Taylor plays Catherine, a young woman recently institutionalized after her cousin Sebastian died while the pair traveled abroad in Spain. Here are some of the pre-AIDS era movies you probably haven't heard of, but are more than worthy of your Netflix queue - even if just to see how far we've come.īased on a play by Tennessee Williams, the acclaimed Suddenly, Last Summer starred Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn, and Montgomery Clift. A few filmmakers were brave enough to feature gay characters that weren't cautionary tales. But if you think it's dismal now, imagine growing up in the middle of the 20th century, when queer characters were either invisible or typically depicted as suicidal or psychotic.
Even though a movie about a gay man is up for multiple Academy Awards on Sunday, depictions of LGBT life remain rare in mainstream film.
