Montreal Main (1974)

Directed by

Frank Vitale

Genre

LGBTQ-related film

Country

Canada

Runtime

1h 28m

Rating

5.2 of 10 from 12 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A filmmaker named Frank forms a close friendship with a 12 year old boy named Johnny. As the community and the boy's parents grow suspicious of their bond, Frank starts to question his own intentions. The movie explores how prejudice can poison even innocent relationships.

intimatecontemplativeambiguousuncomfortabledocumentary-likemelancholicgroundedunsettling

What happens

Montreal Main is a Canadian docufiction film, released in 1974. The film was directed by Frank Vitale, and written by Vitale, Allan Moyle and Stephen Lack. The film centres on Frank (Vitale) and Bozo (Moyle), two friends of ambiguous sexuality living in the bohemian arts community of Montreal, Quebec. Frank develops a friendship with Johnny (John Sutherland), a 12-year-old boy, while Bozo is developing a new relationship with Jackie (Jackie Holden), a friend of Johnny's parents. Although Frank's relationship with Johnny is platonic and non-sexual, the common stereotype of gay men as pedophiles prone to sexually preying on underage boys begins to colour the community's and Johnny's parents' judgement of the friendship, driving a wedge between them as even Frank is increasingly driven to question his own motivations. The film is also a philosophical exploration of the contrast between existentialism and essentialism. The same core group of Vitale, Lack and Moyle also collaborated on the 1978 film The Rubber Gun. The film was rereleased on DVD in 2009, and was the subject of a critical analysis by Thomas Waugh and Jason Garrison in 2011, as part of Arsenal Pulp Press' Queer Film Classics series. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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