The Boys in the Band

One of the many astonishing effects this film posses: Violence becomes Warmth, and warmth does not become heat, or fear, any other kind of emotion in the narrow sense, nor violence.

Loved everything about it. Especially Gorman's performance.

Pauline Kael: "It's like the gathering of bitchy ladies in THE WOMEN [...] They crack jokes while their hearts are breaking. The message appears to be that the spirit of MGM in the 40s still lives in the hearts and jokes of homosexuals." Still, there is an underlying bitter melancholy to it that one doesn't forget, and is, in the end, rather touching. Cliff Gorman is especially good.

İstanbul Film Festivali. William Friedkin seçkilerinde ilk film. Zamanın yine çok ötesinde. Diyaloglar ve oyunculuklar olağanüstü.

I'm of two minds about this film. Mart Crowley's play is an important one, and it's good to see it preserved with a screenplay by Crowley and all of it's original cast. I also think there's something oppressively about the way Friedkin films it, and many of the performances are not bad, but are bad film acting. Nelson, in particular, is very mannered and much too big. This isn't helped by the way Friedkin shoots everything in tight close-ups. It's a film I admired, but didn't really like.

Highly theatrical, contrived, self-amused and unconvincing. For one, it gets tired fast when every other line of dialogue (and this film has nothing but) seems specifically designed to regurgitate the news that the characters are gay. This continues even while each of them starts a random altercation with the other for no good reason.

Em honra do editor Jerry Greenberg (1936 - 2017). BlurayRip Yify/YTS

This stagy style full of back and forth dialogue is right up my alley, which helps smooth out some of the rough edges for me. While the characters are a bit grating, they're equally entertaining and over the runtime they get enough development for their humanity to show through. It's at its best when the drama is heightened and the characters are playing off one another, the final half hour in particular, has some great scenes that drown out the missteps.

Cattiest movie ever. I guess that has to be worth something, along with the first examples (that I'm aware of) of a mainstream film making extensive use of the words "faggot" and "cunt" as well as introducing that oft-recycled line "Who do you have to fuck to get a drink around here?". Still, it's way too stagy and needlessly antagonistic. Friedkin, clearly, was still finding his sea legs here. He would shortly get much better but the general air of nastiness, so far, hasn't left him.

87.000

Lovely screaming queens!

87.500

"The sizzle of the bon mot-tossing ensemble, intact from the stage original, is bracing and fuels the film's momentum." - Bil Weber

Careful but claustrophobic filming of a Broadway play, which at the screen's closer quarters becomes overpowering well before the end.

One of the first and best gay-experience films