The Celluloid Closet appears in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 on this 4K UHD Disc. Given the erratic nature of the source, this Dolby Vision presentation showed the expected ups and downs.
Honestly, Closet feels like a weird choice for the 4K treatment due to the fact it comes from so many old film clips. These largely lacked actual print flaws – outside of lines in some vintage newsreels – but they nonetheless clearly didn’t come from optimal sources.
This left the many movie snippets as watchable but not impressive. Though these remained adequate, they rarely – if ever seemed more appealing than passable.
As for the interviews shot specifically for Closet, these also lacked a lot of polish. Sharpness seemed acceptable but not great, so the “talking head” shots offered good but not great delineation.
No issues with jagged edges or moiré effects materialized, and I saw no edge haloes. Grain felt natural – and sometimes heavy, dependent on the source – and outside of the aforementioned newsreels, print flaws failed to become an issue.
Colors varied due to the mix of courses. In general, the old film clips looked fairly blah, whereas the then-new interviews showed reasonable range.
That said, the hues for the interviews felt acceptable and not much better. Because these shots came from subdued, dark settings, HDR didn’t add a lot to their depiction.
Again, blacks depended on the source and could be blah in the archival scenes. Then-new elements brought acceptable depth to blacks and decent shadows.
As with colors, HDR couldn’t bring much extra power to the presentation. This became a perfectly watchable image for a documentary but like I noted, it remained a curious choice for 4K given the severe limitations of the original film.
As for the DTS-HD MA 2.0 soundtrack of Closet, it became a low-key affair. Most of the film clips went with monaural material, but the documentary’s own snatches of score felt well-depicted.
Really, this soundscape lacked much ambition, partly due to the nature of those archival bits, but also because films with ample “talking head” interviews don’t lend themselves to broad soundfields.
This meant one should expect a largely monaural soundtrack. Although Closet widened at times – almost always due to its own score – a whole lot of the mix focused on the front center.
Inevitably, audio quality also varied, with most of the ups and downs from the archival clips. Those usually sounded fine, but they tended to lack much punch or power.
The sporadic bits of Closet-specific score showed lush tones, and speech felt reasonably natural. All of this added up to a wholly adequate but unremarkable soundtrack.
A few extras appear here, and we get an audio commentary from writers/directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, producer Howard Rosenman, editor Arnold Glassman and narrator Lily Tomlin. It appears all sit together for a running, screen-specific track, though it sounds like additional remarks get edited in as well.
Recorded in the late 1990s, the participants talk about the project's development, the interview subjects, the film clips, editing, the movie's construction, Tomlin's narration, and some historical perspective.
The commentary starts slowly, as the speakers seem to need time to get into the process. Eventually, however, the discussion becomes more engaging.
Tomlin offers some amusing remarks, and we also find good stories about the various interview subjects as well as the filmmakers' troubles getting certain people. Hang with the track and it becomes worthwhile.
Under Additional Commentary, we find a piece with author Vito Russo. After a short intro from author Rita Mae Brown, we go to a March 11, 1990 lecture from Russo. He shows film clips to illustrate his points but we don't see these.
That leads to some minor confusion at times, but Russo's lecture works well enough on its own that those gaps don't matter. Russo covers the history of gays in movies as well as a mix of social domains related to that. Expect an informative chat.
Note that Russo's lecture ends around the movie's 85-minute mark.
In addition, an Interview with Vito Russo runs four minutes, 20 seconds, as he looks at the origins and development of his book, research, and some basics about his work. We get a few decent notes but the program seems too short to tell us much.
Along with the movie’s trailer, we get Rescued from the Closet, a 55-minute, 59-second compilation of additional interviews conducted for the film. We hear from authors Susie Bright, Arthur Laurents, Mart Crowley, Quentin Crisp, Gore Vidal, Armistead Maupin and Rita Mae Brown, screenwriters Jay Presson Allen, Paul Rudnick, Barry Sandler and Stewart Stern, filmmakers Kenneth Anger, Robert Towne, Gus Van Sant, Gregg Araki and Jan Oxenberg, film scholars Robin Wood and Richard Dyer, author/performer Charles Busch, and actors Tony Curtis, Paul Richards, Harvey Fierstein, Tom Hanks, Shirley MacLaine, Farley Granger, Whoopi Goldberg, Chris Sarandon, Mariel Hemingway, and Harry Hamlin.
These clips look at homosexuality in society over the years, experiences growing up gay, aspects of homosexuality in films, specifics about various movies, homophobia and the impact of cinema on the gay community. They flesh out domains from the film well, especially since we hear from some folks who didn’t make the final cut.
.As an exploration of homosexuality in cinema, The Celluloid Closet seems moderately engaging. However, it simply lacks the running time to cover the subject matter well, so it feels fairly superficial. The 4K UHD comes with adequate picture and audio as well as a mix of bonus materials. I admire the intentions of the film but find the final product to lack great depth.
Note that as of November 2022, this 4K UHD disc of Celluloid Closet appears solely via an 11-film “Sony Picture Classics 30th Anniversary” box. It also includes Orlando, The City of Lost Children, Run Lola Run, SLC Punk, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Devil’s Backbone, Volver, Synecdoche, New York, Still Alice and Call Me By Your Name.