Review: Prescient Doc 'The Queen' Still Resonates

Drag culture feels so ubiquitous today, with RuPaul's TV show garnering a huge number of viewers and establishing a strong fanbase of people from all walks of life. Frank Simon's "The Queen" was prescient: Long heralded as a groundbreaking document on drag culture in New York City in the 1960s, it's both a precursor to RuPaul and also a text to study in how drag culture has changed over the years.

Simon, taking a page out of the cin�ma v�rit� school of filmmaking, keenly observes the 1967 Miss All-American Camp Beauty Pageant. As the queens throw shade, rehearse, and transform into their personas, something beautiful occurs; it's like peering directly into a subculture without any pretension. Yet, some of society's biggest ills (race, money, egotism) envelop this community in ways that really shock.

Although Frank Simon is at least a couple steps away from other famous documentarians employing similar techniques during the same era, there's unparalleled access to drag life that keeps each moment more engrossing than the last. The zoom-happy camera work feels, in a way, implicit to the physical movement of these queens, as if their personalities inspired those behind the camera. That being said, sometimes it can feel jarring, too eager to find some meaning, when simply luxuriating in this world would have sufficed.

The story mainly follows LGBTQ icon Flawless Sabrina as she's a willful observer of the planning and production of the pageant, as well as a participant. We watch Sabrina and many of her queen cohorts transform into their personas and also gripe about struggling to be their true selves in their own communities. There's an honesty in these transformation sequences that's heart-wrenching, but also alleviating, as the moments we observe of this film are of these people living their lives fully. As much as "The Queen" is an education, it never stops to explain the finer details, in part because there's so much material to cover and in part because, being an observation, the film must only observe.

The new 4K restoration from Kino Lorber is probably the best the film has ever looked at home, as it was originally shot on 16mm and has the texture signature of that stock. While there are clearly some bumps and bruises in the video and audio, I can't imagine the kind of materials they had to work from in the restoration of this film. Add in a slew of special features, including a short film starring Flawless Sabrina, and you have a release that deeply cares that this movie confidently continues to exist. Special features include:

� Audio commentary by artist and producer Zackary Drucker and journalist and author Diana Tourj�e
� Outtake footage
� Theatrical trailers (original and re-release)
� Interview with producer Si Litvinoff, by Shade Rupe
� "The Queen: After Party Outtakes," with Jack Doroshow, by Joe E. Jeffreys
� Flawless Sabrina: Icon/Muse, a short documentary by Michelle Handelman
� "Irma Vep: The Last Breath," a short film by Michelle Handelman, featuring Flawless Sabrina
� "Queens at Heart," a 1967 short documentary on drag culture
� Post-screening Q&A footage with Flawless Sabrina and Zackary Drucker
� Booklet essay by Joe E. Jeffreys

"The Queen"
Blu-ray
$29.95
https://www.kinolorber.com/product/the-queen-dvd-1