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Swoon (1992)
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Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9780780606562
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, NTSC
ISBN: 0780606566
Label: New Line Home Video
Languages: English (Original Language), Analog
Manufacturer: New Line Home Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: New Line Home Video
Release Date: September 01, 1998
Running Time: 95 minutes
Studio: New Line Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: 1992
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Editorial Review:
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
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
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 ... 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, ... 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 ... Read More
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 ... Read More
Rating: - Very Different
This is a great film. Its prospective is very different from the two previous films(Rope/Compulsion) made on the Leopold/Loeb case. These other movies were both highly fictionalized versions of the case. This film is considered the most historically accurate to be made so far on the case, the trial scenes were taken directly from the actual trial transcripts. For this reason the film is often shown in Criminal Justice, Law and History classes.
This movie is also the first to boldly examine the homosexual ... Read More
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