Whatever you think of Milk, there’s no denying that the Oscar-nominated biopic is putting a long-overdue spotlight on the life of Harvey Milk, allowing much of the mainstream audience to learn about his singular achievements for the very first time.
But why stop there? Now that Milk has proven that stirring gay life stories can appeal to more than just a gay audience, Hollywood should think about making movies about the following legends. We’ll even help them decide which to make first by throwing in a rating of 1-5 Harveys for each story’s eventual Oscar bait-ability. That should help land some big name stars.
Montgomery Clift
Who he was: Gorgeous leading man of the 1950s (From Here to Eternity [1953], A Place in the Sun [1951]) who led a torturously closeted existence in Hollywood. Survived a somewhat disfiguring car accident during the filming of Raintree County (1957) opposite Elizabeth Taylor,...
But why stop there? Now that Milk has proven that stirring gay life stories can appeal to more than just a gay audience, Hollywood should think about making movies about the following legends. We’ll even help them decide which to make first by throwing in a rating of 1-5 Harveys for each story’s eventual Oscar bait-ability. That should help land some big name stars.
Montgomery Clift
Who he was: Gorgeous leading man of the 1950s (From Here to Eternity [1953], A Place in the Sun [1951]) who led a torturously closeted existence in Hollywood. Survived a somewhat disfiguring car accident during the filming of Raintree County (1957) opposite Elizabeth Taylor,...
- 2/5/2009
- by dennis
- The Backlot
The underreported Nazi persecution of homosexuals before and during World War II, including the incarceration of 10,000-15,000 victims in concentration camps, is the subject of a vital documentary by the Oscar-winning team of Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman ("Common Threads: Stories From the Quilt," "The Celluloid Closet").
A winner of both the Sundance Film Festival Jury Award for best direction of a documentary feature and the Fipresci International Film Critics Award at Berlin, "Paragraph 175" silenced and educated the crowd in its Los Angeles debut at Outfest. Slated for theatrical release in September through New Yorker Films, the project has been in the works for several years. It originated with the efforts of German historian Klaus Muller, the European project director for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The title refers to the 1871 German Penal Code, which deemed "unnatural" sex acts between males as punishable by imprisonment and possible loss of civil rights. While this sodomy law remained on the books and was enforced until 1969, there was a period between the wars when Berlin became a center of gay culture. But the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party led to a harsh change of atmosphere.
In its early sections, "Paragraph 175" does a commendable job of summarizing the history of Nazi attitudes toward homosexuals, including the rise and fall of Hitler's close friend and strongman Ernst Rohm, who was gay and was eventually purged in a power struggle in June 1934. According to Nazi documents, from 1933-45, some 100,000 men were arrested for homosexuality. Roughly half of these men were sentenced to prison.
As with the many other nonfiction works about the Holocaust, "Paragraph 175" is most moving and disturbing when the interviewed survivors tell their stories. The film interweaves these personal stories to great effect. Rupert Everett's sober narration, written by Sharon Wood ("Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press"), supports the film's structure.
Among the interviewees are Gad Beck, who joined a Jewish resistance group in Berlin and succeeded in liberating his lover from a Gestapo transfer camp by posing as a Hitler Youth member. Beck saw his lover turn around to rejoin his doomed family. Another subject is Heinz Dormer, who was forced to join the Hitler Youth in 1933 but was arrested two years later for Paragraph 175 violations. There is also Pierre Seel, a Frenchman in annexed Alsace-Lorraine who was caught in the Nazi crackdown on "antisocial" elements. Seel was interned at Schirmeck, where he was forced to help build a crematorium at the nearby concentration camp Struthof.
These individuals and several others remind us how systematically and ruthlessly the Nazis used pink triangles, the Star of David and several other symbols to mark the many religious and ethnic minorities that they deemed expendable in the insane blood bath that was the Third Reich.
PARAGRAPH 175
New Yorker Films
A Telling Pictures production
Directors: Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman
Producers: Rob Epstein,
Jeffrey Friedman,
Michael Ehrenzweig, Janet Cole
Director of research: Klaus Muller
Writer: Sharon Wood
Director of photography: Bernd Meiners
Editor: Dawn Logsdon
Music: Tibor Szemzo
Narrator: Rupert Everett
Color/stereo
Running time - 77 minutes
No MPAA rating...
A winner of both the Sundance Film Festival Jury Award for best direction of a documentary feature and the Fipresci International Film Critics Award at Berlin, "Paragraph 175" silenced and educated the crowd in its Los Angeles debut at Outfest. Slated for theatrical release in September through New Yorker Films, the project has been in the works for several years. It originated with the efforts of German historian Klaus Muller, the European project director for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The title refers to the 1871 German Penal Code, which deemed "unnatural" sex acts between males as punishable by imprisonment and possible loss of civil rights. While this sodomy law remained on the books and was enforced until 1969, there was a period between the wars when Berlin became a center of gay culture. But the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party led to a harsh change of atmosphere.
In its early sections, "Paragraph 175" does a commendable job of summarizing the history of Nazi attitudes toward homosexuals, including the rise and fall of Hitler's close friend and strongman Ernst Rohm, who was gay and was eventually purged in a power struggle in June 1934. According to Nazi documents, from 1933-45, some 100,000 men were arrested for homosexuality. Roughly half of these men were sentenced to prison.
As with the many other nonfiction works about the Holocaust, "Paragraph 175" is most moving and disturbing when the interviewed survivors tell their stories. The film interweaves these personal stories to great effect. Rupert Everett's sober narration, written by Sharon Wood ("Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press"), supports the film's structure.
Among the interviewees are Gad Beck, who joined a Jewish resistance group in Berlin and succeeded in liberating his lover from a Gestapo transfer camp by posing as a Hitler Youth member. Beck saw his lover turn around to rejoin his doomed family. Another subject is Heinz Dormer, who was forced to join the Hitler Youth in 1933 but was arrested two years later for Paragraph 175 violations. There is also Pierre Seel, a Frenchman in annexed Alsace-Lorraine who was caught in the Nazi crackdown on "antisocial" elements. Seel was interned at Schirmeck, where he was forced to help build a crematorium at the nearby concentration camp Struthof.
These individuals and several others remind us how systematically and ruthlessly the Nazis used pink triangles, the Star of David and several other symbols to mark the many religious and ethnic minorities that they deemed expendable in the insane blood bath that was the Third Reich.
PARAGRAPH 175
New Yorker Films
A Telling Pictures production
Directors: Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman
Producers: Rob Epstein,
Jeffrey Friedman,
Michael Ehrenzweig, Janet Cole
Director of research: Klaus Muller
Writer: Sharon Wood
Director of photography: Bernd Meiners
Editor: Dawn Logsdon
Music: Tibor Szemzo
Narrator: Rupert Everett
Color/stereo
Running time - 77 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 7/24/2000
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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