The Christine Jorgensen Story has been labeled "campy" by many film buffs. Personally, I only found one brief scene (the dream sequence during the operation) to be of (unintentional) camp value, but I had other issues with the movie. The script is weak and cliched, full of corny as hell dialogue. But its sincerity keeps me from judging it too harshly, because doggone it, this movie is so sincere in its portrayal of gender dysphoria that it makes me want to overlook its faults. This is one of the best portrayals of gender dysphoria that I've ever seen on film, and it owes this virtue to the sensitivity of its director.
Rapper surely made better pictures, but in a way, his style and technique strengthen what could otherwise have been an exploitation piece. His technique hadn't changed since he made Now, Voyager in 1942, and this film could not be more of a 40s picture if it had been made in black-and-white. This is one of the few period pieces to be set in the middle of the twentieth century that actually plays as though it were a movie made in that part of history. (This, however, makes the small amount of nudity and swearing in the movie stick out like a sore thumb-the first time I saw this film, it was a censored print on TV, and in my opinion, it was much better because it had fewer elements that made it a jarring experience).
I also want to praise the film for being one of the few mainstream trans-themed films that I've seen that is actually *about* the trans character. Movies like Normal and The Danish Girl claimed to be about trans characters, but in reality they were all about the self-indulgent suffering of the family members of the trans character. Trans people have it bad enough without the message in these kinds of movies being "how DARE you transition, and do this to your family!" Because that's sure the message I think they're sending. Though The Christine Jorgensen Story touches on the suffering of her family, it at least has the guts to focus on Christine herself.
It is a shame, though, that they chose the wrong person to play her. Worse than that, they chose someone of the wrong gender to play her. Director Rapper himself later admitted that the movie's big fault was that he hired a man to play the title character rather than a woman, which was a pretty big admission on his part, given that he made that statement in the 1970s, before there was any talk about whether you should really hire a woman to play a trans woman.
It is also a shame that there is an inherent but subtle misogyny to the conception of the screenplay. Once Christine is living as a woman, the script rushes to give her a love interest, as though to say that the only thing a female character in a movie is good for is a romance, that she needs a man to complete her. The real Christine was an independent woman who did not need a man to complete her in any way-she was just happy to be herself. I wish the story had focused more on how happy she was to stop living a lie, because I think it would've made for a better movie, too.
But don't even get me started on the inherent homophobia in the script...
