The author reviews the history of homosexuality in the cinema. For the first fifty years the emphasis was on feminine homosexuality, since masculine homosexuality was subject to legal censorship. Even then the relationships were merely suggested or distorted and hinted at. As the cinema progressed into the 1950's and beyond, there was a stress on temporary deviance within a social context. Only after the impact of the feminist movement in the 1970's did films become more specific about feminine homosexuality and object choice, along with aspects of the mother-daughter relationship and its effect on sexual identity.