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) - 1934-1937 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 |
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Cecil B. DeMille's telling of this oft-filmed tale featured midriff-bearing Claudette Colbert as the Queen of Egypt's Cleopatra who would seduce both Caesar (Warren Williams) and Antony (Henry Wilcoxon); this film included the infamous barge/bordello scene which began with entertainment: near-naked dancing girls accompanying an ox (with a dancer riding upon it and stroking its side) - and the remarkable sequence in which 'clams' that were hauled up in a net were revealed to be more dancing-girls wrapped in seaweed, followed by leopard-skinned animals/girls led by trainers with whips - and more decadence! - as a prelude to her seduction of Antony |  
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George White's Scandals (1934)
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This pre-Code film starred Fox's resident queen of musicals in the 30s and 40s - Alice Faye, opposite Rudy Vallee. It was Broadway impresario George White's first film, as co-director, writer, and actor. The blonde vamp portrayed vulnerability, sweetness and sultry sexuality in this backstage musical film (her debut film) as Kitty Donnelly/Mona Vale, a vivacious aspiring singer with a velvety contralto voice - most noted for her lurid rendition of "Oh, You Nasty Man"; it was followed by a similarly-titled sequel in 1935 | 
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Hips, Hips, Hooray! (1934)
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This was an RKO slapstick comedy musical by director Mark Sandrich, featuring the team of W & W (ex-vaudeville and RKO radio stars, cherub-faced Bert Wheeler and cigar-chomping Robert Woolsey, who also starred in Diplomaniacs (1933) and Cockeyed Cavaliers (1934)) - they were hired as flavored lipstick salesmen or con-men named Andy Williams and Dr. Bob Dudley; the risque film opened with a live radio studio broadcast that featured naked models in bathtubs (they were discreetly shielded by foreground products or their hair), proving the old dictum in Hollywood that sex sells |   
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Frank Capra's quintessential romantic screwball comedy regarding the battle-of-the-sexes was the first film to take all five top Oscars; after 1934, the Production Code required that sexuality had to be constrained so films sublimated touchy subjects into other plot elements (use of witty dialogue and repartee), particularly the scene of the bed blanket separating the two beds of an unmarried male and female (the "walls of Jericho" scene) -- Clark Gable (as Peter Warne) provided co-star Claudette Colbert (as Ellie Andrews) with privacy and respectability -- and the film's mischievously suggestive romantic climax - the toppling of the walls of Jericho; Gable's sexy revelation of a bare-chest under his shirt reportedly killed the T-shirt industry for awhile; another of the film's notorious scenes was the 'hitchhiking' technique scene in which Colbert showed her legs off to instantly stop a passing car |   
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Men in White (1934)
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Sidney Kingsley's Pulitzer Prize-winning play was adapted into this Code-era story that was condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency as being "unfit for public exhibition"; this gritty slice of life film starred Clark Gable as internist Dr. George Ferguson who was dedicated to saving lives; one of the more controversial aspects of the film was Gable's illicit sexual liaison (after a discreet fade-out) with student nurse Barbara Dennin (Elizabeth Allan), ending up with her becoming pregnant -- this led to the film's mostly-implied scene of abortion (without the explicit use of the word 'abortion' in the film, but alluded to with veiled dialogue about her dangerous condition: George: "Ruptured appendix?" Dr. Hochberg (Jean Hersholt): "More serious than that." George: "Why didn't she come to us?"); the young female patient, after having experienced an illegal, butchered back-alley abortion (or self-induced abortion, or suicide attempt?) to avoid shame, was rushed into emergency surgery; typical of films at this time, Barbara died following the operation - interpreted as divine retribution for her sexual transgressions |
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Bette Davis played the role of a blonde, lower-class, slatternly and vulgar, Cockney-accented, illiterate tea-room waitress named Mildred Rogers, who used her sexuality to manipulate Philip Carey (Leslie Howard), a sensitive student of medicine; she was manipulative, repugnant, exploitative, two-timing, shrewish and cruel toward him when he expressed interest in going out, and self-centeredly and vindictively berated the crippled, 'hang-dog' Philip with nasty insults for becoming romantically-interested in her; however, the weak-willed Philip could not resist rescuing her and helping her to recover from two failed relationships (one of which resulted in a child) - things took a turn for the worse when Mildred moved in and turned abusive toward him, telling him at one point: "You cad! You dirty swine! I never cared for you, not once. I was always making a fool of you. You bored me stiff! I hated you! It made me sick when I had to let you kiss me. I only did it because you begged me. You hounded me! You drove me crazy! And after you kissed me, I always had to wipe my mouth! WIPED MY MOUTH!" | 
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The Painted Veil (1934)
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MGM's soap-opera drama was based upon W. Somerset Maugham's
1925 novel of the same name and set in colonial China; early in the film,
Greta Garbo (as Austrian spinster Katrin Koerber) and Cecilia Parker (as
younger sister Olga Koerber) shared a lesbian kiss - although it was disguised,
due to restrictive Hays Code rules just put into effect, as an intense
series of multiple kisses between sisters on Olga's wedding day; a second
film adaptation was The Seventh Sin (1957) with Eleanor Parker,
and a more modern third version was made in 2006 with Naomi Watts and
Edward Norton |
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The Scarlet Empress (1934) |
This was one of Marlene Dietrich's most frank and suggestive films with director Josef von Sternberg (the sixth of their seven collaborations), with the actress portraying Russia's oversexed Sophia Fredericka (renamed Catherine the Great); the film was filled with erotic images and motifs, including a depiction of grotesque tortures (a rotating wheel with a nude woman tied to it, multiple axe-executions and beheadings, nude females being burned at a stake, etc.) culminating in a dissolve from a human bell-clapper into the hoop skirt of the young eight year-old empress-to-be on a swing; it wasn't censored due to the fact that it was released just before the Hays Code went into effect; this stylish, unorthodox and mature biopic showed the fur-hatted queen as a sexually-depraved, dominatrix ruler with a whip, especially in the scene of the appraisal of her troops, and her swaggering, flirtatious assertion to Lieut. Dmitri (Gerald Fielding) - one of her attractive, virile soldiers: "I’m certain you’re very efficient" |
  
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| In this second pre-code, uncensored Tarzan film - a sequel to Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), Jane has adapted to life in the jungle with Tarzan - as an uninhibited and sexually-free partner who has revealed much of her primitive nature; with the rise of the rigid censorship of the Hays Production Code after this film was made, Jane's scanty clothing and nudity, and rampant sexuality with Tarzan, would disappear in future installments; in one of the film's earlier scenes, Jane was tempted to return to civilization with a number of "lovely," "gorgeous" fashionable dresses, hats, shoes, sheer stockings - she was seen nude in silhouette while dressing in the well-lit tent; through most of the film, she wore only a skimpy, sexy halter top and loin cloth that left her midriff, hips and thighs exposed; one morning in the wild, Tarzan awakened with Jane sleeping next to him in the nude - and coyly told him: "Oh, Tarzan, you're a bad boy"; when they went for a swim, Tarzan held onto her dress as he threw her in, and the dress was ripped off her body - she hit the water naked. A nude Jane (body double Josephine McKay) took a skinny-dip swim, performing underwater somersaults with Tarzan in a scene with beautifully photographed underwater images - reportedly, there were various versions of the nude scene (nude, topless with a body suit, and with full body-suit); later during an attack of a band of lions, Jane's skimpy jungle outfit proved to be very revealing as she knelt down |
   
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China Seas (1935) |
Platinum-blonde sex goddess Jean Harlow was known for icing her breast's nipples before scenes, and for flaunting her anatomy; in this film, she took the role of a tough-talking, hot-tempered night-club entertainer (she would have been a prostitute in the pre-Code days) named Dolly "China Doll" Portland - the bawdy mistress of roguish ship Captain Alan Gaskell (Clark Gable); she appeared bra-less in a slinky silk evening dress, which became completely see-through when ocean-spray-soaked by the storm at sea |
 
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Legong: Dance of the Virgins (1935) |
This mid-30s ethnographic docudrama by French director Henry de la Falaise featured topless native nudity (in the guise of an artful documentary) from an all-native cast; it was filmed in two-strip Technicolor (one of the last), and was often considered the last silent film released in the US by a major American studio (Paramount Pictures); it was advertised with the tagline: "TRUE…ACTUALLY FILMED IN BALI", and was accompanied by a poster displaying a bare-breasted Balinese girl; the film's plot was a 'Romeo and Juliet' love story tale with an all-native cast - it was banned in many countries, and the non-prurient nudity was excised from the U.S. release, reducing it to about a 30-minute film; the film was eventually restored by combining three versions -- US, British, and Canadian The film was typical of a number of exotic Bali pictures released as exploitation films in the early-to-mid-30s following F. W. Murnau's South Seas docudrama Tabu (1931), such as Balinese Love (1931), Goona Goona (1932) (aka Kriss), Isle of Paradise (1932), Virgins of Bali (Land of Love and Romance) (1932), and Wajan (1933); the narrator of Virgins of Bali emphasized the film's exploitative content: "Bali is a land of beautiful women. They outnumber the men five to three. They have fine features and well-rounded, slender bodies. They are firmly and harmoniously developed..." |
 Virgins of Bali (1932) 
Legong: Dance of the Virgins (1935) |
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Dracula's Daughter (1936) |
In this vintage Universal horror classic by director Lambert Hillyer, Gloria Holden played the part of the dark and exotic Dracula's Daughter (aka Countess Marya Zaleska); it was remarkable in this Code-era film to have a major character with a kinky (or lesbian) affinity and tormented addiction for the blood of female victims; in one risque scene, she asked a starving young streetwalker named Lili (Nan Grey) to disrobe in order to pose for a painting portrait and then lustfully approached the hypnotized subject's jugular - the suggestive lesbian scene ended with a jolting pan upwards to a grimacing mask, a blood-curdling scream from the frightened and doomed victim, and a quick cut to black |
  
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Klondike Annie (1936) |
Hip-sashaying sex symbol Mae West's earlier hits She Done Him Wrong (1933) and I'm No Angel (1933) established her reputation for bawdy and wisecracking talk; but now that the Production Code was in full effect, this film was vigorously censored (or laundered) for its implications of inter-racial sex, representations of torture and unpunished murder, and the immoral character of West as the Frisco Doll - a prostitute/nightclub performer kept by a Chinese lover |
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| This was a definitive screwball comedy of the 1930s - with the Queen of Screwball comediennes Carole Lombard in a starring role; she made daffy sillyness something that was sexy as a flighty, scatter-brained socialite/heiress named Irene Bullock, especially in a scene in which the 'forgotten man' butler Godfrey (William Powell) revived her during a faked fainting spell - he hauled the lovesick girl up on his shoulder, carried the limp rag-doll upstairs into her bedroom, deposited her on a stool in the shower and turned on the cold shower - leaving her soaking wet to the skin in her evening gown; she skipped toward him with hands outstretched, embracing him and exclaiming: "Oh Godfrey, now I know you love me..." |
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Love Life of a Gorilla (1937) (aka Forbidden Adventure, Angkor, and Gorilla Woman)
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This little-seen 'educational' documentary - an independently-produced jungle exploitation film typical of the 30s, was promoted with the hinting tagline: "Do Native Women Live With Apes?"; it was considered scandalous by the Hays Office; its name was changed to Forbidden Adventure; the film included sensational content (interspersed with horrible stock footage) about a lost Cambodian city - with topless native women (censored versions superimposed fake ferns over bare breasts) and lusty gorillas (men in monkey suits) | 
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They Won't Forget (1937) |
In a small breakout role, teenaged Lana Turner was featured with a sexy, tight-sweatered walk - it made her "the Sweater Girl" and launched her career; in the film, she portrayed teenaged Mary Clay - who was murdered in a school-house in the opening sequence during a Southern town's Memorial Day parade |
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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