Sex and the Cinema: How Hollywood Shaped Desire

Burt Lancaster,gay? The NYT should not repeat such assertions.

I'm sorry, but I refuse to accept that movies are a "gay" media. All movies are not written by gays with a gay agenda. George Cukor seemed to understand women at a time when many macho directors obviously didn't. Who Cary Grant slept with was his business--he gave us the gift of his talent and he didn't owe us any more than that. In the 70s I took classes at Sherwood Oaks Film School in LA, and the day after the closeted Richard Chamberlain spoke in a class I found this scrawled on one of the women's bathroom walls: "Isn't Richard Chamberlain dreamy?" "He's gay, you idiot." "Who cares!" We all are richer for the Grants and Chamberlains, and why can't people accept the gifts of their performances and allow them to live their lives? Does this kind of over intellectualizing add anything to enjoying the films we enjoy? Reading multiple theories by people with their own agendas about something that is neither our business nor provable is basically a useless exercise.

To add to your list of great film critics I suggest Jonathan Rosenbaum. He is a wonderful guide to films from all parts of the world. I shall always be grateful to him for introducing me to directors and great from all over the world. His books of collected criticism hold up very well and his web site is also full of gems. https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/

Movies, more than anything else, determine how we frame the experience of sex and romance. From the first glance to the first kiss to the first bedding, to commitment, or not, marriage or not, the whole experience is defined and contextualized by the screen romances we have seen. What we expect, what we do, the steps taken, the progression, whether a matter of years, or a matter of minutes, is all cued and prompted by movies. Even, and most particularly, physical moves in love making we learn from movies. (More and more, young people are learning them from pornography) Sex and romance sells movies, from Disney to Scorsese; accordingly, the preponderance of movies have sex and romance as a primary theme. Therefore, we are overinvested in sex and romance, and our society is imbalanced.

I was glad to see mention made of Robert Warshow. He was a first class movie critic I discovered in the pages of Commentary and Partisan Review who wrote about gangsters, cowboys, politics, comic books, the Rosenbergs and other things that were important in the forties and fifties. Anyone not familiar with his book "The Immediate Experience" is missing a treat. http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?content=reviews&isbn=9780674007260

A list of film critics that does not include Roger Ebert is questionable. He was the first movie critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism(1975). Honorary member of Directors Guild of America and the only film critic with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Pauline Kael is the most over-rated film critic in history -- she thought little of Orson Welles's work, but revered Brian de Palma (I'm not outright dismissing the latter, but...does anyone think there's an equal comparison there?).

What exactly is this "gay air" that allegedly permeates "all movies." Is it John Wayne killing Indians in "The Searchers" as a way of repressing his desire to sleep with them? Robert DeNiro having his face reduced to hamburger in "Raging Bull?" Kathleen Turner secretly wishing William Hurt was a woman in "Body Heat?" Without supporting evidence, this sounds like a thesis in search of an argument. Or, to quote Groucho Marx in "A Day at the Races:" "Either he's dead or my watch has stopped."

I loved the book. The audiobook, read by the author, is one of the best I have ever listened to. You feel his passion, and marvel at the depth of his knowledge and insight. The wisdom of age and experience shows.

For an interesting cinematic exploration of much of this, I suggest people look up the video essays of Mark Rappaport such as Rock Hudson's Home Movies and many others. Witty, informative, and worth your time. Gotta Google for them.

I look forward to reading this book. I've often registered a homoerotic charge between seemingly straight characters. The most memorable example for me was seeing Lawrence of Arabia as a child. I absorbed that charge between Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif. And it is just as strong with each viewing. Powerful stuff.

Well, if David Thomson has anything to say worth listening to in this book, I can't tell by this review, which quotes nothing of any particular insight about any movie that I could find, and contains too many phrases like "he sometimes substitutes free association for deep thinking and throws out aperçus just to see if they’ll stick" that don't leave me anxious to risk my time.

Thanks for this piece. An inexhaustible and little explored subject

I saw the title of this review, I clicked on it. During this process I immediately thought of "Blue Velvet." Then I scroll down to the cover of the book, and there is the protagonist Jeffrey Beaumont. David Lynch resonated with me. I don't know if that's a good thing or not.

Hard to believe that Spencer Tracy would be involved for decades with Katharine Hepburn if she weren't completely, utterly heterosexual.

This book review was a success in that it convinced me I don't want to bother with the book.

How nice to read a strong review of what sounds like a strong book while adhering to the book author's theme of movies and desire, gay and straight, without the almost ubliquitous contemporary, condemnatory commentary on the deleterious effects of "the male gaze." The male gaze, David Thomson seems to confirm, is the sine qua non of the movies, if not its true motivating factor for both production and viewing. Left unsaid by the critic -- who appreciates the frisson of viewing movies in theaters --and perhaps Thompson himself, is the idea that this voyeuristic activity is best enjoyed in the dark, but as part of a collective. So movie-going is really giving full collective power to male gaze. Sounds almost like an orgy to me. No wonder censorship, whether Puritan or "feminist" in nature, continues to bedevil this art form.

Any thoughts on why straight actors are used to play gay characters? Cases in point: "Blue is the Warmest Color"; "Call Me by your Name". Perhaps this is changing now.

Hollywood killed my desire to go to the movies.

Hard to imagine Cary Grant was "the very least bisexual." I'd bet there were scant others of greater heft. But consider, in all fields where beauty and body are constructs -- the work product -- it is profitable to negotiate with your best arguments.

"We first watch from outside--and then the frame falls away and we find ourselves connecting more intensely." My goodness! I sat up when I read that. Something inside me went CLICK. What follows is rather personal. Not irrelevant, I hope. Do you have dreams like that? I do. I have--ever since I was five or six. You DREAM--that you are watching a movie. Brilliant lighting--smiling faces--elaborate scenery. Then you CEASE to be a mere spectator. You become INVOLVED in the action. You become one of the actors. And this is hard to explain. Suddenly (like a ripple passing over the surface of sunlit water) the movie CHANGES. You thought you understood where it was going. You looked forward to a sunny, happy conclusion. "And so they lived--." But no. It becomes dreadfully clear, this is NOT how it ends. You perceive something frightful, irrational creeping in. Dimming that bright light. Darkening those happy faces. Darkening the mood of your dream. Which turns into--voila!-- --a nightmare. And some movies strike me EXACTLY the same way. Notably "No Country For Old Men." Javier Bardem's character roaming the southwest-- --and you realize (as the pool of blood spreads wider and wider)-- --this guy really IS on the loose. He ain't NEVER gonna get caught. So did I wake up? No. I walked out of the theater. A little dissatisfied. And more than a little troubled. Life is like that, isn't it. Isn't it?

I can't argue with the statement that "the atmosphere of all movies had a gay air” because I have no idea what that means. Yes, sex is everywhere. And a lot of sex is gay, if you will. But is sex the biggest part of film? I don't think so. And are all movies sort of gay? Silly question...

This is a big digression from the main point of this review, but I'm tired of reading such regular praise of Pauline Kael, and I can't let the casual Kael genuflection in this article's second graf slide by. For one thing, Pauline Kael really did not like the movies very much, which isn't a problem on its own, though it's an unusual tendency in a professional movie critic. But here's the writing that pretty much ended any sympathy I ever had for Kael: "chances are that the next morning Hud would have felt guilty and repentant, and Alma would have been grateful to him for having used the violence necessary to break down her resistance, thus proving that she was different. They might have been celebrating ritual rapes annually on their anniversaries." That's from Kael's review of Hud, which appeared in a 1964 issue of Film Quarterly. That's her defense of the protagonist's attempted rape of his loyal housekeeper. That's her endorsement of the philosophy behind rape fantasies everywhere. Fifty-five years have passed since Kael wrote that. I still find it unforgivable.