Amazon.com: Swoon was the rage of the 1992 film festival circuit, as well as part of a wave of gay-themed films that used independent channels to reach the mainstream audience. Written and directed by Tom Kalin and with a cast of mostly unknowns, the movie looks back at the Leopold-Loeb thrill-killing of 1924. Shooting in black and white and using impressionistic imagery, Kalin creates a hallucinatory mix of dream and drama, while giving the story a homosexual perspective that makes it seem new. Where earlier films (such as Hitchcock's Rope and Richard Fleischer's Compulsion) only hinted that these characters might be gay, Kalin takes it as a given and examines the pair's treatment by the police and press based on their sexuality. Might be too arty for some tastes, but others find it intriguingly challenging. --Marshall Fine
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Rating: - Beauty and the beasts
Tom Kalin's 1992 film is a landmark of what Ruby Rich famously called "the new Queer Cinema," and though it's filled with flaws, it's so gorgeous and haunting that it stays with you long after you've forgotten other films that are objectively better. Like ROPE or COMPULSION before it, SWOON seems to dramatize what was known for decades as the Crime of the Century, the morder of fourteen year-old Bobby Franks by two brilliant and wealthy Chicago college students, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, who wanted to prove they could commit the perfect crime. Other version of the story have made the homoerotic nature of the relationship between Leopold and Loeb only implied: here Kalin makes it the absolute center of the story, and the film is as much about how frustrated two beautiful and gifted young gay men are when they cannot express their sexuality openly but have the money and the leisure to do almost anything else. ... Read More
Rating: - A Monumental Film
"SWOON"
A monumental film
Amos Lassen and Cinema Pride
"Swoon" (Strand Releasing) is not a new film but it is one that if you haven't seen it, you should. If you have seen it, now is time for you to revisit. "Swoon" ushered in the age of what was called in 1992 the "new queer cinema". The movie is based on the scandalous murder trial of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb--a trial that had been written about across America in headlines and had already had a book, "Compulsion" and two movies (Hitchcock's "Rope" and "Compulsion") made about it. But the story had never before looked at from the queer point of view. Tom Kalin took the story, studied the facts, and created this beautiful black and white film about what really happened. It stars Craig Chester ("Adam and Steve") and Daniel Schlachet. I finally succumbed to that little voice inside of me that told me to buy it and I am glad ... Read More
Rating: - Trying to be all things to all people
It turns out to be mediocre to everyone.
Swoon feels something like a rather lavish PBS documentary with some stylized, artsy murmuring and elaborate costumes and sets (except for the rather glaring touch-tone phones.) As a documentary, it feels forced, and needs lots of narrative ("On July 15, we this or that and I felt this or that.") However it leaves out any attempt at an examination about why these two men behaved the way they did and what the shaping forces were that created these arrogant, outwardly-polite murderers.
As a presumably entertaining movie, it lurches from one scene to another and lacks congruity and basics of story-telling (like a beginning or an end.) It is interesting, and there are glimmers of excellence, but mostly they get drowned out by costumes and smoking and narrative.
Worth seeing, but not entirely successful.
Rating: - Just short of perfect
This film takes a look at the leopold/loeb case that is often glossed over in other films and even books on the subject. The focus is obviously on Leopold and Loeb rather than the crime itslef and the importance their personalities play in their connection to each other. The film seems rushed at times but it just seems to add to the intensity of it all. It's rushed but you can't seem to think of it being any other way. You're not left thinking one of the two boys is any more 'evil' than the other (which is perhaps the best thing about the film).
However, if you're not familar with the leopold/loeb case much of the movie could potentially be confusing and while many of the lines are actual things said by the two boys they are often placed in a different context or said to different people. If you've previously read Hal Higdon's book on the subject the movie makes much more sense than it would otherwise. However, ... Read More
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- A Monumental Film
- Trying to be all things to all people
