The ghost of Rock Hudson, an icon of masculinity in the 1950s and '60s, appears to look back at his career in Mark Rappaport's 1992 essay film. The director turns to actor Eric Farr, who appears alongside over 30 grainy, second-generation film clips, to interrogate Hudson's on-screen persona (Farr has similar coloring, but dissimilar voice and features). Unlike a conventional documentary, there are no still photographs or interviews with friends and family.
Rappaport concentrates exclusively on Hudson's movies, particularly the trilogy he made with Doris Day and Tony Randall from 1959-1964: Pillow Talk, Lover Come Back, and Send Me No Flowers. Considering that Hudson is now best known for the movies he made with Douglas Sirk, it's a tactical move on Rappaport's part, since he presents the actor primarily as a closeted gay man in Hollywood, in addition to one of the most famous—and mostly famously surprising—casualties of the AIDS crisis.
Hudson's Day-Randall trilogy offers numerous gay references and gay-coded characters. Though it's possible that this was merely coincidental, since movies of the era tended to be coy about such things, due as much to the production code as to then-contemporary morés, Rappaport makes a convincing case that the actor almost appeared to be winking at the audience.
At the time of its release, Rock Hudson's Home Movies served as one of the key texts of the New Queer Cinema, a precursor to Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's 1995 documentary The Celluloid Closet with its panoramic look at LGBTQ representation in American cinema. From today's perspective, Rappaport's film seems a little limiting, since there was more to Hudson than the tension between his image and his sexual orientation, but the director certainly makes a number of intriguing connections.
Rappaport would follow up with a 1995 film about Jean Seberg that presents the actress (played by Mary Beth Hurt) as a more multidimensional individual, one not defined strictly by her sexual orientation. Three of the four bonus films included with the main feature adhere to a similar template in which an actor or director—by way of another actor—narrates their life story through the films they made or in which they appeared. They include John Garfield, Sergei Eisenstein, and Conrad Veidt.
The 2016 Eisenstein film, Sergei/Sir Gay, also examines the Russian filmmaker's rumored homosexuality, but the other films explore different avenues, like Garfield's Jewish background or Veidt's Jewish associations, just as Nazis were taking over the German film industry (due strictly to his marriage, they classified him as a Jew).
Blue Streak, a short from 1971, is the sole effort that fails to hit its mark as Rappaport alternates between static shots of a naked, mixed-gender gathering with voiceover passages recounting graphic sexual experiences and suggestive words that flash across the screen between readings. The other four films, including the feature, provide greater value through the director's increasingly refined combination of social criticism and cinema history--leavened with a welcome serving of humor.
What type of library programming could use this title?
Library programming involving LGBTQ representation on screen could benefit from this title.
What kind of film series would this documentary fit in?
This documentary would fit into a film series dedicated to the career of Rock Hudson.
What kind of academic library film collection would this title be suitable for?
This title would be suitable for majors in gender identity, film studies, and queer studies.