Nearly three decades after the final revised edition appeared, Vito Russo's "The Celluloid Closet" is still an impressive achievement and a compulsive read. Russo's enterprise and scholarship are still impressive, as is his sense of mission and his anger--sometimes barely contained--at the blatant, often bloody homophobia that persisted in cinema from its earliest beginnings through the 1980s.
Russo presents a panoramic view of homosexuality in the movies over nearly a century, beginning with an Edison experimental film of two men dancing a waltz and ending with gay-themed films that appeared toward the end of his tragically brief life. Some of these later films, such as "Parting Glances" with Steve Buscemi, represented a tremendous advance in the portrayal of gays on screen. Others, such as "Cruising" with Al Pacino, were so disgustingly violent and negative that they triggered street protests. In between, Russo presents some fascinating stories about early gay-themed movies, such as "Anders als die Anderen" (Different from the Others), a 1919 German silent starring Conrad Veidt as a gay concert violinist who responds to blackmail by committing suicide. The Nazis destroyed every copy of "Anders als die Anderen" they could find (in one case, Russo reports, opening fire on theater patrons in Vienna); only one partial copy, found in Ukraine, survives today.
Though some crirics have complained that Russo ignored social theory in his analysis, or that he failed to consider important gay directors such as Eisenstein and Fassbinder, "The Celluloid Closet" is still a fascinating and informative book. It's too bad no one has taken up Russo's torch. There have been articles and books about LGBT cinema since Russo's death in 1990, but nothing as magisterial as "The Celluloid Closet." I think Russo would be encouraged by the progress gays and lesbians have made in the cinema since his passing, and it would be nice if another Russo arose to record and assess that progress.
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J. V. Gardiner
A complete delight.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 23, 2014
