is today. Society left women of all classes
with little independence when choosing how to behave. All had better be attractive to men,
using their feminine attributes either with exciting vulgarity or suggestive restraint. Josef Von

5
Sternberg’s Morocco is striking in how it responds to this quiet oppression with conservative
notions of marriage, success, desire and sensuality. Amy Jolly (Marlene Dietrich) surely
exudes femininity, yet it stems from her independent spirit. Moreover, she does not stop at
typical female behaviour when trying to impress, instead exploring her masculine side by
wearing a suit and bowtie, walking nonchalantly and giving the eye to both men and women.
Yet she is never fooled by the kindness of men attracted to her physique. The only man she
desires is legionnaire Tom Brown (Gary Cooper), for not only does he find her blurry
sexuality exciting, he also accepts it unquestionably. Bored by easy local women attracted to
his status, he himself isn’t the clichéd, hyper-masculine soldier. For him, Amy will at once
further resist the pressure to marry well, and redefine her femininity into a more compliant
form in order for this romance to better face the tough conditions of the times. ML

5. Gilda (1946)

It’s the job of the femme fatale to create castration anxieties among male characters and
audience members, anxieties that are then obliterated at the end of the film by her being
punished in some way. In contrast, Gilda (Rita Hayworth) suffers throughout Charles Vidor’s
1946 film, and not because of her promiscuous behaviour. On the contrary, she suffers
because her love for a man, Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford), is not reciprocated. This creates an
interesting spin on the classic femme fatale, as Gilda only pretends to be one in the hope of
making Farrell jealous. The film focuses on her unsolvable pain and frustration, not out of
pure film noir sadism, but as a clever way to indirectly indicate the reason why Farrell doesn’t
love her: he is attracted to Gilda’s husband, Ballin (George Macready). All of Gilda’s
attempts to make Farrell jealous only annoy him, because Ballin expressly asked him to keep
an eye on her. Although Gilda is the title of the film, she doesn’t represent its heart. Neither of
these two men love her; she is only used as a vehicle for them to express their forbidden love
to one another. Elena Lazic

6
6. Rope (1948)

Despite removing any explicit reference to the protagonists’ homosexuality present in Patrick
Hamilton’s play, Alfred Hitchcock transforms Rope into a never-ending parade of fetish
objects, the most glaring being the famous sequence-shot visual scheme itself. The film’s one
hard cut, coming straight after the credits to take us inside the apartment – and face-to-face
with the murder – presents us with the first of a series of ceremonial objects that both John
Dall and Hitchcock’s lens will fawn over and caress for the next 80 minutes. “It’s a museum
piece now,” says Dall, picking up a glass, “Out of this David Kentley had his last drink.” A
glass. A chest. A length of rope. A gun. All are re-purposed in one way or another, twisted
fabrications of function and meaning. Hitchcock invests his film about surfaces with a
devilish wit, toying with ideas of representation every step of the way. MT

7. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

7
The nucleus of so many of Howard Hawks’ films is a group of men at work. From the jaded
airmen of Only Angels Have Wings to the ragtag band of chancers travelling upriver in The
Big Sky, their lives are consumed by work, and thus their fraternal dependence on one another
verges on the spousal. With 1953’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Hawks offers an ingenious
reversal of gender roles, with showgirls Lorelei (Marilyn Monroe) and Dorothy (Jane Russell)
as the central characters, bound by fortune to navigate mid-century romantic mores. Their
potential paramours are ineffectual caricatures, and Hawks makes no effort to hide the fact
that the romance is pursued solely for material comfort – a notion made explicit with
Monroe’s barnstorming rendition of “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend”. The only pure
relationship in the film is Lorelei and Dorothy’s, a pair joined by circumstances perhaps, but
bound by unshakeable affection. Craig Williams

8. Calamity Jane (1953)

Queer icon Doris Day reached the apogee of her queer iconness when starring as tongue-
twisting tomboy Calamity ‘Clam’ Jane in David Butler’s camp musical masterwork from
1953. Whip-cracking away right from the exhilarating opening salvo in which Clam’
cavorts into town on the Deadwood Stage, it’s a film which positively drips with queer double
entendre and saucy intimations, constantly making you wonder whether its makers were
aware of the subversive subtext. Aside from the fact that the roughest, toughest town in the
Old West is peopled by thigh-slapping good-ol’-boys who like nothing more than to watch
cabaret shows, the highlight of the film is the ‘A Woman’s Touch’ sequence, where Clam is
taught to suppress her manly instincts and become happy housewife to Allyn Ann McLerie’s
dominant Katie Brown. And that’s all before Day gets to sing the film’s chart topping ballad,
ahem, ‘Secret Love’… David Jenkins

8
9. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)

Unscrupulous, libidinous and macho criminal men in cinema haven’t surprised anyone in a
long time. So it’s a shame that fifty years after its original release, the badass, kickass women
of Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! remains shocking and unique in the extremity of
their ruthlessness and gender play. More than a simple experiment in reversing gender roles,
the film grapples with conflicting versions of womanhood, from innocent virgin to whore. It
is only Verla (played by the striking Tura Satana) who is ready to wholly assume the
principles usually attributed to men – a taste for money, speed, violence and
women. Indeed, she’s the only one in the pack to ready to reject the male influence
completely. Her tragic end does not sign the customary neutralisation of an independent
woman, but rather the expected termination of the bad ‘guy’.
EL

9
10. Les Biches (1968)

If the genius of Claude Chabrol can be reduced to a single notion, it’s the way he appropriated
the milieu of his century’s great crime novelists, and imbued it with a psychological
exactitude which ran counter to more conventional genre films. The central female pair of Les
Biches – Stéphane Audran and Jacqueline Sassard – are, on the surface, a product of salacious
pulp impulse. Audran glides through her opulent villa, slinky and insinuating. But Chabrol’s
profiling betrays their fragile position in the world. Theirs is a tenuous intimacy, furtive yet
palpable. While it may lack the chilling resolve of his 1995 feature, La Cérémonie, or the
boundary-pushing friskiness of 1960’s Les Bonnes Femmes, it brings steely purpose to
material that is constantly flirting with baser impulses. CW

10
 11. The Killing of Sister George (1968)

By the ’60s, director Robert Aldrich was making a habit of pushing the envelope when it
came to depicting subversive content on screen, perhaps most famously in the has-been
bitch meltdown of 1962’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?. It’s puzzling that his brilliant
1968 feature, The Killing of Sister George, is not more well know, tapping as it does into the
cracked sexual liberation of London’s swinging sixties, and the psychological inadequacies of
smiley soap opera actors. Actor Beryl Reid was a mainstay of television more than film,
but here she tears up the screen as diminutive force of nature June “George” Buckridge, star
of quaint TV drama Applehurst and abusive keeper of secret live-in-lover, Childie (Susannah
York). It’s a film about a woman living a contradiction, outwardly existing as an icon of prim
conservatism, while inwardly a hiding a tendency towards violence, hatred and what was
considered at the time as sexual deviance. An extremely intense and brutal psychodrama
deserving of major rediscovery. David Jenkins

11
12. Boys in the Band (1970)

Just one year before William Friedkin broke through with The French Connection in 1971, he
showcased his skills as a dramatist of immense verve with a screen adaptation of Mart
Crowley’s off-Broadway hit, The Boys In The Band. Though the film’s theatrical roots can be
felt throughout this talky, claustrophobic and sometimes (purposefully) shrill film, there’s no
denying both its intensity and the gravity of the themes it broached. A raucous birthday
shindig is transformed into a drunken confessional as lantern-jawed, all-American college
boy Alan (Peter White) gatecrashes a celebration being hosted by his old friend Michael
(Kenneth Nelson) with whom there just may have been a spark of romance back in the old
days. Things get serious when a fun party game involving attendees having to call a person
they have truly loved on the telephone kicks off. The film transforms from a happy-go-lucky
ensemble comedy of men comfortable in their own skins to a howling maelstrom of self-
loathing and psychological meltdown. DJ

12
13. Cabaret (1972)

Adapted – via a play and a stage musical – from British writer Christopher Isherwood’s
Goodbye to Berlin, Bob Fosse’s Cabaret combines fluid sexuality with a despairing, end-of-
the party city on the verge of catastrophe. Michael York plays Brian, a shy, gay writer who is
drawn to boisterous free spirit, Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli). The Weimar Republic is in its
dying days and the spectre of Nazism is on the horizon. Fosse’s vision of sexuality as a
malleable thing is handled with sensitivity, with Brian’s romantic detour depicted as an
understandable reaction to the uncertainty of the times. The issue is further complicated
with the arrival of a baron who appears to be pursuing both Sally and Brian. At its heart, it is
a film about the daily negotiations of love and the irresistible draw of the livewire
personality. Craig Williams

14. Touki Bouki (1973)

A key film in challenging preconceptions of African cinema, there’s much more to Djibril Diop
Mambéty’s debut feature than one might presume from any synopsis of its lovers-on-the-

13
lam narrative. If queer cinema is a broader church than its LGBT connotations might suggest,
then Touki Bouki’s revolutionary (in African film, at least) examinations of representation
and identification certainly fit the bill. They’re questions that are asked both subjectively and
objectively, – through its characters and through its filmmaking – and the androgynous
couple’s dream of a Paris far from their rural Senegal are manifest in Mambéty’s formal
experiments. It’s a vivid daydream of a movie, the the self-taught filmmaker’s staggeringly
assured and abstract approach to montage simply needs to be seen to be believed. Matt
Thrift

15. My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)

It’s the nonchalance of Stephen Frears’ thoroughly modern take on the traditional British
kitchen sink drama which has kept it in the limelight for some 30 years now. From the
outset, the film looked like a conventional tale of mis-matched romance, yet the star-crossed
lovers at its centre were of the same sex and from different classes and ethnic backgrounds.
And what’s more, it’s not a case of love at first sight – when bleach-blond street punk Johnny
spies his old pal Omar riding around the mean streets of South London at night, their
repartee suggests a private history that transcends the plutonic. The renovation of a scabby
laundrette brings them together once more, yet the general air of greed and animosity
generated by Mrs Thatcher serves to prevent them from achieving happiness and
contentment. DJ

14
16. The Living End (1992)

Today it’s hard to imagine the likes of Todd Haynes and Gregg Araki making colourful,
explicit and confrontational queer films like Velvet Goldmine or The Living End. Carol and
before it the HBO adaptation of Mildred Pierce signal a preference for camp melodrama on
the part of Haynes, while Araki’s White Bird In a Blizzard was a tame, more conventional
picture in the vein of recent features like Mysterious Skin and Smiley Face. But the ’90s were
an exciting and arguably more urgent period for Queer cinema. AIDS remained at the
forefront of the public consciousness, and in contrast to more conservative filmmakers of
the time, those of the New Queer Cinema represented queer men living a lifestyle without
shame or embarrassment.

The Living End re-appropriates the clichés of the tragic gay man and the dangerous gay
criminal – clichés invented by the conservative and straight media – by pitting these
characters against a straight lifestyle which is seen as dull and unfulfilling. Pulpy, full of
cinematic references and with a great grungy soundtrack, the film nevertheless takes a turn
towards despair and melancholia during its closing stretch. But this tragic end is framed
more as a sign of anger and frustration than of discouragement. Elena Lazic

15
17. Philadelphia (1993)

Titled after the “city of brotherly love” where it takes place, Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia
follows the fight of Andrew Beckett (Tom Hanks) against AIDS and his ex-employer’s
homophobia, all with the help of lawyer Joe Miller (Denzel Washington). Yet, Demme is
more interested in Miller’s change of mentality than in Beckett’s worsening condition or his
perseverance in court, however heartbreaking these aspects of the plot may be. Indeed,
after eventually agreeing to represent Beckett, Miller finds himself torn between his own
deep-seated homophobia and his unexpected compassion for Beckett. His anxiety translates
into exaggerated, heartbreaking efforts to prove his conformism, until all attempts to keep
up appearances reveal their obsolescence in a truly virtuosic sequence. While preparing
their defence, Beckett starts describing the emotions he derives from a Maria Callas aria
playing on the stereo. The lighting turns red as his passion fills the room and Demme’s
camera gets close to the tears and smiles. Miller simply watches, his eyes open wide with
sudden tenderness: he looks like someone falling in love. Manuela Lazic

16
18. Zero Patience (1993)

How do you approach the question of AIDS when the gravity of the situation calls for action,
yet little is known about the disease? John Greyson’s solution in 1993 was to talk about it
using humour, melodrama and mystery. The result is a glorious provocation: a musical about
AIDS set in Canada and involving the ghost of ‘Patient Zero’, the gay man (actually named
Zero) believed to have brought the virus to North America. The potential for trivialisation
hangs over every scene, but never falls to break Greyson’s imaginative yet sincere discussion
of prejudice, death and the unknown. The film follows now-immortal explorer Sir Richard
Burton as he works on an AIDS exhibit for the Toronto Natural History Museum. His bigotry
is severe, fuelled by a commonplace ignorance. Meanwhile, Zero’s lonely wanderings
translate the isolation felt by HIV victims. The spectacular musical numbers ask to be taken
seriously, and their crude yet clever lyrics and use of brash set designs allow each song’s
message to be expressed ever more powerfully. Its joyful seriousness makes Zero Patience at
once frank and hopeful, exactly the attitude needed at that time. ML

17
19. Tropical Malady (2004)

The adaptation of identity is central to the cinema of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, an idea

most explicitly pronounced in his 2004 film, Tropical Malady. It’s a diptych not of past lives
but concurrent ones, at least it would appear. Are the hunter and tiger, stalking each other
in the film’s second part, the same pair of male lovers in the first? They’re played by the
same actors, and our first glimpse of Sakda Kaewbuadee’s Tong sees him staggering naked
out of the jungle. The same jungle from which a tiger’s been attacking cattle? Questions
of therianthropy remain oblique, and just one of the film’s means of examining the primal
urges lurking beneath hesitantly flirtatious surfaces. It certainly feels like a love story, if far
from a traditional one in either a narrative or structural sense. It’s one of Apichatpong’s
mysterious objects, defying easy description just as it invites sensory surrender. MT

20. Brokeback Mountain (2005)

18
It’s difficult to shrug off criticism aimed towards Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain as the most
notorious “gay film for straight people” ever made. Ennis (Heath Ledger) is a man who
remains faithful to his lover, never expressing any desire for a man other than Jack (Jake
Gyllenhaal). He is the point of entry for the majority of the (straight) audience as his desire
for a monogamous, conservative and romantic relationship is way more palatable than Jack’s
promiscuous behaviour, which is presented as dangerous and threatening. An argument can
be made that the depiction of Jack is tainted by Ennis’ perspective, one that is full of
personal jealousy, misunderstanding and fear: Ennis is hurt that Jack would need other
partners. Queer sexuality serves as a backdrop for what is essentially a melodrama, a piece
of storytelling divorced from an obligation to chronicle wider experience. Many have
critiqued the mostly negative representation of gay life in Brokeback Mountain, but the film
never intends to be more than Ennis’ story: that of a conservative, monogamous cowboy in
1960s rural America. The film is better for not widening its scope or significance, and it’s the
circumstances around its production and reception – the straightness of its cast and crew, its
status as the most widely seen representation of queer sexuality in modern Hollywood
– that offer more cause for concern. EL

19