This forgotten 1947 noir featured one of the era’s best and most complex gay characters

Welcome back to our queer film retrospective, “A Gay Old Time.” In this week’s column, were revisiting the 1947 noir Repeat Performance, which features what the Criterion Channel calls “one of the era’s most sensitive depictions of a queer character.

If you had a second chance at redoing an entire year of your life, would you do it? 

Unless something extraordinarily good happens—like winning an Academy Award, finding the love of your life, or suddenly coming into millions of dollars—there are probably few people who wouldn’t. The power that a “what if” holds over a person’s life is too big not to be taken seriously, and that is why it’s always been such a rich narrative device.

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This week, we’ll take a look at a little-seen movie from the first half century of Hollywood, the 1947 supernatural thriller melodrama Repeat Performance, in which an actress gets the chance to relive the last year of her life, which ended in great tragedy. However, she soon realizes that no matter how much she wants to change things, some events will still happen the same way, and she may well end up in the very place she wanted to avoid.

The film is notable for its blend of supernatural fantasy, heavy noir influences against a backstage melodrama, and for featuring one of the most sympathetic and complex portrayals of a queer character for its time.

The Set-Up

Repeat Performance follows Sheila Page (Joan Leslie) a famous stage actress who shoots and kills her husband on New Year’s Eve. As she seeks refuge and advice from her good friend William Williams (Richard Baseheart, in his film debut), who has just returned from a stay in an asylum, she makes a wish with him. She wishes that she could relive the past year and avoid the mistakes that led to the killing of her husband. Then, as she enters a new room, she suddenly finds herself a year earlier, and is given a second chance.

We discover that over that fateful year, Sheila’s alcoholic husband Barney (Louis Hayward) had fallen in love with Paula Costello (Virginia Field), the playwright of a show Sheila is set to star in. Trying to change the set of decisions that led her to the show and rupture of her marriage, Sheila cancels a trip to London in which she was to meet Paula.

But as fate would have it, Paula still shows up at her doorstep as a guest to a party in the same building, and she and Barney meet. Sheila ends up doing the show anyway when her producer (Tom Conway) attaches her without her consent, and without knowing the name of the writer. And the affair between Paula and Barney takes place regardless.

A Friend In Need

Sheila turns to William, the only other person who she has told about her wish and the new chance at living the year again. They realize that even though things seem to be playing out the same way, some of the details and smaller events have been changing, and believe that she still could still hold the alter to change the final outcome.

William is still taken away to the asylum after an unclear but heavily hinted-at arrest for public indecency. He escapes and tracks down Sheila right before she is about to once again kill her husband, and he does it for her instead. But not before he also wishes that he could relive things all over.

Although it juggles many interesting narrative and stylistic gimmicks, Repeat Performance is a bit of a structural and tonal mess, and feels like two or three movies crammed into one.

It’s the prototype of a Twilight Zone episode, in which a supernatural premise reflects the unchanging nature of fate and humanity. Its style is reminiscent of a noir, with its shadow play and murky characters with hidden intentions. It’s a backstage drama in the vein of All About Eve.

And it’s also an unintentional look at the innate scapegoat quality of queer characters at the time.

A Queer Bird

William Williams is undoubtedly the most interesting element and character in the film. He is a man that lives in the orbit of the theater world, without taking much part in it himself. He is a patron of the arts, and a friend of the women who work in it. He is shown being wined and dined by older ladies for his company and wit, and is always seen perfectly dressed, eloquent and charming. A less evil version of All About Eve’s Addison DeWitt, William is queer in everything but name.

He is also portrayed as someone mentally unbalanced and painfully lonely. After an undisclosed event involving a public arrest lands him in an asylum, Sheila visits him and he tells her they have to keep him there to fix what’s wrong with him. William has the unmistakable melancholy associated with queer characters of the era; someone full of emotion and yearning, but that is never reciprocated or acted upon.

At least here it gets Sheila’s understanding, empathy, and friendship. William is still very much a tragic character, but his role is pivotal to the story, and we are able to feel for his tragedy in a way that other queer characters would be brushed aside or tossed to the background.

The Tragic Hero

Repeat Performance portrays his tragedy with unexpected nuance and thematic relevance to the story. By giving him the chance to start over, his fate is not totally desperate. William sacrifices himself for the protagonist of the movie, but there is still a slim chance that he might find happiness. Or at least relief. 

The film gives him (and, in a broader sense, the queer community) a chance to imagine that maybe things could turn out differently, and that they may turn out okay. They may very well lead him on the same path no matter what he does, like it happened with Sheila. But that ray of hope is vital. And it’s much more than other gay characters tended to get at that time.

Repeat Performance is currently streaming via The Criterion Channel and Kanopy.

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