E-Mail This Article to a Friend Silent witnesses Gay German cinema before the Reich now on DVD BY GERALD PEARY

When the Nazis in the 1930s ignited their unholy bonfires, suspect books were just the start. Films were also ripped from projectors, and prints were destroyed. That included any movie that acknowledged homosexuality — and during the Weimar period, Germany had been the one place on earth that, on occasion, dared place gay and lesbian characters center screen.

What of those disappeared films? The Nazis didn’t succeed in obliterating them. Hidden-away prints of key works have been discovered in the ensuing decades, films like the 1931 Mädchen in Uniform, Leontine Sagan’s lovely story of a lesbian crush at a harsh Prussian boarding school. Now, Kino Video has just released on DVD a three-film set of what it describes as "Gay-Themed Films of the German Silent Era." Richard Oswald’s Anders als die Andern/Different from Others (1919) is about a concert violinist who gets blackmailed because of his relationship with a young male student. Carl Dreyer’s Mikaël/Michael (1924) is about an elder painter’s burning love for his male ex-model. And William Dieterle’s Geschlecht in Fesseln — Die Sexualnot der Gefangenen/Sex in Chains is about a married man wrongly jailed who becomes involved with a fellow prisoner.

Does it matter that the three filmmakers were straight? These are not liberated films: the homosexuals are sad and self-hating, even if they’re not condemned. And if it’s sex you’re looking for, you’ll have to look elsewhere: among the lovesick looks, there’s not so much as a single kiss.

Anders als die Andern was one among several Oswald-directed films at the end of World War I that dealt with German social problems. Oswald also made movies (these are lost) about abortion and prostitution. Here, he enlisted an openly gay German sexologist, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, who advised on the script and who is also a persistent, and quite ponderous, screen presence. A large-nosed man with a walrus moustache, Hirschfeld appears in some scenes as an analyst, informing homophobic characters about the "third sex," explaining that homosexuals are born that way and that there’s no "cure." In other sequences, he’s a public orator. He gives a slide-show demonstration on the physical manifestations of homosexuality; he testifies against Paragraph 175 of German law, which made homosexuality a crime and left gays and lesbians open to imprisonment.

Anders als die Andern features two gay-and-lesbian crowd scenes, one in a bar (women wearing neckties in the background) and one at a fey costume party. Also fey: the violinist’s overdecorated apartment. One can imagine the set designer struggling to come up with the proper "Berlin-post-WWI" gay décor.

Paragraph 175 survived and became a centerpiece of Nazi "law," allowing for the deportation of gays to concentration camps, where thousands, wearing pink stars, were murdered. It was repealed only in 1994! Richard Oswald’s film was halted by the police in 1920, many years before the Nazis. The DVD version, 50 minutes long, is all that survives of the feature. It’s a composite of reels discovered in French and Russian archives and restored by the Munich Film Museum.

Mikaël is an efficient feature, but none of the characters is remotely likable. Despite direction by Carl Dreyer (La passion de Jeanne d’Arc, Ordet), it’s the least memorable of the trio. The homosexuality is there, but it’s so very, very subdued. Sixtyish artist Zoret (Benjamin Christensen) suffers because his ex-model, a painter of dubious talent, has left him and run off with a sexy countess. The ex-model is played by Walter Slezak, who in the 1950s became an avuncular, twinkle-eyed regular on American TV game shows.

Geschlecht in Fesseln is an unfortunately lurid title for a subtle and tragic work. Dieterle, later a Warner Brothers director (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Life of Emile Zola), is both the filmmaker and the affecting star, playing Sommer, an unemployed engineer who accidentally kills a man who’s been flirting with his wife (the lovely Mary Johnson). He gets three years in jail, and (the didactic part) in Germany of the 1920s, there’s no marital visitation. Both Sommer and his wife are starved for sex. She sleeps with her boss; he has an affair with a guy in his prison cell. (It’s discreet: they reach out and grab hands. Fadeout.) On his release, both are racked with guilt. Terrible things happen. Still, the homosexual transgression is viewed with enlightenment: it’s a deep scar on the marriage, but not because Sommer had sex with a man.

Contact Gerald Peary at gpeary@geraldpeary.com