Lot in Sodom (1933)
The 1933 short film LOT IN SODOM, created by James Sibley Watson and Melville Miller, is thought to be one of the first American experimental films to feature homosexual themes.
LOT IN SODOM
1933. USA.
Directors: James Sibley Watson and Melville Miller
Music: Louis Siegel
Starring: Friedrich Haak, Hildegarde Watson, Dorothea Haus & Lewis Whitbeck
Watson and Miller’s film features sexually charged half-naked male Sodomites lusting after one another, only to be discovered by an unimpressed angel. They then set their attention on him and proposition him for sex. The angel then offers the one ‘good’ man in Sodom (naturally, a heterosexual) a chance to escape with his family before he destroys the city.
LOT IN SODOM is based on the Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah, a tale that has frequently been misinterpreted as homosexuality bringing the downfall and destruction of the city of Sodom. Scholars now understand that the original story was not actually demonizing homosexuality, but rather a mistreatment of outsiders and sexual assault.
In LOT IN SODOM, Watson and Webber seem to be villainizing queerness only on a surface level in order to visually explore the beauty of the male form. Homoerotic elements are heavily emphasized in the film and half-naked men in orgiastic settings take up the majority of its 28-minute run time. This actually may, in part, be due to the film’s co-director, Melville Miller, who, according to queer experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer, was gay. Hammer mentions this in a 1991 article from the San Francisco Chronicle titled, “A Renaissance Man Gets His Due.” Another interesting fact discussed in the article was LOT IN SODOM’s surprising lack of censorship upon its release in 1933; Nancy Watson Dean, who was married to J.S. Watson, noted that, “Nobody noticed it…Isn’t that strange? Maybe because he didn’t push it or copyright it. He just let it float.” It’s also possible that, much like the films created during Hollywood’s Hays Code era of censorship, the film’s surface emphasis on homosexuality as sinful and ending in punishment appeased those who would normally call for censorship.
Queer historian Vito Russo noted in his pioneering 1981 book, “The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies” that people did in fact notice LOT IN SODOM’s queer themes and that while the art critics who mentioned them denounced them, others tended to ignore the homosexual elements and praise the stylistic choices.
LOT IN SODOM it is available on DVD and Blu-ray and also streaming on YouTube, the Internet Archive, and Daily Motion. If you watch the film I highly recommend you also check out Watson and Miller’s other collaboration, a 1928 film adaptation of Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” (also available on YouTube).
