Love and Suffering

Experience the romantic pathos of love between men in two newly restored silent dramas.

LOVE AND SUFFERING: The Wings (Vingarne) (Sweden, 1916, 69 min.) – New restoration & Different from the Others (Anders als die Andern) (Germany, 1919, 50 min.) – New restoration.

Adapted from gay Danish author’s Herman Bang’s infamous story of love between a master sculptor and his apprentice, The Wings features gay, Jewish, Finnish-Swedish director Mauritz Stiller in a frame story meeting Nils Asther, the stunningly handsome young actor that he was having an affair with at the time. In the main story, the sculptor (Egil Eide) falls for his apprentice (Lars Hanson), who spurns him for a femme fatale, setting off a tragic series of events. Central to the film is a sculpture of Zeus’s famous kidnapping of the beautiful young Ganymede.

Likely the first gay activist film ever made, Different from the Others was created and released in Germany during the pause on censorship during the Weimar republic. In this film, a master violinist (Conrad Veidt) and his student (Fritz Schulz) fall in love, but once again the love leads to tragedy. The film features a lecture by pioneering German Jewish sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld about the naturalness of homosexuality and ends with his rousing speech calling for “Justice through knowledge!”

Total running time: 119 minutes