Swoon

I found Swoon to be remarkably different from Compulsion, despite the fact that both movies describe the Leopold and Loeb murder. While Compulsion seems to be more of an unbiased, description-based narrative of the murder, Swoon is an opinionated account of the boys’ relationship much more than the actual murder. Both Compulsion and Rope contained undertones of homosexuality, but Swoon was an overtly gay film – I found myself wondering why this film was so “in your face” gay? What was the point that it was trying to make? This movie was made in the 1990’s, set in the 1920’s obviously. I don’t know why the producers of the film decided to insert such blatant themes of homosexuality, but I found that it had an effect on the viewer of the movie. I felt that the two boys, Nathan Leopold and Dicky Loeb, commit the crime of killing Bobby Franks for each other. They describe all of their previous crimes up until the murder, using a voice over technique, and each one seems to be for the sheer thrill of doing it. The two boys act like they are killing Bobby Franks to legitimize their relationship and for the excitement rather than any other reason.

I found it very curious that there is no talk at all of superior intellect in the movie. Everything that we have learned about the Leopold and Loeb murder up to this point asserts that the boys were Nietzsche fanatics. They were obsessed with the idea that some people retained a superior level of intelligence to others. Rope and Compulsion both claim that Leopold and Loeb commit the murder because they feel that they have the right to – their victim is inferior to them, a lesser human being, and therefore he should be killed. This mindset is not exhibited at all in Swoon. This interested me because the account tries to be very realistic – they use the same names and many of the same details that we have learned about the murder up until this point. However, There was no discussion of Nietzsche or superior intellect. This could have been done intentionally because the film wanted to maintain its overtly homosexual overtones and not distract the viewer with other themes.

Finally, one other aspect of Swoon that I found interesting was the film’s depiction of the boys’ actions before their murder of Franks. The movie took special care, using voice over, to describe all of the crimes, and on what date they occurred, that the boys committed before killing Franks. I feel that this made the viewer feel that these two are criminals. As I watched the movie, I got the sense that these two boys are a couple that enjoy committing crimes – they are not a pair of friends who became obsessed with Nietszche and decided to kill someone because of it, like Rope and Compulsion imply.