I read somewhere that Milland's character in the novel was struggling with guilty feelings over his homosexual tendencies.. could someone who's read the novel comment on this? What role did Jane Wyman's character play in the book? Did he even have a girlfriend?
shareI have not read the book and knew very little about the film, but the opening scene between Don and Wick had some homosexual undertones to it, I can't quite place it. Maybe it was Wick's sophisticated demeanor. Maybe it was that they were going on a trip together or that he was packing Don's clothes for him. It did not strike me that they were brothers until it was mentioned. Evern after that though, when Wick said "I've put up with it for the last six years," it didn't sound like a brother saying it but a lover.
I wonder if in the book, Don is not a very "straight."
apart from the fact they've got the same surname (look at the credits!), there's references to them being brothers throughout the film!!!
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Yeah, the two guys going to the country was kind of gay, I also didn't think they seemed too brotherly. It was also gay when Don wanted his girl to go to the concert with Wick - who wasnt into it. A straight Don wouldn't have done that and a straight Wick would have jumped at the opportunity.
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Wow. Don wanted Wick to go to the concert so he could get drunk in his apartment. Watch the movie.
shareYeah, it seemed to me to show just how far he would go to get these two out of his life for a couple hours so he could have some quality time with the bottle. He'd even throw his girl to his brother.
sharePerhaps you're misremembering, or perhaps the person who wrote that was.
Either way, it's obviously "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051459/ they were thinking of, although the gay element was rather played down in the film compared to the play.
I didn't notice any "homosexual guilt" on Milland's part, but the sarcastic male nurse was awfully fey.
shareNo, it's The Lost Weekend - I know more about it now, there's a situation where the character mulls over some homosexual misadventures, and the male nurse figures into the story prominently by comforting him and telling him he "knows who he is" (which might be just reference to his alcoholism, at that) - that the nurse is still pretty much the same character in the movie gives us the clue that Wilder was aware of all this inner tension.
But still, (just like in Tennessee Williams projects) the homosexual "tendencies" were downplayed to the point of dismissal in the film.. I just think it's very interesting to have another level on the character's psyche, that maybe his drinking is as much an escape from having to pretend he loves the whole "normal life" thing, the pretty girlfriend who he's expected to marry, the promising career, etc. To have an actual biological reason not to want the pretty girl is a killer for a "normal guy" in the forties..
I've noticed that in the Billy Wilder films I've seen, there's often some sort of sexual ambiguity in them. In addition to the nurse in THE LOST WEEKEND, there are Fred MacMurray and Edward G. Robinson's characters in DOUBLE INDEMNITY, who are always telling each other, "I love you." In STALAG 17, there's the prisoner's dance in the barracks (Harvey Lembeck even "dresses" like a woman). And, of course, there's the whole cross-dressing issue in SOME LIKE IT HOT. For the most part, the scenes act as comic relief, so maybe that's just Wilder's sense of humor at work.
shareWhatever the case, overt themes of homosexual guilt would have made this a very different film from the one it is. I agree that Wilder's sense of humour was at work throughout the films you mentioned. I suppose we could debate till kingdom come whether the disappearance between book and film of homosexual guilt served to tighten and refocus the plot or to jolly up the whole thing so it could gain wide acceptance.
shareDon is so in love with the bottle that he's not sexually interested in the very attractive Helen. That's a far more reasonable explanation.
Even if the character in the book had leanings, it's hard to see in the film Wilder directed. Billy seems to be saying, Look what booze'll do to you! Even if some babe like Jane Wyman is interested in you, you won't want to or won't be able to respond in kind.
Sounds like Wilder was in the closet
shareNo, the OP is correct. In the novel, the main character's homosexual guilt drove him to alcoholism. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was not the only bowdlerized adaptation.
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I read the book (quite a few years ago) and yes, there is a theme of homosexuality in it. At the time it was published (1944), some people thought that suppressed homosexuality was the cause of alcoholism, and the book is quite explicit (for its time) about sexuality. This theory never had widespread support though, and it's pretty much forgotten now. In the movie, they left all this out: there's no direct suggestion that Don Birnham has any homosexual issues. But the character of the male nurse ("Bim") is taken from the novel, where he is explicitly gay (in the movie, he just comes off as somewhat effeminate).
shareYes, It been ages since I read the book, but I do remember a scene where Bim, who apparently had excellent gaydar, tells Don that if he doesn't come to terms with his own homosexuality, he'll end up drinking himself to death. Don decides he'd rather be dead than be "like that." I wouldn't call it homosexual guilt, though. I don't think guilt was really involved. It was rather fierce determination to suppress those feelings at any cost, a refusal to accept himself as he really was. Personally, I found that a much more persuasive reason for his alcoholism than a bad case of writer's block.
I also suspect that when this film was made, "somewhat effeminate" (not to mention "male nurse") would have been seen as a clear sign of homosexuality. I thought it was interesting that though the film necessarily eliminated the theme of homosexuality (a gay protagonist would probably have gotten it banned), it retained the character of Bim. Perhaps it was the filmmakers' way of subtly acknowledging an issue that they weren't allowed to address directly.
What a stupid ass thread this whole thing is. It's about an alcoholic man who struggles with his drinking, not with his sexual orientation. Don't make an issue out of something that doesn't exist.
share<<Don't make an issue out of something that doesn't exist.>>
Thank you!
I don't think people are making an issue of something that doesn't exist. I too first interpreted the brother as a "friend", and Wick is not revealed to be Don's brother until some considerable way into the film. Wilder is a smart filmmaker and does not do things like that without a reason.
(You could also consider the repeated motif of getting the cigarette the wrong way round in this context...)
I didn't know there was a homosexual theme in the book, but it doesn't surprise me, and is further evidence that the "something" does "exist".
There was considerable reference in the programme notes I saw to Wilder having to tone down the movie to make it acceptable to the Hays Office. I couldn't see what the writer was getting at, but if there was a homosexual theme those comments would make a lot more sense.
I'm reminded of Edward Dmytryk's "Crossfire" of two years later where the murder of a homosexual was sublimated into an anti-semitic crime to make the movie acceptable to the censors and, one supposes, the public.
Incidentally, "fierce determination to suppress those feelings at any cost, a refusal to accept himself as he really was" strikes me as a pretty precise description of homosexual guilt.
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yeah, I get a little tired when people want to say that movies made from books are allowed to be completely different animals. If the character was homosexual in the book, and you can find even a little evidence to support that he was in the movie, it's at least worth discussing.
interesting comment above, too, that homeosexuality was considered a cause of alcoholism. A constant hole in your soul you can't fill with anything but booze... if you ever think straight you think "deviant" which makes you hate yourself since society tells you all the time that you're wrong, so try not to think straight: what better way than to be drunk and kill the true inner expression?
Was he also a writer in the book? Sorry I still haven't read it, sucks I know.
wow, excellent analysis! I thought it was jarring that no one mentioned they were brothers until so far in... and the cigarette thing is great too
shareHere we go...no matter what movie I look up, 95% of the time there is a thread asking if or claiming the character was gay. The way people talk, 95% of the population is either gay or a closeted gay. Give it a rest!!!!
Oh, and every 30's through 60's film was based on a book that could say out loud that someone was gay. With the morays of those decades, it's a wonder reading didn't go out of style...with all these books having gay themes. Sheesh!
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hahah.. well did you read the book? if not.. this is a comparison, so what are you bringing to the discussion? homosexuality exists, existed, has always been depicted in art, in multiple covert ways. Get over it.
shareHas anyone thought that maybe the film, and it's director, took a different course than the book did? I didn't read the book, but not once did I interpret that Don or his brother, or the male nurse was homosexual. Don was clearly madly in love with Helen in the film, but couldn't give up the booze, or had enough confidence to go and get her.
Maybe if they made a remake of this movie, they can go strictly by the book, so to speak. I'll probably pass on that one though. I hate remakes.
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Like you've read the book.
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Uh, no. And we're not going away.
The scene between the brothers was filmed as if they were a gay couple.
The nurse did everything but write the word gay on his forehead.
As for the book, I haven't read it (I prefer film). But I did flip through it, and quickly found this quote in the first section "The Start", when he sits next to a young man and woman and later steals the purse: "... did she lay her head on his stomach, feel his chest and thighs, was he big? The questions suddenly seemed important, they were all that mattered in the room--important, dangerous and exciting. He felt reckless and elated, larger than life. If she were not there, if the young man were alone, he would advance and find out a thing or two ... It was all one to him, for the moment he was like a god who could serve either at will."
The author was known to be bisexual, or gay. If you have a complaint, take it up with him.
And I'm so sick of people complaining about people who look for gay subtext in old movies. They almost sound like being gay is wrong. I'm gay and I love finding gay subtext in classic films, even if it wasn't intended by the film makers. Who cares? Let people interpret movies any way they want. :)
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It's very simple:
Anything produced before 2017 (TV shows, movies, news, books, etc.) in which men, women, whites, blacks, Asians, Hispanics, & LGBT's are not EQUALLY represented & portrayed is to be destroyed and never mentioned again.
(Don't forget to incinerate any money that shows a slave-owning US President)
You're right. This isn't the book, and it isn't the play. A movie stands on its own; the theater doesn't pass out books or play scripts along with the tickets as viewers' guides. People should put prior versions aside and evaluate the movie on its own merits - period.
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People drink themselves to death because they are addicts. Its an allergy of the body and an obsession of the mind. There are gay and straight addicts and everything in between.
Perhaps in the 40s, when there had to be a "reason," and if addicts would just discover that reason and "come to their senses" and see all they have to live for, they would, like Don, miraculously recover.
It doesnt work that way.
There's a blurb on wikipedia that Wilder made this film to assist Raymond Chandler who had an alcoholic relapse during production of Double Indemnity. I doubt Wilder was concerned about homosexuality.
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Obviously, people are alcoholics for numerous reasons, and the guilt of being gay in the 1940s could have contributed to many people's alcoholism. The Don of the movie is straight, but it would be inaccurate to say that Wilder was completely unconcerned with homosexuality. Wilder was a man who knew a lot of actors and who had lived in the Weimar Republic for several years. He had to at least know a few gay people and know how to depict homosexuality in his movies without angering the censors, and Wilder does that with Bim. It is hard to imagine that Bim isn't gay. Wilder is good at getting actors to be manly men if their part calls for it, so it's hard to imagine that Wilder allowed the actor who plays Bim to act so fey without intending for the character to come off as gay. Obviously, Wilder's depiction of Bim's sexuality is purposeful.
shareSeems as though viewers on these forums, find homosexuality in about every film they watch. It's as if they approach a film, looking for it. If they don't find it, they'll create it.
got a problem with that, bigot?
shareNo, not a bigot. It just seems there's an over awareness of a large group of viewers, where they go into a film looking for gay characters, when the plot doesn't have any reliance on the sexual preference of the character in question. If anything, it indicates homophobia. So perhaps they are the ones you should be calling a bigot.
Okay, I recognize that "eel" is right, that there are those who find gay characters in every movie - I've seen, for example, the argument that Rick and Louis in Casablanca are gay (Ilsa would be so surprised), presumably because at the end they go off together to start a "beautiful friendship". Still "eel" also seems to be suggesting that ALL contentions that there are gay characters in films are made up. THAT is quite untrue. This discussion here concerns the fact that Don in The Lost Weekend, in the book, struggled with homosexuality. That's not dreamed up; it's in the book. I'm not sure if Wilder wanted it to be that way in the film, but censors axed it, or if he simply changed the plot on this point (either in anticipation of the censors or because he knew it wouldn't go over with the film audiences). In any case, no reference to Don's homosexuality is made and nothing hinted at. However, Bim, the nurse in the alcoholics' ward, acts very much like a gay man. Now, he does nothing overtly sexual, but he acts, talks and interacts in manner that one associates with gays. I don't believe that was just a coincidence.
shareI'm also tired of people who bring up "the book" in an attempt to establish some sort of intellectual superiority. I've probably watched this film a half dozen times over the last 60 years or so, and have never had the urge to rummage through libraries and used book stores looking for "the book".
I only concern myself with what is presented in the film.
I don't deconstruct films looking for things that may or may not be there. This film is known for it's exploration of alcoholism, not homosexuality.
You're the kind of audience member from that era. Subtlety flew over their heads. That's how director's like Wilder and Hitchcock had to be clever to go over the censors.
shareWhen Don was thrown into the drunk tank, the character, Bim, the male nurse, is introduced. The first time I saw this film, I taken by complete surprise by the way Bim was played: it seemed to me blatantly obvious that he was meant to be gay. How did that get by the censors in the 1940's?
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