‘Different From Others’: Cinema’s First Gay Love Story; Featuring Love Has More Advantage Than Hatred

"Different from the Others" was the first ever film that features about gay love, a silent picture film from 1919. In the film, a handsome man plays the piano and a violin genius named Paul Korner surrounded by his fame and wealth but he appears to be lonely. Then destiny pushed him to meet a young music student Kurt Sivers, a round-faced handsome lad who has seen all Paul's concerts.

Kurt Sivers approaches the music genius, Paul Korner, saying "My sincere wish would come true if you were willing to be my teacher, Sir Paul!" Without any hesitation, Paul said yes with open arms. Their alliance as a teacher-student with passions and professionalism quiet came successful, and their feelings for each other became stronger. But the society didn't accept their relationship, at the end of the film cruelty and self-hatred came on top that homosexual can hope to be loved.

According to Kino Lorber, the first gay film "Different from the Others" was written by the gay sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld and directed by an Austrian Richard Oswald. The film tells the viewers to suffer not from their condition but rather from the false judgment in our society.

In the fall of 1933, the Nazis attacked Magnus Hirschfield Institute of Sexual Research that every copy of "Different from the Others" had been banned and destroyed. But luckily there was a scientific film called "Laws of Love," a survivor copy which was shown in Russia and remained for decades in the Krasnogorsk archives.

"Different from the Others" made another argument which hatred can smolder liberal democracies. The film was made to be in the first place, along with another featured gay film "Pandora's Box" and "Madchen in Uniform," both seductive onscreen lesbians erotically charged to all girls' boarding school. Anita Loos, a novel writer once stated in the reports of The New Yorker that any Berlin lady might turn out to be a man because the prettiest girl was Conrad Veidt; the man who played Paul Korner in "Different from the Others."

Based in our society, there is a special kind of shame and suffering that comes from living unconfirmed by the gender identity. In "Different from the Others" it portrays Paul Korner loses his faith in the power of companionship. Love has still advantage than hate as what Magnus Hirschfield said in 1919.

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