History of Sex in Cinema:
The Greatest and Most Influential
Sexual Films and Scenes
(Illustrated)
Part 3
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History of Sex in Cinema: Part 3 |
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) - Part 3 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 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 |
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Movie Title |
Brief Scene Description |
Example |
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The Wind (1928) |
Swedish director Victor Sjöström's last surviving silent film told about a lost and delicate young woman named Letty (Lillian Gish, in her final silent movie) who moved to wind-swept frontier life in Texas where she became isolated in a desert cabin struck by sandstorms; it was filled with sexual metaphors, including semi-incestuous desire, jealousy, seduction, attempted rape by a brutal male attacker, frigidity, virginity, insanity and sexual aversion - a predecessor to Roman Polanski's Repulsion (1965) |
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Un Chien Andalou (1929, Fr.) |
This shocking, and provocative surrealistic film, only 17 minutes long, by Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel, was banned in various countries, with its infamous eyeball razor-slashing scene, and these sexual assault images (pictured) of a man's (Pierre Batcheff) hands lustfully fondling or cupping the breasts of a clothed and then naked woman (Simone Mareuil); in the next image, the breasts disappeared and were transformed into buttocks - which the man continued to palpate |
  
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Glorifying the American Girl (1929)
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Paramount Studios and producer Florenz Ziegfeld created this Pre-Hays Code partly-Technicolored musical comedy; in one non-speaking scene during the colorful revue sequence in the film's final third in a segment titled Loveland, future Tarzan's Johnny Weissmuller appeared as Adonis wearing a fig leaf, while standing next to an unidentified semi-nude chorine - this was the first feature-length film to contain virtual nudity and revealing costumes in color! A censored, black and white version of the film was 9 minutes shorter | 
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Pandora's Box (1929, Ger.) (aka Lulu or Die Büchse der Pandora) |
Georg Wilhelm Pabst's early erotic and hypnotic silent film melodrama produced hateful critical reviews for its overt sexuality; this was the first film to present a well-developed lesbian character - the aristocratic countess; throughout the film Louise Brooks portrayed a tempting goddess named Lulu wearing silky dresses and billowy gowns, even though she sported a pageboy haircut (or black bob); in an early scene, the insatiable, free-spirited yet innocent 18 year old cabaret chorus girl and femme fatale Lulu (Louise Brooks) was caught backstage scandalously kissing obsessed and spell-bound wealthy newspaper owner Dr. Schon (Fritz Kortner) by his more socially-acceptable fiancee Charlotte Marie Adelaide (Daisy d'Ora); at the subsequent wedding party celebrating her marriage to Schon, virginally white-dressed (inappropriately), bi-sexual and amoral Lulu engaged in an intimate, flirtatious tango with black silken-dressed, chic lesbian aristocrat Countess Anna Geschwitz (Alice Roberts), and also flirted with Schon's son Alwa (Franz Lederer), causing her bridegroom to become insanely enraged and jealous; punished for unleashing Pandora's box of evil, she ended up dying at the hands of 'Jack the Ripper' (Gustav Diessl) in London's Soho on Christmas Eve with a gleaming knifeblade stuck into her stomach (off-screen) during an erotic embrace and kiss (her hand goes limp to indicate her death) |
    
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| In this second Marx Brothers effort, one of the original lines of Groucho's classic "Hooray for Captain Spaulding" song was censored and abruptly cut because of its sexual suggestiveness for the film's 1936 re-release, and is now only rarely heard: "I think I'll try and make her"; the excised line came after Mrs. Rittenhouse's (Margaret Dumont) line: "You are the only white man to cover every acre"; Groucho also uttered the following veiled comment about the nudity of native girls: "We took some pictures of the native girls, but they weren't developed, but we're going back again in a couple of weeks" |
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| This was the MGM film in which cinema's greatest silent star - an asexual, supercool, 24 year-old Nordic beauty named Greta Garbo - first talked - to a bartender in a coarsely-delivered line as the film's title character: "Gimme a whiskey, ginger ale on the side. And don't be stingy, baby!" In Garbo's transitional role to the talkies, she played the role of a former prostitute (with a veiled reference to being "in the house") whose sordid past could possibly ruin her chances for happiness |
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The Blue Angel (1930, Ger.) (aka Der Blaue Engel) |
This unstrained first film by director Josef von Sternberg featured the legendary Marlene Dietrich in a star-making role - with a plot that would often be repeated in their collaborations; the film told about a meek and repressed teacher Professor Immanuel Rath (Emil Jannings) who was tempted, seduced and destroyed by a sensual, carefree, and carnal top-hatted entertainer named Lola Lola (Marlene Dietrich) at the Blue Angel nightclub as he watched her; there, she sang a throaty rendition of "Falling in Love Again" astride a barrel on stage; she tilted her head to the side, leaned backwards, and grasped one gartered-stockinged leg on bare thighs with her arms; in her dressing room, the Professor kneeled before her and was commanded to slip black stockings over her legs |
  
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The Divorcee (1930) |
This film's original title was Ex-Wife (the title of the original and controversial 1929 novel by Ursula Parrott) - this pivotal Pre-Code film about divorce and infidelity, by director Robert Z. Leonard, was banned by the Production Code Administration as being too brash, racy and forward since it didn't condemn its sinful heroine; it featured Norma Shearer's Best Actress Oscar-winning role as a Manhattan ad writer with a man's name (Jerry) and a "man's point of view" who became a wayward 'loose woman'; at the start of the film, she agreed to get married only if she and her husband were equals, joking: "That's why we're gonna make a go of it - everything equal...75/25"; although happily married, she caught her unfaithful husband-newspaperman Ted Martin (Chester Morris) engaged in philandering and infidelity with an ex-girlfriend (the recently-divorced brunette Janice (Mary Doran)) who embraced him in their kitchen on their own third wedding anniversary; Jerry was devastated and disillusioned when Ted downplayed the incident: "There's no sense in overplaying it. There's nothing to it...It isn't the end of the world, darling" and "Please believe me, darling, it doesn't mean a thing, not a thing. It doesn't make the slightest difference. Come on, snap out of it"; on that same evening after he left for a week-long work engagement in Chicago, she matched Ted's unfaithfulness with her own sexually-adventurous, one-night stand tryst with their consoling, wealthy best friend Don (Robert Montgomery) after an evening of partying (the sex scene was off-screen, signaled by the closing of curtains to darken the bedroom); when her husband returned and repented, she wasn't ready to let the incident be covered up and forgotten so quickly: "You're like a little boy that's stolen some jam, been spanked and kissed and happy again"; when she admitted her own affair (with an unknown male) to her astonished husband to match the score: "I balanced our accounts, that's all...I didn't really intend to, but that's how it is," he wasn't as quick to understand ("It can't be true. Why, I always thought you were the most decent thing in the world. It can't be true"); she begged with him to forgive and try again ("I'll forgive you anything, dear. Can't you please forgive me?"), but Ted stubbornly packed up and explained how his vanity and honor were ruined; then she fatefully vowed to him as she lost her temper that she would become a sexually wanton 'bad girl': "I'm glad I discovered there's more than one man in the world while I'm young and they want me. Believe me, I'm not missing anything from now on...Loose women are great, but not in the home, eh, Ted?...The looser they are, the more they get. The best in the world! No responsibility! Well, my dear, I'm gonna find out how they do it. So look for me in the future where the primroses grow, and pack your man's pride with the rest. From now on, you're the only man in the world that my door is closed to"'; after their divorce and a series of sexual escapades (shown in a montage of close-ups of men's hands, rings, and off-screen dialogue), and two weeks on a yacht in the summer with married former beau Paul (Conrad Nagel) who was estranged from his wife Dorothy (Helen Johnson) with a disfigured face from a car accident, she decided not to join Paul as his new wife to live in Japan when Dorothy made a plea to have her husband back; in the conventional happy ending after Jerry was job-transferred to London, she selflessly returned and was reconciled to her husband where he was working in Paris; they decided to take a second chance on marriage at midnight, during a New Year's Eve celebration at a nightclub (she told him: "You're the only husband I ever had - and ever want. A new year in a minute, Ted. All the world gets a new chance" and he replied: "I'd give my right arm for another chance" and they clinched when she replied: "I like that right arm. How about putting it around me?"); the film was controversial at the time for its reversal of the hypocritical 'double standard', although it was considerably cleaned up - the husband's affair became a romance, and her own romances were considered dates |
       
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| 18-year old platinum blonde Jean Harlow shocked audiences here by starring as a sexy floozy with generous glimpses of flesh available through her slinky dresses; in this Howard Hughes WWI film, she delivered her famous line of dialogue to an awaiting uniformed soldier in her apartment after inviting him in - "Would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable?" - with his response: "I'll try to survive" - and then she seductively entered her bedroom letting her wrap fall to reveal her backless dress; Harlow became screendom's first official 'bombshell' -- meaning hot and explosive |
 
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Madam Satan (1930)
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Director Cecil B. De Mille's bizarre battle-of-the-sexes film, a major box-office flop, challenged the code with a racy, gaudy, and over-the-top masquerade costume party sequence aboard a giant zeppelin; it was the famed director's second talkie (as well as his second film for MGM after Dynamite (1929)), and also his first-and last musical; the story told about 'caged bird' wife Angela Brooks (Kay Johnson) who learned about the infidelity of her cheating husband Bob (Reginald Denny) with leggy seductress Trixie (Lillian Roth) - a singing/dancing member of a traveling show business trio, so she decided to teach him a lesson; she flirted with him at the masked ball (wearing a peek-a-boo, nude-looking gown and half-mask) as a femme fatale to lure him away from pheasant-costumed Trixie; their encounter occurred just before lightning struck the mooring mast of the dirigible (a foreshadowing of the real Hindenburg crash years later), and partygoers were forced to either parachute or jump |
   
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Morocco (1930) |
In her Hollywood debut film (with Paramount and director Josef von Sternberg), Marlene Dietrich targeted her sexuality toward both men and women; as Amy Jolly, she scandalously wore a sexually-ambiguous men's tuxedo and top hat as a performer in a North African cabaret club - in an early scene she sang "Quand L'amour Est Mort" with smoky eroticism, took a flower from the hair of a young lady in the audience (asking: "May I have this?"), inhaled it suggestively, and then kissed the embarrassed woman full on the mouth - one of the earliest (if not the first) female-to-female kisses by a leading actress, in order to get the woman's attention and another man's attention; after tipping her hat and listening to wild applause, the bisexual (or androgynous) chanteuse tossed the flower to admiring foreign legionnaire Tom Brown (a young Gary Cooper) in the audience; in a slightly later scene, the seductive Dietrich, in a skimpy black dress and with a feathery boa draped over her shoulders, also performed: "What Am I Bid for My Apple?" - after doing brisk business throughout the entire crowd, she sold one to Tom, who bit into it lustily (filmed in close-up during his third bite), and then asked her to sit in his lap, after which she discreetly gave him her room key for a late-night "hot" rendezvous - where she demurely told him: "You'd better go now, I'm beginning to like you" - to which he responded: "I wish I'd met you ten years ago" |
   
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The Common Law (1931)
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This romantic drama starred Joel McCrea as wealthy young painter John Neville, Jr. of nude portraits in Paris, and his blonde subject-turned-lover Valerie West (Constance Bennett); the film's themes included nude modeling and art, free love, and issues of pre-marital sex and the sexual double standard for women; as a career model, she posed nude for him (portrayed discreetly and only seen in long-shot); he bluntly told her during one undraped session: "You know, you should never wear clothes" - the film specifically challenged one of the production code's tenets about the portrayal of nudity, and the requisite punishment that a woman should receive for her 'sinful' sleeping around; in the story, when John discovered that Valerie was not a virgin and was previously the 'kept woman' mistress of rich American Dick Cardemon (Lew Cody), he dumped her, although he later reconsidered and they scandously began living together - without marrying at first because of her reticence |  
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Dance, Fools, Dance (1931)
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The Production Code also had difficulties with director Harry Beaumont's gangster film in which new rising talkies star Joan Crawford appeared as liberated socialite Bonnie Jordan (with curly brunette hair and long lashes) diving and swimming in her silky underwear off a yacht in the moonlight in the opening scene; in another risque scene, she proposed a trial ('on probation') period of love and extra-marital sexuality (including test kisses) with her wealthy boyfriend Bob Townsend (Lester Vail); Crawford linked her previous hedonistic dancing film roles with this one as a working girl - a newspaper cub reporter following the Stock Market crash; as an undercover ploy (proposed by her boss: "Use any weapon you've got"), she posed as dancer Mary Smith in the nightclub of gangster/bootlegger Jake Luva (sixth-billed Clark Gable) in order to discover the identity of a killer (revealed ultimately to be her own bootlegging brother Rodney (William Bakewell)) who murdered Bonnie's fellow reporter friend Bert Scranton (Cliff Edwards) in a contract hit; one of the film's highlights was her high-kick-and-tap dance performed in a shiny sequined short dress - shocking to her friends ("Oh, so that's what's become of Bonnie"); it was the first of eight films pairing Crawford with Clark Gable - the actress began an affair with her co-star during the making of this film |  
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| The Production Code pushed earthy sexuality and eroticism deeper into new levels of suggestiveness, deviation, and displacement, as in this classic Universal horror film, with the blood-sucking desire for new young female blood by the vampire (with his bevy of undead brides) portrayed as a substitute for sexual activity |
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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) |
Director Rouben Mamoulian's horror rendition of Robert Louis Stevenson's tale starred Oscar-winning Fredric March as the doctor/monster; the heavily-censored film with themes of sexual abuse, man's dual nature, and repression was criticized for sexy scenes with Cockney slut "Champagne Ivy" Pearson (Miriam Hopkins) and Hyde's sordid, sexually-decadent and sadistic behavior; after rescuing Ivy from one of her brutal 'callers', Jekyll took her up to her room and insisted on a medical inspection of her bruised leg - he told her suggestively: "By the way, you musn’t wear such tight a garter. It's bad for you. It impedes the circulation"; the tempting prostitute then insisted that he check out her hurt ribs, and prepared to undress to rest in her bed, asking him flirtatiously to "turn your eyes away now"; facing the camera, she hiked up her dress, removed her stockings and garters from each leg, flung the garters at his feet and giggled; she then reclined on her bed totally nude, covering herself with her bedspread and bedsheets; when he came over to her and asked: "How is the pain now?", she quickly embraced and kissed him, but they were interrupted by the appearance of Jekyll's upright colleague Dr. John Lanyon (Holmes Herbert) at the door who was appalled at his behavior; Jekyll told Ivy as he was leaving: "I'm a doctor, you know, and I'll call that kiss your fee"; as he exited, Ivy seductively and rhythmically swung her leg back and forth next to the bed (with her garter and bare leg seen in closeup) -- to further entice Dr. Jekyll, as she entreated and invited him to return quickly: "Come back soon, won't you?....Soon...Come back"; as he left, a superimposed overlay of her swinging leg (with her whispered words) was seen over his descent of the stairs; although he was reminded by Lanyon that he was engaged to virtuous Muriel Carew (Rose Hobart), he explained how he was only expressing his impulses - and how sex-starved he was: "Can a man dying of thirst forget water? Do you know what would happen to that thirst if it were denied water?"; subsequent reissues of the film in 1938 were heavily censored and cut, and the same scene was shot with different versions (some longer and in different states of undress) |
      
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The Easiest Way (1931) |
This film (modified and heavily watered down before release due to its spicy nature) was based on Eugene Walter's scandalous play about being tempted to a life of luxury - and becoming a 'kept woman'; it starred Constance Bennett as Laura Murdock, a poor slum girl who turned to advertising agency modeling and experienced the good life by becoming the high-priced mistress of wealthy advertising boss Walter Brockton (Adolphe Menjou), but was shunned by her disapproving family and then experienced complications after falling in love with newspaperman Jack Madison (Robert Montgomery); in keeping with the Hays Code edicts, Laura suffered and was endlessly punished for being a "fallen woman" | |
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A Free Soul (1931) |
After The Divorcee (1930), this was Norma Shearer's next taboo-breaking, racy pre-Code film that challenged the morals and manners of the times, with the Oscar-nominated actress cast as a free-spirited San Francisco socialite; she was portrayed as non-conformist, rebellious, liberated diva Jan Ashe, the daughter of prominent lawyer Stephen Ashe (Best Actor-winning Lionel Barrymore), an alcoholic criminal defense attorney; the independent, headstrong woman liked to smoke, drink, experience pre-marital sex, and have fun; in the film's opening, she was engaged to a devoted and distinguished polo player Dwight Winthrop (Leslie Howard), but broke it off (by stating: "I don't want life to settle down around me like a pan of sourdough") after meeting underworld speakeasy/pool hall manager/gangster Ace Wilfong (a virile Clark Gable in his first breakthrough, star-making role with MGM), a hunky client acquitted of murder by her father; Jan drove off with Ace in his fast-driving open roadster after being snubbed at a stuffy family birthday party, and proclaimed to him: "You're the first really exciting man I've ever met," just before their windshield was sprayed with machine-gun fire by rivals; at his penthouse apartment, she wore a very thin, seductive, bra-less, white silky dress and told him she loved his lifestyle and wasn't frightened at all: "I love it...it's just a new kind of man in a new kind of world...with a very unusual man" [Note: off-screen, Gable commented about Shearer's slinky, form-fitting apparel -- "the dame doesn't wear any underwear in her scenes"]; when Ace asked Jan's father for her hand in marriage, Stephen told off the low-life gangster: "The only time I hate democracy is when one of you mongrels forget where you belong. A few illegal dollars and a clean shirt, and you move across the railroad tracks," but Jan continued to secretly pursue sexual ravishment and rough love-play with 'bad-boy' Ace, staying over at his place for several months; she told him she was madly in love with him and wanted him to show his love rather than talk: "Men of action are better in action. They don't talk well...Why, I take it on the run right into your arms, don't I, darling?...Ace, darling, I'm head over heels mad about you, but what's in the future I don't know..." - she refused to marry him, realizing the possible consequences for her life, but with the film's most famous line (that was threatened by censorship), she invited him to embrace her as she sensuously stretched back and aggressively entreated him: "Come on, put 'em around me" - he obliged; her father vehemently disapproved of her "backstairs affair with a rat," calling her "cheap, common, contemptible" - and he dragged her away; when she returned to Ace after a three-month camping trip with her father, the insensitive gambler attempted to boss her around, brutalize her and force her to marry him, while suggesting that she forget her father: ("You left me flat, explained nothing. And you got a drunken, washed-out tramp who said I wasn't good enough for ya...(he shoved her back onto the couch) Aw, sit down, and take it and like it!...You make no more bargains, sweetheart, with anybody but me. We get married in the morning...You can't live without me. That's why you came back here. You had to. And that's all marriage is, just two people that want to live together. You can call the rest just nothing. You're through. You're mine and I want ya...From now on, you listen to me. We get married in the morning"); fearing his beastly villainy (and sensing the "filthy mark" he left on her soul), Jan abruptly left him and housed herself temporarily at the St. Francis Hotel in the city, where Ace found her the next day and threatened both Jan and Dwight's possible romantic reconciliation by disclosing her spoiled womanhood and threatening to ruin her high-society reputation: "When I get through, you won't have the guts to marry her. Now, let me lay it on the line for ya. She tossed all her ritz overboard months ago. She came to my place and she stayed there. You get that? She's mine. She belongs to me...Well, I'll spread the news to high, wide, and handsome you don't dare marry her. (To Jan) And you'll come crawling back like you did last night. Maybe I'll step out of my class and give ya a break. (To Dwight) Listen, buddy. Take a tip. Back out, right now. If you don't, you won't live long enough to start the honeymoon. And I'm not kidding"; to preserve Jan's honor, Dwight shot Ace dead in his gambling office and was placed on trial for murder (he claimed non-payment of a gambling debt as the reason); he was defended by Jan's father on the grounds of temporary insanity (due to Ace's lethal threats), and acquitted of the murder; at the end of his eloquent appeal, Stephen collapsed of a heart-attack, and Jan and Dwight were destined to be together as the film concluded; the film was remade as The Girl Who Had Everything (1953) with Elizabeth Taylor |
    
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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