I had seen the play on Broadway twice, once with Richard Gere and David Dukes, and once with Michael York and Jeffrey DeMunn. The movie is very faithful to the play and was just as interesting, which usually is not the case. Mick Jagger is great as Greta. All in all, I'd recommend this movie and did not find it pretentious in the least.

As I understand it, "Bent" was originally a stage production in London. I don't know how the stage production was, but the movie version doesn't come out as good as it could have. Portraying a gay man (Clive Owen) in Nazi Germany pretending to be Jewish and meeting another gay man in Dachau, the movie never really develops anything as much as it could. In fact, it seems like the movie never really looks thoroughly at what the Nazis were doing. Mick Jagger, playing a transvestite, is really the only reason to see the movie.

So, they probably had good intentions with this movie, but they never did with it what they could have. The whole thing comes out pretty muddled. Also starring Ian McKellen.

No person who is knowledgeable about the Holocaust can ever claim that without seeing Bent. The play which opened in 1979 in London is about those all too forgotten victims of the Holocaust, the gay people of Europe. On Broadway the lead role that Clive Owen plays was essayed by Richard Gere for the run of 241 performances in the 1979-1980 season. Doing his original role from the London production as Uncle Freddie is Sir Ian McKellan.

For those who think that homosexuality doesn't have an inherited element in it, Bent certainly gives lie to that. During the Weimar Republic years Germany had a thriving gay if somewhat discreet scene. After the Night of the Long Knives with the SA purge in 1934, gays were systematically rounded up for a final solution and Hitler certainly did a thorough job of it. Today the German Federal Republic has once again a thriving gay scene. Those recessive genes are popping out in full force.

Bent does begin right at the Night of the Long Knives where Ernst Roehm was killed and anyone whoever knew of him and his not so discreet gay lifestyle was done in. The long knives of Himmler's SS come calling that night on Clive Owen and his boyfriend Brian Webber because they've picked up a pretty young man who used to trick with Roehm. He dies quite gruesomely, but they escape.

Owen seeks aid from an old gay man who's called Uncle Freddie played by Ian McKellan who gives him some help, but whom Owen doesn't take some good advice from. McKellan has been very much deep in the closet, it's what's made him survive a society where homophobia is not just approved, but is now the law of the land.

After this the scene cuts to a train to Dachau and Dachau itself where Owen and Webber are taken. Webber doesn't survive the trip, that scene is something I don't want to reveal. Owen decides that he'll take the Jewish star of David rather than a pink triangle, in the Dachau pecking order gay is worse than Jewish.

Just as Schindler's List showed the dehumanization of Jews, Bent shows the dehumanization of gay people. Only there was no Oskar Schindler to save some of them. In fact sexuality as a form of repression has not ever been better displayed on screen than in Bent.

But Owen learns about gay pride from another prisoner, Lothaire Bluteau who wears the pink triangle in defiance. They find a connection and consummate that connection in the only way they can do it under the circumstances. Again a scene I can't reveal.

This film should not be missed by any Gay/Lesbian/Bi-Sexual/Trangendered person on this planet. It shows better than anything else what we potentially face in the way of repression when we are dehumanized by law and societal mores. We cannot let that happen and we have to make sure it's stopped in the places it does happen in the world.

And this review is dedicated to all the brothers and sisters who died back then. Here's hope for a better world for our next generation.