Sex in Cinema: Greatest and Most Influential Erotic / Sexual Films and Scenes

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.

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 \| 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 \|
Sex in Cinema: Part 3 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
Movie Title	Brief Scene Description	Example
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)
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
Glorifying the American Girl (1929)	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
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)
Animal Crackers (1930)	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"
Anna Christie (1930)	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
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
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; it featured Norma Shearer's Oscar-winning role as a wayward 'bad girl' with a man's name (Jerry) and male viewpoint, who matched her unfaithful husband-newspaperman Ted's (Chester Morris) philandering and infidelity with an ex-girlfriend (the recently-divorced Janice (Mary Doran)) by engaging unrepentedly in a sexually-adventurous, one-night stand tryst of her own with his best friend (Robert Montgomery) to 'balance the account'; she admitted to her astonished husband Ted: "From now on, you're the only man in the world that my door is closed to"; after a series of sexual escapades and two weeks on a yacht in the summer with married (but separated) former beau Paul (Conrad Nagel), she selflessly returned and was reconciled to her husband on New Year's Eve in Paris; 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
Hell's Angels (1930)	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
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"
Dracula (1931)	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
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 film was criticized for Hyde’s sordid, sexually-decadent and sadistic sexual encounters with Cockney slut "Champagne Ivy" Pearson (Miriam Hopkins); it was a heavily-censored horror film due in part to its inclusion of a scene of Dr. Jekyll kissing nude mistress-prostitute Ivy under her bedsheets, and her seductive invitation to return quickly: "Come back soon, won't you?" - subsequent reissues of the film in 1938 were heavily censored and cut
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"
A Free Soul (1931)	After The Divorcee (1930), this was Norma Shearer's next taboo-breaking, racy pre-Code film, with the Oscar-nominated actress cast as a free-spirited socialite - a "new kind of woman"; it was a frank role as a modern San Francisco girl - the daughter of a defense attorney - that challenged the morals and manners of the times; she starred as erotic, non-conformist, rebellious diva Jan Ashe who liked to smoke, drink, experience pre-marital sex, and chatter away; she was seen wearing a very thin, seductive, bra-less silky dress to break her engagement to polo player Dwight Winthrop (Leslie Howard) to pursue sexual ravishment (and rough love-play) by villainous, brutalizing underworld gangster Ace Wilfong (a virile Clark Gable in a breakthrough, star-making role) in his apartment - she proclaimed to him: "You're the first really exciting man I've ever met", and also invited him to embrace her as she sensuously stretched back and entreated him: "Put 'em around me"; in another oft-remembered scene, Gable shoved co-star Shearer back onto a couch as he told her: "Take it and like it"; off-screen, Gable commented about Shearer's slinky, form-fitting apparel -- "the dame doesn’t wear any underwear in her scenes"