 Starring: VariousDirector: Various Year Of Release: 2006 Plot: This highly explicit collection of seven short films was created to explore the fine line where art and pornography intersect, as well as to highlight controversial issues about the representation of sexuality in art. They range from Marina Abramovics Balkan Erotic Epic, a humorous look at old sexual rituals from Eastern Europe, to Gaspar Noes (director of Irreversible) We F**k Alone, a disturbing stroboscopic look at the violence and intensity of sex. It also includes entries from Larry Clark (Bully), Matthew Barney (Cremaster), Marco Brambilla (Demolition Man), Richard Prince and Sam Taylor-Wood. |
Sex sells. Or so moviemakers would have you believe. From the dawn of cinema a glimpse of naked flesh has always aroused interest. Because of the battles that have been fought over sex and nudity on screen in the last century, it’s impossible to do anything but scratch the surface in an article like this (indeed several lengthy books have been written on the subject, as well as the six-part TV series Sex and The Silver Screen), but it’s still worth looking at the basics.
Destricted, a series of seven short films all dealing with sex in an extremely uninhibited (and rather arty) way, is one of the most explicit releases ever released with an 18 certificate in the UK, and shows how attitudes have changed drastically over time, to the point where real sex is now allowed in movies, as long as it can be artistically justified. However while we can now legally see Sam Taylor Woods Death Valley, which features a man masturbating in the desert, or Marco Brambillos Sync, a collage culled from hundreds of porn films, filmmakers have been pushing the boundaries since cinema first began.
Sex and nudity have been the heavy-breathing bedfellows of cinema since its inception. Soon after the mediums invention the first film featuring nudity was created by Frenchman Eugene Pirou in 1896. Entitled Le Coucher de la Mariee, the film was based on a music hall performance given by Miss Louise Willy and featured a young married couple preparing for bed. Even though the film was only three minutes long it was a huge success and was soon playing in a number of venues across Paris. Pirou used his new-found reputation to produce three more short films the following year. Most of these were based on the popular striptease acts that could be seen around Paris at the time but always with a novel twist; one, entitled La Puce, involved a young lady having to disrobe piece by piece in an attempt to find a flea in her clothes that was causing her consternation.
Pirou was not alone in his endeavours however and soon found he had a rival by the name of Georges Méliès (yes, the one who went on to become the father of special effects with the likes of La Voyage Dans La Lune), who went on to have a more prolific career, producing many films throughout 1897. These found a market outside of his native France and were sold with the suggestion that they would be most welcome at any smoking concert or stag party.
It wasnt until 1902 that America jumped on the sweaty bandwagon by producing a five-scene drama entitled The Downward Path, which followed the slide into prostitution of a share-croppers young daughter. Considering the countrys massive porn industry today, its surprising to learn America was a little behind when it came to nudity and sex in the cinema. Many of these early outings were short films and it wasnt until 1910 that the cinema-going public were treated to their first long-form film from Denmark, of all places. The White Slave Traffic was a two-reel film that was so popular that a rival company created a similar film with the same title which caused such interest that German cinema owners were apparently climbing on their seats for a better view at a preview showing. Such was the interest and popularity of these films that others were made in following years with titles such as The Last Victim of the White Slave Traffic and Dealer in Girls, both produced in 1911.
After their initial foray with The Downward Path, it was another 11 years before America trod the path of porn again. In 1913, a US studio produced the countrys first feature-length sex film. Starring Jane Gail and Matt Moore, directed by George Loan Tucker and produced by Universal, Traffic in Souls was made in secret as the studio believed the American public werent ready for feature films not because of the risqué subject! The film attempted to take a look at the sex trade in New York and was filmed in a documentary style (ostensibly to add legitimacy to the subject matter). As if to prove the studio wrong and give them their first taste of box office success, the film (which cost $5700 to make) went on to make the princely sum of $450,000.
With all this sex going on, its amazing that the first female to appear fully nude on the screen (in a porn flick) didnt get gentlemen hot under the collar until 1915, with the appearance of Audrey Munson in Inspiration, re-released in 1918 under the title The Perfect Model. Miss Munsons role as a naïve country girl who becomes an artists model, complete with shots of her posing naked, caused outrage from some quarters, while others considered her au naturel cavorting both artistic and educational. As if opening the floodgates, the same year saw three more leading ladies stripping for the camera, most notably Australian swimming star Annette Kellerman in Fox studios Daughter of the Gods. Annettes debut exposed some double standards when it comes to the female form when she appeared five years earlier in the first one-piece bathing suit she caused outrage among the more moral members of society, yet when she appeared naked on film hardly a word was said.
From 1916 onward, young ladies where disrobing all over the shop, though the majority were done in extremely artistic ways, such as slave girls in Roman arenas or young ladies of the night in clubs. 1930 saw the second-biggest landmark in naked cinema with the Polish production Europa claiming the first-ever full frontal nudity by a female (previous nudes coyly covered their lady bits). The censor demanded that the scene be cut, but in a move that would be considered inspired rebellion by a director today, Stefan Themerson forgot to remove the scene and the film went out uncut.
It seems filmmakers around the world were on a mission to push the boundaries of what they could get away with. Those crazy Czechs led the way, breaking the next barrier in 1933 by producing Ekstase, a film that broke one of the final major barriers and depicted the act of (simulated) sex itself on screen. Starring the then-unknown Hedy Lamarr, Ekstase tells the story of a young lady who flees from her impotent husband into the arms of a young engineer. Many wrongly credit Ekstase as being the first motion picture to contain a nude scene, when it is actually the first to depict sexual intercourse.
After Europa, it was only a matter of time before the moralists would get control and put a stop to all this frivolity. This happened in 1934 with the introduction of the infamous Hays Code in Hollywood, which effectively saw the end to cinema nudity in mainstream movies for a good 30 years (for more about the end of Hollywood hedonism in the 1930s, read the Movie A Day article on The Blue Angel and Born To Be Bad). It wasnt until 1964 that a young lady was again seen topless in a mainstream film, in Sidney Lumets The Pawnbroker, which was allowed due to the nudity being essential to the film. The passing of this film uncut essentially ended the Hays Code (it was already crumbling and this was one of the final nails) and led to the ratings system that is still with us today. The introduction of the Hays Code was a move which gave birth to the underground porn industry that eventually dragged itself into the mainstream and went on to become the one of the worlds biggest film industries.
In an amazing piece of forward thinking and not being bound by the restrictions of the Hays Code, the UKs BBFC passed its first nude scene in 1951 for the Swedish film One Summer of Happiness. It includes a scene of a young couple embracing in a pool of bulrushes, which was allowed because, as former BBFC Secretary John Trevelyan stated, it was generally more accepted that people in Scandinavia bathed in the nude. A classic quote, and monumental as the BBFC had banned all nudity since its creation in 1913. This open-minded approach did not however extend to the full-frontal female nude.
It wasnt until the 1966 film Hugs and Kisses, with a young lady disrobing in front of a full-length mirror, before the British film-watching public could enjoy the beauty of the nude female form on screen, even though it took the BBFC a whole year to pass it for viewing (the BBFC had allowed a few earlier naturist documentaries, but these werent fictional films). Hugs and Kisses is also notable for another first in cinema skin history as the first time pubic hair had been shown in any detail, though there had been glimpses in the controversial Blow Up, starring David Hemmings and Jane Birkin, which was released around the same time.
The Swinging 60s and their liberal attitude flung open the doors to the world of sex and nudity that still populates the local multiplex to this day. It comes as no surprise that the Swedes were first off the blocks once more by actually showing non-simulated sex in a theatrical release for the first time in Stefan Jarls 1967 Dom Kallar Oss Mods. Yes, they really did it its a documentary about rebellious teenagers and, as the characters are real people, there aint no sense faking it.
Nowadays everyone and their mother is whipping their kit off. While the world of straight-to-video is populated by starlets willing to get everything out for a chance at the big time, mainstream Hollywood tends to use nudity from background characters and bit-part players, with only a limited number of big name stars or leading ladies willing to shed clothes. Many actresses even have no-nudity clauses written into their contracts as they feel it detracts from their acting to show the talents God gave them.
Whenever a big name or leading lady decides to go au naturel you can bet there will be a huge amount of publicity. As evidence of this simply look at the furore that surrounded Sharon Stones now-legendary interrogation scene in Basic Instinct, an appearance that created such attention as to be almost unheard of before or since. Or the rumoured $300,000 extra payout to Halle Berry to go topless for a few seconds in Swordfish.
While female nudity has always been the main thrust behind nakedness in the cinema, men have been rather conspicuous by their nekkid absence from the celluloid world. Even though the first full frontal appearance by a man happened in the 1912 Italian production of Dantes Inferno, it would be another 53 years before Alan Bates and Oliver Reed would have their monumental nude wrestling match in Ken Russells 1969 movie Women In Love. While the amount of nudity in mainstream films by leading ladies seems to be on the decline, their male counterparts are actually on the rise when it comes to baring all, with the likes of Ed Norton dropping his trews in American History X, Ewan McGregor having a hard time keeping his clothes on in The Pillow Book (and half the other films hes appeared in) plus John Malkovich, Jude Law, Russell Crowe and numerous others unveiling their trouser tackle for adoring audiences.
Oliver Stone also turned the tables by having a fully clothed Cameron Diaz stroll through a locker room of semi-nekkid football players in Any Given Sunday. This move prompted many commentators to proclaim it as a landmark in male nudity due to the scene being treated with almost total disinterest instead of the usual furore that would accompany the appearance of man-meat down at the multiplex.
Much has been written about the real reasons behind the general lack of male nudity on screen and the consensus seems to be that the majority of the film world is still run by men and designed to be watched by men, and as such female nudity is seen as healthy for the bottom line, while male nudity supposedly has exactly the opposite effect. Its also true that in the US, while you can get away with an R-rating for female nudity, the sight of a penis is far more likely to get the deadly NC-17 rating, and so it rarely happens in Hollywood movies, and almost never in a sexual context, simply because of inequality at the ratings board.
With the attitude to both sex and nudity being relaxed in almost all areas of the movies, filmmakers have once again gone on to push the boundaries of what they can get away with. The BBFC passed the controversial Intimacy (2000) as the first mainstream film to feature the act of fellatio. Around the same time (and not without a lot of legal wrangling), the BBFC decided to relax its rules, allowing hardcore porn for the first time (sold through licensed sex shops) and also agreeing theyd only cut 18 rated movies if these were really extreme and/or couldnt be justified by the context.
This has led to a massive increase in the amount of unsimulated sex on screen, ranging from the erections and shagging of The Idiots to the smorgasbord of sexual activity (including an ejaculation) in Michael Winterbottoms 9 Songs. However Destricted, with its seven extremely explicit short films, ranging from Larry Clarks documentary Impaled, where he finds a young man who wants to be in porn and explores how the reality is different to the fantasy, to Matthew Barneys bizarre giant machine masturbator in Hoist, is probably the most explicit film ever released with an 18 certificate in the UK.
However after this initial rush of unsimulated sex movies, there have been fewer in the last couple of years, probably because the novelty has now worn off (Destricted was meant to be the first of a series of releases, but no more have been forthcoming). However for the first time thats not because it wouldnt be allowed in the UK, but simply because there are fewer movies out there doing it (and those that do cause a lot less fuss than they did).
As long as cinema is a reflection of human nature, sex will be a part of entertainment just as its a part of everyday life. When censorship comes out of the Dark Ages and realises the world is full of adults as well as children, maybe cinema will parallel reality in its liberal attitude to sex. We seem to be moving in that direction, but until then, well just have to keep watching Sharon Stones fleeting bits in Basic Instinct.
TIM ISAAC
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