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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
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Brief Scene Description |
Example |
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The Scarlet Empress (1934)
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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; 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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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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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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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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They Won't Forget (1937)
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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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One scene in Howard Hawks' famous screwball comedy had fluffy, boa-collared, negligee-wearing David Huxley's (Cary Grant) uncensored, emasculated exclamation while jumping up in front of Katharine Hepburn's Aunt Elizabeth (May Robson): "Because I just went gay all of a sudden" - the exclamation has been recognized by many commentators as the moment in film when the meaning of the word 'gay' changed |
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The film's exploitational taglines: "A throbbing drama of shackled youth!" and "Where Lust was called Just" hinted at its 'educational' plot contents designed to circumvent the Production Code restrictions with a story that warned against underage marriage; it told about the door-to-door moral crusade of schoolteacher Miss Carol (Diana Durrell) to rid the Ozark rural community of Thunderhead Mountain of hillbillies (especially Warner Richmond as Jake Bolby) courting and marrying underage girls; the film's most notorious and gratuitous sequence was a nude skinny-dip in a pond by nubile young 12 year-old actress Shirley Mills (not Miles) in her screen debut (as Jennie Colton) with young friend Freddie Nulty (Bob Bollinger), while she was leered at by Jake from a nearby cliff; this independent film was 'road-showed' by legendary roadshowman Kroger Babb although it was banned in many locations due to its infamous underage nudity |
  
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Olympia (1938, Ger.)
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Hitler's commissioned photographer Leni Riefenstahl to make this documentary film (in two parts) about the XI Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936 - it opened with a beautiful, silent nude sequence with dancers and athletes to artistically capture the movement of beautiful human bodies to perfection |
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Sex Madness (1938) (aka Human Wreckage, They Must Be Told, Trial Marriage, and About Trial Marriage)
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This film was a typical sex-ploitation melodrama of the period often shown in skid-row theatres - purportedly educational to warn about the perils of sex, but banned by the Legion of Decency; it told about innocent chorus girl Millicent Hamilton (Vivian McGill) who entered the big-city world of burlesque and acquired syphilis due to a free sexual lifestyle and passionate lust ("the crimson path of immorality"); it included taboo subjects strictly forbidden by the Production Code, such as lesbianism, wild parties, sex out of wedlock, and other similar evils |
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This Civil War-era Best Picture blockbuster included a scene in which Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) dramatically carried resistant Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) up a long flight of stairs - it has often been referred to as the 'conjugal rape' scene; it was followed the next morning by a view of Scarlett's fulfilled, smiling face; the most controversial, much-debated line in the film was Rhett Butler's declaration to Scarlett at the film's conclusion: "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" |
 
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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 |
Created in 1996-2008 © by Tim Dirks. All rights reserved.
