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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 |
Brief Scene Description | Example |
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Youthful sexuality was the theme of Elia Kazan's melodrama, about all-American teen Bud Stamper (Warren Beatty) who had an ultimately-unsuccessful relationship with his repressed and tortured Kansas high-school girlfriend Wilma Dean 'Deanie' Loomis (Natalie Wood), as she struggled with her controlling mother and defiantly asserted that she was still a virgin and not spoiled -- during a bold-for-its-time bathtub scene; in the film's opening scene, the young teenaged couple were making out in a convertible when she pleaded for Bud to stop - while a symbolically rushing waterfall in the background belied her words; later, she vowed to give herself to Bud: "And I would do anything you asked me to. I would. I would. Oh, Bud!" |   
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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 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) who 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), and Sylvia Syms as 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!"; 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) |
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Luis Bunuel's masterpiece, winner of the 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 widower uncle Don Jaime (Fernando Rey) who 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, he clothed Virdiana in his wife's wedding gown and drugged her; he carried her into the bedroom, loosened her dress, buried his head in her breasts 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 -- but the ultimate result was his own guilty self-humiliation and a suicidal hanging; 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 beggars, to the sounds of the "Hallelujah Chorus" in Handel's Messiah - one of the celebrants even attempted rape on the virtuous and idealistic Viridiana; and the film ended with a possible menage a trois scene |     |
| Advise and Consent (1962)
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This complex and controversial drama about party politics with a big-name cast by director Otto Preminger (based upon Allan Drury's highly influential and best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning political potboiler of 1959) told of the US Presidential nomination of left-wing, former Communist Party member Robert A. Leffingwell (Henry Fonda) as Secretary of State -- the controversial candidate's fate was ultimately in the hands of the stringently honest, idealistic and principled Utah Senator Brigham Anderson (Don Murray), the head of the Senate nominating sub-committee, who it was revealed had a "nasty secret" from his own past (late in World War II during R&R in Hawaii, Anderson had a month-long affair with another serviceman) that he tried to hide from his wife Ellen (Inga Swenson) who was receiving anonymous telephone calls; this fact led to his own blackmailing - and suicide ("cut his throat") by film's end; the movie was both praised for its daring homosexual subplot and condemned for its dated portrayal of a NYC gay bar (Club 602) with the voice of Frank Sinatra singing on the jukebox and the effeminate bartender beckoning the horrified Anderson to enter |    |
Boccaccio '70 (1962, It.)
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One episode of this four-part anthology film about Eros (made by great Italian directors with three sexy European stars Romy Schneider, Sophia Loren and Anita Ekberg) was Federico Fellini's Le Tentazioni del Dottor Antonio (The Temptations of Dr. Antonio) - his first film in color; it told about a milk company's advertisement in the form of a giant billboard in a Rome park that provocatively pictured a reclining, well-endowed blonde bombshell Anita Ekberg (playing Herself) entreating passersby to "Drink More Milk" - surprisingly, she suddenly came alive and stepped out of the photo, to torment and tempt self-appointed moral protector Dr. Antonio Mazzuolo (Peppino De Filippo), a pious and crusading censor who wished to cover up or dismantle the billboard; in her 50-foot size, she stalked him, picked him up, and placed him between her monstrous breasts | 
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White and wet bikini-clad Ursula Andress seductively emerged from the water as Honey Ryder - the first Bond girl, with giant seashells and a knife at her waist in the first James Bond (with Sean Connery) film; the Bond films told about a promiscuous agent who practiced casual 'free love' in an atmosphere of action and violence; they became famous for double entendres one-liners (i.e., a phone call excuse that he couldn't be interrupted while lying in bed next to Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton) - from Goldfinger (1965): "I'm sorry, I can't, something big's come up") |  |
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The original Kubrick version of Vladimir Nabokov's novel was a dramatic story with black humor of juvenile temptation and perverse, late-flowering lust; rather than a film of overt sexuality and prurient subject matter, its content was mostly suggestive, with numerous double entendres and metaphoric sexual situations; during the film's production, however, it was marked by the threat of censorship and denial of a Seal of Approval from the film industry's production code; it told the basic plot line of the obsessive love of a mature literature professor for a pubescent nymphet (12 years old in the original novel) in an aura of incest; the film's publicity posters asked the tagline: "How did they ever make a movie of Lolita?" with a picture of Lolita in a seductive lollipop pose; it starred Sue Lyon (a fourteen-year-old television actress in her screen debut) as Dolores Haze - a tempting, precocious, iconic, underaged nymphet nicknamed Lolita - first viewed in the garden in a two-piece bathing suit and wide-brimmed sun-hat, and eyed by the passion of middle-aged professor Humbert Humbert (James Mason) as Lolita's mother Charlotte (Shelley Winters) tempted him with her "cherry pies"; the film was noted for the scene of Humbert's overnight stay at a hotel with Lolita and her early morning coquettish, whispered suggestion to play a game that she had learned at camp with a boy, while seductively twirling the hair on his head with her finger --- followed by a discrete fade to black; the film's credits hinted at pedophilia during a pedicure (during which over-controlling and possessive Humbert expressed his sexual jealousy), and one of the film's prominent characters, TV writer Clare Quilty (Peter Sellers) was also a pedophile, who was shot and killed by film's end; the film was remade by Adrian Lyne in 1997 |
    
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| Something's Got to Give (1962)
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Noted as being the last uncompleted role of sex star Marilyn Monroe (as married Ellen Arden), with a well-publicized nude swimming pool scene in which the star gave up the nude body covering; production delays and the expense of Fox's epic Cleopatra (1963) resulted in the firing of Marilyn, although she had been re-hired and was to resume production in October of 1962, but then the film was permanently halted when Monroe died in August; it would have been the first nude scene in an American sound film by a major star (that honor would be held by Jayne Mansfield in 1963 - see below); it was remade as Move Over Darling (1963) starring Doris Day |
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| Walk on the Wild Side (1962)
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Director Edward Dmytryk's melodrama (based on Nelson Algren's 1956 novel of the same name) with an Oscar-nominated title song had the tagline: "Love is Best When Kept a Secret" - this alluded to the seedy underworld plot set in Depression-Era New Orleans in which both Capucine (as crusading drifter Laurence Harvey's wayward, 'one true lover' Hallie Gerard) and 24 year-old Jane Fonda in her third film role (as amoral vagabond Kitty Twist) found work as prostitutes at the Doll's House bordello (more opulent in the film than in the novel) under the management of lecherous, iron-willed, villainous lesbian madame Jo Courtney (Barbara Stanwyck - the first US actress to portray a lesbian in a feature film, in this case in love with Capucine); the shocking film (for its time) was notable as the first major Hollywood film to be open about the subject of lesbianism even while restrictions were being imposed by the Production Code, but it was criticized as lewd, tawdry, and sleazy; by film's end, Capucine suffered for her profession - she was accidentally shot in the stomach when Oliver's (Richard Rust) gun went off during a struggle with Laurence Harvey and died in his arms |  
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| Boin-n-g (1963)
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Director Herschell Gordon Lewis' soft-core "nudie cutie" (made with producer David F. Friedman) was one of the last of its kind; it was a self-satirizing and semi-autobiographical screwball comedy about the sexploitation film industry itself; it told about an inexperienced producer and director (Al Harding (William Kerwin billed as Thomas Sweetwood, and Bob Stevens (Bill Johnson)) - both amateur porn film fanatics, who auditioned and filmed naked women for an adults-only nudie movie of their own making titled "Nature’s Nudniks" - with disastrous results and complications; in one segment, the nude actresses sat down in poison-ivy! |   |
| Cleopatra (1963)
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This epic blockbuster from 2oth Century Fox was heavily publicized for its extravagance (ballooning to $44 million and almost bankrupting the studio) and for the negative publicity generated by the off-screen extra-marital affair conducted between major stars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton (as Julius Caesar) (married to Eddie Fisher and Sybil Burton respectively) - which continued on as a love-hate relationship; in the long run, it was beneficial for the film's bottom line, since it became the most expensive film made-to-date; the stars' off-screen indiscretions helped (although they were criticized on moral grounds), but it took many years for the film to recoup its enormous costs |
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| Contempt (1963, Fr) (aka Le Mepris)
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New Wave film-maker Jean-Luc Godard's unrated European import with nudity further chipped away at censorship barriers; the marriage drama opened with an exploitative extended view of a fully nude Brigitte Bardot (as unsatisfied wife Camille Javal) lying face down in bed with her screenwriter husband Paul (Michel Piccoli) - the scene shot with a colored filter was ordered to be added to the finished film by Italian producer Carlo Ponti, to capitalize on Bardot's immense popularity, although it desexualized the sex kitten with her questioning dialogue about all of her objectified body parts from her head to her feet: "Do you like my body ... my breasts ... my ankles ... my knees ... my thighs?", and ending with: "Then you love me totally"; the same scene was repeated in Godard's Tout Va Bien (1972) (aka Everything's Going Fine) with Jane Fonda and Yves Montand |   |
| Goldilocks and the Three Bares (1963)
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This early, inaccurately-named Herschell Gordon Lewis (known later as the "Godfather of Gore") film was a further example of the predictable, usually awful "nudie-cutie" genre of films; it was considered the first nudie-musical (filmed in "Buffocolor" and "Seemorescope") - "the first (and to date the only) nudist musical", as an excuse to display lots of female nudity in a nudist camp, including an amazing ten-minute horseback (bareback) riding scene |  |
| Promises! Promises! (1963)
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The buxom, platinum blonde sex goddess/siren Jayne Mansfield from the late 50s (a former Playboy Playmate in February 1955, similar to rival Marilyn Monroe), with a breathy and squeaky voice, appeared in such hits as The Girl Can't Help It (1956) and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957), but her most notorious role was as Sandy Brooks in this unrated sex farce by director King Donovan, in which she sang "I'm In Love" in a foamy bathtub, then toweled off (and dropped her towel), toplessly greeted a bespectacled male at the door ("Do you want something, honey?"), and writhed around on a bed; the original version was banned in many cities (including Cleveland) and substituted with an edited version; in order to have the film available, it was distributed independent of the major studios; Mansfield became the first mainstream actress to appear nude in an American feature sound film, baring her breasts and buttocks; the film's poster shouted out Jayne's words: "This is the first time I've ever appeared COMPLETELY NUDE!" The provocative film was heavily publicized in Playboy's June 1963 issue, with pictures to prove it, that led to the magazine's publisher Hugh Hefner being charged with obscenity (and later acquitted) -- the only time in his life |   
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| Scum of the Earth (1963)
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This was a 'dark' nudie-cutie - a precursor to the "roughie" films in the mid-1960s; it was directed by the notorious Herschell Gordon Lewis in his pre-gore days with his frequent producer David F. Friedman; the film was advertised as "Depraved, Loathsome, Nameless, and Shameless" and deliberately filmed in black and white to emphasize its sordid nature, although it contained only limited nudity; in this expose of smut peddling and the 'dirty pictures' racket, wholesome and innocent college girl beauty Kim (Vickie Miles, aka Allison Louise Downe) was brought into the degenerate world of the 'dirty picture' racket when she agreed to model for sleazy and boozing photographer Harmon (William Kerwin); she first posed topless and then was blackmailed into appearing in raunchier porno shots, which later led to a police raid, two murders (one with a baseball bat), and suicide; the film included an infamous, moralistic speech in which Kim was denounced by Mr. Lang (Lawrence Aberwood) - the sleazy head of the modeling agency: "Deep down inside you're dirty. Do you hear me, dirty! You're damaged goods, and this is a fire sale" |   |
| The Silence (1963, Swe.) (aka
Tystnaden)
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Director Ingmar Bergman's last film of a trilogy about faith and redemption (preceded by Through A Glass Darkly (1961) and Winter Light (1962)) told about emotional emptiness, fractured intimacy and distance in human relationships in its bleak story of two polar-opposite, incestuous sisters: terminally-ill, judgmental, controlling, and repressed Ester (Ingrid Thulin) and more open, earthy, narcissistic, sexually-overt Anna (Gunnel Lindblom), who traveled by train together to a nameless country and checked into the claustrophobic Hotel Europa; the climactic scene occurred when Anna was discovered by Ester engaged in having casual sex with a stranger in a hotel room and they had a violent and bitter argument - Anna expressed a range of emotions from deranged laughter to tears; the film attracted unusual attention for its explicit and overt sexuality for its time -- |    |
| Tom Jones (1963, UK)
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This Best Picture of the year, based on Henry Fielding's novel, included a notable, much-imitated, bawdy, extended-foreplay, primal food-eating sex scene between a lusty, boyish rogue Tom Jones (Albert Finney) and Jenny Jones/Mrs. Waters (Joyce Redman) - who was rumored to be his mother! - with meat, fruit, and oysters providing the aphrodisiac - it was a perfect combination of carnal sexual lust and food consumption; their multi-course dinner meal consisted of soup, drafts of ale, turkey, oysters, pears, and wine which they slurped, sucked, and tore into with gleeful and pleasurable abandon |  |
| Goldfinger (1964, UK)
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In this third James Bond 007 film, Sean Connery delivered one of his many sexy double entendres with a phone call excuse that he couldn't be interrupted while lying in bed next to villain Goldfinger's escort Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton): "I'm sorry, I can't, something big's come up." Of more concern was Jill's ultimate fate -- her naked corpse (painted gold) was discovered on a hotel bed; the film also featured Honor Blackman as sexily-named Bond Girl "Pussy Galore" |  |
| Kiss Me Quick (1964)
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Peter Perry's science-fiction horror "nudie-cutie" film, from sleaze producer Harry Novak, was a zany, monster comedy with exceptional cinematography by Laszlo Kovacs; it had an incredulous plot about effeminate Sterilox (Frank Coe) from the Buttless Galaxy and the all-male planet Droopeter who came to Earth and demented Dr. Breedlove's (Max Gardens) castle (similar to Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, and the Universal Studios Frankenstein films) to find the perfect female specimen for a race of servants - there he was introduced to a trio of gyrating buxom strippers (named Boobra, Barebra and Hotty Totty) in the laboratory and in a pool |   |
| Kiss Me, Stupid! (1964)
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Now rated PG-13, this lesser film about debauchery from Billy Wilder received a condemned rating from the Catholic Legion of Decency for its allegedly smutty tale of an opportunist songwriter (Ray Walston) who hired a roadhouse prostitute named Polly the Pistol (Kim Novak) to impersonate his wife Zelda, to avoid the amorous attentions of Las Vegas crooner and playboy Dino (Dean Martin) | |
| Lorna (1964)
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After an era of 'nudie-cutie' films from 1959 to 1963, sexploitation film-maker Russ Meyer turned to this 'roughie' rape-revenge, rural sex film with the tagline: "Ever wonder why wives WANDER?"; it starred 42C big bosomed voluptuous star Lorna Maitland as an unsatisfied married woman ("too much for one man") who was raped by an escaped convict in the woods after a nude swim in a swamp - and subsequently had her sexuality awakened, although her unfaithfulness led to her murder (a baling hook to the chest); some states prosecuted the film for obscenity |   |
| Marnie (1964)
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This film was another of Hitchcock's tales of sexual perversity and obsession - billed as a 'sex mystery' with the questioning tagline: "Would his touch end Marnie's unnatural fears or start them again?", it featured the prudish title character Marnie/Mary Edgar (icy blonde Tippi Hedren) who was sexually frigid (due to trauma when witnessing as a young 5 year-old (Melody Thomas Scott) her 20 year-old prostitute mother Bernice Edgar (Louise Latham) being abused by sex partner and pedophile sailor (Bruce Dern)); Marnie was also a compulsive kleptomaniacal thief (who acquired power over men by stealing from them); the film also featured handsome James Bond co-star Sean Connery as her blackmailing playboy boss and newly-wed husband Mark Rutland in a much-debated scene (was it passive rape or a case of frigidity?) - on their honeymoon cruise to Fiji, he asserted: "I very much want to go to bed" - a euphemism for sleeping with her; he hungrily advanced toward her, kissed her, ripped off her nightgown (the silky garment fell to her feet), embraced her, laid on top of her on the bed and took her (his face filling the entire screen) as she stared upward in a frozen, paralyzed catatonic state - completely lacking any passion or emotion, but then the scene cut away; Marnie's mother admitted that at age 15, she allowed a boy named Billy to "have her" in exchange for his sweater |
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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.
