I just finished watching THE DETECTIVE (1968) -- a film I'd only seen bits and pieces of over the years. Previously, it had always seemed overtly homophobic (in a BOYS IN THE BAND kind of way) in keeping with the period when movies were new to dealing with such edgy subject-matter and the culture wasn't prepared to deal with it at all. (There's a gay murder, and Frank's the hard-boiled cop who's investigating). There are lots of slurs and all the gays are leering, effeminate and abjectly psychotic.
But today, to my surprise, the film almost feels progressive. The stereotypes which once seemed so offensive years ago have lost their bite in the current era of Drag Queen Story Hour when we seem to have re-embraced those homophobic cliches as somehow empowering. So now, with much of its un-PC shock value eliminated, the movie is reduced to giving us uber-macho, no-nonsense detective Sinatra being startlingly sympathetic to all the raging and suicidal queens, hold hands with a flaming crazy as he confesses falsely [spoiler alert!!] to homicide who then subsequently fries in the electric chair, and Frank spouts leftist (or is it rightist?) rhetoric I've rarely heard in a motion picture about how urban slums are maintained as slums because they're more lucrative than if they
weren't slums.
The movie is rough and lurid in a late-'60s way. And as such it borders on rampant trash. Frank's wife (Lee Remick) is sluttier than Frank's favorite slut (who looks just like his wife), Jacqueline Bissett shows up as a key person in the plotline, Ralph Meeker (whom Tarantino loves) is a nasty homophobic cop in Frank's precinct, dapper Lloyd Bochner (whom Tarantino reviles) is the dapper shrink who knows all the faggy secrets. Etc... etc...
The acting is good, the direction is tight, the politics is all over the place.
I was surprised it was as watchable as it was.
Despite my best efforts, why am I warming to Frank Sinatra as the decades roll on??
www.indiewire.com
