Elmer Gantry (1960)

Director Richard Brooks' drama Elmer Gantry (1960) was derived from the title character in Sinclair Lewis' 1927 novel, regarding hellfire and brimstone charismatic preacher Elmer Gantry (Best Actor-winning Burt Lancaster). The fiery, flamboyant, high-energy revivalist evangelist was set up and framed by one of his old (and wronged) girlfriends - minister's daughter-turned-prostitute Lulu Bains (squeaky-clean, Supporting Actress Oscar-winning Shirley Jones in an against-type role).

She invited him to her place hours before being cast out of town by the law, following a brothel raid that he had sponsored to rout out sin. She had vengefully set him up and framed him, by having photographers positioned to take pictures from outside her window, so that they would be caught in a compromising situation - to ruin his reputation. When he arrived, she angrily criticized him for his hypocrisy:

"When you came bustin' in last night like God Almighty wearin' a tin star, I got mad, boilin' mad. All I could think of me - how you took me and ditched me. That's all I could think of, me. Little Miss Lulu, the dumb pushover. When the cops said get out of town in 24 hours, all I wanted to do was spit in your eye, blackmail ya, shake-down, anything to hurt ya. But when you walked in just now, gee honey, it was like the first time between us all over again. All goose-pimples. You'd better beat it."

He admitted that he had been wrong to run out on her back in Kansas, after having an affair with her that discredited her in the eyes of her puritanical father. When he offered a charitable handout of cash to "sort of tide you over," she instead asked for a kiss goodbye before she left for Paris: "Just kiss me goodbye, just once." She awaited his kiss - with her eyes closed - and when he hesitated, she placed her arms around his neck and approached his lips. The longer they kissed, the more passionate it became, and she rekindled her feelings for him. She realized that she had accomplished what she wanted, dimmed the lights, and then asked:

"Stay awhile. Talk to me. Don't go yet. Please don't go. Oh, tell me anything. Tell me a good strong lie I can believe but hold me, just hold me like you used to. Please."

But Gantry declined, because he had feelings for dedicated Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons) instead - detestfully called "that Bible broad" by the jealous Lulu. When he went to the door to leave, she apologized and admitted: "I could use some of that cash after all" - and sexily placed his charitable contribution in her garter.

La Dolce Vita (1960, It.) (aka The Sweet Life)

Federico Fellini's landmark masterpiece was about middle-class depravity and decadence.

It told about the life of playboyish gossip writer Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni) who regularly attended parties, seduced socialites, and sought celebrity scandal for his tabloid stories.

One night, he was charmed and smitten by bosomy, sexy, and seductive Amazonian blonde Hollywood starlet Sylvia (Anita Ekberg) in a low-cut black evening gown, who was dancing through the night streets with a white kitten in her arms. Then, she spontaneously waded, danced, cavorted and cooled off in the water of Rome's Trevi Fountain - to tempt him and seek his attention by her dampened, form-fitting clothing. She called out to him: "Marcello, come here, hurry up."

The film ended with a celebratory marriage-annulment orgiastic, drunken party at a seaside villa in which the exhibitionist, wealthy socialite hostess Nadia (Nadia Gray) performed a depersonalizing exotic strip after shedding a fur wrap. However, after being ignored by her disinterested and jaded guest audience, she covered herself up. In the same scene, Marcello also rode a woman as a donkey.

Nadia's (Nadia Gray) Strip

In another shocking sequence for its time, Marcello and bored nymphomaniacal socialite Maddalena (Anouk Aimee) picked up bisexual prostitute Ninni (Adriana Moneta) for a thrill-seeking ménage à trois.

Pagan Island (1960)

Exploitational cinema, outside the bounds of Hollywood, began to further push the limits of censorship. The film's trailer and an idyllic shipwrecked sailer on a pagan island advertised that one could "watch these girls dance and make unashamed love in this tropical paradise."

This exotic, teasing and cheesy B-grade tale was cast by famous cheesecake photographer and model Bunny Yeager, who had taken some of the best-known Bettie Page photos.

The story was an improbable tale about marooned-shipwrecked sailor William Stanton (Edward Dew) on a small, uncharted South Sea island after floating for nine days in a life raft after his oil tanker exploded. It was populated only by beautiful but white-man-hating semi-naked native females, including:

• Luana (Sharon Michael)
• Malia (Allison Louise Downe)
• Princess Nani Maka (Nani Maka)

The native women (all white!) were topless except for flower leis (although with very little explicit nudity) - who spoke broken English. The sailor fell in love with Princess Nani Maka, but her irate mother Queen Kealoha (Trine Hovelsrud) thought she had been violated.

Unfortunately for Nani Maka and Stanton, the Princess was about to be sacrificed as "the future bride of the gods." He decided to rescue his lover and join her in a sacrificial rite together to the angry, all-powerful sea god after he was hung upside down. They jumped, hand-in-hand, into the god's temple under the lagoon, where they came upon a giant clam.

Peeping Tom (1960, UK)

This highly disturbing, British psychological horror film from director Michael Powell was a variation on Psycho (1960) - see below. The notorious film nearly destroyed director Michael Powell's film career, and most critics loathed it, forcing the picture to be withdrawn from screens for almost two decades. When it was released, many shots in the film (including brief nudity) were cut, edited, or shortened.

It was about voyeurism in its lurid story of a shy young cameraman (and psychopathic serial killer) named Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm) who murdered women with a phallic weapon - his camera (featuring a cross-haired viewfinder). The device had a sharp spiked knife inside one of the tripod's legs, and an ingenious mirror device attached so that his screaming female victims could fearfully watch themselves die.

In the pre-credits murder sequence, Mark (concealing his camera within his coat) came upon a prostitute on a street corner, who propositioned him for two quid. Without saying a word, he followed her to her nearby cheap upstairs apartment where he murdered her, as she began to undress. The scene was filmed from his point-of-view through the camera's cross-hairs. She backed up in terror and screamed when she realized that she was going to be impaled. Later, Mark privately viewed the projected film.

Due to an abusive childhood, Mark had turned into a voyeur with a morbid fascination for capturing terror on the faces of female victims at the moment of death - an affliction termed scopophilia, the morbid urge to gaze. On the side, he sold photographs ("views") of his soft-core, nude pin-up photo shoots to a round-faced neighborhood store-owner (Bartlett Mullins), who pedaled the pornography to elderly male customers (Miles Malleson).

In the final murder scene, model Milly (Pamela Green, a real-life 50s pin-up) asked herself as she reclined backward (while Mark closed the blinds): "I might as well talk to a zombie. Is it safe to be alone with you, I wonder? It might be more fun if I wasn't." His shadow covered her face, as he moved and stood above her nude body. [Note: It was reportedly the first nudity in British film history, according to some reports, although Nudist Paradise (1959, UK) was released earlier. She displayed, momentarily, one nude breast.] The film faded to black with loud piano chords on the soundtrack, before she was murdered (off-screen).

Model Milly's (Pamela Green) Final Murder Scene

Although Mark's female friend and downstairs lodger Helen Stephens (Anna Massey) discovered his horrible secrets, he spared her life and took his own, suicidally (in the same horrific manner that he often used) as the police arrived. He impaled himself in the neck with his own spiked device, as he spoke to Helen: "Helen, Helen, I'm afraid...And I'm glad I'm afraid," and then slumped dead to the floor. The words of a tape recording ended the film: "Don't be a silly boy. There's nothing to be afraid of" - "Good night, Daddy. Hold my hand."

Psycho (1960)

The classic Hitchcock horror/slasher film Psycho (1960) marked the decline of the Production Code. It was not rated until 1968, when an early version of the MPAA ratings system rated it M, for mature audiences only. A 1984 reissue re-rated the film R. The tale included such taboo topics as transvestism, voyeurism, stabbing as rape, implied incest, and hints of necrophilia.

It was heavily censored (and edited) in some locales for repeated views of its main protagonist in a bra - both in the first scene during a lunchtime dalliance, and also twice later.

The Opening Scene: Furtive Lunchtime Sex Marion (Janet Leigh) and Lover Sam Loomis (John Gavin)

However, the film was most noted for the voyeuristic scene of Bates Motel manager Norman (Anthony Perkins) peering through a peep hole at motel customer Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) as she undressed and revealed a black bra - shot from his POV to implicate the audience in the viewing.

This unsettling sequence was followed by the shocking, carefully-edited shower murder scene of nude Marion Crane (Janet Leigh, and a body double) as she vainly resisted and shielded her breasts (never fully revealed) from a menacing, phallic-like knife while being savagely murdered.

Marion's (Janet Leigh) Shocking Shower Murder Scene in Psycho

The film was also noted for having a view of a toilet -- something unusual at the time.

Spartacus (1960)

Stanley Kubrick's big budget studio film told about rebellious, slave-born Thracian Spartacus (Kirk Douglas) who eventually led a rebellion of slaves against Rome.

The film was severely criticized for its infamous bathing-seduction scene (originally cut from the film, although restored to the theatrical release version in 1991) in a sunken tub (dark and partially veiled by see-through netting), between:

• bisexual, prurient Roman patrician General Marcus Crassus (Laurence Olivier)
• submissive 26 year-old Sicilian "body servant" Antoninus (Tony Curtis)

They engaged in a notorious, double-entendre conversation about bi-sexual experimentation and sexual preferences with their veiled culinary talk about the morality of eating oysters (females?) and/or snails (males?). Crassus expressed an affinity for sexual variety:

"Do you eat oysters?...Do you eat snails?...Do you consider the eating of oysters to be moral, and the eating of snails to be immoral?... It is all a matter of taste...And taste is not the same as appetite, and therefore not a question of morals...My taste includes both snails and oysters."

Also the film was noted for the near-nude scenes of buxom slave girl Varinia (Jean Simmons), Spartacus' love interest:

• knowing that enslaved Spartacus had never had a woman, he was watched from a grate above his cell as Varinia stoically lowered her gown for him. Laughter from observers disgusted Spartacus, and he refused to take and mistreat the young woman.
• in a bathing scene, Varinia swam (partially obscured by an overhanging fern)

In a later love scene, Spartacus told Varinia:

I want to know...everything. Why a star falls and a bird doesn't. Where the sun goes at night. Why the moon changes shape. I want to know where the wind comes from.... I want to know all about you. Every line, every curve. I want to know every part of you. Every beat of your heart.

The Adventures of Lucky Pierre (1961)

Director Herschell Gordon Lewis' first fully-fledged and financially-successful, sexploitative "nudie film" (produced by David F. Friedman) was a blatant copy of Russ Meyer's successful The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959). It was advertised with the tagline: "DELICIOUS, DELIGHTFUL, DELECTABLE, DESIRABLE DAMSELS, UNBLUSHING, UNCENSORED, UNINHIBITED, UNASHAMED, UNADULTERATED Girl-Type Girls."

This one-hour long comedic film, made on a budget of $7,500 and shot in four days, consisted of nine short skits (some a film-within-a-film) each involving the beret-wearing title character Pierre (Billy Falbo) with nude ladies and amusing misadventures.

Main Segments	Description	Screenshots
"Pardon My Pigment"	A bumbling artist paints three nudes in the park.
"The Plumber's Friend"	A handyman repairs the shower faucet with a nude blonde woman in the tub.
"For the Birds"	A naturalist bird-watcher stumbles across two nude sunbathers.
"The Photographer's Apprentice"	A cleaner at the "Glamour Photo Studio" ends up taking photographs of three nudes who inexplicably vanish each time he snaps a photo.
"Drive-In Me Crazy"	A patron attends the drive-in screening a double bill: "I Was a Teenage Nudist" and "10 Days in a Nudist Camp" (as well as sixty-five cartoons!). The drive-in has an all-nude staff that serves him popcorn. The short subject feature is titled: "Picnic at the Playground," a "Movies-In-The-Rough Production" in which the same three girls who work at the drive-in appear nude at a playground!

As Nature Intended (1961, UK) (aka Naked...As Nature Intended or Just as Nature Intended)

Since the late 1950s, the 'nudist colony' documentary film successfully challenged previous limitations on First Amendment protections for films.

This one, with a working title of "Cornish Holiday," was made by glamour photographer and UK sex film pioneer George Harrison Marks. The film displayed some nudity (no private parts) and now functions only as a curiosity item. It claimed that it was "actually shot at Terwyn Sun Club" in revealing Eastman Color.

A group of three professional females (all using their real first names) from London who went on a summer holiday were:

• Pamela (cult model Pamela Green, girlfriend and business partner of the director, 39-23-36), Windmill Theatre nightclub dancer and "woman of the world"
• Petrina (Petrina Forsyte), "nice-girl" office secretary, Pamela's apartment roommate
• Jackie (Jackie Salt), shoe shop assistant, outdoorsy

In the teasing travelogue, they first visited the monoliths of Stonehenge, Clovelly, Minack Open Air Theatre at Porthcurno and the ancient ruins of Tintagel Castle. After a half an hour of the film had elapsed, they finally visited a beach in Cornwall, England, where they came upon Trewyn Beach, owned by a local nudist club.

There, the trio met two nude female sunbathers:

• Angela (Angela Jones)
• Bridget (Bridget Leonard), blonde

Soon, all five were cavorting nude on the beach (there were many views of breasts and buttocks, but no genitalia), playing a game of 'football' with a large beach ball.

Pam	Petrina	Jackie	Bridget

Eventually, after posing and rock-climbing, the two nudists invited their three new converts to their nudist park sun-club, where they were members. All of them enjoyed socializing and walking around in the nude.

Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)

Blake Edwards' groundbreaking romantic comedy, based on Truman Capote's 1958 novella, reportedly inspired director Radley Metzger to make a series of critically successful and overtly sexual films, such as The Dirty Girls (1964), Carmen, Baby (1967) - an erotic updating of Bizet's opera with voluptuous sex kitten Uta Levka as the title character, and his most successful feature Therese and Isabelle (1968). With the release of the film, it signaled that it was alright to be a single woman with an active sex life.

Paramount Pictures' romantic comedy featured an against-type portrayal ("as you've never seen her before") by pristine, squeaky-clean, skinny Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly. [Capote had originally wanted curvy Marilyn Monroe for the role.] She portrayed a raunchy Manhattan socialite, noted also for her luxurious image - sunglasses and black Givenchy gown.

The compromised, desexualized film omitted most of the novella's references to Holly's sexual promiscuity and life of semi-prostitution. It had no explicit sex of any kind, although there was some frank sex talk. She was a free-wheeling, daring, sexually-active and flighty call girl (who lived, partially, on weekly payments in exchange for visits to ex-mob boss Sing Sing prisoner Sally Tomato (Alan Reed)).

Her upstairs neighboring tenant and eventual boyfriend was Paul Varjak (George Peppard), a struggling writer. He was the one who was sexually promiscuous - he was a "kept man" (gigolo) by icy and rich older NYC socialite "decorator" Emily Eustace Failenson (Patricia Neal), nicknamed 2E. However, the film basically followed a stereotypical and traditional gender love story between Holly and Paul as they became better acquainted.

The final scene, a typical Hollywood happy ending, began with a taxi ride to New York's Idylwild Airport by Holly, on her way to Brazil (to find a rich husband), accompanied by Paul who was trying to persuade her to stay. He professed his love for her ("Holly, I'm in love with you... I love you. You belong to me"). She told Paul that she didn't belong to anyone ("People don't belong to people...I'm not gonna let anyone put me in a cage"). Paul expressed his true love again ("I don't want to put you in a cage. I want to love you"), though she continued to call herself a "no-name slob." He gave her an ultimatum and then got out of the taxi:

"You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? You're chicken. You've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say: 'Okay, life's a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness.'"

She decided to curtail her plan and pursue him. The film ended, following traditional Hollywood norms, with them breathlessly kissing and embracing in the pouring rain in an alleyway, as the theme from "Moon River" played. Her rescued Cat was squished between them, as the camera zoomed in for a closeup, and then pulled away for medium and far shots.

The Children's Hour (1961)

This film was based upon Lillian Hellman's hit Broadway play The Children's Hour - and was first filmed by William Wyler as These Three (1936). It was extremely bowdlerized due to restrictions imposed by the Hays Office. However, this forward-looking film helped to contribute to the eventual breakdown of the Production Code and its strict censorship.

In the earlier drama of 1936, the rumor and accusation of a lesbian relationship between two teachers was changed to an illicit, though heterosexual, love affair (and romantic triangle) between one of the teachers and her colleague's fiancé. This 1961 film remake by Wyler also had to avoid the word 'lesbian.'

It told a serious story of female attraction between two headmistress-teachers at the Wright-Dobie School for Girls:

• Karen Wright (Audrey Hepburn)
• Martha Dobie (Shirley MacLaine)

Their 'affair' was witnessed (during eavesdropping outside their door) and reported by mean-spirited, vindictive, and manipulative 12 year-old student Mary Tilford (Karen Balkin) - the act was seen as unnatural, "bad things."

Mary's scandalous lie, to remove herself from a school where she was disliked, had devastating after-effects for the school and its administrators. It even created doubts in the mind of Dr. Joe Cardin (James Garner), Karen's fiancee who was planning on marrying her. Karen suggested to Martha that they go away somewhere to make new lives for themselves ("Let's pack and get out of here. Let's take the train tomorrow...There must be someplace we can go").

In a heart-rending, devastating, and overacted scene, self-loathing Martha realized that the child's lie had uncovered her own suppressed lesbian-tinged emotions, although she tried at first to deny them. She broke down and hysterically confessed how 'guilty' and 'sick and dirty' she felt about her love feelings toward Karen:

Martha: "We don't love each other. We've been close to each other, of course. I've loved you like a friend. The way thousands of women feel about other women. You were a dear friend who was loved, that's all. Certainly there can be nothing wrong with that. It's perfectly natural I should be fond of you. Why, we've known each other since we were seventeen and I always thought that."
Karen: "Why are you saying all of this?
Martha: "Because I do love you."
Karen: "Yes, I love you too."
Martha: But, maybe I love you the way they said I love you. I don't know. Listen to me!
I have loved you the way they said! There's always been something wrong, always - just as long as I can remember. But I never knew what it was until all this happened."
Karen: "Stop it, Martha, stop this crazy talk."
Martha: "You're afraid of hearing it. But I'm more afraid than you.
Karen: "I won't listen to you."
Martha: "No. You've got to know. I've got to tell you. I can't keep it to myself any longer. I'm guilty."
Karen: "You're guilty of nothing!"
Martha: "I've been telling myself that since the night I heard the child say it. I lie in bed night after night praying that it isn’t true. But I know about it now. It’s there. I don’t know how. I don’t know why. But I did love you. I do love you. I resented your plans to marry, maybe because I wanted you. Maybe I wanted you all these years. I couldn’t call it by name before, but maybe it's been there since I first knew you."
Karen: "But It's not the truth. Not a word of it is true. We've never thought of each other that way."
Martha: (bitterly) "No, of course you didn't. But who's to say I didn't. I'd never felt that way about anybody but you. I've never loved a man. I never knew why before. Maybe it's that."
Karen: "You're tired and worn-out."
Martha: "It's funny. It's all mixed up. There's something in you, and you don't know anything about it because you don't know it's there. And then suddenly, one night a little girl gets bored and tells a lie, and there for the first time, you see it. Then you say to yourself, did she see it? Did she sense it?"
Karen: "But you know it could have been any lie. She was looking for anything to -"
Martha: "But why this lie? She found the lie with the ounce of truth. Don't you see? I can't stand to have you touch me! I can't stand to have you look at me! Oh, it's all my fault. I've ruined your life and I have ruined my own. I swear I didn't know it! I didn't mean it! Oh, I feel so damn sick and dirty, I can't stand it anymore!"

In the somber and despairing ending, she committed suicide (by hanging herself in her room - her dangling feet seen in shadowy silhouette) when she realized that the lesbian rumors about herself were true.

Martha's (Shirley MacLaine) Suicidal Hanging - Tragic Consequences
The Noose-Rope (in silhouette)	The Locked Door	Karen's Reaction	Dangling Feet and Overturned Chair with a Single Shoe Beside It

Last Year at Marienbad (1961, Fr/It.) (aka L'Année Dernière à Marienbad)

This enigmatic, cinematically puzzling, and ambiguous New Wave film about dreamy seduction from Alain Resnais was set at an opulent European hotel or resort chateau. It had expansive hallways and dark corridors, mirror-lined walls, statues, high ceilings with ornate chandeliers - and outdoors, geometric gardens.

The characters were nameless in the black and white expressionistic film, that mixed time (past and present), and reality (fantasy vs. memory). A traditional love triangle existed - between a man (hero), woman (heroine), and husband.

Handsome X/Stranger (Giorgio Albertazzi) endlessly attempted to convince sleek, elegant and alluring A/Woman-Lover (Delphine Seyrig) that they had met before (last year at Marienbad?) and had an affair at the hotel. She was accompanied by a brooding, jealous and threatening M (Sacha Pitoeff), her escort or husband.

In an existential dance of seduction, the two 'lovers' recounted a fragmented tale of their perceived reality and unrealized love affair. Whether X was lying or only confused about A's identity was open to question, but he continually tried to convince A that she had previously promised to elope or run away with him when they again met. They often argued, as he tried to persuade her of their past association, but she claimed she couldn't remember. She rebuffed him, recoiled from him, and was wearied by his assertions:

A: "I've never been in any bedroom with you."
X: "You don't want to remember."

At one point, X treated details of the previous year's events at Marienbad as if they were fictional segments of a conventional movie drama, and by film's end, his ambiguous allegations about what had happened were completely uncertain. The two might not actually know each other, exist together, or even be alive. However, it appeared that the protagonist had gradually succeeded in readying A to leave the hotel for an unknown destination.

The Misfits (1961)

Director John Huston's film The Misfits (1961) was derived from a screenplay by playwright Arthur Miller, Marilyn Monroe's husband in a troubled marriage. It was believed that Marilyn was deteriorating in health, from overuse of prescription drugs, depression and alcoholism. Gable was also in poor health and drinking heavily. Overexertion on the set led to a heart attack two days after the end of filming and his subsequent death.

It was the final, haunting, fully-completed film for the two major, yet aging, sex screen legends:

• 59 year-old Clark Gable (once "The King of Hollywood") as Gay Langland, a washed-out, 'real-life' cowboy
• 35 year-old Marilyn Monroe as Roslyn Taberas, a troubled ex-stripper and divorcee

[Scenes of Roslyn's face were mostly in soft-focus, while the harsh light of the black and white film accentuated the crags and wrinkles on the faces of the cowboys.]

The Two Aging Stars: Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable

In the opening scene set in Reno, Nevada, Roslyn practiced her lines for a quickie divorce with her experienced, wisecracking, spinster landlady Isabelle Steers (Thelma Ritter), to rid herself of husband Raymond (Kevin McCarthy). Through Isabelle, she was introduced first to ex-mechanic, former WWII pilot, and widower Guido Racanelli (Eli Wallach) and then in a local bar to aging, washed-out 'real-life' cowboy Gay Langland (Clark Gable), a rugged individualist. Langland told her: "You're a real beautiful woman. It's almost kind of an honor sittin' next to ya. You just shine in my eyes. That's my true feeling, Roslyn. What makes you so sad? I think you're the saddest girl I ever met." He suggested that he could be a "good friend" to her.

The two men were interested in the young voluptuous blonde woman, although she eventually fell in love with the gallant Langland - who was old enough to be her father. They were offered an unfinished house in the desert, abandoned by heartbroken Guido after the death of his wife, and they moved in together. Roslyn was exhilarated by the freedom and danger of the wide open spaces, and a new, growing passionate relationship with Langland.

In one of the earlier scenes in a crowded bar, Roslyn (wearing a trademark low-cut white dress with polka dots) surprised the wagering crowd with her expert paddle-ball skills, voluptuously shaking her chest and rear end with body English - causing one cowpoke to irresistibly spank her backside in rhythm.

She also met Langland's comrade - reckless, worn-out, injured 'rodeo cowboy' rider Perce Howland (Montgomery Clift). The three men planned to round up wild, misfit mustangs and sell them for dog food, an idea that appalled Roslyn. Like the mustangs themselves that were eventually allowed to run free, she also chose to be with Langland. In the film's final scene in the front seat of a pick-up, the two made a new start together. She asked him about raising a family together and taking the right path:

Roslyn: "Gay, if there could be one person in the world, a child who could be brave from the beginning - I was scared to when you asked me, but I'm not so much now. Are you?"
Gay: "No.
Roslyn: How do you find your way back in the dark?"
Langland: (nodding toward the nighttime sky) "Just head for that big star straight on. The highway's under it - it'll take us right home."

Paris Blues (1961)

This melodramatic Martin Ritt film, shot on location in Paris, was noted as being the first to star an African-American actor (Sidney Poitier) as a romantic lead character. The story's themes were music, love, and racism. It was subtitled as "A Story of Young Lovers," and featured music by Duke Ellington and a guest appearance by Louis Armstrong.

In racially-tolerant Paris, two male characters (who both worked in a Left Bank nightclub) romanced two vacationing American tourists, there for a two-week holiday in the autumn:

• expatriate jazz musician Eddie Cook (Sidney Poitier) with Connie Lampson (Diahann Carroll)
• trombone-playing, aspiring composer Ram Bowen (Paul Newman) with Lillian Corning (Joanne Woodward)

Two Couples
Lillian	Ram	Eddie	Connie

Eddie decided to marry Connie and return to the US, despite knowing the racial discrimination he was bound to face. Ram fell in love with Lillian, but was reluctant to marry her ("What do you want to do? Wrap me up and take me home? We had a good thing going. What do you have to spoil it for?"), and join her in the US as a second-rate trombonist.

The Sinister Urge (1961) (aka The Young and Immoral)

Writer/director Ed Wood Jr.'s campy, low-budget crime drama was notable for Wood's usually cheesy and silly dialogue and wooden performances. This was, ironically, Wood's last "straight" film, as the B-director of schlock films would turn to creating soft-core porn in the future.

The film's outrageous cautionary claim was that pornography was directly responsible for "dope peddling" and the murder (!) of young aspiring starlets, all pornography models.

The film opened with a terrorized female running into a phone booth and making a distressed phone call. Later, her brutalized corpse was found at the scene by cops who muttered about how the "smut" business was responsible.

The main character was Dirk Williams (Dino Fantini), a sex-crazed henchman and compulsive serial killer (with a "sinister urge"). His boss was pornography ("smut business") director Johnny Ryde (Carl Anthony) [a transparent allegory for Wood himself]. Ryde's work was financed by his floozy "mob" boss Gloria Henderson (Jean Fontaine).

In the film's plot, a naive and innocent Midwesterner named Mary Smith (Jeanne Willardson) was an aspiring actress, but eventually ended up in a porn flick made by Ryde and Gloria - before being murdered by Dirk. He had seen her "dirty" semi-clad photographs, lost control and raped and knifed her to death in a park.

The police officers used a transvestite cop to patrol the area, track down the murderer and smash the smut picture racket.

The film's climax came when the targeted Dirk was smuggled out of state (by Ryde and Gloria), but their plot to kill him in a sabotaged car failed. Dirk returned to murder Ryde, when Gloria mistakenly shot and killed Dirk (thinking that she was shooting Ryde). She called the police to tell them that Dirk shot Ryde. Both victims were dead on her patio, with the murder weapon hidden under her couch cushion.

Splendor in the Grass (1961)

Youthful sexuality, sexual repression, and neurosis were the themes of director Elia Kazan's daring, controversial, and hyperbolic melodrama Splendor in the Grass (1961). The time period of the plot occurred during the late 1920s and early 30s at the start of the disastrous Depression in a rural, SE Kansas town, coinciding with the intensity of a first love and the devastating consequences of repressed sexuality upon a pair of love-struck teenagers. The film's tagline expressed this theme: "There is a miracle in being young...and a fear." A poster also described the reality of a 'first love' when feelings that were new and somewhat frightening were heightened by a constricting society.

The mood and story line of the stormy relationship between two star-crossed, teenaged lovers paralleled William Wordsworth's poem: "Though nothing can bring back the hour, Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower, We will grieve not, but rather find, Strength in what remains behind." The two Kansas senior high-schoolers from Commerce HS who met and fell obsessively in love were:

• hunky Arthur "Bud" Stamper (Warren Beatty in his film debut), All-American sports hero
• beautiful, dark-haired Wilma Dean "Deanie" Loomis (26 year-old Natalie Wood), repressed and tortured

They became sexually awakened, faced repressed sexual attitudes, parental pressures, turmoil, social constraints and class differences, and ultimately broke up and were traumatized without consummating their love.

In the film's opening scene, the young teenaged couple were making out in an open, yellow roadster convertible after school in the early evening - on a lover's lane a short distance in front of a raging waterfall. The attractive couple were passionately kissing and breathing heavily - their raging hormones were symbolized by the flow of churning water over the falls behind them. He begged her to go further, but she resisted expressing her physical needs. Angry at her, sexually frustrated and slightly humiliated, Bud left the car and stood by the waterfall, stating: "I'd better take you home," as she slipped on her boyfriend's striped letter sweater.

Throughout the film, Deanie's body language exhibited tremendous sexual longing. After returning home, she leaned backward as she stroked her hair and neck. She hugged a pillow as she reclined on a sofa with her legs extended. Her domineering and controlling mother Mrs. Frieda Loomis (Audrey Christie) tried to instill her own sexual fears into her. Her rigid, puritanical mother vowed that boys never respected a girl who went all the way - love-struck Deanie was troubled by her own emerging, raw physical feelings. Prudish Mrs. Loomis asserted that women don't enjoy sex or have sexual urges, and that they dutifully have sex with their husbands only to have children. She was always physically repelled by her husband and men's aggressive tendencies.

But a virginal Deanie was already experiencing (and repressing) strong, out-of-control physical drives, although she struggled with wanting to be 'a good girl' and worried about staying pure until marriage. Deanie threw herself onto her bed, cast away her brown bear in disgust, grabbed her pillow, and thrust her chest into it. Her sexual longings burst forth as she imagined hugging her sweetheart while glancing at Bud's many pictures plastered above her dresser.

The next day in an overheated love scene, head-over-heels in love Deanie showed her sacrificial devotion to Bud after he had shown interest in someone else. She peppered him with kisses all over his face - and then when they heard voices, they retreated into the side dining room. Through a framed doorway, the camera eavesdropped on them. Deanie pressed her groin into his as they leaned against a door. Bud forcefully grabbed her shoulders and pressed her down to her knees to make her confess her utter obedience to his will. She confessed:

Bud, I can't get along without you. And I would do anything you'd ask me to. I would! I would! Anything!

After her vow of complete submission, she rolled over onto her back on the floor in a sublime, vulnerable state of passionate surrender, moaning orgasmically and begging for "anything" to happen: "Oh Bud. - Bud! - Bud."

In the film's most emotionally-raw sequence, Deanie was soaking and sweating in a bathtub full of steaming hot water - attempting to relax and purge herself of poisons and anxiety about Bud's new relationship with flapper-styled, not-so-innocent, slutty Juanita Howard (Jan Norris). She rocked her head left and right (with her eyes shut) as she sighed feebly and told her mother that she felt better. But the tension visibly mounted when she was quizzed by her mother about Bud. Their bickering and argument soon rose to a feverish pitch when her mother threatened to call Bud and she screamed: "Don't you dare!" - and she was questioned about the spoiling of her virginity:

Mrs. Loomis: What's been the matter the past few days?
Deanie: I'm sorry I've troubled you. I don't want to worry you. I don't want to worry anyone.
Mrs. Loomis: Is it all on account of...because of Bud? Because he doesn't call for you anymore?
Deanie: I don't know. I don't know, Mom.
Mrs. Loomis: I have a mind to call that boy and tell him....
Deanie: (sitting up furiously and screaming) Don't you dare! Don't you dare, Mom! (She covered her face with both hands and lay back down into the tub - and then tried to assert herself, with her right hand covering her mouth.) Don't you dare! Don't you dare!...No, Mom! Momma, if you do something like that, I'll do something desperate! I will, I will, Mom! I will!
Mrs. Loomis: (standing over her) Deanie, how serious had you and Bud become? I mean, well, you know what I mean. Deanie - had he - had anything serious happened? Did he - did he spoil you?
Deanie: (raging and laughing hysterically and uncontrollably) Spoil??? Did he spoil me? (She turned and submerged her head under the steaming water. She flailed around and then sat up again.) No. No, Mom! (hatefully) I'm not spoiled! I'm not spoiled, Mom! I'm just as fresh and I'm virginal like the day I was born, Mom!
Mrs. Loomis: Stop it! Stop it!
Deanie: I'm a lovely virginal creature who wouldn't think of being spoiled! (She stood up in the tub and stepped out with her arms outstretched.) I've been a good little girl, Mom! I've been a good little, good little, good little girl! I've always done everything Daddy and Mommy tell me. I've obeyed every word. I hate you, I hate you, I HATE YOU!

Deanie's (Natalie Wood) Bathtub Scene in Splendor in the Grass

After confessing her prudish celibacy and that she had been 'a good little girl," she screamed invectives of hate at her mother and ran naked toward her room.

[Although Natalie Wood had agreed to be filmed nude in the scene, potentially the first ever by a major star in a mainstream film, Hollywood censors cut the shots of her nudity. What was left was a brief shot of her running naked away from the camera toward her room, with only a brief view of her upper back.]

Deanie Desperate to Make Love

When Deanie met up with Bud a few months later at a party, wearing a sexy low-cut red dress, she made desperate sexual advances toward him - to consummate her feelings for the greatest love of her life. Lustfully, she risked everything when she begged him to make love to her. Again he rejected her during the failed reunion - for not being 'herself' ("a nice girl") and for denying her pride. She cried out: "I haven't any pride. I haven't any pride."

Her emotional frailty caused her suicidal thoughts and tortured madness to resurface ("I just want to die. I just want to die"). She was subsequently hospitalized in a sanitarium.

Victim (1961, UK)

Director Basil Dearden's non-judgmental, ground-breaking film-noirish thriller was a daring landmark film with its head-on presentation of the 'un-talked about' topic of homosexuality in the early 60s, when Britain still had anti-sodomy statutes as law.

The controversial film was denied a seal of approval from the MPAA as a result of its subject matter and explicit use of the word 'homosexual.' Six years after the film's release, the UK's Sexual Offenses Act of 1967 finally decriminalized homosexuality between consenting adults over the age of 21 (with a number of exceptions).

The film was advertised with the tagline: "The Screen Comes of Age!" and was reportedly the first film in Britain to use the word "homosexual."

Its story involved a self-confessed, beleaguered, non-practicing homosexual and wealthy lawyer named Melville Farr (Dirk Bogarde, in a role as the screen's first gay hero - and remarkable since Bogarde later was revealed as gay in his private life). He risked his marriage and career to track down a creepy, slimy blackmailer (Derren Nesbitt) over accusations of closeted homosexuality.

Peter McEnery co-starred as Jack "Boy" Barrett (Farr's chaste 'boy friend' from his past as a Cambridge student, who eventually committed suicide by hanging himself in jail, where he was incarcerated for embezzling money to silence the blackmailers). Sylvia Syms portrayed Laura - Farr's stressed, estranged but supportive wife.

In one of the film's most tense moments, Laura asked her husband:

"I want to know the truth. I want to know why he hanged himself ... Someone found out he was a homosexual and blackmailed him? ... It takes two to make a reason for blackmail. Were you the other man? Were you?"

He burst out an admission of his past indiscretion to her:

"I stopped seeing him because I wanted him. Do you understand? Because I wanted him!"

Viridiana (1961, Sp./Mex.)

Luis Bunuel's subversive masterpiece, winner of the Grand Prize (Palme d'Or) at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival, was originally banned in his home country and condemned by the Catholic church for its perceived indictment of Catholic self-righteousness, blasphemy and obscenity, and for its hinted themes of incest, rape and necrophilia.

In the plot, devout Spanish convent novice Viridiana (Silvia Pinal) visited her reclusive, lecherous widower uncle Don Jaime (Fernando Rey). He was still mourning the death of his wife due to a heart attack on their wedding night - without consummation.

To reluctantly satisfy his obsession with her similar looks ("You look just like her"), he clothed his niece Virdiana in his wife's wedding gown. He admitted: "I can't keep my eyes off you" and reluctantly confessed ("You must think I'm mad") he would like to marry her ("I never want you to leave this house"). She was repulsed: "You can't be in your right mind. I've been so happy here, and now you've spoiled it all." Don Jaime promised to drop the subject, but then after his servant Ramona (Margarita Lozano) secretly drugged her tea drink, he carried her into the bedroom, loosened the top of her dress, buried his head in her breasts, kissed her and was tempted to rape her.

The next day, he falsely confessed to her that he had taken her virginity to keep her from returning to the convent for her final vows ("I only possessed you in my thoughts"). When she was still determined to leave, he admitted that he lied -- but the ultimate result was his own guilty self-humiliation and a suicidal hanging with a jump rope. In his will, he had left his property to her and his illegitimate son Jorge (Francisco Rabal).

The Controversial Last Supper Scene in Viridiana

Another of the film's most controversial scenes was a drunken parody and re-enactment of Da Vinci's 'The Last Supper' by a group of degenerate beggars and thieves who were being supported by the virtuous and idealistic Viridiana. They had taken over the house after she had invited them to live in her uncle's crumbling estate. The scene in which they 'freeze-framed' at the table was played to the sounds of the "Hallelujah Chorus" in Handel's Messiah. One of the filthy female beggars suggested "photographing" them (snapping the picture) by lifting her skirt. One of the celebrants even attempted to molest and rape Viridiana when she returned to the house.

Totally disillusioned or maybe more aware of herself (after two attempted rapes), Viridiana played a game of cards, to the sounds of the early 60s pop tune Shake Your Cares Away. The film ended with a possible menage a trois scene between ex-nun Viridiana, servant Ramona, and her lothario cousin Jorge.