Nighthawks (1978) on Netflix
By day Jim teaches geography to classes at a London school. He keeps his homosexuality hidden from those around him, and he spends his nights in the city's gay pubs and clubs.
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- Netflix2.6/5
- IMDb6.2/10860 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes40%
Trailer
Plot summary
Jim teaches geography at a school in London, and the people around him there know nothing about his homosexuality. When the school day ends, he goes out into the city's gay pubs and clubs, where he meets men. It shows everyday gay life in London in the late 1970s, and no earlier British feature had set its story openly in the gay community.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Nighthawks (1978)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The British Film Institute refused to fund Nighthawks, so Ron Peck turned to private donors and German broadcaster ZDF, asking Stanley Kubrick, Albert Finney, Elton John, David Hockney and others for money; Freddie Mercury met him privately but declined.
SPOILER
John Warburton, a London geography teacher fired and banned from Inner London schools after pupils saw him at a gay rights demonstration, was considered by Ron Peck for the lead in Nighthawks; he got a cameo in a pub scene, and his experience inspired the scene where Jim comes out to his class.- Nighthawks was shot mostly in very long improvised sequence takes with no cutaways, so when first assembled as a full narrative it ran to something like four hours, an edit Peck called not easy.
- Nighthawks is the first explicitly gay British feature set in the gay community, following the day-to-day life of a gay man in London.
- Ken Robertson, who had only been considered for the lead in October 1977, was hired to play Jim and was the only actor paid on the Nighthawks production.
