The arc of Visconti's film career mirrors his increasing openness about his homosexuality. His first proletarian epic, La terra trema, contained many stunnningly composed images of young men at work, whereas his later epic, Rocco e i suoi fratelli, constantly depicts Alain Delon in close-up, framed and lit in the most glamorous movie-star style, while there is a subplot involving a boxing promoter who pays young men for sex. The homoeroticism of Götterdämmerung, Morte a Venezia, and Ludwig is overt and configured in terms of obsession.

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Critical opinion on Visconti's work remains sharply divided. Except for those critics who are totally dismissive (usually citing Visconti's decorative tendencies, which may be a coded term for his homosexual sensibility), however, most critics find at least one of his films praiseworthy, although each may cite a different one.

The divided response to Visconti's life and career points to a figure of great complexity, one of the towering figures of Italian culture in the twentieth century.

Since the 1960s, European film has included significant gay-themed films, many of them directed by openly gay and lesbian directors.

Since cinema began, Hollywood has been fascinated with finding ways of representing homosexuality.

Gay, lesbian, and bisexual film directors have been a vital creative presence in cinema since the medium's inception over one hundred years ago.

Although British film star Dirk Bogarde only tacitly acknowledged his homosexuality during most of his life, he deserves credit as the first actor to create a sympathetic gay character in British film.

Italian design duo Dolce & Gabbana, partners both in business and in life, are known for their sexy, glamorous women's clothing and sharp men's tailoring, all of which embody a distinctively southern Italian feel.

Actor Farley Granger is best known for playing strikingly handsome yet emotionally vulnerable young men in classic 1940s films, but his long and productive career encompasses theater and television roles as well.

German-born American photographer Horst P. Horst, known most widely as simply "Horst," created some of the most memorable images of the mid-twentieth century.

One of Germany's greatest twentieth-century authors, Thomas Mann encoded his own homosexuality in his novels but thought that homosexuality led to the destruction of social institutions and the death of the individual homosexual.

Controversial Italian director Franco Zeffirelli has won both acclaim and derision for his visually extravagant opera, stage, and film productions, while also provoking the ire of many gay men and lesbians for his anti-gay religious positions.