The Third Sex: A relic of moral panic

Is it worth your time?

Honestly? Only if you are the kind of person who enjoys watching history try to explain itself and fail miserably. If you’re looking for a sober or sensitive portrayal of anything, stay far away. This is for the curious, the people who like watching old, crumbling reels of moral panic. If you get offended easily by outdated psychobabble, you will absolutely hate this.

The Third Sex is one of those movies that feels like it was written by a committee of people who had never actually met a human being. It’s supposed to be this cautionary tale about homosexuality, but it ends up being a weird, unintentional comedy of errors.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of The Third Sex (1934) through its definitive frames.

Elinor’s therapist is the real star of the show here. He delivers lines with the kind of smug confidence that only a man in a tweed suit could muster. The idea that you can just 'marry a football player' to fix your entire internal landscape is so absurd it’s almost poetic. Almost.

Odd moments and observations

• The roommate, Bobby, is played with such earnestness that it makes the rest of the cast look like they’re reading from a teleprompter in another room.
• There’s a scene at the country home that feels like it’s been edited by someone with a very heavy hand and a very short attention span.
• The dialogue is stiff. Like, 'wooden board' stiff. Nobody speaks like this, not even in the 50s.

It’s strange to think about how this compares to something like Through Eyes of Men. Both films feel like they’re trying to lecture the audience, but they lack the self-awareness to realize how transparent their agendas are. It’s like being trapped in a conversation with a relative who just learned a new word and won't stop using it incorrectly.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of The Third Sex (1934) through its definitive frames.

The pacing is all over the place. One minute we’re in a high-stakes law office, and the next we’re at some random country estate that feels like it was rented for a weekend just to film the B-roll. You can almost see the budget constraints in the way the actors stand too close to the edges of the frame. It’s charming in a 'we ran out of money' kind of way.

I found myself wondering if anyone involved actually believed the message. Or were they just trying to make a quick buck off the scandal of it all? It’s hard to tell when the acting is this flat. There’s a distinct lack of humanity here, even when the characters are supposed to be having these big, 'profound' realizations. It’s just people moving through sets, waiting for the scene to end.

Watching this made me think of The Silk Express, mostly because both movies feel like they were stitched together from scraps. You aren't watching a movie; you're watching an artifact of a time when society was deeply, deeply confused about itself. It’s not 'good' in any traditional sense. But it sure is something to behold.