Film
Swoon
Tom Kalin's *Swoon* is a provocative, formally daring dramatization of the 1920s Leopold-Loeb murder case, told with a queer sensibility that reframes notorious criminals as tragic figures bound by desire and intellectual vanity. Shot in black-and-white with experimental editing and a hypnotic score, it's austere and seductive—challenging rather than comfortable. For viewers interested in crime, queerness, American history, and cinema itself.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you are drawn to films that study a seductive, morally hollow bond closely, watching two characters through long held silences and deliberate, stylized images rather than through plot.
Skip it if you want momentum or a clear moral frame; it is cool, elliptical and deliberately unsettling, so the coldness can feel like distance rather than insight.
What it asks of you: Ninety-three minutes, but it moves at the pace of a held breath; you need patience for long pauses and a tone that stays chilly, never warm or explanatory.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
Rope1948
Hitchcock's real-time thriller about two intellectuals who commit murder as a philosophical exercise. It shares the Leopold-Loeb obsession with moral superiority and the erotic charge of shared transgression, but deploys suspense rather than ambiguity.
But Theatrical and talky by modern standards. The sexual subtext is repressed rather than explicit, which some find more frustrating than revelation.
Compulsion1959
Another Leopold-Loeb adaptation, starring Dean Martin and Bradford Dillman, that treats the case as courtroom drama and psychological study. More conventional but deeply intelligent, with career-best performances and real emotional weight.
But It's a procedural rather than a provocation. If you want artistic challenge and formal risk, this is the safe version.
A Prophet2009
Jacques Audiard's masterpiece about two young men in prison whose relationship—sexual, predatory, dependent—mirrors Leopold and Loeb's destructive intimacy. Beautiful, brutal, and achingly human in ways that complicate sympathy.
But Prison brutality and sexual violence are not obscured. It's long, slow-burning, and doesn't offer catharsis or moral certainty.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Swoon
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Mussolini and I1985
Both use a real historical crime and real homoeroticism to examine how intellectual superiority and sexual desire can become indistinguishable and destructive. Both trust the audience to stay morally unsettled.
A Masterpiece Theatre miniseries about Mussolini and his son's homosexual relationship, filmed with Masterpiece's restraint but utterly fixated on power, desire, and the corruption of both. It treats the intimate and the historical as inseparable—exactly what *Swoon* does with Leopold and Loeb.
But It's buttoned-up 1985 television drama, not avant-garde cinema. The style is cautious and the emotional register is distant rather than rapturous.
More like this (7)
Suddenly, Last Summer1959
Tennessee Williams' film adaptation is oblique and sensual, circling a hideous crime and the homoerotic desire that motivated it. Like *Swoon*, it refuses to condemn, instead making the audience complicit in understanding.
But Melodramatic and deeply weird. The coded queerness feels dated now, and Elizabeth Taylor's Southern gothic histrionics aren't for everyone.
In Cold Blood1967
Richard Brooks' adaptation of Truman Capote's true-crime novel is crystalline and clinical, examining two murderers with forensic precision. It shares *Swoon*'s fascination with how intelligence and desire can calcify into cruelty.
But Methodical and detached, sometimes to the point of coldness. There's little emotional turbulence, which some find distant rather than profound.
The Killing1956
Kubrick's debut uses fractured chronology and moral indifference to make a heist film feel genuinely transgressive. Like *Swoon*, it trusts the audience to occupy an amoral space and find meaning there.
But The narrative structure is initially confusing, and the fatalism can feel bleak rather than illuminating.
Heavenly Creatures1994
Peter Jackson's film about two girls whose intense friendship culminates in murder. Shot with baroque visual invention and genuine psychological insight, it understands the seductive power of shared fantasy and transgression.
But It's wildly stylized and romantic in ways that some find excessive. The friendship feels more sympathetic than culpable, which isn't to everyone's taste.
M1931
Fritz Lang's masterpiece about a serial killer and the systems that hunt him. Like *Swoon*, it's formally brilliant and morally complex, asking uncomfortable questions about justice and humanity.
But It's a 1931 German expressionist film—the pacing is slow, the sound design is tinny, and it requires active engagement rather than passive watching.
We Need to Talk About Kevin2011
Lynne Ramsay's formal experiment about a mother grappling with her son's violence. Like *Swoon*, it uses fragmentation and aesthetic distance to examine the inexplicable and the terrible without flinching.
But Deeply grim and deliberately obscure. The fractured editing can feel punishing, and there's no redemptive arc to cling to.
The Devil's Backbone2001
Both films are set in the past but use period detail and formal beauty to illuminate how youth, desire, and cruelty are bound together. Both distrust easy moralism.
Guillermo del Toro's ghost story, set in a Spanish orphanage during the Civil War, is about boys whose cruelty and complicity are as much the subject as the supernatural. It's a period film that uses genre to explore how desire and violence corrupt innocence—a different register than *Swoon*, but the same obsession.
But It's a ghost story, so if you're looking for psychological realism, the supernatural elements might feel like evasion. Some find it too beautiful to match its darkness.
People
Cast
- Daniel SchlachetRichard Loeb
Craig ChesterNathan Leopold Jr.
Ron VawterState's Attorney Crowe- Michael StummDoctor Bowman
- Valda Z. DrablaGermaine Reinhardt
- Paul ConnorBobby Franks
Adina PorterStenographer
Todd HaynesPhrenology Head
Pamela KofflerPhrenology Head
James LyonsPrison Mugshot
Bobby ReedReporter
Michael KirbyDetective Savage
Recommended by
Rope, Compulsion, The Unbelievable Truth, Poison Ivy, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Poison, Miss Julie, Fun