The Celluloid Closet

Name: The Celluloid Closet
Genre: Documentary
Released: 1995
Duration: 102 min
Rating: 4.1

Rob Epstein19951h 42mDocumentary

Why we chose it

Hollywood spent a century putting gay men and lesbians in the movies, or hiding them there, and now the closet door is open. The filmmakers play old scenes back to the people who wrote and acted in them, and hear what could be shown openly, what had to be coded and what was quietly cut.

Synopsis

From the silent era to the mid-1990s, Hollywood is full of gay men and lesbians, who mostly appear as the punchline, the villain or the body in the third act. For thirty years the Production Code won’t even let a film name their sexuality outright. Now people from American cinema watch their own scenes again and tell the whole truth about them.