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 \| Part 51 \| Part 52 \| Part 53
Sex in Cinema: Part 52 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
Saw III (2006)	This third installment of the popular grisly horror film franchise included one scene in which a hapless female victim named Danica Scott (Debra Lynne McCabe) was strung up by her wrists in a frigid, walk-in freezer locker; during her torture, a cold mist was sprayed or showered from nozzles on vertical poles at her side onto her naked body as she hung there, eventually encasing her in a thin sheet of ice and killing her before she could be saved; the full frontal nude view of her struggling led to charges of misogyny, dehumanization, sexual objectification, and abusive exploitation
Sherrybaby (2006)	In this independent feature film debut for writer/director Laurie Collyer, Golden Globe-nominated Maggie Gyllenhaal took the down-to-earth role of 19 year-old Sherry Swanson, recently paroled from a three-year jail term for robbery (to support her drug use) and hoping for a second chance and an opportunity to re-connect with her eight year-old daughter Alexis (Ryan Simpkins). Living in a half-way house, she experienced a strained relationship with her brother and sister-in-law who were raising her daughter. Baring both her physical and emotional self, she had sex with the half-way house program director (Rio Hackford) to reduce her curfew requirements, offered oral sex to her employment counselor to get a job in a Head Start program (instead of a factory), and often chose the wrong people to associate with. Wearing cheap-looking and ill-fitting inappropriate clothing, she invited sex in order to get what she wanted - in a gritty, fearless, sexually-raw blue-collar portrayal
Shortbus (2006)	Writer/director John Cameron Mitchell (director of the cult classic Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001)) brought his second arthouse feature film (aka "The Sex Film Project") to be screened both at the Cannes Film Festival, and at the Toronto International Film Festival - where it was the "most explicit" or sexually-graphic film ever screened; it also had the widest release of any film showing unsimulated sex, although it was encased within a non-pornographic dramatic narrative about emotionally-challenged post 9/11 New Yorkers searching for sexual happiness and self-discovery; this highly controversial film - named for the underground sex salon ("for the gifted and challenged") in the unrated film, contained unsimulated, hardcore images of sexual intercourse (gay and straight), masturbation, a dominatrix sex whipping, an orgy scene and a gay menage a trois scene (with oral sex) accompanied by a rousing singing of the national anthem: "The Star Spangled Banner"; Sook-Yin Lee, host of CBC Radio's Definitely Not the Opera, starred as married sex therapist Sofia who was pre-orgasmic, but became liberated by film's end
Three (2006, UK) (aka Survival Island)	Writer/director Stewart Raffill's preposterous action/thriller (compared unfavorably to Dead Calm and Swept Away - with Madonna) produced in 2003 told a tale about a shipwrecked Caribbean private yacht, taken by a rich couple: macho and wealthy Jack Matson (Billy Zane) and his pretty, big-breasted wife Jennifer (Kelly Brook, FHM Magazine's Sexiest Woman in the World in 2005); she and crew shiphand Manny (Juan Pablo Di Pace) were stranded and marooned on a remote island -- where conflict and sexual tension arose soon afterwards when Jack (without survival skills) also appeared and created a fierce love triangle; the film - only released for a short time theatrically in mid-2006 - was lambasted for being lame, poorly directed, acted and written (mostly for its characterization of Manny and for the voodoo subplot), unintentionally funny, and Kelly Brook-breast obsessed with views of her in and out of a skimpy white bikini; the real-life couple who met on the set were later engaged - and garnered headlines in late 2005 when Zane unsuccessfully threatened producers to remove Brook's nude scenes
Venus (2006)	Peter O'Toole's Oscar-nominated role as dying, impotent, septuagenarian has-been actor Maurice Russell who has a warm March-December platonic romance with fellow actor Ian's (Leslie Phillips) feisty teenaged grand-niece Jessie (Jodie Whittaker), much to the bemusement of Maurice's sardonic, disheveled, estranged wife Valerie (Vanessa Redgrave); most notable was randy Maurice's dreamy, murmured, courtly and fearless reply to Jessie's question about which of her body parts he thought about: "Your hair, your feet, your legs, your behind, your eyes...your elbows, (pause) your cunt"; she also briefly exposed her breasts to him at the foot of his bed by pulling up her shirt to rouse him while he was lying deathly ill; when gazing at the famed reclining Venus painting (the name he then adopted for Jessie), Maurice and Jessie spoke together about contrasting gender views on beauty: (Maurice: "For most men, the woman's body is the most beautiful thing they will ever see." Jessie: "What's the most beautiful thing a girl sees? Do you know?" Maurice: "Her first child"); in the final scene, Jessie - a nude model for art students in an art class - adopted the famous reclining pose of La Venus del Espejo (aka the Rokeby Venus) painted by Diego Velazquez - and her image dissolved/melded into the actual painting and metaphorically became Venus
Alone With Her (2007)	Canadian writer/director Eric Nicholas' disturbing and creepy low-budget suspense thriller about the invasion of privacy and voyeurism told about skilled high-tech Los Angeles stalker Doug (Colin Hanks), who placed listening devices and video surveillance cameras (the film was shot from the POV of the protagonist's gadgets) in the apartment of a beautiful woman, an aspiring artist named Amy Ruis (Mexican-born Ana Claudia Talancón). The sociopathic, obsessive peeping tom used the information he gathered from his voyeuristic sessions (including watching her showering and masturbating with her hair brush handle) to 'coincidentally' meet her and insinuate himself into a relationship (he actually engaged in love-making with her, but experienced impotence), while rescuing her as a knight-in-shining-armor from his own manufactured disasters. The film ended on a downer note when the jealous predator killed both her suspicious best friend Jennifer (Jordana Spiro) and Amy herself, after she discovered that he had spied upon her
Alpha Dog (2007)	This fact-based crime drama (about the Jesse James Hollywood case) from writer/director Nick Cassavetes told about how Southern California drug dealer Johnny Truelove (Emile Hirsch), after being double-crossed in a deal by Jake Mazursky (Ben Foster), impulsively kidnapped Jake’s naive 15 year-old half-brother, Zack (Anton Yelchin), and took him to Palm Springs to be held as ransom; Zack blindly enjoyed his captivity, drinking and doing drugs and having first-time sex with two party-girls Julie Beckley and Alma (Amanda Seyfried and Amber Heard) in a pool skinnydip scene playing Marco Polo ("This is your lucky night. Get in"); the situation eventually escalated to tragedy and the murder of Zack; in a scene with the most explicit nudity in the film, Johnny's girlfriend Angela Holden (Olivia Wilde) engaged in a hotel tryst with him - although he was pre-occupied with events in his life and couldn't perform ("Your dick's not even hard...it's like bubble gum") - even after attempted oral sex
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007)	This fatalistic crime melodrama by veteran director Sidney Lumet told, in flashback, about two brothers who master-minded a crazy (and completely botched) hold-up of their parents' Westchester suburban strip-mall jewelry store on a Saturday morning because they needed cash for debts: they were slobbish, bulky, smooth-talking New York real-estate broker-accountant Andy Hanson (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and his deadbeat, divorced, weak and indecisive younger brother Hank (Ethan Hawke); Hank needed child-support funds for his vindictive ex-wife (Amy Ryan) and for his daughter, and Andy required money for his expensive heroin drug habit, for male prostitutes, and to escape embezzlement charges by his company and the IRS; in the opening scene, Hank made love (vigorously from behind, doggy-style) while on vacation with his beautiful, dark-haired trophy wife Gina (Marisa Tomei in a frequently-naked role) in an exotic Rio hotel room surrounded by mirrors; but restless, miserable and reckless Gina also visited Hank on a weekly basis to have sex in his dumpy apartment - during one clandestine tryst, he wanted to run away with her and escape his debts and disastrous problems in his life, but she reminded him of his responsibilities (child support, his daughter, the rent, etc.), and then in the kitchen, she told him: "You've (got) a really good thing going. You should just enjoy it. We had a really good time in bed. I don't ask for anything." He responded plaintively: "I love you. I want more." She seductively and sensuously approached him and said: "So does, uh, Oliver Twist. Can I help you to seconds, or do you really, really, really have to get back? Huh?" Ironically, Andy had a similar conversation with his drug dealer
Beowulf (2007)	Director Robert Zemeckis' adaptation of the Old English epic poem engendered some anticipation over its rating -- PG-13 or R -- in part for Angelina Jolie's mostly-naked seductive role as Grendel's mother who was seen covered with dripping gold liquid (although virtual and 100% CGI as a digital replica), and looking like a golden Academy Award Oscar statue; the film ended up PG-13, mostly because the nudity was with animated characters, for its intense sequences of violence, disturbing images, and some sexual material (and nudity)
Black Snake Moan (2007)	Writer/director Craig Brewer's dirty, visceral and raw Southern drama about redemption and guilt starred Samuel L. Jackson as a blues-playing, deeply-religious Tennessee farmer-gardener named Lazarus (grieving from a recent breakup in his marriage) who took it upon himself to care for a troubled, abused, wild, and sexually-loose white trashy woman named Rae (Christina Ricci) with a bluebird (or sparrow) tattooed on her right breast; early in the film, she cheated on her absent boyfriend/fiancee Ronnie (pop star Justin Timberlake) who was away for military training; to cure her "itch", she found sex in a hotel room and then on a bluish-lit football field while wearing shoulder pads amidst used plastic drink cups - and then said "Oh god, that feels so much better" when the pads were removed; Lazarus found her bruised and abandoned by the side of the road and chained the scantily-clad female (wearing a ripped and cut-off T-shirt with a Confederate flag and shorts) to his radiator to keep her from straying and so he could save her from her promiscuous afflictions - and likewise save himself, although when a teenaged black errand boy appeared, she removed her loosely-cropped top to seduce him
Bug (2007)	William's Friedkin's psychological thriller, based upon Tracy Letts's 2004 off-Broadway play, starred Ashley Judd as abused, coke-snorting wife and cocktail waitress Agnes White from Oklahoma, and Michael Shannon as psychologically-scarred Gulf War veteran Peter Evans, two lost souls in a motel apartment room. During their first love-making, the artsy cinematography lingered on the saliva-thread of a kiss, and provided a large closeup of a sweaty female breast. After they made love in her bed, he believed that he was becoming infested with bugs ("rogue aphids" in his bloodstream), and began extracting infested teeth from his mouth. Sharing in his delusions, they both became violently paranoid and mad, believing that Peter was an experimental drone, and Agnes was the queen bug. They wrapped the blue-lit room in tin-foil and hung up bug zappers - and then doused their naked bodies with gasoline in the erotic and violent climax
Eastern Promises (2007)	Filmmaker David Cronenberg's violent thriller contained one of the most talked-about sequences ever filmed: the four-minute vicious fight sequence (beautifully choreographed) in which marked, tattooed and enigmatic mobster driver/bodyguard Nikolai Luzhim (Viggo Mortensen) was ambushed by two knife-wielding, clothed Chechen assassins in a steamy bathhouse -- naked and vulnerable except for his body tattoos, and culminating with one thug being stabbed in the eyeball; the director noted that the scene recalled Psycho's notorious shower scene
Feast of Love (2007)	Robert Benton's R-rated ensemble film set in Portland, Oregon in a small college town was composed a series of vignettes providing a meditation on love ("a story for anyone with an appetite for love"). The film was headlined by Morgan Freeman as wise philosophy professor Harry Stevenson - the voice-over narrator and resident sage of the town, and Greg Kinnear as his naive friend - Jitters coffee shop owner Bradley Smith. The film contained copious amounts of nudity from many of the female characters in the midst of their relationships. Bradley's life was completed changed when his wife Kathryn (Selma Blair) suddenly left him for a lesbian relationship with Jenny (Stana Katic), shown in a passionate and nude face-to-face embrace; he then began to date (and married - but soon divorced) a single blonde real estate agent Diana Smith (Radha Mitchell) who was concurrently sleeping with married man David (Billy Burke), with whom she argued comfortably in the nude; in another segment of the film, beautiful waitress Chloe (Alexa Davalos) also fell madly in love with cash-strapped fellow barista and former drug addict Oscar (Toby Hemingway), making love one night on the 50 yard-line of a deserted football field stadium, and struggling to make ends meet by making a home-made porn flick with him.