It's funny, but when I saw this film it sure seemed to be a story with a strongly gay subtext--even though the film was supposedly not about homosexuality. I really think that in 1924, this was MEANT to be the point but the film never directly said this--at least this is so with the English language version. Perhaps the European version was more explicit.

Why do I say this? Well, the film is about a brilliant painter and his muse/favorite model. Both are men and late in the film, the aging painter referred to the young man as his "adopted son and heir", but this seemed like a cover for the truth. Instead, it seemed like a love triangle, as the two men were happy and successful living together until the model met a woman and began taking the old guy for granted AND mistreating him badly. The painter, for his part, seemed like a dependent lover who never stood up to the young man for his mistreatment. In the end, when the old man died, he really seemed to have died from a broken heart after it was apparent that the younger man was never returning.

I sure wish I had a time machine so I could meet with the director, Dreyer, to determine if this gay subtext was intended. It sure seemed this way and the way they explained it all away seemed tough to believe--it just didn't seem to fit. In addition, most everyone reviewing this film also thought it was about homosexuality and I am sure they'd like a clear and unequivocal answer.

Now as for the film, it was wonderfully made--with some great camera work and a decent plot for a silent. Not a masterpiece, but a very good and unjustly forgotten film--one of Dreyer's best.

It is sometimes fascinating the subject matter for films before the infamous Code was put in Hollywood. Of course this is a German silent film and in those days when movies didn't talk all one had to do was change the subtitles and film was really universal. Such is the case with Michael, a romantic triangle the apex of which was Walter Slezak in his salad days. He was beloved by both an aristocratic artist and one carnal princess.

In less than a decade when the Nazis took over and made the UFA Studio their personal propaganda reserve such homoerotic work like Michael would not see the light of day for years. I'm really surprised that a print existed and that TCM obtained one. I would have thought Josef Goebbels would have burned all he could find.

Without a kiss, without an embrace, but with a look of love that tells all, we know exactly what the relationship Benjamin Christiansen has with Slezak. Slezak plays the title role, a callow youth a willing user of the affections of all in the same manner Murray Head was in Sunday Bloody Sunday. Slezak was quite the hunk in his youth to those of us who remember him from Hollywood in the Forties.

Nora Gregor plays the princess who eyes Slezak like a side of beef on the meat rack at the Playgirl Club. He's getting tired of Christiansen anyway so he's hot to trot as his she.

Christiansen is a sad and lonely old man and his performance really drives the film. His and Slezak's relationship also reminds me a bit of the famous relationship played out in the tabloids of Scott Thorson and Liberace. Another young cutie who was showered with everything, but just wanted his own space.

It's a good thing this gay themed story did survive and is available now for home viewing on DVD. A great piece of gay cinematic history.

Carl Theodore Dreyer requires patience but I have never been disappointed. This tale of love between two men in 1924 couldn't have been done in the U.S. There is a touch of Of Human Bondage here. The young male model is used by the master, both as a subject and as a lover, and then he turns the tables on him, using his affection for his own greedy uses. The artist goes into a slump while the kid is living the high life on the old guy's money. Michael is a selfish little weasel who has no talent and leaves a path of human destruction in his wake.