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Sex in Cinema: |
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Sex in Cinema: |
 
Sex in Cinema: In the following collection, excerpted from the
Mini-History of Sex in the Cinema
at this site, here are some of the most significant milestones, and
most influential and memorable sexual/erotic scenes and films on the
big screen through cinematic history. Most of these films, with portrayals
of sex and/or nudity, were considered quite erotic, groundbreaking,
unique and/or controversial at the time. HISTORY OF SEX IN CINEMA - INDEX (chronological by film title) Intro | Part
1 | Part 2 | Part
3 | Part 4 | Part
5 | Part 6 | Part
7 | Part 8 | Part
9 | Part 10 | |
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Greatest and Most Influential Erotic / Sexual Films and Scenes (chronological by film title) 
Milestone Films With Scenes That Were Especially
Notorious, Infamous, Controversial, or Scandalous |
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Movie Title
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Brief Scene Description |
Example |
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Black Narcissus (1947, UK)
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This Powell/Pressburger classic film was noted for its theme of repressed sexuality within a nun's mission (located in a former brothel with sensual murals on the walls) situated on the precipitous edge of a Himalayan mountainside; the film was controversial for its provocative and censor-defying dance through the palace by beautiful, alluring, orphaned local Indian maiden Kanchi (18 year-old Jean Simmons in her second major film role), who later closed her eyes and sensuously smelled the perfumed essence (of black narcissus) of the Himalayan general's son Dilip Rai (Sabu); the insane, sexually-conflicted, free-spirited and starved Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron) was mad with lust for the property's handsome British intermediary Mr. Dean (David Farrar) and she virtually threw herself at him; the film concluded with her climactic scene opposite devout and pious Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) - when she wore a forbidden scarlet red dress after renouncing her nunhood and then applied bright red lipstick (symbolizing her complete break with the nunnery) |
 
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The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)
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There's a non-sexual but extremely sensual, romantically sappy and transcendent ending to this film; recently-deceased, white-haired widow Lucy Muir (Gene Tierney) rose from her British seaside cottage's chair and - rejuvenated and young again - walked off, hand-in-hand through the front door into the afterlife, with her salty and ghostly sea captain Daniel Gregg (Rex Harrison), Gull Cottage's former owner; he had, in a creepy sort of way, been haunting her bedroom and thoughts in his non-flesh-and-blood form |
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The Bicycle Thief (1948, It.)
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Vittorio De Sica's neo-realistic Italian masterpiece (an Academy Award-winning "most outstanding foreign film" recognition) contained two non-explicit scenes that were questioned by Hollywood's Production Code Administration (PCA); the film told the story of the search by unemployed Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani) and his 10 year-old son Bruno (Enzo Staiola) for a bicycle stolen by a kid in a German military hat (Vittorio Antonucci); the two scenes in question were: (1) Bruno's pausing by a wall to relieve himself, and (2) their frantic pursuit into a bordello ("house of tolerance") where the women were actually clothed, and uninvolved in sexual activity. Although the PCA was accused of petty demands, the film was the first to be successfully released and exhibited without a seal of approval | |
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The classic Howard Hawks' cattle drive western included the pre-Code scene of Cherry Valance's (John Ireland) and Matt Garth/Dunson's (Montgomery Clift) discussion of their guns - often interpreted as homosexually-charged; in the scene, Cherry made covert advances toward Matt, while they both exhibited much symbolic macho posturing and sexual innuendo about their respective guns -- "Can I see it?...And you'd like to see mine!" "Nice! Awful nice...", and the clincher dialogue: "You know, there are only two things more beautiful than a good gun: a Swiss watch or a woman from anywhere. You ever had a good Swiss watch?"; this scene was followed by their competitive target practice session with a tin can to demonstrate their shooting skills |
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Rope (1948)
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Alfred Hitchcock's first color film had two gay villains in a plot that was loosely based upon the Leopold-Loeb murders -- in the suspenseful film composed of lengthy takes, two implicitly homosexual and psychopathic college buddies-lovers named Phillip Morgan and Brandon Shaw (Farley Granger and John Dall) thrill-killed (by rope strangulation) a third individual and then hid his body in a chest; in one chilling, sexually-tinged scene, Shaw recounted his feelings about the murder to Morgan: "I don't remember feeling very much of anything -- until his body went limp and then I knew it was over...I felt tremendously exhilarated!" |
 
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This melodramatic film warned in its opening, necessary for code restrictions at the time, that it was salutory to view this "story of evil" in order to be delivered from it; an abortion doctor (to whom black-hearted Rosa Moline (Bette Davis) visited with an unwanted pregnancy) was called a 'psychological consultant' to disguise his occupation; her sins included adultery with Chicago industrialist-millionaire Neil Latimer (David Brian), murder of Moose (Minor Watson), an attempted abortion, and a forced miscarriage; in one of the film's final scenes, Rosa lept from a car and rolled down a steep embankment in a crazy attempt to induce a miscarriage, and as the film concluded, she was found face-down and dead in the dirt after failing to reach the train station to escape her plight |
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Caged (1950)
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Director John Cromwell's grim, black-and-white women-in-prison film starred Eleanor Parker as initially-naive Marie Allen - sentenced for being an accomplice to armed robbery and placed in an Illinois correctional institution run by a sadistic and corrupt guard/matron named Evelyn Harper (Hope Emerson); there were unstated hints of lesbianism when widowed Marie (who was pregnant without a husband when he was killed in the $40 robbery) was introduced to Harper: "Let's you and me get acquainted, honey. You may be a number to the others, but not to me. Sit down in this chair. It’s kinda...roomy"; it also included the requisite titillating shower room scenes although tame by today's standards, and lustful fellow prisoners who viewed the increasingly-hardened Marie as a "cute trick" |
 
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Director Billy Wilder's dark film-noir story told about "behind the scenes" Hollywood, self-deceit, spiritual and spatial emptiness, and the price of fame, greed, narcissism, and ambition; in the film's plot, a B-movie hack screenwriter/narrator-gigolo Joe Gillis (William Holden) with financial problems sought to trade himself for monetary support from an aging silent film queen Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) in her decaying mansion in Tinseltown; after being showered with bribes (clothes, money, flattery and other gifts), he was quickly spoiled and ensnared in her web of delusion - and death trap |
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Young Man with a Horn (1950)
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Michael Curtiz' and Warner Bros' musical drama and morality play starred Kirk Douglas as ace trumpet player Rick Martin (representing 1920s jazz artist Bix Beiderbecke); he eventually (and wrongly) married sultry, wealthy and neurotic jazz patroness Amy North (Lauren Bacall in an off-beat role) who had confused lesbian leanings and envied the pure heterosexuality of Martin's true love - a big-band torch singer named Jo Jordan (Doris Day): ("Jo's interesting, isn't she? So simple and uncomplicated. It must be wonderful to wake up in the morning and know just which door you're gonna walk through. She's so terribly normal"); this cautionary tale warned against wayward lesbian leanings and unspoken affections (bad girl Amy's feelings for a painter named Miss Carson (uncredited Katharine Kurasch)) that could disintegrate marriage - eventually Rick broke off their troubled marriage with: "You're a sick girl, Amy. You'd better see a doctor" |
  
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Various elements in the plot of this John Huston adventure film were toned down - the unmarried co-habitation of prim missionary lady Rose Sayer (Katharine Hepburn) (known for her circumspect statement: "Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above") and gin-drinking boat captain Charlie Allnut (Humphrey Bogart) on his run-down tramp steamer vessel; also any negative references to missionaries, or mention of nudity; their kissing scene couldn't be prolonged or lustful either, although she did express her physical enthusiasm for a ride down the rapids: "I never dreamed any mere physical experience could be so stimulating!" |
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Era Lui!... Si! Si! (1951, It.) (aka It's Him... Yes! Yes!)
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Long before Sophia Loren (earlier credited as Sofia Lazzaro and Sofia Scicolone) became an international star and Oscar-winning actress, she starred in a number of low-budget campy foreign language films; she owed her future film success to producer Carlo Ponti (her future husband), who judged her second place in the 1950 Miss Rome competition; in one by director Giorgio Bianchi titled Era Lui!...Si! Si!, she was an extra as a harem girl; she also appeared naked in a pool swimming scene in the bawdy costume drama-comedy Two Nights With Cleopatra (1954, It.) (aka Due Notti Con Cleopatra) in which she played a double role as the sultry Queen of the Nile and slave girl Nisca, and then she established herself as an iconic sex symbol in Boy On a Dolphin (1957) as Phaedra (also pictured here), emerging from a dive with a wet, body-clinging dress |
 Era Lui!...Si! Si! (1951)  Two Nights With Cleopatra (1954)  Boy on a Dolphin (1957) |
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In one of the most romantic performances ever filmed, in an extended scene of budding romance, this George Stevens film captured the sensuous and electrifying romantic interplay between rich girl Angela (Elizabeth Taylor) and poor boy George (Montgomery Clift) at a dance; in a sensual series of full-face closeups as they danced together, George finally confessed his love to Angela - the love of an ideal woman which had now been discovered in her, and breathlessly, Angela began to confess her love for him in kind; on the balcony during powerfully-erotic moments, their enormous, extreme closeups filled the screen as they revealed innermost, heightened emotions and inflamed passions, and pledged themselves to each other. They closely embraced and kissed passionately, caught up in an all-consuming relationship over which they had no control |
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Elia Kazan's sizzling melodrama featured brutish Stanley (Marlon Brando) and fragile nymphomaniac sister-in-law Blanche (Vivien Leigh) in perpetual conflict with each other; the film was stripped of many of its 'objectionable' elements (i.e., rape, homosexuality, abuse, etc.) by the studio's altering and cutting of dialogue and various scenes (12 cuts and four minutes of screen time) to escape the Catholic Legion of Decency's condemnation rating; a restored version or "Director's Cut" of the film was released to theatres and video in 1993; Brando became a sex symbol, and popularized the T-shirt as a sexy garment (similar to the opposite effect bare-chested Clark Gable had on the industry in It Happened One Night (1934) when he revealed he wasn't wearing a T-shirt); the film was also noted for the sex-related scenes of Blanche kissing a young boy, a satisfied wife Stella (Kim Hunter) the morning after being ravished by her husband Stanley, and Blanche's rape by Stanley (symbolized by the broken glass) |
   
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Calamity Jane (1953)
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David Butler's lighthearted, rousing Warner Bros' musical, loosely based on historical facts and set in the Old West in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, starred Doris Day as the Wild West's fast-shootin', tough-talkin', cross-dressin', buck-skinned stagecoach driver/cowboy, in a heterosexualized story about the Golden Garter saloon and her romance with Wild Bill Hickok (Howard Keel); but in a few other scenes with a Sapphic subtext, she sang the Oscar-winning song about "Secret Love", and expressed her physical attraction and tomboyish, lesbian leanings toward a bustier-wearing actress' maid named Katie Brown (Allyn Ann McLerie) by looking her up and down: ("Gosh...you're the prettiest thing I've ever seen. I've never known a woman could look like that. Say, how do you hold that dress up there?") - they moved in together and painted "Calam and Katie" in a big heart on their cabin's front door, and eventually Katie made a 'lady' out of Calamity by getting her to change from buckskins to jeans to a blouse and skirt |
 
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HISTORY OF SEX IN CINEMA - INDEX (chronological by film title)
Intro | Part
1 | Part 2 | Part
3 | Part 4 | Part
5 | Part 6 | Part
7 | Part 8 | Part
9 | Part 10 |
Part 11 | Part
12 | Part 13 | Part
14 | Part 15 | Part
16 | Part 17 | Part
18 | Part 19 | Part
20 |
Part 21 | Part
22 | Part 23 | Part
24 | Part 25 | Part
26 | Part 27 | Part
28 | Part 29 | Part
30 |
Part 31 | Part
32 | Part 33 | Part
34 | Part 35 | Part
36 | Part 37 | Part
38 | Part 39 | Part
40 |
Part 41 | Part
42 | Part 43 | Part
44 | Part 45 | Part
46 | Part 47 | Part
48 | Part 49 | Part
50 |
Created in 1996-2008 © by Tim Dirks. All rights reserved.
