Tom Kalin directed this black-and-white study of the infamous Leopold and Loeb case, a case told before in two previous films -- ROPE (Alfred Hitchcock, 1948) and COMPULSION (1959, starring Orson Welles). In 1924, in Chicago, Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb, two 18-year-olds, kidnapped and murdered the 13-year-old Bobby Franks, immediately killing him and then stuffing his naked body up a culvert. The motive for the crime was simply that they wanted to prove to themselves that they were smart enough to get away with it.
The previous film versions downplayed Leopold and Loeb's homosexuality, but Kalin's version explores their possible psychosexual motivations. Loeb (Daniel Schlachet) is calculating intellectual, while Leopold (Craig Chester), the amateur ornithologist, is emotional and weak. In love with Loeb, Leopold is willing to do anything for him, and when Leob uses the withholding of sex as a prompt, Leopold is even willing to commit murder to have his sexual desires satisfied by Loeb. SWOON is a chilling yet fascinating film.
Region: 2
Sprog: Engelsk
Undertekster: Ingen
1991
93 min
|
