A man peeping through a keyhole at an attractive young woman gets his comeuppance. This film, presumed lost, is often mistaken for Ferdinand Zecca's "What Is Seen Through a Keyhole" (1901).
A turn-of-the-last-century hand-tinted short, which features two women, Miss Lally and Miss Julyett, dancing at a ball. By the legendary French filmmaker Alice Guy.
In this film, Méliès concocts a combination fairy- and morality tale about the foolishness of trying to look too deeply into the workings of an unstable and inscrutable universe. At a medieval school, an old astronomer begins to teach a class of young men, all armed with telescopes, about the art of scrutinising an imminent eclipse. When a mechanical clock strikes twelve, all the young men rush to the windows and fix their telescopes on the heavens.
Billy and His Pal, released on February 16, 1911, is about a cowboy, Jim (Francis Ford), who is idolised by young Billy (actress Edith Storey in drag). When Jim runs afoul of a gang of Mexican thieves, it’s up to Billy to rescue his hero. Billy and His Pal is short on plot but long on local atmosphere with the director (probably William Haddock) and cameraman William “Daddy” Paley making the most of the starkly beautiful Texas countryside.
When Algie Allmore asks to marry Clarice, the young woman's father gives him one year to prove that he's a man.
Comedy about a film crew shooting a movie about guns and robbers, when real robbers turn up. Having to go home in robbers costume, they are mistakingly accused. In the end the real robbers are brought to justice. One of the earliest films portraying bisexual characters.
Lillian Travers, a New York heiress, pops down to Florida to surprise her fiancé, Fred Cassadene, the house doctor at a prominent Saint Augustine hotel. The surprise, however, is Lillian's when she finds Fred in a series of compromising situations with a certain wealthy widow staying there. When she can take no more, Lillian discovers a box forgotten at an old curiosity shop in which lies a hundred-year-old secret: a vial of four rare and exotic African seeds that promises to transform whoever swallows one from a woman to a man or vice versa.
The story is that of a conniving countess coming between a gay sculptor, Claude Zoret, and his bisexual model and lover, Mikaël, ultimately leading to Zoret's death in a raging storm at the base of a statue of Mikaël as the mythological Icarus. The film is missing 19 minutes of run time.
A teenage tomboy, tired of being bossed around by her strict guardian, impersonates a man so she can have more fun. She quickly discovers that being the opposite sex isn’t as easy as she had hoped for. What ensues is a gender-bending comedy decades ahead of its time.
Conrad Veidt plays a famous musician who is blackmailed for being gay. Eventually he stands trial and is convicted. At the end the film pleads for the abolition of §175 (the paragraph which punishes homosexuality).
A famed artist fights his passion for a male model, until the young man falls for a woman. Michael is widely considered a landmark in gay silent cinema.
A young man is convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to a term in prison. There he forms a close relationship with his cellmate. Upon his release his wife is concerned as to how prison has changed the man she married.
Musical short.
Otto Ott owns and operates a summer garden, which is successful if only because they serve the largest beers in town for only 5¢ apiece. The problem is Otto's manager wife. Although they have been married only a year, to him it feels like an eternity. Mrs. Ott is the bane of all the waiters' existences, all of whom she fires. This situation causes a staffing problem for Otto. Otto's solution may lead to another problem for him at home, while Mrs. Ott's solution causes further problems for Otto, one which may not be entirely her fault.
A sensitive girl is sent to an all-girls boarding school and develops a romantic attachment to one of her teachers.
Betty's campaign tries to appeal to everyone. Real candidates are parodied, but campaign promises are a bit bizarre.
The story of two newly enamored medical students, loosely arranged around recordings of various medical operations on the human reproductive system. Interspersed: a dark bar, populated by drug addicts and the "sexually abnormal," medical images of the sex of intersex people, sex changes and transplantation of animal genitalia.
When Kaoru's sister-in-law Miyoko arrives at the family home, tender feelings start to grow between the two. However, the initial happiness that Kaoru finds in the company of her beautiful sister-in-law is frustrated by her brother Mitsuo, Miyoko's husband, who intervenes in their budding passion. Full of unspoken words, deeply suggestive mise-en-scène, and forbidden glances, Fukujuso is a compelling melodrama that surprises us with its potent homoeroticism, especially considering its year of production.
An onnagata (female impersonator) of a Kabuki troupe avenges his parents' deaths. Remade in 1963 as Yukinojô Henge.
The eponymous garçonne or flapper is Monique Lerbier, an emancipated French woman who leaves home to escape a marriage of convenience to a man she does not love which her parents have forced on her. She then falls into all sorts of carnal temptations and artificial pleasures previously unknown to her. These include her being seduced into a lesbian love affair by a chanteuse.