Gay black and white movies
The best LGBTQ+ movies of all time
Photograph: Kate Wootton/TimeOut
With the help of principal directors, actors, writers and activists, we count down the most essential Gay films of all time
Like queer identity itself, queer cinema is not a monolith. For a long time, though, that’s certainly how it felt. In the past, if gay lives and issues were ever portrayed at all on screen, it was typically from the perspective of white, cisgendered men. But as more opportunities have opened up for lgbtq+ performers and filmmakers to tell their own stories, the scope of the LGBTQ+ experiences that have made their way onto the screen has gradually widened to more frequently include the trans community and queer people of colour.
It’s still not perfect, of course. In Hollywood, as in society at large, there are many barriers left to breach and ceilings to shatter. But those recent strides deserve to be celebrated – as do the bold films made long before the mainstream was willing to accept them. To that finish, we enlisted some LGBTQ+ cultural pioneers, as well as Time Out writers to assist in assembling a list of the greatest gay films ever made.
Written by C With editorial contributions by Alison Foreman, Lattanzio, Jude Dry, Tom Brueggemann, and Mark Peikert. What it is: If you’ve been living under a Kansas farm dropped on you by a twister and need an explainer, ‘The Wizard of Oz’ is MGM’s iconic musical adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s classic children’s manual, starring Judy Garland as a prairie girl exploring a magical world of adventure. Why it’s gay: Well, consider how ‘Friend of Dorothy’ is a widespread slang term for homosexual men and that should be sufficient explanation. But if you need more convincing, ‘The Wizard of Oz’s’ campy, colorful musical story has long been interpreted through a gender non-conforming lens, as a metaphor for LGBT people who venture outside of black-and-white middle America for homosexual communities in cities fancy New York or San Francisco. There are so many moments and characters in the film that come across now as unintentional nods to the queer AmazonApple If it feels a bit like a CW version of an after-school distinct, that's no mistake: Teen-tv super-producer Greg Berlanti makes his feature-film directorial debut here. It's as chaste a love story as you're likely to spot in the 21st century—the hunky gardener who makes the title teen interrogate his sexuality is wearing a long-sleeved shirt, for God’s sake—but you understand what? The queer kids of the future require their wholesome entertainment, too. AmazonHulu A gay fantasia on Elton themes. An Elton John biopic was never going to be understated, but this glittering jukebox musical goes way over the top and then keeps going. It might be an overcorrection from the straight-washing of the previous year's Bohemian Rhapsody, but when it's this much fun, it's best not to overthink it. Advertisement - Endure Reading Below NetflixAmazon A charming Irish movie that answers the question: "What if John Hughes were Irish and gay?" Misfit Ned struggles at a rugby-obsessed boarding school until a mysterious new kid moves in and an unlikely friend There was once a superb black actor, Meshach Taylor, a hair younger than the Morgan Freeman generation, the brilliant black heterosexual thespians capable of embracing their feminine side (all that Shakespeare training, perhaps). Meshach played “Hollywood Montrose,” a flamboyant gay window-dresser who befriends a dim straight white boy called Jonathan Switcher (haha!) in a dumber-than-bricks ’80s B-movie, Mannequin. Taylor wasn’t the lead, but provided the only sparkle in a dud film that stood as the most widely seen and appreciated depiction of a gay shadowy character in the matching rich era that gave us the sweltering bromance of goofy white “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and brooding black Keith David in John Carpenter’s genius They Live. A decade before Morgan Freeman himself and Brad Pitt would participate similar homo-social games in Se7en, it was Taylor alone who held the flame aloft for jet gay dudes in cinema. Ugh. Like all black actors of his day, Taylor was also an accomplished theater performer and about 15 years ago he played the candelabra, Lumière, in Broadway’s boffo Disney musical Beauty and the Beast. At that period, he said to my friend John, also a genius actor of stage andThe Gayest Movies That Aren’t Actually Gay, from ‘Barbie’ and ‘Burlesque’ to ‘Venom’ and ‘Road House’
‘The Wizard of Oz’ (1939)
The 50 Best LGBTQ Movies Ever Made
Love, Simon (2018)
Rocketman (2019)
Handsome Devil (2016)
Old Hollywood movies had to follow strict guidelines throughout the 1930s–1960s, known as the Hays Code. This basically prevented all US films from featuring anything that was overtly sexual or "inappropriate," which forced a lot of filmmakers to get artistic about how they could navigate potential censorship. I hold running lists on Letterboxd of every Old Hollywood and LGBTQ+ movie that I watch, so I sifted through them to locate a bunch from the Hays Code era that are subtly (and not so subtly) suuuuuper gay. Here are some of my favorites. Enjoy!
1.Rebel Without a Cause (1955) stars James Dean as a pansexual hottie, so you really can't question for much more. The original script had his ethics kissing Plato, who was one of the first lgbtq+ teen characters on screen, but the Hays Code fast squashed that from happening. Still, this movie is edgy and dramatic and romantic, and the whole cast is just so pleasurable to look at.
2.All About Eve (1950) is a witty and toxic drama about an aging actress who befriends a fan who ultimately tries to usurp her. This movie shares the record for the most Oscar nominations ever, with 14, and it briefly features Marilyn Monroe in one of her f