Like real history gays have been around the movies ever since their beginnings as evidenced with the 1895 Edison clip of two men dancing. Similar to real life, gays have been forced to hide themselves in the closet in the film industry for many years, not revealing themselves openly until a few films in the 1960s. Yet according to Vito Russo's 1981 book The Celluloid Closet, which has been transformed into a documentary by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, gays had to locate homosexual characters through "gaydar" and movie subtexts.

That may be hard for younger viewers to understand since they've seen the Academy reward Tom Hanks for portraying a gay man with AIDS and have seen mainstream American rip-offs of really great gay themed foreign fare with The Birdcage and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar, the latter starring the generally macho Patrick Swayze and Wesley Snipes. Add to that a handful of gay-teen-coming-of-age films, like Beautiful Thing, as well as a number of gay-themed Academy Award-nominated films like The Crying Game, The Kiss of the Spider Woman, Boys Don't Cry, and Gods and Monsters, and modern film watchers may think that such content was always this open.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Documentary directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, who also directed the award-winning gay-themed The Life of Harvey Milk and Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt, hypothesize that homosexuality was forced into the closet due to studio codes and censorship until the 1960s, but remained a "forbidden love" until the last couple of decades. They also assert that there is a huge difference between depicting lesbian love and gay love on film.

Epstein and Friedman generously provide numerous clips and interviews to support their theses, showing us love scenes from Personal Best and The Hunger along with Susan Sarandon telling how she had no problems bedding Catherine Deneuve. Others discuss how straight men are far less threatened by watching two women get it on than they are by watching two men. They may even enjoy watching lesbian lovemaking, thinking that it's a simple matter of having the right man show up to convert them.

The documentary points out that many gays and lesbians felt even more isolated when they never saw themselves depicted on the screen. Gays and lesbians would grasp at any subtle signs of gayness, portrayed on film for validation. Writer/actress Susie Bright points out how she was blown away by a suggestive lesbian scene in Morocco when a sharp looking Marlene Dietrich in a tuxedo kisses another woman. Later she expresses her "discovery" of Hitchcock's subtle allusions to lesbian love in Rebecca when Mrs. Danvers shows off the dead wife's underwear and lovingly caresses her lingerie. In the "old" days, filmmakers had to find ways to sneak such content past the censors. Hitchcock was very good at this; just examine Rope with the understanding that the two murders are gay to understand another layer of the subtext.

Even literature required major surgery before coming to the screen. Wielding the censoring ax was Joseph Breen, who changed The Lost Weekend character from an alcoholic suffering from sexual confusion to an alcoholic with writer's block, and also changed the gay bashing murder in Crossfire to an anti-Semitic bashing instead. Gay love was something either to be erased or poked fun of with stereotypical sissies. Occasionally, gays were somewhat acknowledged in a handful of films as cold-blooded villains who would be killed by the last reel, to the relief of the audience. The documentary filmmakers illustrate these points with a number of clips.

The most famous and controversial portion of the film revolves around writer Gore Vidal and his role in rewriting William Wyler's Ben Hur script on the pivotal scene when Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd first meet and renew their friendship. The film was having difficulty explaining the intensity of the hatred that develops between the two characters, so Vidal suggested to Wyler that they play it with the idea that the two men were once teen lovers with Boyd wanting to renew that relationship, only to be spurned and rejected by Heston. According to Vidal, Wyler raised his eyebrows but agreed it was better than what they had, and instructed Vidal to tell Boyd but not Heston, as Chuck wouldn't take it well.

With that subtextual knowledge in mind, it makes that initial reunion meeting of Boyd and Heston a far more interesting and amusing scene. Of course, Heston still denies any homosexual context. But he also has stated in a subsequent interview that he will NOT take part in any movie that Gore Vidal participates in, so that only makes me wonder how comfortable Chuck is with the homosexual issue.

The other well-known gladiator movie with a gay subtext is also examined with the well-known scene from Spartacus that was originally cut because the censors actually understood Sir Lawrence Olivier's metaphor of liking both oysters and snails while Tony Curtis served as his body servant. Thankfully, this scene has found its way back into the rereleased versions, and seems to be much ado about nothing compared to the content of more current films.

The fact that Hollywood felt it necessary to withhold this scene as late as 1960 clearly demonstrates the ideas behind The Celluloid Closet. The metaphors were too overt for mainstream cinema at that time, even though no one makes love on the screen. If such hints were not allowed, how much more were filmmakers and actors required to remain in the closet during the earlier days of film?

I rarely considered the film industry such a loyal upholder of mainstream values, in the light of recent political bashing. However, this documentary makes it plain that Hollywood has hardly been a leader in social causes, especially when we look at sexuality issues. Any increased sensitivity we may see towards gays and lesbians in current cinema will not come from the studios, but will evolve only as individuals and society become more enlightened. The Celluloid Closet is a good visual introduction to the subject.