Word: gering
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Dachau: 1936. The sun is hellish. Two men in prison garb stand in front of an electrified fence. Max (Richard Gere) and Horst (David Dukes) must carry heavy rocks from one side of the prison yard to the other, drop them in a pile and then carry them back. This task of inspired idiocy is designed not only to break their bodies but to crush their minds and spirits. Their crime: being homosexuals...
...survival, the deep need and sustaining force of human affection in dire adversity and the taxing journey to the root core of one's identity. The play at Manhattan's New Apollo Theater achieves these ends, thanks in part to an arresting performance by Film Actor Gere (Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Yanks). Even greater thanks are due David Dukes for his extraordinarily intuitive portrayal of Horst, a man rounded up by the state for having signed a petition demanding rights for "queers." To put this in proper historical perspective, some of the earliest Nazi party stalwarts were distinctly...
Throughout the play, Gere handles the shadings of emotion superbly, especially in a scene in which he and Dukes stand several feet apart, not facing each other, and go through an explicit verbal depiction of oral sex all the way to its climax. Bent is not "entertainment" as the word is customarily used, but in its tensile strength and nervy risk taking, it is audacious theater.-T.E. Kalem
...performances. The movie's locations include quaint shops and pubs, foggy, blacked-out streets, a glorious art deco movie palace and enough green pastures to make even an Irishman go dizzy. Most of the cast accomplish the not inconsiderable feat of standing out against the colorful backdrops. Though Gere at times slips into self-conscious mannerisms, he makes his character, a mess sergeant from Arizona, an appealing innocent abroad. Devane is a charming commanding officer, despite his disconcerting tendency to sound like Jack Nicholson. Both Eichhorn (a gifted screen newcomer) and Redgrave show enough backbone to prevent their roles...
Aside from sexual lassitude, the biggest problem with these lovers is that there are too many of them. Only the Gere-Eichhorn romance is fully told, complete with subsidiary characters (Eichhorn's parents, well acted by Rachel Roberts and Tony Melody). The remaining couples are superficially sketched and add little to the film except length. There are other excesses as well: a thrown-in sub plot about Redgrave's troubled young son, some muddled digressions about British-American cultural conflicts, and a grueling military race riot. Besides wasting time, these intrusions are pretentious; the director seems...