Herbert Lom's Character
Do you think he's supposed to be gay?
shareNo. He's more sensitive because he's been given a hard time and he identifies with Baker's character in the same way. They're just kindred spirits is all.
shareI take your point but he cxertainly gives him some steamy looks.
shareHeh, that's as maybe- and I can certainly see where you might get that impression from, now I think about it, but I reckon he is really just filled with love for "hizza Lute-see".
I must admit, I've grown interested in Mr Lom in recent years. He's probably one of the most uncelebrated actors in the world. It's like he was always the bridesmaid, never the bride. He's been in so much and a lot of it is really classic stuff. Yet whilst he's played fairly high-profile characters in those particular films he never quite rose to the rank of an A-lister, for some reason. I mean, he is a really, really good actor with such a range of roles behind him and I think it's only right he gets the props he deserves.
I'm sure he'll get recognition when he's no longer with us, as is the way these days. Perhaps Tintin Quarantino should bring him to the public's attention again; he deserves far more than what he's got.
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'He was my special friend'
shareYes, that phrase always concerned me too, but I think it was said with more innocence then. I think it's only become a euphemism in more recent times.
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Maybe he fancied both of them!
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I think if the film were made today, you might have a point. But, look at Captain Renault's dialog about Rick Blaine in Casablanca. "...well, if I were a woman, and I were not around, I should be in love with Rick. But, what a fool I am talking to a beautiful woman about another man." And, Rick, the final line in the movie, "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship." Did the writers mean for this dialog to mean these two men fancied each other?
"Two more swords and I'll be Queen of the Monkey People." Roseanne
ProfessorPeach, Herbert Lom was in one of my favorite films, Night and the City. He was terrific as the criminal, Christo, who loved his father.
"Two more swords and I'll be Queen of the Monkey People." Roseanne
Cheers, Noir- I don't think I know that one (I'll look out for it though). Yeah, he's a brill actor. I really think ho ought to be recognised much more.
shareThanks, Bart, yes the film is the only few film noir I've seen set in London, not the US. If you catch it, hope you enjoy it.
"Two more swords and I'll be Queen of the Monkey People." Roseanne
Its interesting.I mean I think that Geno saw him in a platonick light.And "Speacial friend" Can make one wonder.But it was made at a diffrent time.Heck the word"Gay" back them ment happy.Also Geno knew his English lanquedg,it can be that certain words might come out difrently.Instead of best friend it could come out as speacial friend
shareI think that is the way to look at dialog in older movies. Some of the silents had questionable visuals, without dialog, like Wings with Clara Bow; her boyfriends certainly had a relationship. But, I didn't see or hear it in this film.
"Two more swords and I'll be Queen of the Monkey People." Roseanne
I still don't think it had any deeper meaning than the fact that Yately was Gino's "special friend" because Gino seems a bit of an outsider to the general group and Yately too is one, but on reading notes about the film it seems that an intimation of a "deeper relationship" has been read into by other students of the film.
Like I say, I think it's innocent in that respect but who knows what the writer of the film was thinking? If he was a smart guy- and I suspect he was, seeing other aspects of his work- this may even have been deliberately ambiguous.
I suspect Gino was portrayed as much more emotional because he was Italian. The British, in the Fifties, saw themselves as cold and detached. Gino was a warm Mediterranean character meant to show a different sort of person altogether (as the British pigeon-holed Italians as 'emotional'). To portray Gino as gay is ludicrous. He was passionate about the girl all through the movie. The fact that the girl 'fancied' toughie Yateley rather than the caring Italian man just pointed up the pathos that "nice guys come last".
Presumably, 'nice guys' have to be gay nowadays. We don't seem to have moved forward in the last fifty years, just sideways.
Also watch out for him in North-West Frontier, a 1959 adventure film with Kenneth More. It's a fantastic film, and Herbert Lom gets to play an intelligent baddie. As usual he gets killed at the end.
shareTo be fair, in modern terms it did seem that his help to Baker's character went beyond the call of duty, as this is a guy who seems hell bent on making trouble really and not originally for any noble reasons. I must say when the two first met in Baker's room it did strike me as having a gay subtext but that's the only time and it came more from Baker really.
Bit of a shame is so that the gay guy gets to crash and burn if that were the case, if there was a subtext (and I don't know there was) it would be true to the era.
Oh sure, most of the characters in Hell Drivers are gay. Sid James and Gordon Jackson had a steamy sex scene which was cut out by the homophobic censors of the time, as was a tender and moving scene in which William Hartnell tells Sean Connery how much he loves him, ending with a passionate kiss. This would have been one of the classics of gay cinema if the gay-haters hadn't destroyed it.