Source: http://www.glbtq.com/arts/transvestism_film.html

Trying to figure out what cinematic transvestism has meant for queer audiences is problematic not only because transvestism has never meant one single thing, but also because representations of transvestism have often fallen short of what we today consider "queer."

While today we may take for granted the subversive possibilities of drag, it nevertheless remains true that actual representations of drag in film have reinforced conventional ideas of gender more often than they have challenged them.

On the other hand, queer postmodernism has appropriated iconic images of drag so wantonly that we tend to forget where they actually originate. For example, the indelible image of Marlene Dietrich performing cabaret in a man's top hat and tails has become retroactively synonymous with queer gender-bending, yet we should not conveniently forget that Josef von Sternberg's Morocco (1930) was, after all, a film about heterosexual masochism.

European cinema has always, of course, presented the same farcical stereotypes as Hollywood--slapstick cross-dressing has always been a staple of lowbrow comedy nearly everywhere. However, mainstream European films such as Claude Miller's The Best Way (1976) and Marco Risi's Forever Mary (1989) show that transvestism as a legitimate, if still troubled, representation of alternative desire was more allowable in European cultures whose homophobias were not quite as codified as those of Hollywood.

Elsewhere, in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's absurdist satire Satan's Brew (1976), we see that transvestism ultimately seems a far less neurotic practice than the mundane sadomasochisms we endure on a daily basis.