HOMOSEXUALITY IN experimental FILM: the 1930s
LOT IN SODOM (1933)
Dir. JAMES SIBLEY WATSON AND MELVILLE WEBBER
USA
RUNTIME: 28 MINUTES
![Picture](/uploads/1/8/0/6/18060971/1564797.jpg)
The American filmmakers James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber, first gained notoriety with their avant-garde film The Fall of the House of Usher in 1928. Their next large-scale avant-garde film they were working on was the experimental work Lot in Sodom. The twenty-eight minute film was created between 1930 and early 1932, the scoring for the film continued into 1933. In December of 1933 it premiered at the Little Carnegie Theater in New York and ran for more than two months. It continued to play in theatres through the 1930s and 1940s and is arguably one of the most critically successful avant-garde films of that era (Horak, 41).
Watson and Webber’s experimental film follows the Old Testament story about the trials of Lot. Lot lives in Sodom with his wife and daughter, the family try to keep separate from the men who dominate the city. These men, or ‘Sodomites,’ are rough and animalistic and depicted primarily as homosexual. An angel comes to Lot's home to investigate the city of Sodom. The men see the angel and Lot tries to reason with them. The men request the stranger be brought to them so they may ‘know’ him and Lot offers up his daughter instead. Unimpressed, the men deflower and rape Lot’s daughter who becomes pregnant and gives birth. The Angel, seeing that the city is full of evil, sends Lot and his family away as the Lord is going to destroy it; he warns them not to look back. Lot’s wife looks back as the city is engulfed in flames and she is turned into a pillar of salt.
The surrealist-type film is highly stylized in black and white and full of experimental imagery. It is primarily silent with an orchestral score and occasional dialogue and Biblical intertitles. Lot in Sodom is concerned with relaying the Biblical story through symbolic imagery and non-traditional narrative. There is an interesting combination of play with light and shadow, semi-nude and balletic movement of the body, optical tricks, multiple exposure, slow motion, and montage (Horak, 42).
Lot and Sodom is important because it is responsible for beginning, and inspiring, the combination of homosexual subject matter with visually experimental elements of avant-garde cinema. Another important aspect is that the filmmakers were becoming more bold by including male nudity, even though they are very careful not show the men from the front. They are using the Biblical stories with well-known connections to homosexual subject matter as well as symbolic imagery, and visual experimentation within the film to suggest sex-acts. Early films with homosexuality are much more prone to using symbolism in their works to suggest sex acts instead of actually showing them. It is not until the 1940s that filmmakers become a bit bolder with their imagery choices.
Partly due to a combination of censorship, the Great Depression, war, and laws against homosexual acts, there is not another surviving film that directly tackles homosexuality until the late 1940s in both Europe and North America (Davies, 19). The USA, however, does have subtle hints of it in their mainstream films but it is rare; filmmakers were cautious to avoid being censored by the Hays Code, which was implemented in 1934 and lasted until 1968.
Watson and Webber’s experimental film follows the Old Testament story about the trials of Lot. Lot lives in Sodom with his wife and daughter, the family try to keep separate from the men who dominate the city. These men, or ‘Sodomites,’ are rough and animalistic and depicted primarily as homosexual. An angel comes to Lot's home to investigate the city of Sodom. The men see the angel and Lot tries to reason with them. The men request the stranger be brought to them so they may ‘know’ him and Lot offers up his daughter instead. Unimpressed, the men deflower and rape Lot’s daughter who becomes pregnant and gives birth. The Angel, seeing that the city is full of evil, sends Lot and his family away as the Lord is going to destroy it; he warns them not to look back. Lot’s wife looks back as the city is engulfed in flames and she is turned into a pillar of salt.
The surrealist-type film is highly stylized in black and white and full of experimental imagery. It is primarily silent with an orchestral score and occasional dialogue and Biblical intertitles. Lot in Sodom is concerned with relaying the Biblical story through symbolic imagery and non-traditional narrative. There is an interesting combination of play with light and shadow, semi-nude and balletic movement of the body, optical tricks, multiple exposure, slow motion, and montage (Horak, 42).
Lot and Sodom is important because it is responsible for beginning, and inspiring, the combination of homosexual subject matter with visually experimental elements of avant-garde cinema. Another important aspect is that the filmmakers were becoming more bold by including male nudity, even though they are very careful not show the men from the front. They are using the Biblical stories with well-known connections to homosexual subject matter as well as symbolic imagery, and visual experimentation within the film to suggest sex-acts. Early films with homosexuality are much more prone to using symbolism in their works to suggest sex acts instead of actually showing them. It is not until the 1940s that filmmakers become a bit bolder with their imagery choices.
Partly due to a combination of censorship, the Great Depression, war, and laws against homosexual acts, there is not another surviving film that directly tackles homosexuality until the late 1940s in both Europe and North America (Davies, 19). The USA, however, does have subtle hints of it in their mainstream films but it is rare; filmmakers were cautious to avoid being censored by the Hays Code, which was implemented in 1934 and lasted until 1968.
OTHER NOTABLE FILMS:
(Mainstream with Queer Characters or Scenarios)
1930 - Morocco
1930 - Way Out West
1931 - Maedchen in Uniform
1932 - Call Her Savage
1933 - Queen Christina
1934 - Wonder Bar
1936 - Dracula's Daughter
(Mainstream with Queer Characters or Scenarios)
1930 - Morocco
1930 - Way Out West
1931 - Maedchen in Uniform
1932 - Call Her Savage
1933 - Queen Christina
1934 - Wonder Bar
1936 - Dracula's Daughter
CITATIONS:
Davies, Steven Paul. Out at the Movies: A History of Gay Cinema. Harpenden: Kamera, 2008. Print.
Horak, Jan-Christopher. "A Neglected Genre: James Sibley Watson's Avant-garde Industrial Films." Film History: An International Journal 20.1 (2008): 35-48.JSTOR. Web. 31 Mar. 2013. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/25165457>.
Davies, Steven Paul. Out at the Movies: A History of Gay Cinema. Harpenden: Kamera, 2008. Print.
Horak, Jan-Christopher. "A Neglected Genre: James Sibley Watson's Avant-garde Industrial Films." Film History: An International Journal 20.1 (2008): 35-48.JSTOR. Web. 31 Mar. 2013. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/25165457>.