Sick and Dirty: Hollywood’s Gay Golden Age and the Making of Modern Queerness

Sick and Dirty by Michael Koresky delves into several films from "classic Hollywood" that skirted the production code of the time. Bracketed between two versions of the same play, both by the same director but 26 years apart, key films are analyzed both as texts and for the people who wrote them.

If you want good film analysis backed by solid research, you will enjoy each chapter in this book. Unlike some previous, and quite good, books about queerness in classic Hollywood, this expands from simply being about homosexuality as homosexuality to the broader feelings of exclusion and being silenced that people beyond the queer community can relate to. That is part of the reason these films speak to so many people from all walks of life. Our show more basic humanity and how we can often abuse people out of ignorance and fear.

Koresky also points out that sometimes, maybe most of the time, leaving things unsaid, only partially seen, and hinted at can make the moviegoing experience more enjoyable. It allows us to read ourselves into the story more easily since we have fewer absolutes about each character and situation.

For film history buffs more generally, you will find a lot of excellent background material on the writers, directors, and actors involved in these productions. The writing is excellent and makes transitions between someone's personal life and what we see on screen flow naturally. As readers we don't have to completely change gears when he shifts focus, he walks us easily to the next point.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. show less

This is an interesting survey of Code-era queer movies, which of course means Code-era queer coded movies. And it's a fascinating look at how artists maneuver around obstacles to get their vision made, as well as what happens when they can't quite manage that. I enjoyed it, I learned things, and I didn't find it depressing, so it's basically a huge win in the history of queer cinema department.

A wonderful book, but very much misrepresented by its subtitle and accompanying PR babble. We are revisiting four movies, extensively, and appropriately, while pretending to explore the entire history of post-Code "queerness" through 1961.
If the publisher had not inflated one's expectations of the book, one would be more than happy with Koresky's explorations of these iconic films.