Different from the Others
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DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHERS A Comparative Analysis of Representations of Male Queerness and Male-Male Intimacy in the Films of Europe and America, 1912-1934 A thesis submitted to the University of East Anglia for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Shane Brown School of Film, Television and Media ©This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived there from must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. 1 | P a g e ABSTRACT Since the publication of Vito Russo's now classic study, The Celluloid Closet, in 1981, much has been written on the representation of queer characters on screen. However, no full length work on the representation of queer sexualities in silent and early sound film has yet been published, although the articles and chapters of Dyer (1990), Kuzniar (2000) and Barrios (2003) are currently taken as the definitive accounts of these issues. However, each of the above studies deals with a specific country or region and, since their publication, a significant number of silent films have been discovered that were previously thought lost. There has also been a tendency in the past to map modern concepts of sexuality and gender on to films made nearly one hundred years ago. This thesis, therefore, compares the representations of male queerness and male-male intimacy in the films of America and Europe during the period 1912 to 1934, and does so by placing these films within the social and cultural context in which they were made. This allows us to understand not how modern audiences read them, but how they were understood by audiences when they were initially released. While previous studies have concentrated on a relatively small group of films, this thesis looks far beyond this and, although it does re-examine these core works, it also explores previously neglected films, those that have only recently been rediscovered and, 2 | P a g e through a study of newspaper articles, reviews and advertisements, films that are now lost. This approach has produced some surprising conclusions, not least that, aside from the core group of European “gay-themed” films (Vingarne, Anders als die Andern, Michael and Geschlecht in Fesseln), it is in America that queer characters were dealt with more sensitively and with more compassion in the films of this period. It has also been possible to re-examine friendships or relationships on film that were previously regarded as having a homosexual subtext and, instead, demonstrate that these were actually representations of the “romantic friendship” popular in the late nineteenth century in America or the comradeship experienced by those that served in the battlefields of World War I. 3 | P a g e CONTENTS page Abstract 2 List of Illustrations 5 Acknowledgments 6 Introduction 7 PART ONE 32 Chapter One: Seen But Not Heard: Representations of Gay Men in European Cinema, 1916-28 33 Chapter Two: “Laughing at him will do as much to cure him as compulsory football”: American Film, the sissy and the fop 78 PART TWO 129 Chapter Three: Romantic Friendships and the College Film 130 Chapter Four: ‘Wonderful, Terrible Days’: The War Film and Depictions of the Buddy Relationship 176 Chapter Five: Madmen, Murderers and Monsters: Queerness in the early Horror Film 218 Conclusion 260 Bibliography 275 Filmography 290 4 | P a g e LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS page Chapter One Fig. 1.1: Conrad Veidt as Paul in Anders als die Andern 46 Fig 1.2: Bernd Aldor in Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray 46 Fig. 1.3: Publicity photograph of Conrad Veidt c.1919 55 Fig. 1.4: Veidt as he looks in Anders als die Andern. 55 Chapter Two Fig. 2.1: Rudolph Valentino publicity shot 79 Fig. 2.2: Valentino as photographed by Helen MacGregor 80 Fig. 2.3: Advertisement from Motion Picture Classic magazine 83 Chapter Four Fig 4.1: Advertisement for What Price Glory 188 Fig 4.2: Depiction of the trenches in Shoulder Arms 201 5 | P a g e ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A piece of work such as a thesis is only possible with the support and encouragement of others. Many people have helped with this thesis, some unknowingly. I would like to thank the following: My supervisors, Professor Yvonne Tasker and Professor Mark Jancovich, for their time, support and encouragement. The Arts & Humanities Research Council who provided funding for this thesis. The Swedish National Archive of Recorded Sound and Moving Images (SLBA), the British Film Institute (BFI), the Deutsche Kinemathek and Ned Thanhouser for making available films and ancillary materials. Dr Rayna Denison for supervising my BA dissertation, a piece of work that was the starting point for this thesis, and for her support during the writing of this thesis. William Frost and Netty White for their support, encouragement and friendship. Peter Kramer. I have never been taught by Peter, nor do I know him particularly well. However, he was Admissions Officer back in early 2005 when I applied to undertake a BA degree. I was a mature student with no recent experience in education, and with low A-Level grades. Despite this, Peter took a chance and accepted me on to the course, from which I have never looked back and for which I am eternally thankful. Over the last three years, many people on online forums and groups have talked to me about my work, suggested films I might want to consider, and even provided me with a few of them. I do not even know the real names of most of these people, but I thank them wholeheartedly for the encouragement, time and support. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their support, patience and encouragement. Sadly, my Dad passed away during the writing of this thesis, but both he and Mum have been enormously supportive (as they have been all my life), and it is to them that I dedicate my thesis. 6 | P a g e Introduction In late 1894 or early 1895, a film was produced which attempted to link sound with the moving image for possibly the first time. Directed by William K Dickson, the film, just seventeen seconds long, shows a violinist playing into a large recording horn while “two men clasp each other and dance in circles” (Benshoff and Griffin, 2006: 21). Vito Russo, in his groundbreaking book The Celluloid Closet incorrectly names the film as The Gay Brothers, and both the book and the documentary of the same name suggests homosexual content due to the two men dancing together in the film (Russo, 1987: 6).1 However, the reason for two men dancing, rather than a man and a woman, seemingly has no relation to sexuality. Anthony Slide states that the “two men provided the movement for the moving picture not because they were sexually attracted to each other but simply because there were no female employees at the Edison laboratory; even the secretaries were male, confirmed an Edison historian” (Slide 1999: 25). Despite this, Dickson’s short experimental film was (albeit inadvertently) the very first to feature queer images on the screen. Queer cinema was born. Dickson’s experimental film can effectively act as a microcosm for everything that is 1 In recent years, the film (which has no formal title) has been referred to as the Dickson Experimental Sound Film. 7 | P a g e to follow within this thesis. It demonstrates the importance of placing a film within its historic and cultural context, and that original intentions can often only be revealed by doing this. However, at the same time, knowing what the filmmakers intended, and that it had nothing to do with sexuality, does not prevent a film from being read as “queer” either at the time of release or at a later date. “Queer cinema” is, after all, one of those strange terms: difficult to give a concrete definition,but we “know it when we see it”. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith describes it as a bringing together “in a single field a large number of manifestations of homosexuality in the cinema, from explicit to implicit, from pornography to the most respectable mainstream, all of which could be seen as in some way challenging the heterosexual norm” (Nowell-Smith, 1996: 756). While this is a useful definition, it is also one which merely scratches the surface of what queer cinema is or can be. It is a relatively modern term (Nowell-Smith’s definition comes under the heading of “New Concepts in Cinema” in The Oxford History of World Cinema) and has evolved considerably over its short lifetime, such that queer cinema surely now goes beyond “manifestations of homosexuality” in film in order to include many forms of otherness within representations of gender and sexuality. The term “queer” may encompass homosexuals, bisexuals, asexuals, transvestites, hermaphrodites and more but, more importantly, it also resists this simplistic pigeonholing, allowing for a less rigid and more fluid examination of both human sexuality and gender roles. This use of the term “queer” in order to provide a resistance to pigeon-holing is discussed by Eve Sedgwick in her 1993 book Tendencies, one of the key early works of “queer theory”. Here she states that “queer” can refer to “the open mesh of 8 | P a g e possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of anyone’s gender, of anyone’s sexuality aren’t made (or can’t be made) to signify monolithically” (Sedgwick, 1993: 8).