I recently watched this classic again. It's probably been 20 years since the first time that I saw it and was curious what IMDb viewers had written about it. I was a bit surprised to see the comments on this film as being objectionable. I don't think that the other reviewer was considering the time. That Tom Lee turned out to be straight despite his less manly habits was the only way that the movie could have been made in those repressed days.
When I first saw this film, I was in the throes of my own coming-out. I loved it and didn't find it objectionable in the least. Here was a movie where someone (other than me) was a loner and different than the popular boys and was the hero of the story. What I had forgotten (or not picked up on at the time) were some of the supporting performances. The supportive room-mate was brave and although he did eventually give way to the pressure, how many folks today would have been as brave?
I also saw the housemaster in a different light. He had always seemed to be a big bully to me, but today I really heard his wife's complaints that they had been married less than a year and that they hardly ever touched anymore. Add that to the way that he seems to spend a lot of time `playing' with bare-chested young men and that he never remarried after his wife left him and one has to wonder if he weren't in a closet of his own.
I think that this movie has stood the test of time better than most and is in no way objectionable although it does describe an objectionable time. Finally Deborah Kerr's final line is one of the great gay line's of all time. Many a gay man has slept with someone and in his mind thought "Years from now when you talk about this - and you will - be kind"
When I first saw this film, I was in the throes of my own coming-out. I loved it and didn't find it objectionable in the least. Here was a movie where someone (other than me) was a loner and different than the popular boys and was the hero of the story. What I had forgotten (or not picked up on at the time) were some of the supporting performances. The supportive room-mate was brave and although he did eventually give way to the pressure, how many folks today would have been as brave?
I also saw the housemaster in a different light. He had always seemed to be a big bully to me, but today I really heard his wife's complaints that they had been married less than a year and that they hardly ever touched anymore. Add that to the way that he seems to spend a lot of time `playing' with bare-chested young men and that he never remarried after his wife left him and one has to wonder if he weren't in a closet of his own.
I think that this movie has stood the test of time better than most and is in no way objectionable although it does describe an objectionable time. Finally Deborah Kerr's final line is one of the great gay line's of all time. Many a gay man has slept with someone and in his mind thought "Years from now when you talk about this - and you will - be kind"