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Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–39005–9 © Barry Forshaw 2015 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978– 1– 137– 39004– 2 hardback ISBN 978– 1– 137– 39005–9 paperback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Forshaw, Barry. Sex and film : the erotic in British, American and world cinema / Barry Forshaw, independent writer and journalist, UK. pages cm Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978–1–137–39005–9 (paperback) 1. Sex in motion pictures. 2. Erotic films––History and criticism. 3. Motion pictures––Great Britain––History and criticism. 4. Motion pictures––United States––History and criticism. I. Title. PN1995.9.S45F68 2015 791.43’6538––dc23 2014047898 Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India. Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–39005–9 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–39005–9 Contents Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 1. The 1930s: From Mae West to the Legion of Decency 15 2. Getting it Past the Puritans: The 1940s 26 3. The Kinsey Era: The 1950s 35 4. Pushing the Boundaries: Preminger the Rebel 42 5. This Property is Condemned: Tennessee Williams 52 6. Arthouse Cinema in Italy: The New Explicitness 62 7. Sex à la Français 85 8. World Cinema Strategies: Britain and America from the 1960s 91 9. World Cinema Strategies: Europe 103 10. Stretching the Parameters: Bergman and Oshima 108 11. The 1970s: Exploitation Joins the Mainstream 124 12. Vixens and Valleys: Russ Meyer’s Cinema 138 13. British Smut 145 14. The Porn Revolution 154 15. Sex Moves Centre Stage: The 1980s and 1990s 168 16. Anything Goes: The Twenty- first Century 175 17. The End of Sex? The New Puritanism 181 18. Painful Odysseys 189 Appendices Appendix 1: Selected Films 196 Appendix 2: Continental Icons of the Seductive 206 Selected Bibliography 216 Filmography 217 Index 227 v Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–39005–9 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–39005–9 Introduction A fairly sober warning should be given to any potential readers of this book. If notions of political correctness are important to you, it might perhaps be best to steer clear of what follows. Sexuality and the treat- ment of sex on film has long been a minefield for a variety of reasons, but it has perhaps become even more so now that it is essential for any writer to parade his or her ideological credentials or attitudes; even the sentence you have just read had to be non- gender specific. One might say that the Damoclean sword of ‘avoidance of offence’ in the sexual arena fell in the 1980s with the surprising and unlikely marriage between the morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse and anti- pornography feminists. While the former was famous for her ‘Clean- up TV’ campaign and battles with such dramatists as Dennis Potter, the latter concurred with her view that the female body had become objectified in popular and even serious culture. Personally, I argued in vain with feminists of my acquaintance who supported her censorship initiatives, believing that they (my friends and colleagues) had far more in common with someone like myself, who had no objection to either female or male nudity. Their fragile alliance was with a woman who, for instance, objected to such feminist shibboleths as abortion and felt that her own sex was best served by a devotion to family, church and conservative values – the German mantra ‘Kinder, Küche und Kirche’, in fact. But while Mrs Whitehouse herself has not had a notable successor (although, at the time of writing, the government is once more attempt- ing to push through a variety of censorship legislation), attitudes to female nudity and graphic expressions of sexuality remain highly con- tentious. This book would have to be twice as long if I made an apology for each unblushing treatment of these themes – or, for that matter, if I repeatedly laid out my own position. I would simply suggest that 1 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–39005–9 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–39005–9 2 Sex and Film those offended by any discussion of sexuality that does not immediately freight in a ‘politically correct’ opinion (one that laments the calculated exposure of Brigitte Bardot’s naked body in most of her films, for example) should accept that I am unlikely to be observing these strictures. Of course, it might be argued that a reader possessed of such squeamish sensibilities would be unlikely to pick up a book entitled Sex and Film in any case. Any book that purports to be a study of sex in the cinema – from the earliest days of the medium up to the present and beyond, and taking in the films of every nation – has to set out its stall in one particular: what is the attitude of the author to sexual activity on the screen? Utterly objective? Dispassionate? Mildly stimulated? And how objec- tive must a commentator be on a subject that gets so many people hot under the collar, not to mention other regions of the body? One might accept that a critical examination of, say, the orchestral tone poems of Richard Strauss or the Dutch interiors of Pieter de Hooch might be written in an utterly detached fashion, with the reader completely unconcerned about the individual tastes of the critic, but a discussion of sex will have even the most casual reader examining – consciously or otherwise – the attitude taken by whoever is writing or talking about the subject. What is their own take on the treatment of sex on film? Surely the writer’s views must influence the objectivity of any statements? One would not want a commentator with a rigorously celibate frame of mind to make value judgements about the sensual content of films. Adherents of the Catholic Church are prepared for (supposedly) celibate priests to make pronouncements on the sex lives of worshippers, but it is hardly a view shared universally. The best one might hope for is a commentator who tries their damnedest to be objective, but accepts that their personal mindset will influence their views; the intelligent reader can accordingly decide whether or not they wish to agree. Speaking personally, I have absolutely no problem with a film, or a sequence in a film, that is designed to effect sexual arousal – but the definition of ‘film’ can extend from mainstream and arthouse filmmak- ing to utilitarian pornography. And as this book is largely concerned with the former – that is to say, linear narrative cinema – it should be pointed out that nearly all the work discussed here, whatever the erotic elements, is generally committed to saying something pertinent about the film’s characters, or about society, rather than merely treating us to some photogenic concupiscence. In other instances, the films men- tioned in these pages utilise the medium of cinema in some creative Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–39005–9 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–39005–9 Introduction 3 or innovative fashion, or perform the useful function of testing the parameters of taboos in representational art. However, as Orson Welles once observed, two things can never be filmed in an interesting way: prayer and sexual intercourse. Presumably this is because both are ultimately somewhat boring to watch for the non- participant; there is no doubt that that is often the case with the lovemaking scenes in many films. After a prolonged scene of sweaty, graphic carnal activity – or worse, a languorous series of lap dissolves, seemingly shot through gauze, showing naked limbs being rearranged in uninteresting patterns – viewers may be inclined to mutter, ‘OK. They’ve made love. Now, for God’s sake, let’s get on with the plot!’ I once attended a reading at an erotic bookshop for women (men were permitted only if accompanied by a woman); as I sat there, sur- rounded by sometimes mystifyingly complex sex toys, I was aware that the frequent and lengthy descriptions of intercourse, fellatio, cunnilingus and other diversions quickly became wearisome. Until, that is, one woman writer read out her story, which involved paid- for sex between a middle- aged woman and a young male prostitute. The sex scenes were humdrum, but the subsequent section of the story – in which the woman attempted to talk to her young hustler, trying to build some kind of relationship with him when he wanted only to be paid and to leave – was infinitely more interesting.

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