Film fans are returning to Swoon, Tom Kalin's bold 1992 drama about Leopold and Loeb, because it puts the pair's relationship at the centre of a notorious Chicago murder case. Its stark black-and-white style, unsettling courtroom imagery and refusal to soften queer history still make this New Queer Cinema classic feel startlingly alive.

Essential Takeaways

  • Based on a real case: Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb murdered Bobby Franks in Chicago in 1924.
  • Queerness stays central: Swoon presents the pair's romantic relationship openly rather than hiding it in subtext.
  • A deliberately uneasy style: High-contrast black-and-white images and fractured camerawork create a tense, disorientating mood.
  • The trial matters: The film explores how sexuality, class and public morality shaped the case's reception.
  • Still available to watch: Swoon can be rented or bought digitally through major platforms, including Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV.

A notorious crime gets its queer history back

The Leopold and Loeb case already had the ingredients of a sensational headline: wealthy university students, a kidnapped teenager, a supposed intellectual experiment and a courtroom spectacle that gripped the United States. PBS's account of the 1924 trial records how the pair were eventually convicted after evidence exposed their involvement in Bobby Franks's murder.

What makes Swoon different is that it doesn't treat the men's relationship as an inconvenient footnote. Instead, their intimacy sits alongside the crime, forcing viewers to consider how desire, privilege and violence became tangled in the public imagination. It's an uncomfortable combination, but that's precisely the point. (PBS, Roger Ebert)

Swoon refuses to hide behind implication

Earlier fictional versions of the case often reshaped the details or left the relationship between the central men carefully implied. Alfred Hitchcock's Rope is the famous example, turning the premise into elegant suspense while keeping its homosexuality beneath the surface.

Kalin's film takes the opposite route. Craig Chester and Daniel Schlachet play Leopold and Loeb as young men whose closeness is tender, erotic and troubling, sometimes within the same scene. The result isn't a romantic gloss on murder. Rather, it argues that removing the relationship from the story also removes part of the historical truth. (Time Out, Roger Ebert)

Black and white has rarely felt so unstable

Swoon looks like a period film, but it doesn't settle into comfortable nostalgia. Its stark monochrome photography, abrupt angles and restless visual movement give the story a feverish, almost dreamlike quality. The world feels tilted, as though the audience is being denied a safe place to stand.

That approach also reflects the film's larger interest in performance and perception. Public appearances, courtroom testimony and private desire constantly collide, while the characters seem trapped inside versions of themselves created by other people. Academic writing on queer crime narratives has similarly examined how sexuality is repeatedly linked with danger, deviance and social control. (Roger Ebert, Sage Journals)

The courtroom becomes the film's most provocative stage

Swoon's most unforgettable image places a bed inside the courtroom, with Leopold and Loeb lying together as they are questioned. It's surreal, funny in a bleak way and deeply confrontational. The scene collapses the private and public worlds that the men, their lawyers and the press all tried to keep apart.

The film doesn't claim their sexuality caused the murder, nor does it ask the audience to excuse what happened. Instead, it examines how the relationship affected the way the crime was interpreted. In a society already eager to turn homosexuality into evidence of moral failure, the trial became about more than guilt. It became a spectacle of identity. (PBS, JSTOR)

Why this New Queer Cinema classic still matters

Swoon arrived during the early 1990s New Queer Cinema movement, a period associated with formally adventurous films that challenged respectable, simplified ideas of LGBTQ+ life. Its approach can feel jagged and confrontational, but that roughness is part of its power. This isn't a polished historical re-enactment designed to reassure.

It also offers a useful counterpoint to today's true-crime culture. Modern audiences consume murders through podcasts, documentaries and streaming dramas at extraordinary speed, yet Swoon slows down to ask what gets erased when a complicated story is turned into a neat thriller. More than three decades after its release, that question still lands with a quiet thud. (Time Out, Sage Journals)

Swoon remains a daring watch for anyone interested in queer cinema, true crime and the politics of who gets remembered.

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