8 amazing, historic gay and LGBTQ films to add to your bucket list 

In recent years, film critic Guy Lodge has revisited landmarks of queer cinema in the pages of Attitude magazine. Here, his reviews are assembled together for the first time as part of Attitude Uncut: The Film Issue. Think of this as the perfect weekend watchlist.

The Watermelon Woman (1996)

Cheryl Dunye’s smart, raucous comedy was a trailblazer back in 1996 – it was the first feature film ever directed by an out Black lesbian – and still feels bracingly free and forward-thinking. Dunye herself stars as a young video store clerk in Philadelphia, attempting to make a documentary about unsung Black women on screen, all while negotiating the mores and taboos of queer dating. 

It tackles any number of substantial social issues with a light, wry touch, attentive to the rhythms of everyday conversation and sexuality. Nearly 30 years on, its cultural significance is self-evident, but it never feels self-important.

Available to stream on Mubi

Strangers on a Train (1951)

I first saw Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film noir when I was a child. Back then, I was enthralled by its ingenious hairpin plotting and steamy black-and-white atmosphere – but what I didn’t realise, in my naive youth, was how flagrantly queer it all is. 

The story of a straight, upstanding, professional tennis player terrorised by a brazen psychopath who commits a nasty little murder on the other man’s behalf – but is really, clearly and most erotically obsessed with him – is a fascinating lesson in how Hollywood queer-coded its villains in times when the censors wouldn’t let filmmakers name any such desire. That the straight hero is played by Farley Granger, one of the most famously queer stars of the era, only complicates this classic’s many layers.

Available on Amazon and Apple TV

Victim (1961)

The 1960s Brit-biker classic The Leather Boys stands out as the perfect pairing for Pillion, but it’s currently unavailable to stream. So, for a very different sense of how gay life here has evolved in the past 60-odd years, check out this riveting, groundbreaking psychological thriller from 1961, the first British film to directly and sympathetically address homosexual identity. 

Dirk Bogarde plays a closeted barrister whose life and livelihood are threatened when he’s enmeshed in a gay blackmail case — that the actor himself was queer and not publicly out brings particularly heady subtext to the drama here, and the film remains taut and tense to this day.

A Bigger Splash (1973)

Not to be confused with Luca Guadagnino’s sun-soaked 2015 psychodrama of the same title – though there is a certain queer kinship between them – this landmark 1973 documentary is an intimate window into the creative and personal headspaces of British artist David Hockney, then in his mid-30s, while in the protracted process of breaking up with longtime partner Peter Schlesinger. 

Emotionally candid and sometimes sexually explicit, it’s both a revealing individual portrait and a snapshot of a wider artistic scene amid the relaxed permissions of the 1970s, where gay identities in particular could assert themselves as never before. 

Available on Netflix

To read this article in full, check out Attitude Uncut: The Film Issue now on Apple News+ and the Attitude app.