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) - 1991 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 |
At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1991)
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This fairly realistic 3-hour long South American/Brazilian rain forest tale was an adaptation of Peter Matthiessen's well-regarded 1965 novel by Brazilian director Hector Babenco (and producer Saul Zaentz); it offered an excuse to show the nudity of actors Daryl Hannah (during a nude swim) and Tom Berenger as an American pilot returning to his wild tribal roots; the film also included a notorious scene of 43 year-old Kathy Bates (as a repressed missionary's wife) losing her mind and doing an unflattering nude native dance (partially clothed with a thatch of leaves and layers of mud) | 
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La Belle Noiseuse (1991, Fr.) (aka The Beautiful Troublemaker)
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Jacques Rivette's lengthy drama with minimal dialogue told about the creative process regarding an uninspired and aging French artist-painter Edouard Frenhofer (Michel Piccoli) who suddenly returned to work on an abandoned masterpiece, known as "La Belle Noiseuse," when offered to paint model Marianne (Emmanuelle Béart), who posed nude for most of the film |     |
Boyz 'N the Hood (1991)
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Writer/director John Singleton's coming-of-age tale was set in South Central Los Angeles; Singleton became the first African-American and the youngest filmmaker to be nominated as Best Director; one of the subplots involved the black teen couple, Tre Styles (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) and Brandi (Nia Long), who eventually lost their virginity together, after she resisted his advances due to her Catholic faith beliefs; Tre was previously cautioned by his stern father Furious (Larry Fishburne): "Any fool with a dick can make a baby, but only a real man can raise his children"; while kissing Brandi as she felt empathy for his exasperation over more gang violence, he asked two questions hinting at marriage and commitment with her: "What do you think about people getting married while they're still in college?" and "Are you sure you're down for this?" as she agreed but worried: "I don't want to get pregnant" while he was touching her gold-cross necklace and assuring her: "You won't" |   
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Close My Eyes (1991, UK)
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Writer/director Stephen Poliakoff's British drama about forbidden incestual love told about a recently-reunited brother - an architect named Richard (Clive Owen) and his sister Natalie Gillespie (Saskia Reeves) in adulthood, and their subsequent ill-fated love affair ("strange bond") in London during a sultry summer; although she was married to an older, affluent entrepreneur named Sinclair Bryant (Alan Rickman), the duo were overwhelmingly attracted to each other and engaged in a passionately physical, clandestine sexual encounter in his apartment; afterwards, Natalie became guilt-ridden and insisted that her brother find a more appropriate partner, but he forced her to continue their incestuous pairing - until the truth came out
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Delicatessen (1991, Fr.)
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This film became well-known for its montage set-piece called the "Squeaky Bedsprings" scene, a clever and non-explicit sex scene that took place in a tenement apartment building above a ground floor butcher's shop/delicatessen; above him as newly-hired handyman and circus clown Louison (Dominique Pinon) painted the ceiling with a roller, the cannibalistic butcher/landlord Clapet (Jean-Claude Dreyfus) made love to his mistress Mme. Plusse (Karin Viard) on a squeaky bed - other tenants (the butcher's bespectacled near-sighted daughter Julie (Marie-Laure Dougnac) playing a cello with a metronome, a woman beating a dusty rug, a man pumping a bike tire, Louison rolling on paint to the ceiling, an old woman knitting, the toy-making Kube brothers testing out a noise-making novelty toy that moos, etc.) kept synchronized in symphonic rhythm ("squeak squeak", "pound pound", "tick tock", "click click") to the squeaking in increasingly sped-up tempo until the fat-faced butcher climaxed (when a cello string broke, the bike tire exploded, the painter fell to the floor, etc.) |   
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Jungle Fever (1991)
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The inter-racial, adulterous romance in New York City between married, middle-class black architect Flipper Purify (Wesley Snipes) and Italian-American office temp worker Angie Tucci (Annabella Sciorra) in writer/director Spike Lee's urban romance was considered controversial in the early 90s; when Flipper confided in his high-school teacher/neighbor Cyrus (Spike Lee), his reaction was: "H-bomb. H-bomb...Nuclear holocaust!"; soon afterwards, their scandalous liaison was broken apart by their two neighborhoods (relatives and friends): Sugar Hill in Harlem and Bensonhurst in Brooklyn | 
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My Own Private Idaho (1991)
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Writer/director Gus Van Sant's off-beat, buddy/road independent film was a modern reworking of William Shakespeare's Henry IV. It featured young male street hustler Mike Waters (River Phoenix) in the Pacific Northwest who suffered from narcolepsy. In a scene during the film's credits (with Tex Owens' Cattle Call cowboy song sung by Eddie Arnold in the background), he was apparently reclined backward in a chair as he received fellatio from a male client. As he strained - with the camera only showing his face - various surreal images were displayed from his mind: Mike in his mother's arms as she held his head in her lap and assured him ("Don't worry. Everything's gonna be alright"), clouds churning across the sky over a rural two-lane road as sunset approached, salmon leaping upstream to get back to their place of birth, and then a wooden barn crashing to the ground from the sky, signifying that he had orgasmed. As the camera panned down his body, two $10s were thrown as payment onto his bare chest by a john named Walt (Robert Lee Pitchlynn) - the bills slid down into his crotch area as he fastened his blue jeans. He was forced to beg for another $10 bill as he crouched outside the customer's toilet door. In another scene, the males (Mike and his friend Scott (Keanu Reeves) and others) displayed on the covers of porn magazines in an adult book store came to life and talked to each other |
   
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Poison (1991)
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Director Todd Haynes' first full-length feature was this NC-17 rated film - part of the Queer Cinema movement, with the title referring to the 'poisonous' effects of sex; the most controversial of its three, non-linear interwoven stories (adapting French Jean Genet's homoerotic writings and only film Un Chant d'Amour) was titled "Homo" - it was told with schoolyard flashbacks and vignettes; the segment was set in a prison where young thief John Broom (Scott Renderer) experienced life-long obsessed homosexual feelings for fellow inmate Jack Bolton (James Lyons); in a nighttime scene in which the prisoners were sleeping side by side, Broom tentatively and erotically touched Bolton, and was surprised to have his touch reciprocated; the film was attacked by right-wing, reactionary Christian fundamentalist groups as part of their family-values campaign against "government-funded pornography" (the film was funded, in part, by the National Endowment of the Arts) - in particular, for this homosexual scene, for an anal rape scene, a notorious spitting scene, and for a short explicit view of an erection (removed in the unrated and R-rated versions) | 
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Prospero's Books (1991, UK/Fr.)
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Eccentric arthouse director Peter Greenaway deconstructed and retold Shakespeare's The Tempest in this lurid, lavish, and visually stunning R-rated film production and fantasy drama, about magician Prospero (John Gielgud) exiled to a small Mediterranean island with his daughter, Miranda (Isabelle Pasco) and twenty-four beloved books; it told of his revenge against his enemies when they were shipwrecked and his daughter fell in love with the son of his chief enemy; the bacchanalian spectacle was advertised as containing copious nudity at various times (provided by hundreds of unclad extras of both sexes as nude dancing nymphs) | |
Rambling Rose (1991)
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Martha Coolidge's coming-of-age dramatic tale (in flashback) told about a scandalous, sexually-precocious, troubled, love-seeking young woman - the sexually-uninhibited, overtly sexual, 19 year-old, free-spirited Rose (Oscar-nominated Laura Dern) - who was employed as a curly-haired maid in a mid-1930s Southern family's household, where she tempted or bewitched the proper head of household Mr. 'Daddy' Hillyer (Robert Duvall) who himself was trying to fend off her many suitors; in one realistic scene, she taught smitten 13 year-old Buddy Hillyer (Lukas Haas) about the facts of life by letting him touch her in bed |
 
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The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
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This taut, suspenseful, psychological thriller was directed by Jonathan Demme and written by Ted Tally; it was a major commercial and critical success (Best Picture Oscar-winner), although gay groups complained about its stereotypical depiction of the trans-sexual killer ("Buffalo Bill") in the finale - which equated homosexuality and transgenderism with insanity and serial murder, despite Hannibal Lecter's (Anthony Hopkins) insistence that Buffalo Bill was not a real transsexual and only thought he was | 
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Thelma & Louise (1991)
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Ridley Scott's feminist road trip tale showcased the title characters Geena Davis (as unfulfilled Arkansas housewife Thelma) and Susan Sarandon (as waitress Louise Sawyer) in flight after an ugly threatened rape incident in the Silver Bullet roadhouse parking lot that led to a retaliatory killing; it featured a star-making role for Brad Pitt as good-looking hunk and redneck cowboy named J. D. who joined them in their T-Bird convertible while hitchhiking; during a motel fling in Room 133 with Thelma when he came in from a rainstorm, he told her he'd broken parole and had robbed a number of small businesses - he flaunted a hair dryer as a gun when he demonstrated his "gentlemanly" technique; the "outlaw" sweet-talked Thelma with "I may be an outlaw, darlin', but, uh, you're the one stealin'; my heart"; the camera panned up J.D.'s chiseled abs (shot from the female point of view) as he stood at the foot of the bed, pulled Thelma's bare legs toward him, kissed the sensitive area above her pantied crotch, and then proceeded to make passionate and energetic love to her on top of the room's dresser - to the sound of Chris Whitley singing Kick the Stones; the next morning in the motel's coffee shop, Thelma showed Louise her hickie and admitted to Louise that she had her first orgasm: "I finally understand what all the fuss is about now. It's just like a whole 'nother ballgame." Louise responded happily: "I'm so happy for you. That's great. I really am. You finally got laid properly. That's sweet." But on departing, they were shocked to discover that J.D. had stolen their "future" money that they had left on the nightstand next to the bed, forcing them into a life of crime. In the film's conclusion, before the two fugitives drove their convertible into the Grand Canyon after Thelma had urged: "Let's keep goin'", they kissed each other |
    
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Whore (1991) (aka If You're Afraid to Say It, Just See It)
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Director Ken Russell's third American film was this pseudo-documentary drama - an uncompromising, realistically bleak look at the dehumanizing, promiscuous occupation of prostitution - advertised as the "flipside to Pretty Woman"; it examined the life of jaded LA streetwalker Liz (Theresa Russell) as she talked to the camera through flashbacks - and experienced lewd sexual encounters, dirty talk and abuse from her no-good husband Charlie (Frank Smith), her rough and controlling pimp Blake (Benjamin Mouton), cops, other prostitutes and her clients-customers, including latent lesbianism and violent gang-rape in a van; in one scene, she unzipped her skirt for sex in the back of a car with a client (Charles Macaulay), and in another, she had hot-tub sex with her pimp after a workout in lingerie; the film was available in three versions (82-minute R and NC-17 version, and longer 92-minute European version) |   
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Zandalee (1991)
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This erotic, steamy bayou thriller (basically an embarrassing sexploitation flick that most actors in it would like to disown) by director Sam Pillsbury was set in New Orleans - it told about a sexually-starved, free-spirited wife Zandalee Martin (Erika Anderson), who resorted to betrayal by uninhibited and passionate sexual encounters with her poet-husband (turned corporate executive) Thierry Martin's (Judge Reinhold) painter friend Johnny Collins (Nicolas Cage), including their memorable body-painting scene with a blue-finger on her bare chest and an instance when a powdery drug substance was applied to Zandalee's nether regions from behind |    
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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