But what\u2019s most valuable about Sick and Dirty<\/em>, more even than the extensive research and his punchy, insightful prose, is the author\u2019s willingness to take a close, thoughtful look at pictures deemed \u201cproblematic\u201d by today\u2019s standards. There are many movies from this era that are now routinely dismissed and sometimes despised by a younger generation concerned with the propriety of representation. \u201cThese films, these phantoms, persist because they speak to the unsettled parts of ourselves that don\u2019t fit into acceptable standards of contemporary queerness,\u201d Koresky writes. \u201cThe parts we hush away, the parts that creep into our thoughts at night when we draw the shades and close our eyes after a full, tiring day of being so sure and pure and proud and righteous.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The book takes its title not, as I\u2019d assumed, from a Velvet Underground lyric but rather from a line of dialogue from The Children\u2019s Hour<\/em>. Director William Wyler\u2019s 1961 adaptation of Lillian Hellman\u2019s Broadway shocker has always been somewhat ignominious in more progressive circles due to its depiction of two schoolteachers, played by Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine, whose small town lives are destroyed by salacious rumors regarding their sexuality. (MacLaine basically apologizes for the movie in the film version of The Celluloid Closet<\/em>.) Yet when Koresky recently showed the picture to his NYU students, he was struck by the intensity of their reactions. This awkward, outmoded old movie still packed a punch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sick and Dirty<\/em> is bookended by Wyler\u2019s two adaptations of Hellman\u2019s play. His 1936 These Three<\/em> was forced to de-gay the source material to an almost comical extent, straightening out the central scenario, though Koresky still spots some stray innuendos sneaking in from the sidelines. Twenty-five years later, The Children\u2019s Hour<\/em> was Wyler\u2019s attempt to finally do right by Hellman\u2019s 1934 text, ironically by updating it to an era for which it was no longer suited. Critics dismissed the movie as overwrought and out of touch. (Koresky uncovers a shockingly homophobic Pauline Kael bon mot that didn\u2019t make it into her collected volumes.) But those NYU students weren\u2019t wrong to react the way they did to the film\u2019s tragic denouement, which is stunningly acted by MacLaine and retains an awful, unsettling power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s the kind of scene that would cause a lot of overly image-conscious, contemporary critics to write \u201ctropes\u201d and call it a day. I must confess that I myself might have had a more knee-jerk reaction to The Children\u2019s Hour<\/em> had I not first read Koresky\u2019s book, which places the film and its intentions in a fuller context. This is what great critical writing can do, widening our perspectives and digging around to find a deeper understanding of why certain works endure. Koresky proves that however unfashionable, problematic art is worth reckoning with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/suddenlylastsummer-1024x576.jpg\")
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