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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 |
| When Will I Be Loved (2004)
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This post-feminist, mostly-improvised James Toback-directed film, an Indecent Proposal tale, contained four very sexual scenes, one of which occurred during the opening credits; it was an extended erotic, unself-conscious nude hot shower sequence by beautiful, independent -minded Manhattanite debutante Vera (Neve Campbell) - supposedly an introduction to how she would later demonstrate her sexual and intellectual powers; later, Vera videotaped her lesbian tryst with a lover, had sexually frank discussions with her potential employer - a college professor (Toback), and was pimped for $100,000 to a visiting Italian count billionaire (Dominic Chianese) |  |
| 2005 Academy Award Nominees | The 2005 Academy Awards were dominated by films with non-mainstream, challenging sexual roles and identities; two Best Picture nominees had themes with homosexual/bisexual protagonists: Best Director-winning Brokeback Mountain (2005) (see below), and Capote (2005) - with a Best Actor Oscar for Philip Seymour Hoffman as the squeaky-voiced, effete homosexual writer title character; also, Felicity Huffman was nominated for her gender-bending role in Transamerica (2005) (see below) |  |
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Co-produced by Innocent Pictures and Dogma 95 proponent Lars von Trier's Zentropa Productions, this foreign film (released in different versions with varying degrees of sexuality) was directed by Jessica Nilsson; it skirted the boundaries of pornography (as a crossover hardcore adult film with explicit unsimulated sex performed by mainstream stars - including a full episode of fellatio to a messy climax (performed by Eileen Daly), penetrative sexual intercourse (with two different male stars), female masturbation, and lesbian oral sex/cunnilingus performed by French porn icon Ovidie); in its story of sexual relationships, it told about an independent, attractive single woman named Anna (Danish actress and singer Gry Bay) who worked as a theatrical costume designer, while being torn between her ex-lover boyfriend Johan (Mark Stevens) and a current lover/painter Frank (Thomas Raft) |     
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Mexican writer/director Carlos Reygadas' Palme d'Or-nominated film with non-professional actors told "about the mystical erotic pleasure of lost souls in the megalopolis of Mexico City"; it caused controversy wherever shown, with its two major scenes of sexual content: the first in which rich, 20s-something general's daughter and sexy part-time prostitute Ana (Anapola Mushkadiz) was straddled atop passive middle-aged unattractive working class Mexican driver/bodyguard Marcos (Marcos Hernandez), and in another scene, Marcos made love from behind to his morbidly overweight wife; there were also two extended male oral sex scenes (one with a condom, one without - with the use of a prosthetic penis) |
   
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Bloodrayne (2005)
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In notorious director Uwe Boll's video game adaptation, a vampire sword-and-sorcery action film, Rayne was the title character in 18th century Eastern Europe -- a beautiful but vengeful half-human, half-vampire Dhampir (Kristanna Loken), whose patriarchal father was evil ruler Lord Kagan (Ben Kingsley); in the film's sex scene, she aggressively seduced Sebastian (Matthew Davis), one of three vampire hunters from the ancient Brimstone Society; she opened up her top, stripped down below, and grabbed iron cell-bars that Sebastian was backed up against - and proceeded to have sex with him, standing up - similar to the scene in The Last Seduction (1994); the film also featured a blood and sex orgy/harem scene among vampires |   
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This was the first mainstream gay/bi-sexual romance film, heavily-promoted by the media, to receive multiple awards and critical/public acclaim; it had eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, and three wins; it was made by major A-list film-maker and Best Director-winning Ang Lee, and featured major stars in a story about a secret lifelong bond and longing for love (forbidden) between two young men in the early-mid 1960s: ranch-hand Ennis del Mar (Oscar-nominated Heath Ledger) and rodeo cowboy Jack Twist (Oscar-nominated Jake Gyllenhaal); the two grew close while herding sheep in the summer on an isolated Wyoming mountain, including scenes of them skinny-dipping, sharing a hungry kiss, and having an under-one-minute sexual encounter in a shared sleeping bag in a two-man tent -- and years later in a motel bed; also there were scenes of both men having sex with their girlfriends/wives: Jack in Texas with rodeo queen Lureen Newsome (Anne Hathaway) and Ennis in Wyoming with sweetheart Alma (Oscar-nominated Michelle Williams); the plotline was based on the short story by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Proulx and an Oscar-winning adaptation for the screen by the team of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana; Gustavo Santaolalla's original music score accounted for the film's third and final Oscar win |
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| Broken Flowers (2005)
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Writer/director/producer Jim Jarmusch's film starred Bill Murray as Don Johnston (with a t), who, during a cross-country search, visited four possible mothers (all former girlfriends) of a 19-year-old son he had supposedly fathered; one visit was to Sharon Stone (as closet organizer Laura) - who had a 'jailbait' nubile daughter named, unsurprisingly, Lolita (21 year-old Alexis Dziena), who non-chalantly and seductively walked around the living room naked (without her pink robe) while talking on the telephone in front of deadpan-faced and unamused Don; this film won the Grand Prix at the year's Cannes International Film Festival |  |
Dirty Deeds (2005)
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This typical high school teen comedy (although rated PG-13) bombed at the box office, but did better when released to DVD as unrated with the nudity (from three anonymous actresses) reinstated (and featuring a special nude outtakes feature); the film's title referred to the completion of a set of ten challenging "dirty deeds" or pranks (10 Dares in 12 Hours) in the form of a scavenger hunt performed at the time of a high school's homecoming; in two unfunny scenes in the unrated version, the hero Zach (27 year-old Milo Ventimiglia as an 18-year old) used a loaf of wheat bread as a masturbatory tool while fantasizing about a nude girl, and there were two topless lesbians to top it off |  
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| The 40 Year-Old Virgin (2005)
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This popular R-rated comedy starred Steve Carell as nerdy, middle-aged virginal electronics super-store worker Andy Stitzer whose sex-obsessed store salesmen buddies decided that it was time for him to score and advised him to act tough ("like David Caruso in Jade") - so he started to date: he had a disastrous experience with a sexaholic bookstore clerk named Beth (Elizabeth Banks) - who was skilled with a detachable shower head in the bathtub, then with a drunken date named Nicky (Leslie Mann), and also with his pushy boss Paula (Jane Lynch); he finally found his soulmate in free-spirited 40 year-old divorced mother of three Trish (Catherine Keener) although first had to abide by a no-sex policy for 20 dates; other funny gags included Andy's first experience on using a condom - even under the covers, a speed-dating lunch hour session (in which his prospective date (Kimberly Page) inadvertently flashed him), and a botched chest-waxing treatment |
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Hard Candy (2005)
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Music video director David Slade's first feature film was this thought-provoking, exploitative female revenge thriller about seemingly-innocent 14 year old femme fatale Hayley Stark (Ellen Page) who met 32 year old photographer Jeff Kohlver (Patrick Wilson) in an Internet chat room; during their first face-to-face meeting at the Nighthawks coffee shop, the potential jail-bait predator bought her some chocolate cake (which he suggestively wiped from her lips); he also reassuringly told her: "You look older than you are and you, you certainly act older than you are"; later, she accused him of being a pedophile: (Jeff: "You were coming on to me" Hayley: "Oh, come on. That's what they always say, Jeff...Who? The pedophiles! 'She was so sexy. She was asking for it.' Or 'She was only technically a girl, she acted like a woman.' It's just so easy to blame a kid, isn't it! Just because a girl knows how to imitate a woman does NOT mean she's ready to do what a woman does"); with premeditated determination, she turned the tables on him in his Hollywood Hills home (in a tense cat-and-mouse interplay regarding the "predator" and the "prey") when she drugged his drink, tied him up, and then threatened to castrate him (as "preventative maintenance") with a scalpel and anesthetic ice; as he both berated her and pleaded with his raging and sadistic captor; she forced her repentant victim to confess to a murder that he may/may not have committed of a young model named Donna Mauer that he once photographed - he was definitely an accessory to her murder |
   
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| Havoc (2005)
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Anne Hathaway (star of G-rated family films The Princess Diaries and Elle Enchanted) and Bijou Phillips were featured as two slutty, spoiled white suburban girls (Allison Lang and Emily) from Pacific Palisades who were "totally f--king bored" so they became involved with drug-dealing, tattooed East LA Latino gang members (including Freddy Rodriguez) in this unrated, direct-to-DVD independent film directed by Oscar-winning documentarian Barbara Kopple and scripted by Oscar-winning Stephen Gaghan (Traffic and Syriana); this was a prime example of an against-type role played by a young female actress as a rite of passage to more adult roles; in a scene in which Hathaway wore a black bra while she was being video-recorded by student documentary film-maker Eric (Matt O'Leary), she moaned on a couch like a porn star, revealing: "You wanna f--k me?...Oh god, my nipples are hard, oh god..How do you know I'm not taking this seriously? Games are fun"; in another realistically-acted scene, both young women were making out with gang members in the same room when Allison decided she'd had enough (before intercourse), although Emily decided to go all the way |     |
A History of Violence (2005)
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Director David Cronenberg's film contained two contrasting sex scenes, the first in which a married couple in the small Indiana town of Millbrook seductively and lovingly acted out their teenage fantasies together: successful lawyer Edie (Maria Bello) playfully wore a cheerleading outfit before making love to her diner manager/husband Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) - purportedly the first instance of '69' performed in a non-pornographic American film; in the second instance after a murderous confrontation in the diner that changed their lives forever (revealing that Tom had a former life as Joey Cusack, a brutal killer from Philadelphia?), Tom and Edie engaged in a painful, combative, angry, disturbing, violent and near-rape attack on their home's staircase |
    
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| Hostel (2005)
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Before the grisly and bloody torture/murder in this horror story about three backpackers (Americans Paxton and Josh and Icelandic Oli, played by Jay Hernandez, Derek Richardson, and Eythor Gudjonsson) who ventured to a Slovakian city, they found hedonistic and casual sex with giggly brunette beauty Natalya (Barbara Nedeljakova) and blonde Svetlana (Jana Kaderabkova) |    |
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This bleak, medium-core sex film from director Clément Virgo further pushed the boundaries of sexuality in film; it explored the distinction between love and lust, and featured two known TV stars; it opened with a scene of emotionally-detached 25 year-old Leila (Lauren Lee Smith) masturbating on her sofa to a porn video on TV, and then followed with numerous emotion-less but explicit sexual encounters between Leila and David (Eric Balfour) to dull the pain of their existences, including full-frontal nudity, male and female oral sex, an erect penis, and more, with some instances of voice-over narration by Leila |     |
Manderlay (2005)
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Controversial director Lars von Trier's sequel film to Dogville (part of a planned trilogy) was set in 1930s Alabama in a rural community that still practiced slavery at a secluded cotton plantation named Manderlay; 24 year-old red-haired Bryce Dallas Howard (daughter of actor/director Ron Howard) starred as reforming, headstrong do-gooder Grace (earlier portrayed by Nicole Kidman); in one of the film's subplots, she performed in an inter-racial sex (simulated) scene (interpreted as semi-rape by some critics) with former studly slave Timothy (Isaach De Bankole) |    |
| Match Point (2005)
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This was famed director Woody Allen's first R-rated erotic thriller; it starred Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as retired Irish tennis pro Chris Wilton who married heiress Chloe Hewett (Emily Mortimer); however, he had a steamy clandestine affair with femme fatale Nola Rice (Scarlett Johannson), the American girlfriend of her brother; there were two scenes of their love trysts...the steamier one was out in a field in a rainstorm; the film recalled Body Heat (1981), Fatal Attraction (1987) and Allen's own Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) |   |
Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005)
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With her debut "indie" film, Miranda July served as writer/director and star; her film was the year's winner of the Special Jury Prize for Originality at the Sundance Film Festival as well as the Camera d'Or Best First Film prize winner at Cannes; the film was rated R for "disturbing sexual content involving children" - even though it presented comic views of underage sexuality; the story told about a romance between video artist Christine (Miranda July) and recently-separated, socially-awkward shoe salesman Richard Swersy (John Hawkes); other scenes included Richard's seven year-old son Robby (Brandon Ratcliff) anonymously sex-chatting on the Internet (in an instant message session initiated by his older 12 year-old brother) with an unaware adult woman (Tracy Wright), and using the boy's own personal and innocent fixation about 'I want to poop back and forth' (he explains: "I'll poop into her butthole and then she'll poop it back into my butthole and then we'll just keep doing it back and forth with the same poop") - the phrase was mistaken for exotic scatological talk - drawn with this smiley: ))<<>>(( ; eventually, the young Robby met the stranger sitting on a park bench; in another scene, 14 year-old Peter (Miles Thompson) allowed himself to be the blindfolded subject of a blow-job competition (off-screen) by two precocious neighbor girls - Heather (Natasha Slayton) and Rebecca (Najarra Townsend) that required two washcloths, a towel, and two pieces of candy (preferably mints); and the same neighbor girls took up perverted older neighbor Andrew's (Brad Henke) dare after he left them sexually-lewd notes - but he sheepishly cowered inside when they called his bluff |     
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Melissa P. (2005, It.)
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Another coming-of-age tale by director Luca Guadagnino (and produced by actress Francesca Neri) and based upon the frank, best-selling teen memoirs book 100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed by Melissa Panarello, with 18 year-old Spanish actress Maria Valverde (with dubbing into Italian) in the title role as the baby-faced Melissa -- a maladjusted 16 year-old Sicilian high school girl who used sex to combat loneliness and neglect by her parents; in the opening scene, Melissa masturbated and caressed herself in her room in front of a hand-held mirror; the child seductress also sought riskier contact and lost her virginity through other sexual couplings, threesomes, orgies, and oral sex, as she became a plaything for other males' gratification and sought to make an identity for herself; Geraldine Chaplin played the part of Melissa's understanding grandmother, until she was taken to a convalescent home |     
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| Mrs. Henderson Presents (2005, UK)
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This Oscar-nominated film starred actress Judi Dench as the title character Laura Henderson - a war-time widow who battled government censorship and transformed a run-down theater (the Windmill) in the 40s into a flashy revue of naked showgirls, when allowed to present shows with 'immobile' or motionless, fully-nude stage performers as living statues in 'artistic tableaux'; the performers included Anna Brewster as Doris, Kelly Reilly as Maureen, and Sarah Solemani as Vera, among others; also - to provide equality of the sexes, there was a brief nude glimpse of the theater's stubborn manager Vivian Van Damm (Bob Hoskins) |    |
The Notorious Bettie Page (2005)
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Writer/director Mary Harron's R-rated period biopic, from a script co-written with Guinevere Turner, covered the life of '50s icon and brunette (with bangs) bondage pin-up queen Bettie Page (remarkably portrayed by actress Gretchen Mol); the film (alternating between both B/W and color) surveyed in a sketchy way Page's fundamentalist background, her innocent country girl roots in Nashville, TN, her molestation by her father, her abusive marriage, an incident of a brutal gang rape, her early days as a topless camera club fetish model posing with a whip and chains and other bondage set-ups, her 1955 Playboy Magazine (Miss January) centerfold with a Christmas tree, and her targeting by a government 'witch hunt' against pornography (a "smut probe") led by Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver (David Strathairn); during her modeling days, she was photographed in numerous tawdry and kinky, S/M cheesecake poses for self-promoting photographer Irving Klaw (Chris Bauer); later in life, she turned back to Christianity and was born-again transformed |       The real Bettie Page |
Shadowboxer (2005)
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Director Lee Daniels' daring, exploitative and provocative melodramatic crime-thriller (his directorial debut film) pushed the envelope and provided shock value with its story of inter-racial (and incestual) sex and crude violence; it told about a female assassin named Rose (Helen Mirren) who was diagnosed with terminal cancer; she and younger inter-racial lover/step-son Mikey (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) were commissioned to kill Vickie (Vanessa Ferlito), the supposedly unfaithful wife of Clayton (Stephen Dorff), a sociopathic and villainous mob boss; their plan went awry when Vickie's 9-month pregnancy compelled Rose and Mikey to protect her and her newborn son; in addition to the film's crude and violent content, it also contained sexually-graphic scenes; in an early controversially-indulgent scene of sodomy and anal sexual assault, Clayton gagged Tommy (Jack Krizmanich) with an 8-ball and rammed a jagged, half-broken pool cue up his rear (off-screen) before killing him; in another equally-controversial scene, while having coital sex from behind with his topless girlfriend (Maria Soccor) draped over a desk - Clayton withdrew himself when interrupted by an argument outside his door, exhibiting his semi-erect condom-covered penis, and then shot dead those who disturbed him; and in an outdoor sex scene between Mikey and Rose, he shot her in the head with a revolver as she climaxed - an unusual mercy killing |   
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| Transamerica (2005)
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Desperate Housewives ABC-TV sitcom star Felicity Huffman earned an Oscar nomination for her gender-bending role as a pre-operative transgendered woman (or male-to-female transsexual) named Bree (with the given name of Stanley), who discovered (s)he had fathered a 17-year-old son - a troubled and surly, drug-abusing 17-year-old gay hustler named Toby (Kevin Zegers); in this low-budget, R-rated independent road film, Huffman displayed full-frontal nudity as both a man (with a prosthetic penis) and as a woman!; in one scene, he/she relieved himself while traveling from NY to CA by car with his/her son (witnessed by him through the car's rear-view mirror), and another scene showed him/her coming out of the bathroom and embarrassed to be seen in his/her underwear by his/her son; in a post-operative scene, she checked herself out in the bathtub |
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Tsai Ming-liang's porn-musical was controversial for its full-frontal nudity and explicit oral sex; in a metaphoric scene, a nubile nurse (real-life Japanese porn actress Sumomo Yozakura) was lying naked from the waist down on her back on a white bed - her legs were spread-eagled and bent at the knees, with a juicy half of a watermelon between her legs; low-budget porn film actor Hsiao-Kang (Kang-sheng Lee) crawled toward the nurse's fruit - his tongue lapped at her, and his fingers prodded into the sweetly-sticky, squishy melon; after she had an orgasm, Hsiao-Kang stuck a vagina-sized chunk of drippy pulp in her mouth; in another outrageous and bizarre production number, Busby Berkeley-esque pink bikini-clad females with red plastic buckets on their heads and blue-toilet plungers circled around Hsiao-Kang dressed as a giant penis; other scenes included one of Yozakura sitting on a kitchen counter and masturbating with a plastic water bottle, various making-of-porn scenes, and the film's controversial, open-ended final sequence |    
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| The Wedding Crashers (2005)
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This bawdy film from director David Dobkin marked a return to R-rated comedies with numerous T&A shots; it was about two intrepid Washington DC bachelors and lifelong friends John Beckwith and Jeremy Grey (Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn) who invited themselves to nuptial receptions to pick up on women and bridesmaids (including one named Claire (Rachel McAdams) and her "stage-five clinger" sister Gloria (Isla Fisher)); the film also included the sped-up "wedding sluts" montage sequence of the two scammers in bed with partly-clothed and topless women who flopped down in front of them (including Diora Baird, Rachel Sterling and Ivana Bozilovic), and the racy scene of John being seduced by sexually-insatiable Kathleen "Kittycat" Cleary (54 year-old Jane Seymour) - the socialite wife of Treasury Secretary and presidential wannabe William Clearly (Christopher Walken) when he was invited to sample her new breast implants ("I just had my tits done. Do you like 'em?...Feel 'em" - but then he was accused of being a "pervert" after he sampled them) |     
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This controversial, tangled and convoluted film-noirish feature film from Canadian director Atom Egoyan was set in two time periods; it was a lurid and sexy backstage crime/murder mystery based upon Rupert Holmes' 2003 novel, about an amoral and pill-popping comedy duo team in 1957 resembling Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis (Kevin Bacon as American Lanny Morris and Colin Firth as Brit Vince Collins) who broke up their act after naked, redheaded coed Maureen O'Flaherty (Rachel Blanchard) - who was the room service waitress from the hotel they just vacated in Florida - was found dead in their New Jersey hotel bathtub from supposed drowning or drug overdose (although her corpse had been flown from Florida to NJ and planted there); later, it was revealed that she was killed because she witnessed Vince's closet bisexuality-homosexuality - a psychosexually-related crime committed by the duo's bodyguard Reuben (David Hayman) by smothering her with a pillow in order to silence her; then 15 years later, worldly, award-winning aspiring journalist Karen O'Connor (Alison Lohman) - once a polio-cured guest on their final telethon show before the murder, pursued the two to write a book to find "where the truth lies" in the circumstances surrounding the death, and became sexually involved with Lanny; in one of the film's hotter scenes, Vince drugged and photographed Karen while she experienced 'wet' oral sex performed on her by aspiring singer/prostitute Alice (Kristin Adams) who wore a bluish Alice in Wonderland outfit; the film was filled with female and male nudity and was initially rated NC-17 by the MPAA for its sex scenes (including a threesome and an intense homoerotic scene, in which Lanny screamed at Vince: "F--k this! We're buddies, we're pals, we're partners, we're a duo. We love each other, but we don't f--k!"), resulting in its release as both an explicit unrated version and as a R-rated version; the two offensive scenes that were shortened/edited were: (1) Vince receiving oral sex from an unnamed hooker, and (2) the repeated hip thrusting of Lanny as he took Denise (Rebecca Davis) from behind in the hotel room |
       
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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 | Part 51
Created in 1996-2008 © by Tim Dirks. All rights reserved.
