Bent

I suppose you have to like the Nazi genre. I don't. Yes, those were terrible times, and we need to make sure it doesn't happen again. But there are enough movies about this subject already. I didn't find this version unique.... Full review

I suppose you have to like the Nazi genre. I don't. Yes, those were terrible times, and we need to make sure it doesn't happen again. But there are enough movies about this subject already. I didn't find this version unique.... Full review

The film Bent portrays the persecution of homosexuals during the Nazi reign of terror, a subject unknown to many, overlooked by others, but clearly overshadowed by the Third Reich’s more infamous genocide of the Jews. Adapted for the screen by Martin... Full review

Homosexual playboy in 1930's Germany fights to keep himself and his gay flat-mate out of the Nazi soldiers' grasp, but they are soon rounded up and face the horrors of war. This tough-going drama doesn't delve too deeply into the... Full review

This is a very wordy and long-winded response to guajolotl (guajolotl@aol.com)'s comment"Yetch!": In times of desperation and fear, people do awful, incomprehensible things. Everything you know is taken away, the comfortable fears of your daily life are stripped away in... Full review

When Martin Sherman's play first appeared (with Ian McKellen as Max and Tom Bell as Horst) it caused outrage and much discussion with its sympathetic and frank treatment of forbidden love in the age of the SS.Here it has undergone... Full review

Only half way through this film did I remember having seen a small theatre production of the play in Los Angeles a dozen years ago. I only remembered when the rock-moving scenes began. I don't recall being particularly moved by... Full review

Its always the Jew's travail I hear about concerning the Nazi Germany Period, but other GROUPS apparently got treated miserably as well, and this movie deals with one of them.Pathos, tremendous camera action (black/white & technicolor), superb character acting, excellent... Full review

This film, based on the theatrical production, is a moving and powerful experience. It is both emotional and intense and its power moves even a cynic to tears. While hope bounds throughout the hopeless scenario, the overwhelming feeling is desperation... Full review

I sat down to watch this movie, and I was completely drawn into it. By the end, i thought that only 15 minutes had passed instead of an hour and a half. The subject matter (homosexual persecution during the Holocaust)... Full review

Based on the enormously successful stageplay of the same name, Bent follows the lives of two gay men Horst (Lothaire Bluteau) and Max (Clive Owen) who are imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp as a punishment for their sexuality. But Horst and Maxs harrowing ordeals in the camp betray Mathias history of directing for theatre each sequence is tightly choreographed, as though the actors are confined to the limits of a West End stage. ... Full Review

Unfortunately the movie's performances don't make the emotional connection....Both actors are solid....Rumours of a movie version of Bent have been flying around for years (one version had Rainer Werner Fassbinder directing Richard Gere).....does the adaptation broaden the play enough into a credible piece of filmmaking.....As a film scene, the boredom rather than the absurdity, is the dominant impression..... ... Full Review

It sounds like a slice of Dietrich- style high camp, especially with the saucy Jagger in the saddle, but in fact it's a chilling prelude to a sober, beautifully modulated film about the Holocaust. POWER OF UNDERSTATEMENT Under Mathias' direction, ``Bent'' has a spare, understated power that draws as much from what it shows as what it doesn't show. ... Full Review

Directed with unfailing aplomb by Sean Mathias, "Bent" is nevertheless all but unbearable in its bleakness. Wednesday November 26, 1997 At the beginning of the powerful, galvanizing "Bent," a spotlight picks up a black-stockinged singer in silhouette, perched on a steel circle as it is lowered into a vast warehouse turned into a nightclub, where a veritable pansexual orgy is going on. ... Full Review

A better film would have found a way to absorb the sexuality into the underlying theme; both scenes are crowd-pleasers, and so is a closing sequence which seems staged more as a noble tableaux than as drama at all. This scene works like the chase scene: It drops out of the drama to stand alone as entertainment--as eroticism. ... Full Review

The quality of the work at Fort Lauderdale's Rising Action Theatre has been a sometime thing -- sometimes good and engaging, sometimes woefully inadequate -- so hearing that the company would be staging Martin Sherman's challenging Bent is bound to... ... Full Article

Rain, Rain, Come Back Again The recent winter storms were awfully photogenic on TV but all that rain was just so much water under the Sixth Street Bridge. ... Full Article

BENT Martin Sherman's 1979 play created a furor when first produced because it provocatively depicted the persecution of homosexuals as well as Jews in Hitler 's Third Reich . ... Full Article

Martin Sherman's historic Bent, which fixes its unflinching gaze upon two gay men imprisoned in a Nazi death camp, left me scarcely less horrified, disturbed and revolted by its violence and cruelty than at its 1979 Royal Court premiere. ... Full Article

The basic premise of Martin Sherman's play "Bent" is about tolerance. In a modern age where we still experience much intolerance this should be a blessed relief, but unfortunately, the play falls a bit short, emotionally. ... Full Article

Martin Sherman's Bent opened on Broadway almost 30 years ago, but the power of its storytelling, which helped win it the 1980 Tony Award as best play, hasn't aged. ... Full Article