David Färdmar | Love (My Name Is Love) / 2008

gay rape

by Douglas Messerli

      

David Färdmar (screenwriter and director) Love (My Name Is Love) / 2008 [20 minutes]

 

Love (Adam Lundgren), a straight guy on an open date with one of his female roommates, Frederika (Alicia Vikander), is at a party which he clearly is not enjoying. To console himself he’s busy with the beers, and even when Frederika asks him to dance argues he’s busy drinking, but obviously rather passive by nature, stands nonetheless, to move his body around like the numerous others about him.

     But suddenly as he stands rolling about his torso a boy comes up and gives him a short kiss on the cheek. At first Love is somewhat annoyed, raising his hand to place where the kiss was planted, but clearly also intrigued, confused a bit by what such an action might have meant.

  We see him, soon after, asking Fredericka if they might go home, arguing that she had promised him….we don’t know what, that their stay at the party would be short, that they might have sex that night? In any event, she’s having fun, she declares and wants to stay for a while longer.

      At one point in wanders the floor again looking for her to observe her busy flirting with another guy. He leaves the party, only to cross the street and, as he passes a small group of diners sitting outside a café, spots a good-looking blond boy, and turns his head back to look before physically turning and moving on in yet another direction.

      Something is clearly happening to Love’s psyche that we and, more importantly, he can’t quite comprehend. Combine that with the fact that the director keeps interspersing what we can only presume are later scenes of Love running down a street in tears, entering his apartment with a sour expression upon his face, and puking in the middle of an empty street—a scene intercut with the moment we see him entering the dance room with a drink other than beer which suggests he’s now mixing alcohol—and we realize that it’s not going to be a pleasant night for our unstated hero.

       But in the very next scene with Love walking down an entirely empty street he encounters another lone blond boy (perhaps the one at the café, perhaps simply another attractive Swedish boy). He again turns back to look, as does the other, who asks from the distance now between them, “Did you want anything from me?” It’s an odd question which could be a challenge by a homophobe to a gay man, or a gay come-on, a way to engage the other.

        When Love simply asks “What?” the blond boy, moves closer to him, repeating the question. And when Love mutters “No, no,” moves even closer toward him, he asking what is now obviously a come on, “Are you sure?

      Despite Love’s fears and protests (“Usually I don’t do these kind of things”) he nonetheless agrees to join the stranger in his apartment only a block away. This is the night, we can only imagine, that Love has been longing for, an opportunity to try out same sex love.

      The usual introductions are made, drinks offered, names exchanged—although Love is understandably bashful about offering up his first name, the other is named Marcus* (Jonas Rimeika)—ages confirmed, an important thing evidently in the Scandinavian countries where underage sex can mean arrestment (the age for consensual sex in Sweden is 15; Love is 22 and Marcus 28), and occupations explored: Marcus is in “Economy. Kind of.” And Love is a history of literature student at the University. At that point, inevitably, Marcus begins to make his move to overcome the general reticence of his guest, stroking his shoulder gently, and moving Love’s hand onto his own thigh and his cock. “Do you like it?” he asks, Love answering, a bit surprising for his total honesty, “Yes.” But when Love still remains passive, Marcus looks carefully at him to inquire: “Don’t tell me I’m your first guy? Are you a virgin?”

      When Love does not respond, Marcus immediately tells him to leave. “I don’t want to be with someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing? Just go.”

       In hindsight that should have been an obvious clue for Love to leave. This guy is clearly into something that a newcomer won’t be able to comprehend or deal with. But Love is interested, now sexually aroused apparently, and lies. It is not his first time. Like so many young men and women in society Love has been taught that virginity is something about which to be embarrassed, as if there was never a first time to experience something new.

      We are hardly prepared for what suddenly happens as Love moves toward him for, perhaps, a deep kiss, an exploration of the other’s nipples, an unzipping revelation…whatever a young man seeking same sex for the first time might imagine.

       Marcus immediately pulls his own shirt off and then Love’s, turns him over, pulls down his pants and proceeds to fuck him hard, Love at first protesting that “it hurts a little,” but soon screaming out in utter pain, pleading with him to stop. Marcus continues with even more abandonment, Love shouting out: “Please stop, stop, it hurts?” while the other responds “You like this don’t you? It’s doggy style!”

       We are witnessing not a first love session, but a rape. And like most rapists, when Marcus finishes he simply orders the other out of house. (“It was nice, but you better go know. Just leave.”)

        Love, unable to even move, simply lies face down on the couch, almost as if dead. Marcus gets up to take a shower, leaving his victim to find his own way out.

       Slowly, gradually, Love struggles to stand and put on his pants. Hardly able to walk out the door, he breaks down into tears on the street as we have seen just before the film’s opening credits.

      As he later showers in his own apartment, we hear a call from a woman reminding him he needs to pick her up at the airport in the morning, perhaps his girlfriend or even wife who has been away. He himself now refers to the man with whom just had sex as “a fucking gay whore,” “a fucking fag.” Love, who the night before was ready to explore gay sex, now is speaking like a homophobe.

     Back on the street the next morning, he observe Love bend down and vomit, the frame we saw before placed into a new context. He is not drunk, but sick, perhaps still bleeding internally. Once again we see him running, breaking down in tears. Fredricka rings him on his cellphone wondering why he had just left her that evening. She’s at a gay bar, wanting to know where he is? “Or have you hooked up with someone already?” She hears him bawling, wondering where he is, what has happened.

      It appears that he has, in fact, discussed with her his desire to seek out a gay experience, and that the promise she had given him was to accompany him to a gay bar. His first sexual experience, alas, may have now made it nearly impossible for him to “come out,” or least create a huge block in the way of coming to terms with his obvious gay sexual desires.

    The early credits describe this as a true story, and unfortunately, it may be a too common experience for gay neophytes.

 

*The credits list the character’s name as Sebastien. Was the character lying even about his name? It is also, of course, possible that Marcus or Sebastien is the same figure at the party, with the group at the café, and alone on the street, which suggests an even more dangerous role for him as a stalker grooming his pick-up. Yet at the café the blond-haired boy is wearing a black top, while later on the street he is dressed in a light blue T-shirt. The boy at the party seems to be dressed in a white T-shirt.

 

Los Angeles, June 19, 2022

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2022).

Yasujirō Ozu | 一人息子 (Hitori musuko) (The Only Son) / 1936

the good son

by Douglas Messerli

 

Tadao Ikeda and Masao Arata (screenplay, based on a story by James Maki [Yasujirō Ozu]), Yasujirō Ozu (director)  一人息子 (Hitori musuko) (The Only Son) / 1936

 

The first image of Yasujirō Ozu’s 1936 talkie, The Only Son, is a sentence, a kind of maxim: “Life’s tragedy begins with the bond between parent and child,” which could, in fact, serve as a prelude to nearly all of this great filmmaker’s works.

     The next “scene” shows us the hard-working widow, Tsune Nonomiya (Chōko Iida) at work in a silk production factory in the rural town of Shinshū in 1923. When she returns home to her son, Ryōsuke (Masao Hayama), apparently near the end of his elementary school studies, he reports to her that many of his peers are going on to Middle School, and it is clear that he would like to join them, while recognizing that she is too poor to pay for his expenses. He also perceives that his future in the rural outpost in which he lives is destined to be bleak.

   Ryōuske’s teacher Ōkubo (Chishū Ryū) also stops by the house, revealing his happiness that, as Ryōsuke has evidently told him, he will be going to Middle School in Tokyo; he, too, is soon planning to return to Tokyo. It is important for the child’s future, he argues, that the boy have future education.

     When Ōkubo leaves, Ryōsuke is punished for his lie, but his mother nonetheless realizes the truth of the teacher’s words, and is pleased by her son’s desire to continue his education. And she soon relents, saying she will simply find a way to make it happen.

     The film quickly shifts to Tokyo, thirteen years later, to a scrappy suburb of the city, where Ryōsuke works as a night-school teacher, hardly making enough to feed his wife and new baby. After all these years, Tsune has saved up enough money to visit him, and when she arrives, we can see her immediate disappointment about the location of her son’s modest home, and her surprise and hurt that he has not told her that he is married and has a baby. But, like the visiting parents in Ozu’s masterful Tokyo Story, she swallows her pain, and expresses joy in finding a new daughter-in-law and grandson.

    Ryōsuke (now played by Himori Shin’ichi) quickly borrows money from friends in order to buy dinner and a pillow for his mother, while knowing that he will have a difficult time paying it back and realizing that it is several days from his next paycheck.

     In order to entertain his mother, he takes her to a movie (also a talkie), the first she has ever seen, and together they visit several public shrines. But she, tired from activities, seems disinterested in the film, and quickly falls asleep. The next day, they together visit his former teacher, now running a tonkatsu restaurant, his own dreams of becoming a professor also having been dashed.

     That evening, with little money left, Ryōsuke and his wife introduce the older woman to the Chinese-style Ramen noodles which the poor eat.

     While touring with her in the neighborhood the next morning, he sits sin a field with her, admitting his own sense of disappointment and defeat. It is very difficult, he explains, to survive in such a large environment. For the first time during her visit, she chides him, angry for his being a defeatist (while openly expressing what we know, that part of her anger surely is that she has herself given up so much for her son). She admits that she has been forced to sell their home, and has for years been living in a factory tenement.

     Out of money, the married couple try to imagine how they continue to entertain Tsume; but Ryōsuke’s wife reveals that they have some little money since she has just sold her kimono, and the family plans to spend the day together enjoying city life.

    In their neighborhood, however, a young boy playing under and around a horse, is kicked and must have immediate medical attention. The family cancels their plans and help rush the neighbor’s boy to the hospital. Tsume observes her son quietly hand over the envelop of money Ryōsuke has planned to use for their outing to the boy’s father to help with the child’s medical bills. She later tells him what she has see and praises his kind act.

     Now, having seen, so to speak, “how things are,” she is ready to return to her village and job. Before she leaves, Ryōsuke promises her that he will find a way to return to school in order to find a better job as a teacher.

     And back in Shinshū we see her gossiping with a friend about how proud she is of her successful son, so pleased with him that she can now die happy.

     Yet Ozu’s last shot of her, alone during a break, we see her gazing into the future. And we can only wonder whether Ryōsuke will be able to keep his promise or ever find a better job.

      Many of Ozu’s works are bittersweet, just as in the film I mentioned earlier, Tokyo Story. But The Only Son, made by Ozu returned to filmmaking after the Japanese-Sino War, seems particularly bitter. For all the “good” people of this film cannot find the lives that they deserve and suffer for, so it seems; while others have somehow found a way to get ahead. If nothing else, the unjust society in which they find themselves is unable to reward all their hard work. It now sounds so familiar.

 

Los Angeles, December 2016

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (December 2016).

N. Phillip and Keiynan Lonsdale | Kiss the Boy / 2018 || piano version 2024 [music videos]

ferris wheel to heaven

by Douglas Messerli

 

N. Phillip and Keiynan Lonsdale (storywriters and directors) Kiss the Boy / 2018 [4.24 minutes], piano version 2024 [5.12 minutes] [music videos]

Australian actor, dancer, and singer, Keiynan Lonsdale, after showing up at the end of the film Love, Simon (2018) as Simon’s secret lover, pretty much expressed what he had already announced in 2017 when he reported that “I like girls & I like guys,” that he had bisexual inclinations.

     The 2018 video, Kiss the Boy, directed by N. Phillips, shows a wide variety of unrelated images of girls kissing girls, boys kissing girls, and, significantly, boys kissing boys as the singer proclaims his difficulties and his newly discovered recognition that:

 

“If you wanna kiss the boy

Then you better kiss the boy right now

And you ain't gotta be afraid

Of the words you wanna say right now

'Cause love is a game we deserve to play out loud

So if you wanna, hey

If you wanna kiss the boy

Then you better kiss the boy right now”

    In an interview of the same year, after having kissed Nick Robinson on the Ferris Wheel to nearly everyone’s joy and approval, Lonsdale noted that in the song:

 

“I knew I wanted it to be as obvious as possible. There can’t be any mistake that this is a boy singing about a boy and that’s that. There’s other songs where it may be more ambiguous, and there’s a message in that as well. I’m definitely not going to shy away from singing about guys or girls or whatever kind of love. The love that I feel is what I’ll put in the song.”

 

    Although the original 2018 video is quite charming in its direction and straight-forward images, I far prefer the 2024 piano version with a real narrative where Lonsdale keeps running into the handsome black friend throughout the city and finally invites him to his recording session, where he finally kisses to boy he has been so long secretly observing, but has been afraid to make his feelings clear. As he writes with Tyler John Minford and Morgan A. Matthews in the original song:

“I've been afraid of my place

Of this way of my feelings

But I'm amazed at how we talk

It's so chill but there's tension

What was the deal when your eyes locked on me?

What was the deal when you smiled at me like that?

'Cause see I try to be cool

But the problem is you're messing my emotions up

My head gets stuck

I'm scared to show just how I feel 'cause people talk

Don't wanna worry 'bout whatever

Just gotta know your deal

See half the time I'm wondering if this is real

And why not say something's on my mind if I feel love?

But when the moment's right I freeze

That's how I know my heart is his”

 

Los Angeles, June 3, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2026).

Matt Haller | You Will Find Love / 2024

the man that got away usually did so for good reason

by Douglas Messerli

 

Matt Haller (screenwriter and director) You Will Find Love / 2024 [19 minutes]

 

Simon (Henry Truitt Harshaw) and Gabriel have been childhood friends who grew very close before happened to pull them apart. It’s an old story where love comes to early for young boys to assimilate it, and resulting it their pulling away at the time they most want and need one another. But the society so strongly condemns those very feelings that they deny the very thing they most need and desire.

     Time has passed, Gabriel having become an actor—so far only roles in ads—and Simon having become a novelist of gay stories, which brings him back to their home town for a reading in a friendly bookstore. Frankly, after hearing only the brief end of the story, it sounds rather dreadful, and his voice is anything but the melodic voice of the readers for taped readings, which Gabriel suggests he should try. But they meet up again nonetheless.

      Gabriel has since married a gay man, and wonders why Simon never showed up to the wedding. But obviously he is not terribly sensitive since it is immediately clear to the viewer than Simon still holds strong feelings for Gabriel, and that, in fact, his inability to share his love with his high school friend has regretted it for all the years since, never being able to truly situate himself in a solid relationship.

      When he is finally able to admit to Gabriel that his pulling away at the very moment when he most wanted to kiss and hold his high school friend has haunted him ever since, Gabriel admits that he felt quite similarly, and that his dating other boys soon after (unthinkable in my day) had simply been a front, that he too still longed for a relationship with Simon. The admission almost devastates Simon, and momentarily makes him feel even more stupid that ever before for not having been able to play out his desires. But it also, at least, ameliorates the feeling of not having been wanted, and after a brief head-on-shoulder rendezvous with his former friend wherein Gabriel assures Simon that some day he too will find the right person to love, clearly reinvigorates the young man who has admitted that he is not ever certain that he can go only writing his gay love stories.

    They end the meeting as admiring friends, both suggesting another meet-up at some time, but also both recognizing that their lives have taken them elsewhere and that will likely never encounter one another again.

      It is a beautiful pathos that easily moves the heart of almost any gay man, most of us, perhaps, who have been angry with our selves for not having the wisdom to perceive where we might have found love earlier than we did. I might have found it in the arms of the high school football team captain if only I hadn’t been so fearful and prudish to run off the moment he offered me a long ride home; or I might have made wonderful love in Norway to the local speed-skating champion who I absolutely lusted after but was so innocent that I couldn’t respond to his overtures. How stupid I now realize I was, and how either relationship might have opened me up far earlier to the gay world and self-acceptance.

     But to ponder that failure too long is simply an act of nostalgia and sentimentality. We are ready to become who we are only when we perceive it within ourselves. And that is always the problem with such looking back sagas such as this short film. Simon demonstrates himself as a grand sentimentalist, who could not go on simply because he could not yet accept love because of a beautiful conception of it in the past. Surely neither he nor Gabriel would have been ready to establish a full relationship even if they had kissed at the magical moment when they both so desired it. Gabriel, at least, has moved on and found someone whom he loves and can live with as an adult, while Simon is simply trapped in the past.

     This sometimes makes for great melodrama in the man-that-got-away works such as Douglas Sirk’s grand gay heartthrob drama hidden behind a screen heterosexual romance, All Heaven Allows (1955), and more recently in French film by Olivier Peyon, Lie with Me (2022), and so many others before them, including the heterosexual tear jerker generally adored by every Englishman, Brief Encounter (1945). Yes, I understand the power of these works, to which the rather poorly acted and clumsily written You Will Find Love simply can’t compare; but I am not ultimately moved by their sense of nostalgic regret. Love is something you put into action every day, never in the imaginative sense of what might have been.

Los Angeles, June 3, 2026 | Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2026).

Roman Ilyushenko | Violine (Violin) / 2012

a better drug

by Douglas Messerli

 

Roman Ilyushenko Violine (Violin) / 2012 [12 minutes]

 

The German film Violin is another example of the films I have been describing as sexual teases.

     In this 12-minute work, directed by Roman Ilyushenko, a young lonely violinist, Oli (Johannes Huth), is visited, fresh out of the shower, by his “drug dealer,” Jan (Hannes Sell) or a boy who you might more generously describe as his local source for pot.

      Given that Oli’s just out the shower and dressed in a bath towel, the film gives Jan the chance to case out the place, creating a scenario which Oli doesn’t deny, that he lives in the lovely apartment most of the time alone, his parents spending their time traveling.

      At first Jan, in his strutting surety seems almost somewhat threatening, teasing the other boy when he discovers he’s a violinist. The best line of the film is Jan’s: “I always wanted to be musician, but my parents insisted I get a job. I think I found the perfect compromise.” Jan shares a long spliff, obviously marijuana mixed with something stronger, making Oli cough.

      But before long, the gentle responses of Oli, who plays a couple of short passages for him and encourages him to even try the violin out for himself, bring out what seems to be a far more curious and engaged person. And as Oli moves around behind him, showing him how to make a chord with his fingers while helping to bow the instrument, the scene turns briefly in a romantic moment, as Jan drops his hand to rub it just above the other’s waist, and a moment later is kissing Oli’s neck and ear that promises a highly erotic love scene.

 

      Jan’s phone rings and he’s off for another meet-up, leaving Oli with nearly an open mouth, empty, and lonely once again. “How much do I owe you?” he asks. This time it’s on the house.

      We can only hope that Oli quickly uses up the remainder of his bag, calls up his pot-dealing friend for more of the better drug he’s just experienced, and gets down to business before any further interruptive calls.

      Other than some beautiful film stills, Violin doesn’t really have much else to offer.

 

Los Angeles, August 5, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2023).

Mervyn LeRoy | Little Caesar / 1931

the beginning is the end

by Douglas Messerli

 

Francis Edward Faragoh, Robert N. Lee, Robert Lord, and Darryl F. Zanuck (screenplay, based on the book by W.R. Burnett), Mervyn LeRoy (director) Little Caesar / 1931

 

Arguably William A. Wellman’s The Public Enemy (upon which I write above) and Mervyn LeRoy’s Little Caesar both of 1931, along with Howard Hawks’ 1932 Scarface established and defined the genre of the gangster film. But the first two had the advantage simply because the Hays Board was far less attentive to their tropes, which by the time of Scarface had become so apparent that they demanded far more cuts for Hawks’ film that the earlier two. Some argue that Scarface was one of the most highly censored films in Hollywood history.

     Both of the 1931 films, moreover, have deep homosexual and/or homoerotic content that the latter lacks.

     The basic plot of Mervyn LeRoy’s Little Caesar is so simple that it barely needs retelling.  Growing tired of drugstore robberies, Caesar Enrico “Rico” Bandello (Edward G. Robinson), soon known as “Little Caesar” announces to his long-time friend and gang partner Joe Massara (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.) that he wants to go East to join up with the real gangs headed by the likes of Pete Montana (Ralph Ince). Joe, his long-time friend, tags along to Chicago, but increasingly expresses his desire to leave the gang and spend his time on his major love, dancing, as well as attending to the ladies he’s sure to find in the city. In a sense, we see in both men at a turning point, a kind of beginning where they desire to move out of their youthful commitments into their adult lives.

      Rico has no interest in girls, suggesting they confuse a man’s mind, the same way as he views alcohol, which he refuses to drink. He insists Joe remain with him, and dance as a sideline, what today he might describe as a “hobby.”

      In short, the writers and director have already set up a strange set of interlinkings that one might never have imagined for the macho-permeated genre as most people perceive it today. Rico’s close relationship and even dependency on Joe as his “front” man (clearly a possible sexual term as well), and Joe’s desire to dance, particularly with his partner Olga Stassoff (Glenda Farrell), a woman with whom he obviously has previously had a relationship most definitely reads queer. Strangely, it is this rather perverse triangle of human relationships that is at the center of this film throughout.

      However, we almost lose sight of Joe for long periods of time as Little Caesar serves out his time first with Sam Vettori, finally determining that he has enough backing to ease him out of control and take over; and then, after being threatened by Little Arnie Lorch (Maurice Black), head of the nightclub wherein Joe dances, he intimidates him so fully that Lorch heads off with his henchmen to Detroit.

      The only time that Joe has been pulled back into Rico’s control is also the second most notable scene in the movie, when Rico, still working for Vettori, robs Lorch’s nightclub, using Joe as the lobby lookout. It is at that very moment when he encounters Crime Commissioner Alvin McClure (Landers Stevens) about to leave the place having just discovered that Lorch is involved with the gangs. Little Caesar takes the opportunity to kill him, thus hoping to relieve the gangs from the Commissioner’s determination to destroy their kind.

      Local Sergeant/Lieutenant Thomas Flaherty (Thomas E. Jackson), however, takes over the job of bringing down the gangs, focusing particularly on Rico with the same passion that McClure had focused on Big Boy, Montano, and Vettori.

       If having brought down two major gang leaders is not enough for Rico, the overlord, Big Boy (Sidney Blackmer), asks Rico to take over for Pete Montana as well. We never discover what happens to Montana, but in the very next scene Rico is in charge. And it is when he is finally at his apogee, seeming to have found a new companion in his henchman Otero (George E. Stone) that he insists that Joe return to him.

       His intentions are only slightly coded, the script covering his real reasons by suggesting that he now wants Joe around him again because his old friend knows too much. He tells Otero that Flaherty may have been trying to “put the heat” on Joe and Olga about identifying who killed the Commissioner. After all, Rico has previously brutally gunned down his former driver Tony Passa (William Collier, Jr.) for the very same reason—the driver, like so many others, finally so terrified of the depth of his involvement that he is on his way to confess to a priest. But the astute viewer realizes there are other explanations for Rico demanding Joe come back to him.

     Just before Little Caesar meets with Big Boy, he seems quite close to Otero, even coyly inviting him into his bed for a conversation about his future plans, clearly a psychosexual indication that he might be ready to establish a closer relationship with his new underling. But Otero is primarily a “yes man,” having none of the honesty and intelligence of Joe Massara. And although he is comely, he is, like Rico himself, short in statue with none of Joe’s good looks, and certainly lacks the memories that Joe and Rico have from their long past together.

       When he finally takes over the Northside territory of Joe Montana as well, Rico fills his apartment with rococo and gilded furnishings, and—after an odd intertitle suggests, “Rico continued to take care of himself, his hair and his gun, with excellent results.”—he proudly struts down the small staircase, well dressed, calling out, “Otero, what did I tell you, huh?” He laughs. “I knew it was coming. I knew he had his eyes on me all the time. And let me tell you something Otero: It’s not only Pete Montana that’s through but Big Boy himself. He ain’t what he used to be…”

       Otero answers, “Sure boss, pretty soon you’ll be running the whole town.”

       “Otero, you said a mouthful.”

       It’s at that point that his doorman announces that there’s a guy with the name of Massera out there who wants to see you. Otero is obviously disturbed by the news, asking what Joe wants since he hasn’t been seen around there for months.

       Rico answers that he sent for him, explaining that he wants to know if Flaherty has been working on Joe which he’ll find out after he has a little talk with him. But we quickly see through his camouflage. When Joe strolls in, quite impressed with the new place, Rico beams in appreciation. He immediately sends Otero off, the man easily ready to leave since he believes the conversation is all about finding out if Joe has squealed.

       And at first the conversation seems to be centered around those very issues. “I thought it’d be kind of nice to have talk together, like old times.” Joe tells Rico he’s looking good, and Rico returns the compliment. Again, he brings up the notion that “dancing’s all right for a sideline. But it ain’t my idea of a man’s game.”

       Joe is immediately set on edge, knows what’s coming. “And I kind of took pride in you Joe. Brought you into the gang, pushed you ahead. But now you’re turning into a sissy.”

       Joe asks him can’t he just let go, keep going along with him. But Rico insists he doesn’t want to, that they started out as pals and they have to keep going along as before. It’s not the gang he talking about, we perceive, but their friendship, their relationship. Joe is in fact more than a friend serving Rico’s purposes almost as a trophy wife, a man he wants at his side forever. “I need you Joe,” he implores, “Someone I can trust.”

        Still, Joe insists he quit the gang.

       For Rico, it clearly isn’t the gang: “You didn’t quit. Nobody ever quit me!” It is himself he’s talking about, it is the relationship between them somewhat like a married couple that he’s referring to, not that of a henchman to his leader.

        If he begins to attack Olga, even threatening to kill her, it is not, we realize because he’s truly afraid that she or Joe will tell the police what they know, but that she is interfering with his own relationship with his “friend.” “It’s she who’s made a softie out of you!” he insists. When Joe pleads for him to leave Olga out of this, that he loves her, Rico cynically responds, “Love. Soft stuff.”

        A minute later, Rico gets a telephone call from Big Boy who clearly suggests another man to serve as Rico’s main partner, but “Little Caesar” insists he doesn’t want him. “I got a kid by the name of Joe Massara that will help me.” When he returns to the room, Joe’s gone.

        In some respects, this is the major scene of the movie, the moment that Rico has been living for all along, a moment in which he had always hoped to share with the man he loves, Joe. And we suddenly recognize just how much it has meant to him, that dream, and in realizing that, we must admit that Joe means more to him perhaps that even the struggles he has undergone to attain his wealth.

        Although he’s threatened Joe and Olga both, it’s all been to keep Joe near him; now with Joe gone he can only plot revenge, like a spurned husband.

       When Joe returns to Olga he orders her to pack immediately, planning to go on the run, himself knowing, perhaps for the first time, that he is Rico’s fetish—and now his target as well. But Olga knows that wherever they might run, it would never be far enough, and calls Flaherty to tell him that Joe is ready to talk about who killed Alvin McClure.

       Both the major forces of the film, the worlds of the gangster and the police suddenly move forward to converge at the very point where the film begin: Rico and Joe sitting in a room together plotting out the future. But when they meet up this time it for the last time, an end.

        Rico reaches Joe’s apartment first, with Otero as his backup. Realizing what his happening Rico now has no choice but to kill Joe; but when he puts the gun to his heart, he cannot pull trigger, so deeply does he love the man. He is now the “softie,” the one in love who’s he’s mocked, turning to leave and even stopping Otero from shooting by pushing away his hand, the bullet only grazing Joe.

       The police chase begins Rico’s inevitable fall as he winds up, finally, in a flophouse, stupidly falling for Flaherty’s newspaper challenge that Little Caesar is “yellow,” afraid of facing what all his other mean have accepted in their arrests.

       The final shootout. killing Rico, with his horrible recognition that all his ambitions were for nothing— "Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?"—occurs inevitably under a sign announcing the happily dancing couple of the normal heterosexual world, Joe and Olga. Rico’s perverted world—mean, violent, homocentric—has been replaced by law and order, but strangely, one might almost say queerly, represented by a sissy and seemingly “foreign” woman who entertain their audiences in dance. It’s clear that it their popularity, the musical comedy and the gangster film do after all have some deep affiliation in Hollywood during the Depression. And perhaps it was that very link to that world in Joe that Rico—just like most of the audience for this film—was truly seeking, to finally sit back assured of enough money to enjoy his life. But only Joe could have shown him how to do that.

 

Los Angeles, February 24, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (February 2023).