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Vid: "Liar" (Multifandom)
Dec. 18th, 2020 12:41 pmTitle: Liar
Fandoms: Rope (1948), Murder By Numbers (2002), Compulsion (1959), Swoon (1992)
Music: "Liar" by Stars
Summary: "It was done by my double."
Notes: Made for centeau for Fall Equinox 2020
Warnings: Content Notes: Murder. Like, a lot of murder. Dead bodies, blood, suicide, guns, violence, including IPV.
Notes:
So when I saw the prompt for movies based on the Leopold and Loeb case, I IMMEDIATELY jumped at it, even though I hadn't seen three out of the four I ended up using. This story is really a litmus test for the people retelling it - what lessons do they take away about sexuality? About privilege? About crime and punishment? The four movies I used all come from different time periods (well, you could put Rope and Compulsion under the same Hayes Code heading, but the former benefits from being a Hitchcock movie) which means you can basically trace the tellings and retellings of this story through the different approaches used.
One thing I found interesting is that Swoon - the version that hews closest to the true story, with the actual names used and quotes from the court transcript - is the only one that really makes the central relationship look even semi-functional. With all the other movies, the main takeaway is "THIS RELATIONSHIP IS A DUMPSTER FIRE, GET AWAY" but Swoon makes them look like they're genuinely in love, albeit, you know, murderers. I suspect at least part of this is because Swoon was part of the New Queer Cinema movement, so you had a director who wanted to tell a gay love story as opposed to a story about two violent degenerates. It's amazing what a slightly altered perspective will do.
(On the opposite end, you've got Murder By Numbers, which is most recent one and bizarrely, probably the most homophobic? It's certainly the one that leans hardest on "we've got one psychopathic gay guy obsessed with his friend, and his friend who is somewhat redeemed by the love of a good woman." The 2000s were a weird time.)
Other scattered thoughts: Compulsion is very boring, because it was clearly made by a stage director who didn't know how to translate the work to a new medium, and it's super static as a result. I still love Rope, even though having seen the stage show, it bears very little resemblance to the source text. It and Strangers on a Train could really be shown as a double bill of "Farley Granger Gets Dommed And He's Not Happy About It, Directed by Alfred Hitchcock." None of these movies really dig into the class aspects, or the religious communities involved - most of them just turn the characters into Christians. I mean, I guess no community really WANTS to claim these two, but given the tensions in the real case over whether or not L&L shamed the wider community they were part of, it's an odd omission. There's just so much going on in this case, and no adaptation really digs into all of it; most pick one aspect and go all in on it.
Also, no adaptation really focuses on the victim, which is understandable, but also disconcerting.
Fandoms: Rope (1948), Murder By Numbers (2002), Compulsion (1959), Swoon (1992)
Music: "Liar" by Stars
Summary: "It was done by my double."
Notes: Made for centeau for Fall Equinox 2020
Warnings: Content Notes: Murder. Like, a lot of murder. Dead bodies, blood, suicide, guns, violence, including IPV.
Notes:
So when I saw the prompt for movies based on the Leopold and Loeb case, I IMMEDIATELY jumped at it, even though I hadn't seen three out of the four I ended up using. This story is really a litmus test for the people retelling it - what lessons do they take away about sexuality? About privilege? About crime and punishment? The four movies I used all come from different time periods (well, you could put Rope and Compulsion under the same Hayes Code heading, but the former benefits from being a Hitchcock movie) which means you can basically trace the tellings and retellings of this story through the different approaches used.
One thing I found interesting is that Swoon - the version that hews closest to the true story, with the actual names used and quotes from the court transcript - is the only one that really makes the central relationship look even semi-functional. With all the other movies, the main takeaway is "THIS RELATIONSHIP IS A DUMPSTER FIRE, GET AWAY" but Swoon makes them look like they're genuinely in love, albeit, you know, murderers. I suspect at least part of this is because Swoon was part of the New Queer Cinema movement, so you had a director who wanted to tell a gay love story as opposed to a story about two violent degenerates. It's amazing what a slightly altered perspective will do.
(On the opposite end, you've got Murder By Numbers, which is most recent one and bizarrely, probably the most homophobic? It's certainly the one that leans hardest on "we've got one psychopathic gay guy obsessed with his friend, and his friend who is somewhat redeemed by the love of a good woman." The 2000s were a weird time.)
Other scattered thoughts: Compulsion is very boring, because it was clearly made by a stage director who didn't know how to translate the work to a new medium, and it's super static as a result. I still love Rope, even though having seen the stage show, it bears very little resemblance to the source text. It and Strangers on a Train could really be shown as a double bill of "Farley Granger Gets Dommed And He's Not Happy About It, Directed by Alfred Hitchcock." None of these movies really dig into the class aspects, or the religious communities involved - most of them just turn the characters into Christians. I mean, I guess no community really WANTS to claim these two, but given the tensions in the real case over whether or not L&L shamed the wider community they were part of, it's an odd omission. There's just so much going on in this case, and no adaptation really digs into all of it; most pick one aspect and go all in on it.
Also, no adaptation really focuses on the victim, which is understandable, but also disconcerting.
