A Florida Enchantment | |
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Directed by | Sidney Drew |
Produced by | Sidney Drew |
Written by | Marguerite Bertsch Eugene Mullin |
Starring | Edith Storey Sidney Drew Ethel Lloyd |
Cinematography | Robert A. Stuart |
Distributed by | Vitagraph Studios |
Release date(s) | 1914 |
Running time | 63 minutes (at 20 frame/s) |
Country | United States |
Language | Silent film English intertitles |
A Florida Enchantment (1914) is a silent film directed by and starring Sidney Drew and released by Vitagraph Studios. The film is based on the 1891 novel and 1896 play (now lost) of the same name written by Fergus Redmond and Archibald Clavering Gunter.
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In the film, Lillian Travers, a wealthy Northern woman about to be married, takes a magical seed which transforms its user into the opposite gender. Lillian's transformation into Lawrence Talbot has also been read as a transformation into a butch lesbian. This reading is bolstered by the later transformation of Lillian's fiancé into what appears to be an effemininate gay man.
The film is also known for its use of blackface antics; an aspect carefully dissected in Siobhan Somerville's "Queering the Color Line." Since its inclusion in Vito Russo's The Celluloid Closet, the film has increasingly been seen as one of the earliest film representations of homosexuality and cross-dressing in American culture.