Alonso Duralde

The subtitle calls this "a celebration of LGBTQ+ representation and preseverance in film." It's a survey of the major films and personalities who make up LGBT history in (mostly) American cinema.

The book is organized chronologically, with chapters divided roughly by decade. Each chapter is divided into two main sections, "The Films" and "Icons," giving capsule summaries of the movies or biographies of the people. Those sections are followed by "other films of note" and "other icons of note" show more listings, which run rapid-fire through supplemental choices, summarizing movies in a sentence and careers in a couple of key credits. There are occasional sidebars, mini-essays of a page or two on major themes of a particular decade.

The individual entries are brief, with most lasting only four or five paragraphs. Duralde does a superb job of cramming a lot of information into limited space, but the prose never feels rushed or overly info-dump-y. He doesn't limit herself to positive depictions of the community (the first half of the book would pretty much vanish if he did), and is careful to place each entry in its historical context. The "icons" section of the 1930s chapter, for instance, ends with a section on "the sissies," a group of character actors famous for playing effeminate gay-coded men -- Edward Everett Horton, Franklin Pangborn, Eric Blore -- and Duralde notes that even today, those portrayals remain controversial within the community.

As the title suggests, the focus is mostly on American film, though there are a few entries on particularly important movies and people from international cinema.

Turner Classic Movies, working with Running Press, has been publishing a series of glossy coffee-table/reference books for some years now; this is the third in a series of books on historic representation of minority communities, following Donald Bogle's Hollywood Black and Luis I. Reyes's Viva Hollywood. Duralde's book is an excellent overview, and it leaves me eager to read the Bogle and Reyes books. show less

In this comprehensive must-have guide to queer film, Advocate deputy arts and entertainment editor Alonso Duralde presents 101 films that will resonate soundly with gay audiences for reasons good, better, and outrageous!