Dry Ice Factory

I'm writing about this movie in honor of Gay Pride weekend, because it's one of the gayest movies of the silent era.

I'm not sure why it isn't more famous than it is. It's dismissed by some as campy or artificial, but it seems to me that people either aren't recognizing that it's Decadent or don't care for that style. The movie is based on Oscar Wilde's play, and I guess the play isn't well-liked either. Even there, some people complain that a silent film is the wrong vehicle for Wilde's verbal wit, but this fails to recognize the perverse uber-romanticism that I suppose the movie takes from Wilde and that is very suitable indeed to an image-based medium. An early title card even puts it in words: The Mystery of Love is greater than the Mystery of Death. For my money, this is a strikingly gorgeous treatment of the story, lovingly produced by a group of theatrical decadents led by the Russian emigre, Alla Nazimova.

( Gay Old Hollywood ... )