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And God Created Woman Last Tango in Paris Deep Throat Way Down SEX AND THE CINEMA fandor.com The movies have always had a complicated relationship with sex, whether through honest portraits of human intimacy or salacious spectacle appealing to base desire. Both have played a defining role in the history of cinema as the movies pushed boundaries and the self-appointed moral watchdogs pushed back. It’s still the most contentious of controversies, and the roots go back to the first movies. The Kiss The Cheat AKA THE WIDOW JONES, CECIL B. DEMILLE, 1915, USA EDISON STUDIOS, A Japanese businessman 1896, USA brands an American heiress The least arousing like cattle (a bold metaphor smooch in cinema for sexual violation). DeMille history and one brands an entire race of the first movies as sexual predators and ever screened rides the sadomasochistic for American spectacle to box Traffic in Souls audiences. They were office success. GEORGE LOANE TUCKER, 1913, USA scandalized. Sex and Immigrant women forced into brothels! cinema have been Salacious thrills in the guise of social drama inextricably linked sparks moral outrage and audiences ever since. flock to it. The American sexploitation industry is born. 1893 Thomas 1895 The Lumière 1907 Chicago forms the 1921 The Fatty Arbuckle Edison conducts the Brothers screen their first municipal board of fabricated “scandal” makes world’s first public films in Paris, the first censors in the nation. national headlines and demonstration of ever projected on a movie Their first target: dirty Hollywood scrambles to moving pictures on his screen for the public. dancing in the movies. clean up its reputation, or Kinetoscope viewer. at least appear to do so. Way Down East Michael D.W. GRIFFITH, 1920, USA CARL TH. DREYER, 1924, GERMANY America’s moralist faced censorship Future cinema-master Dreyer takes on when Pennsylvania ordered massive the love that dare not speak its name. cuts to his melodrama of innocence New York Times film critic Mourdant deceived, including all suggestions of Hall didn’t get it: “The story is also pregnancy and childbirth. Sex education handicapped by queer titles.” was apparently still in the 19th century. Bed & Sofa ABRAM ROOM, 1927, SOVIET UNION Comradeship becomes a threesome in this Soviet Design for Living. Economics, morality and sexism are addressed with seriousness and maturity. It was, naturally, banned in the US and Western Europe. Queen Kelly ERICH VON STROHEIM, 1929, USA Von Stroheim stormed past all Red Dust boundaries with this lavish exercise in decadence and debauchery. When VICTOR FLEMING, 1932, USA he shot scenes in a real-life brothel, Great white hunter Clark producer Joseph Kennedy shut down Gable and happy hooker both the film and von Stroheim’s Jean Harlow share a bed, directing career. Gable seduces a married woman, Harlow splashes naked in a rain barrel and both get a happy ending. The Catholic Legion of Decency was not amused. 1927 The Jazz Singer— 1930 The original 1934 The Production Code 1943 Betty Grable a silent movie with Production Code (the Administration gets teeth becomes the favored sound sequences— so-called Hays Code) and bites down hard on pin-up of American GIs. premieres. Talking is inaugurated and Hollywood. The censors pictures are born. flagrantly ignored by now rule. every studio. Ecstasy GUSTAV MACHATÝ, 1933, CZECHOSLOVAKIA Hedy Lamarr skinny-dips and orgasms on camera in a simulated sex scene, the first ever on camera. The original sexy European import was denounced by the Pope and banned in the US in 1935. The Outlaw HOWARD HUGHES, 1943, USA Ostensibly the story of Billy the Kid, this Tarzan and Howard Hughes production became all about Jane Russell and her bust. After two years his Mate of fighting censors, it was released without CEDRIC GIBBONS, 1934, USA Production Code approval. Maureen O’Sullivan skinny dips in The notoriety was better artfully murky waters (censored in than advertising. 1935, restored decades later) but the real affront to the Catholic Legion was the playfully innocent intimacy of Double Indemnity a happily unmarried BILLY WILDER, 1944, USA couple. Billy Wilder films the unfilmable. James Cain’s novel had been off-limits to Hollywood since 1935. Wilder snuck around the Production Code and turned Barbara Stanwyck into a cold- Notorious bloodedly seductive ALFRED HITCHCOCK, 1946, USA femme fatale. The Production Code decreed no kisses longerDeep than three seconds. Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman share dozensThroat of passionate smooches in two Gerard Damiano, 1973, US minutes, leaving no question as to the intimacy of this affair. The first XXX cross-over brought pornography out of the raincoat theaters and into the suburbs for a brief “Porn Chic” vogue 1946 A photo of Rita 1953 Playboy is launched. 1954 The Supreme 1960 Stanley Kubrick for dirty movies. It soon Hayworth (as Gilda) is 1953 The Moon Is Blue Court favors the First is forced to cut the returned to the margins. taped to the A-bomb is released without the Amendment over New “snails and oysters” detonated over Bikini Production Code seal for its York censors in Excelsior scene from Spartacus, Atoll, creating the first harmless discussion of sex. Pictures vs. New York not restored until 1991. sex bomb. Board of Regents. A Streetcar Named Desire ELIA KAZAN, 1951, USA Tennessee Williams’ play was toned down for Hollywood and Kazan’s original cut was censored further (since restored). La Ronde What remained was still MAX OPHULS, 1950, FRANCE the most mature portrait Everybody is somebody’s fool of adult relationships in in this witty and wistful merry- American movies in its day. go-round of love and desire and sex. Banned in New York for “immorality” and appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court. …And God Created Woman ROGER VADIM, 1956, FRANCE More to the point, God created Brigitte Bardot, and Roger Vadim turned her into the original French sex kitten. Baby Doll ELIA KAZAN, 1956, USA Teen bride Carroll Baker sleeps in a crib and sucks her thumb while a randy Karl Malden waits for her to turn 20. It was condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency, and it popularized the baby doll nightgown. I Am Curious (Yellow) VILGOT SJÖMAN, 1967, SWEDEN Sex and the Swedish New Wave: This avant-garde mix of documentary, social commentary, Dr. No graphic nudity and simulated TERENCE YOUNG, 1962, UK sex was confiscated by customs Sean Connery plays the original stud officials and banned in superspy who brazenly sleeps with a Massachusetts. The battle went beautiful enemy agent before killing to the Supreme Court. her. Kiss kiss bang bang. Blow-Up MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI, 1966, UK Mainstream American audiences get their first eye-blink glimpse of pubic hair in Antonioni’s Swinging London mind game. 1964 The Pawnbroker 1968 The MPAA institutes 1976 The first consumer VHS 1990 The NC-17 rating is the first American the current ratings system, player is introduced. is born to separate movie featuring nudity initially composed of G, M 1980 Cinemax (aka “Skinemax”) the art from the XXX. to receive a seal of (Mature—later GP, then PG), is launched, providing cable Henry & June is the approval. R and X. subscribers with hours of soft- first film to carry the core titillation at home. rating. Midnight Deep Throat GERARD DAMIANO, Cowboy 1972, USA JOHN SCHLESINGER, 1969, The first XXX crossover USA brought pornography out Jon Voight is a male of the raincoat theaters prostitute to New York City and into the suburbs for women and men in the first a brief “porn chic” vogue for and only X-rated film to win dirty movies. It the Best Picture Oscar. Two soon returned years later it was re-rated R to the margins. without any cuts. Last Tango in Paris BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI, 1972, FRANCE/ITALY Emmanuelle Marlon Brando’s middle-aged JUST JAECKIN, 1974, FRANCE nudity—and the notorious The commercial peak “butter” penetration of of soft-core and the Maria Schneider—set a new trigger for a thousand precedent for major movie knockoffs. stars and explicit content that has been rarely equaled. Caligula In the Realm TINTO BRASS, 1979, ITALY/USA of the Senses NAGISA OSHIMA, 1976, JAPAN This true story of twisted sexual An explicit Roman epic obsession challenged censorship with respected actors and boundaries in Japan (where soft-core pornographic spectacle movies and erotic comics thrived), and produced by Penthouse made men around the world squirm. magazine. It was an epic flop and ended porn mainstreaming. Blue Velvet Betty Blue DAVID LYNCH, 1986, USA JEAN-JACQUES BEINEIX, 1986, FRANCE The boy next door peeks L’amour fou: philosophical under the façade of narration, gorgeous young Norman Rockwell’s small stars, copious nudity and town America and finds lots of sex made this a big a dirty (and perversely arthouse hit in the US. How seductive) world of sex, very French! sadomasochism and voyeurism. Pretty Woman Kids LARRY CLARK, 1995, USA GARRY MARSHALL, 1990, USA The flip side of the teen sex comedy: a disturbing (and disturbingly explicit) portrait of reckless promiscuity Sex gets Disney-fied: Julia in the AIDS era. The film was released unrated. Roberts makes prostitution look downright inviting in a romantic comedy about a hooker with a heart of gold who gets her own Cinderella story. Romance CATHERINE BREILLAT, 1999, FRANCE Crash Breillat casts an Italian porn star in DAVID CRONENBERG, 1996, CANADA/UK an arthouse drama and pushes sexual Auto erotica is redefined in Cronenberg’s adaptation frankness to hard-core levels, shocking of J.G. Ballard’s novel of sex, technology and the even French sensibilities. ultimate fetishizing of car culture. Brokeback Shortbus JOHN CAMERON MITCHELL, Mountain 2006, USA ANG LEE, 2005, USA The creator of Hedwig Heath Ledger and Jake and the Angry Gyllenhaal are cowboys Inch explores human in love in the first fragility, vulnerability explicitly gay love story and physical contact from a Hollywood studio through unsimulated to find both critical and sexual encounters and popular success.
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