History of Sex in Cinema:
The Greatest and Most Influential
Sexual Films and Scenes
(Illustrated)
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History of Sex in Cinema: |
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:
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| Greatest and Most Influential Erotic / Sexual Films and Scenes (chronological order, by film title) - 1976 Intro | Pre-1920s | 1920-1928 | 1929-1930 | 1931 | 1932 | 1933 | 1934-1937 | 1938-1943 | 1944-1946 | 1947-1952 | 1953-1954 | 1955-1957 | 1958-1959 | 1960-1961 | 1962-1963 | 1964 | 1965-1966 | 1967 | 1968 | 1969 | 1970 | 1971 | 1972 | 1973 | 1974 | 1975 | 1976 | 1977 | 1978 | 1979 | 1980 | 1981 | 1982 | 1983 | 1984 | 1985 | 1986 | 1987 | 1988 | 1989 | 1990 | 1991 | 1992-1 | 1992-2 | 1993 | 1994-1 | 1994-2 | 1995-1 | 1995-2 | 1996-1 | 1996-2 | 1997-1 | 1997-2 | 1998-1 | 1998-2 | 1999-1 | 1999-2 | 2000-1 | 2000-2 | 2001-1 | 2001-2 | 2002-1 | 2002-2 | 2003-1 | 2003-2 | 2004-1 | 2004-2 | 2005-1 | 2005-2 | 2006-1 | 2006-2 | 2007-1 | 2007-2 | 2008 | 2009 | |
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| Movie Title |
Brief Scene Description | Example |
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Director Bud Townsend's film (with producer Bill Osco) was self-proclaimed as an "X-rated Musical" fantasy, loosely based on Lewis Carroll's children's book of the same name; it starred cute blue-eyed blonde Kristine DeBell (who had appeared in Playboy) as the title character - it was one of many examples in the 70s of pornographic, eroticized versions of fairy tales - produced in both soft and very hard-core (XXX) versions to appeal to varied audiences and make more profits for the producers; the explicit version included self-masturbation, an incestual Tweedledum and Tweedle-dee, oral sex - male (with the Mad Hatter) and female (with the tyrannical Queen of Hearts), lesbianism, pseudo-bestiality, ejaculation, and inter-racial intercourse |  |
The Autobiography of a Flea (1976)
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This pornographic film was a groundbreaking, landmark film from the Mitchell Brothers Film Group - it was noted as being the first major X-rated porn film directed by a female, Sharon McNight; it was a costume drama loosely adapted from the erotic novel published in London around the turn of the century - a Fanny Hill-style, Victorian period comedy of love and lust told from the perspective of a flea (the Narrator) in the private place (pubic hair) of a beautiful young 14 year-old woman named Belle (Jean Jennings), as she was seduced by the local and lustful Roman Catholic priest and introduced to a world of sexual depravity |  
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Carrie (1976)
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Brian DePalma's tale of extreme sexual repression opened with a slow-motion credits sequence with a salacious scene of a locker-shower room full of naked high school girls (including Nancy Allen as popular 'bad' girl Chris Hargensen); the title character - terrified Carrie White (Sissy Spacek), was introduced as an awkward, shy and picked-upon student in a steamy shower where she experienced her first menstruation (late-coming at age 16), cried out "Help me!", and endured cruel teasing by other insensitive classmates who tossed tampons and sanitary napkins at her while they yelled: "Plug it up!"; for her whole life, Carrie was subjected to the shame-inducing words of her religiously fanatical Mother (Piper Laurie), such as: ("I can see your dirty pillows. Everyone will!" Carrie: "Breasts, Mama. They're called breasts, and every woman has them"); following her cruel teasing during the prom scene, she enacted a bloody aftermath with her telekinetic powers |   
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Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands (1976, Brazil) (aka Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos)
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In director Bruno Barreto's erotic comedy and box-office smash hit, the dead handsome ex-husband wastrel Valdomiro 'Vadinho' Santos Guimarães (Jose Wilker) of the title character, lovely Dona Flor (Florípides) Guimarães (Sonia Braga in her breakthrough role), returned as a ghost to make erotic and passionate love to her (and only she can hear and see him); even though she was remarried to boring, hard-working and meticulous pharmacist Dr. Teodoro Madureira (Mauro Mendonça) she relished the randy reappearances of her first husband alongside her in bed for strange threesomes |   
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Nagisa Oshima's shocking and intense film of extreme, all-consuming sexual obsession, madness and immersion (bordering on pornography in its uncut version) was seized and banned by US Customs and postponed in its censored release; this erotic Japanese masterpiece about painful passion told the story of a torrid, increasingly intense and dangerous, true-to-life, almost non-stop sexual affair between gangster businessman/inn owner Kichizo (Tatsuya Fuji) and one of his maid-servants, former prostitute Sada Abe (Eiko Matsuda) in mid-1930s Japan; it had an orgy scene, sexual violence and masochism (forcible use of a wooden dildo, bite-wounds, and S&M, among other practices); in the scenes between Kichizo and Sada Abe, there were explicit shots of unsimulated fellatio (while he passively laid back and smoked a cigarette) with a close-up of semen dripping from her mouth, unsimulated penetration, a wide variety of sexual positions and sexual acts, etc.), vaginal insertion of a hard-boiled egg, masturbation during a bloody menstrual period, and the depiction of the infamous, violent scene of their disturbing practice of auto-erotic asphyxiation with a red scarf - and even worse, bloody genital dismemberment after murderous strangulation to keep his member inside of her; this film broke the taboo in Japanese cinema against showing female pubic hair and sex organs |
     
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At the time of this sordid film's release by director Lamont Johnson, it was severely criticized for its cheap exploitational nature; Margaux Hemingway (in her film debut) starred as provocative fashion and lipstick model Chris McCormick - the victim of an ugly, sodomizing rape (in which he smeared lipstick across her face, and tied her down to her bed with silk scarves) who sought lethal vigilante revenge against her convicted rapist Gordon Stuart (Chris Sarandon) after he was acquitted of the rape charges and then went after her younger sister Kathy (Mariel Hemingway in her film debut) in an abandoned office building (with his hideous assault off-screen); rather than condemning rape, it was thought to exploit and sensationalize the crime and had to be drastically edited after preview audiences despised the lengthy rape-bondage sequence; in the film's ending, Chris used a shotgun to seek bloody and murderous justice (with an obviously tacked-on ending and voice-over which found Chris not guilty of the murder) |     
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Barbet Schroeder's early daring, kinky and provocative erotic drama (he was better known later for Reversal of Fortune and Single White Female) explored the double-life of professional dominatrix prostitute Ariane (Bulle Ogier), who was engaged in a strained romance/relationship (with a struggle for 'control' regarding domination or submissiveness) with her boyfriend - a Parisian door-to-door encyclopedia salesman/thief named Olivier (Gerard Depardieu); the film's tagline was: "A LOVE STORY ABOUT THE MYSTERIES OF LOVE"; she had a second dungeon-style apartment (accessible by a hidden staircase from her upper apartment) where she lived an alternate existence engaged with bondage, S&M whips and chains and various paraphernalia, while wearing a rubber/leather outfit, a Louise Brooks-style wig, and makeup; disturbing scenes of submissive sadomasochism and sexual depravity included a bourgeous party with painful spanking that produced reddish welts, genital torture (nailing down a masked man's genitals to a wooden plank) - and the real-life bloody slaughter of a horse |
  
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The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976, UK)
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Nicolas Roeg's impressionistic, hallucinatory, disjointed, non-literal sci-fi film and parable about an alien on Earth seeking water for his drought-stricken planet included the scene of pale humanoid alien visitor Thomas Jerome Newton's (rock star David Bowie in his feature film debut) (aka "Mr. Sussex") arrival on Earth and his developing relationship with naive, New Mexico hotel worker/girlfriend Mary-Lou (Candy Clark) - she peed down her leg at the startling, repulsive revelation of his true Anthean form (androgynous, cat-eyed and hairless); there were also the scenes of their unusual, exploratory and explicit sexual encounters (with full frontal nudity of Bowie and Clark - cut from the film's initial UK release for US audiences) in which she taught him about humanoid sex, and learned that aliens secreted a semen-like goo; also in one frenzied and loveless encounter, a drunk Newton threatened Mary-Lou with a blank-firing fake pistol, dipped its barrel into a glass of wine, and then licked it, before they both struggled with the weapon as sexual foreplay; in one unrelated scene to much of the film, the corporate villain Peters (Bernie Casey) had a sensual poolside scene with his loving wife (uncredited B movie queen Claudia Jennings) |
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Sidney Lumet's critical look at TV news included a side story of the affair between aging married man and network news head Max Schumacher (William Holden) and icy-cold, and work-obsessed VIP of Programming Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway), during which she related her sexual inadequacies: "I can't tell you how many men have told me what a lousy lay I am. I apparently have a masculine temperament. I arouse quickly, consummate prematurely, and can't wait to get my clothes back on and get out of that bedroom. I seem to be inept at everything except my work. I'm good at my work and so I confine myself to that"; without hardly pausing, she orgasmed during an intense ranting about programming challenges regarding "The Mao Tse Tung Hour" during a weekend tryst in the Hamptons | 
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1900 (1976, It./Fr./W. Germ.) (aka Novecento)
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Bernardo Bertolucci's epic-length,
sprawling historical drama of Fascist Italy, his follow-up film to Last
Tango in Paris (1972), was greeted with both excitement and skepticism
at the Cannes Film Festival for its near-pornographic scene of sexual
exploration featuring big stars in an explicit sex act; the characters
of Robert DeNiro (as Berlinghieri heir Alfredo, grand-son of a landowner)
and Gerard Depardieu (as Olmo Dalco, the bastard son of a peasant) visited
prostitute Neve (Stefania Casini), where both were viewed completely naked
as the woman visibly fondled and mutually masturbated both of them (one
with each hand for each penis); earlier, the two prepubescent boys examined
and compared the length of their penises; the scenes were edited out for
the US release of the truncated film, and later reappeared in the over-5
hour, NC-17 re-release in 1993; there were other questionable scenes involving
Donald Sutherland and Burt Lancaster |
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Sebastiane (1976, UK)
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Outspoken homosexual writer/director Derek Jarman's feature debut film was this experimental, homoerotic cult film -- rated X upon release -- that was inspired by the image in a Renaissance painting of a martyred Saint Sebastian - who was stripped naked, tied to a pole and shot through with arrows; the film was noted for a number of things: (1) the film's dialogue was in vulgar Latin (and required English sub-titles), (2) the story set in Roman times told about a Christian guard soldier named Sebastiane (Leonardo Treviglio) in the Roman Imperial troops who was martyred (tied naked to a stake and penetrated with arrows) when he rejected the homosexual advances of his desperate pagan commanding centurion Severus (Barney James) to engage in sodomy - and it included an explicit and frank depiction of homosexuality (and an erect penis) between two other soldiers having same-sex intercourse in the remote Sardinian outpost: Anthony (Janusz Romanov) and Adrian (Ken Hicks), (3) the opening sequence of a Roman orgy viewed body-painted naked men dancing with comically-exaggerated penises, (4) throughout the film, the soldiers often appeared undressed and completely naked (with full-frontal male nudity) |  
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Up! (1976)
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In this surreal Russ Meyer film (co-written by Reinhold Timme, a pseudonym for film critic Roger Ebert), Shakespeare-quoting wood-nymph Francesca 'Kitten' Natividad (credited in the role as a one-person nude "Greek Chorus") found pleasure through a tree trunk; the film was littered with all the ingredients of Meyer films: big-breasted ('buxotic') women, colorful characters (including hick rednecks), awful dialogue, kitschy music, bawdy humor, a mostly incoherent plot, and incredulous gory violence (death by carnivorous piranha in the bathtub, karate-chop to the neck, a night-time chainsaw struggle, an axe fight, electrocution during sex, two cartoonish yet violent rape scenes, etc.) |   
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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.
- Milestone Films With Scenes That Were Especially Notorious, Infamous, Controversial, or Scandalous
