Introduction: In the following illustrated compilation are some of the most significant films in the history of sex on the screen. The influential film milestones and their memorable sexual/erotic scenes are thoroughly described. Including portrayals of sex and/or nudity, these films were often considered quite erotic, groundbreaking, unique and/or controversial at the time. The following listing of these influential, memorable and classic sex scenes and films takes into account all of the available surveys of this type of material, and attempts to provide an informed, detailed, unranked, chronological (by film title) grouping of the most influential and groundbreaking films and scenes. Some of the most notorious (or infamous) films are quite mediocre, usually made as an excuse to display nudity or eroticism of a star performer.

See also the multi-part Sexual and Erotic Films in Cinema, The Most Controversial Films of All-Time and the Best and Most Memorable Film Kisses of All Time in Cinematic History.

Key to Icon Symbol:

- Milestone Films With Scenes That Were Especially Notorious, Infamous, Controversial, or Scandalous

Example

How to Be Very, Very Popular (1955)

Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955)

Monika: Story of a Bad Girl (1955)

Legendary exploitation distributor Kroger Babb, after purchasing the rights to Ingmar Bergman's Summer With Monika (1953, Swe.) (aka Sommaren med Monika), cut out approximately 30 minutes of the film, dubbed it into English, replaced the musical score with a jazzy one by Les Baxter, and renamed it to ready the film for the drive-in circuit; it was one of the first foreign-language films that made its nudity a major selling point for US audiences, and helped create the stereotype that Swedish women were sexually liberated; Babb sensationalized the repackaged film with racy advertisements and taglines such as: "She’s 19—and Naughty but Nice!", "Everybody’s Talking About Monika!", and "The Devil Controls Her By Radar!" (for its one controversial scene of nudity and love-making); the film featured the brief idyllic romance between a young couple: Harry (Lars Ekborg) and Monika (18-year-old Harriet Andersson)

Picnic (1955)

Joshua Logan's widescreen version of William Inge's Pulitzer Prize-winning play included a slow "mating" dance sequence (to the tune of "Moonglow") between handsome, sexy drifter Hal Carter (William Holden) and Madge Owens (Kim Novak), filmed in one-take with a circling camera under colorful Japanese lanterns on a boat dock landing at night, during a Labor Day weekend

Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

Nicholas Ray's film sympathetically viewed rebellious, restless, misunderstood, middle-class American youth alienated from adults; one of its characters was Judy (Natalie Wood), a nubile teen with a desperate need to be loved who was first introduced at the police station; in a scene with a hidden incest subtext, she was upset about her father (William Hopper) who resisted and reproached her grown-up maturity. He caused her pain when he labeled her a "dirty tramp" - after she had applied red lipstick and dressed up for him; later, she was seen in her home forcing a kiss from her father at the meal table after he had returned from work: "Daddy?...Haven't you forgotten something?" He mocked her need for affection and humiliated her, embarrassed because she was too old: "What's the matter with you? You're getting too old for that kind of stuff, kiddo. You can stop doing that long ago." She responded: "I didn't want to stop" and remained upset over her father's reluctance to kiss her and respond to her affection: "Girls don't love their father? Since when? Since I got to be 16?" Her father slapped and chastised her with a reprimanding tone, while her mother (Rochelle Hudson) reassured him, admitting that she too didn't know how to help their adolescent daughter: "She'll outgrow it dear, it's just the age...It's just the age when nothing fits"; two other characters in the film's storyline who joined Judy to became a close-knit 'family' of sorts were troubled juvenile Plato (Sal Mineo) - portrayed as homosexual (he idolized a picture of movie-star Alan Ladd in his school locker), and red-jacketed rebel Jim Stark (James Dean); by film's end, due to homophobic attitudes, the 'gay' character (the real 'rebel' of the picture) was killed

The Seven Year Itch (1955)

To Catch a Thief (1955)

And God Created Woman (1956, Fr.)
and
And God Created Woman (1988)

This ground-breaking 'art-house' international film from director Roger Vadim (with no explicit sex and almost no nudity) was a star-making vehicle for international sex symbol and 'sex kitten' Brigitte Bardot (as an 18 year old free-spirited orphan named Juliette, and the director's wife at the time); it opened with a view of the naked and tanned starlet silhouetted against a hanging white bedsheet (laundry) while lying down sunbathing; also later, the film featured the erotic scene of a desperate Juliette madly dancing the mambo barefooted with her open green skirt flashing her black panties; the film was the biggest foreign box-office success of the 50s - its titillating content and positive reception inspired other producers to incorporate nudity into their films to attract audiences, and helped initiate the trend for art house theaters to become adult-film venues as well

The original 1956 film was remade over thirty years later with much more nudity and a completely different story by director Vadim (his final film that was a huge failure) as And God Created Woman (1988) - with Rebecca DeMornay in the lead role

Baby Doll (1956)

Tennessee Williams' play was adapted by controversial director Elia Kazan for this pot-boiling Southern drama - harshly condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency for its depiction of older aged men pursuing an under-aged female; it told about a thumb-sucking, white-trash, 19 year-old 'baby doll' child bride (Carroll Baker) - she was married (without sexual consummation) to cotton gin operator Archie Lee Meighan (Karl Malden) - in the film's opening, Baby Doll slept in a small crib-bed while sucking her thumb as the desperate, sexually-frustrated Archie peeked at her through a hole in the wall (and thrust with a penknife to make the hole wider - as her mouth opened and closed around her thumb); in another blatant scene that took place in town, Baby Doll pleasurably licked an ice cream cone; the film's notorious, highly-sexual seduction scene on a plantation swing by vengeful, covetous Sicilian Silva Vaccaro (Eli Wallach) was severely criticized - but mostly for what was not shown just below the camera's frame; one of his aims was to 'take' the virginity of Baby Doll and deflower her to get back at her husband - and he was able to kiss her on-screen in a darkened adjoining room under a turned-off bare bulb while Archie was on the phone nearby; later, in a memorably lewd sight - Vaccaro mounted and sat astride a small wooden hobby horse - rhythmically rocking back and forth on the tiny toy whose head was hardly visible between his legs - gyrating back and forth to the raunchy accompaniment of the rock song "Shame on You"; later, he pursued Baby Doll through the house (and in one instance - generally considered in bad taste by critics - when he tickled her as she squirmed on her back by rubbing her stomach with his shoe) and up to the attic to get her to sign a statement about Archie Lee's arson

Bus Stop (1956)

This Joshua Logan film was adapted by George Axelrod from a play by William Inge - it was about an innocent rodeo cowboy named Bo (Don Murray) who fell in love with dim-witted cafe singer Cherie (Marilyn Monroe); Monroe sang an off-key, inept, but innocently sensual rendition of "That Old Black Magic" in the Blue Dragon - a run-down honky-tonk night-club in Phoenix and at the end of the number, turned a red spotlight on herself to look "aflame"; the passionate kissing scene between Murray and Monroe had to be reshot after major filming had ended - it was common knowledge that censors routinely cut love scenes in films with open-mouthed kisses

The Girl Can't Help It (1956)

Frank Tashlin's mid-50s film starred buxom (42DD) blonde bombshell Jayne Mansfield as curvaceous aspiring, no-talent star Jerri Jordan in her best-remembered film at a time when she was competing for top honors with Marilyn Monroe; it was filled with ribald sexual humor and the display of Mansfield's exaggerated figure that brought battles with the Production Code Administration; a former cartoonist, Tashlin inserted outrageous, saucy sight-gags into the film - as curvaceous Jerri walked down the street, the ice in a delivery man's truck immediately melted, and when she climbed some steps past a milk delivery man, with her hips swinging, the bottle he was holding popped open and spurted out frothy milk - and another man's glasses cracked (all to the tune of Little Richard's "She's Got It").

Tea and Sympathy (1956)

The Violent Years (1956)

Island in the Sun (1957)

Noted as groundbreaking for its soapish inter-racial romances (although almost entirely devoid of onscreen physical contact) set on a fictional West Indies Caribbean island under British rule, this breakthrough film by director Robert Rossen chipped away at and defied the Production Code standards that forbid miscegenation; there was a kiss in the inter-racial romance between local West Indian dime store clerk Margot Seaton (Dorothy Dandridge) and the governor's white aide Denis Archer (John Justin); in another parallel romance, however, there was only the holding of hands (reflecting a double standard regarding the black male) between Joan Fontaine as socialite Mavis Norman and Harry Belafonte as politically-ambitious black union official David Boyeur

Peyton Place (1957)

Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

Untamed Youth (1957)
and
High School Confidential! (1958)

Platinum blonde sex starlet Mamie Van Doren was one of the leading sex symbols of the day, known as one of the three M's (the others were Marilyn and Jayne Mansfield); she starred in a late 50s teen movie hit in 1957 -- a women's prison farm musical; then in Jack Arnold's B-film cult classic wild youth film about teenaged drug pushers in 1958, 'bad girl' Mamie was featured as a nymphomaniacal older aunt sporting a tight-sweatered, pointed 'bullet bra' covering her protuberant breasts who vamped younger Russ Tamblyn; some of the scenes of High School Confidential! were re-shot for more liberal European standards (pictured), such as the shot of a young girl in overdosing agony (and partially unclad) in an adjoining room

Later, scandalous roles for Van Doren in drive-in quickies, juvenile delinquent films, or sexploitation films in which she co-starred with younger actors were: The Girl in Black Stockings (1957), The Beat Generation (1959), Girls Town (1959), Born Reckless (1959), The Private Lives of Adam and Eve (1960) (pictured), College Confidential (1960), Sex Kittens Go to College (1960) (aka The Beauty and the Robot), and Three Nuts in Search of a Bolt (1964) - the latter was publicized by nude photos of Mamie in a bathtub in issues of Playboy Magazine