Sexual
or Erotic Films focus on themes with either suggestive, erotic or
sensual scenes or subjects, sometimes with depictions of human nudity
and lovemaking, but not always of an extremely explicit, gratuitous or
pornographic nature. These kinds of films often appeal to the emotions
of the viewer, with their emphasis on pleasure, physical desire, and
human companionship. Films of romance with heart-throb sexy lead
characters may have sexual elements, but these are often secondary to
the main plot goal - the search and attainment of love.
In the days before the film industry's stringent Production Code was established in 1930 (known as the Hays Code after Will Hays, the head of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America - MPPDA) and strictly enforced after 1934 to regulate "morally offensive" content, many silent and 'Pre-Code' taboo-breaking films contained adult-oriented material. In addition to nudity, sexuality and violence, they included candid depictions of drug use, prostitution, lawlessness, and religious blasphemy.
See also this site's multi-part, illustrated History of Sex in Cinema, 50 Sexiest Films of All-Time, and Sexy Hollywood Bombshells
Since the abandonment of the Hays Code in the late 60s, and the fairly recent establishment of various rating systems, sexual or erotic films with even small amounts of nudity have become more abundant. They often include frank adult content, violence and explicit language, or just suggestions of eroticism or sensuality. Teen sex comedies, erotic dramas or thrillers, sexploitation films, and other films dealing with sexual content are included in this wide-ranging category.
The Earliest Films:
Shortly after the Lumieres conducted the first public screening of a film (in December 1895), pioneering French film-maker Georges Melies directed the very short B/W 'adult' film Après Le Bal (1897, Fr.) (After the Ball, Bath) with one of the earliest nude scenes in film history. Reportedly around the same time, "blue movie" pornographer Eugene Pirou pioneered the risque film (called "smoking concert" or stag party films) when he produced the slightly erotic Le Coucher de la Marie (1896, Fr.) (aka Bedtime for the Bride) in which Louise Willy performed the first strip tease onscreen during a bathing scene -- the short pornographic film (of which only a few minutes exist) was directed by Léar (real name Albert Kirchner).
Fatima's Coochie-Coochie Dance - 1896Another similar film was Fatima’s Coochie-Coochie Dance (1896) a short nickelodeon kinetoscope/film of a gyrating belly dancer named Fatima (well-known for her dancing shows at the Columbia World's Exhibition in 1893). It became the first film in which a scene was censored - for her gyrating and moving pelvis - it was covered up by what appeared to be a white picket fence (a grid-like pattern of white lines).
The Kiss - 1896The very first kiss on film was between a Victorian couple seen in the Edison kinetoscope The May Irwin Kiss (1896) (aka The Kiss, or The Irwin-Rice Kiss in a filmed scene from the stage play The Widow Jones). This titillating short 20-second film, with a close-up of a kiss, was denounced as shocking and pornographic to early moviegoers and caused the Roman Catholic Church to call for censorship.
And Eadweard Muybridge's primitive motion studies (from 1884-1887) included test footage with cinematic glimpses of naked men and women. Lois Weber's and Paramount's 4-reel silent film Hypocrites (1914) featured full female nudity in the guise of an unclad lady (Margaret Edwards) - 'the Naked Truth' - who occasionally appeared as a transitional plot element between scenes.
Audrey Munson (a real-life model) first appeared artistically nude in George Foster Platt's controversial Inspiration (1915) from the Mutual Film Corporation, as a sculptor's model. It was the first known film in which a leading actress stripped down to be naked, making her the first nude film star. Munson also appeared nude in another silent film, Rea Burger's 7-reel Purity (1916), in a dual role as a spirit figure and as an artist's nude model named Purity/Virtue.
Theda Bara: The Vamp and First Sex Symbol
A Fool There Was - 1915Sex was portrayed in the earliest films as something exotic and foreign. The original vamp and first movie sex goddess, the full-bosomed Theda Bara, starred in a number of early silents for the Fox Film Corporation - her first lurid, slinky vamp appearance (and first lead role) was in Fox's melodramatic A Fool There Was (1915), in which she portrayed a worldly, predatory woman who stole a married man away from his wife and child. Her most famous line in this film was: "Kiss me, my Fool!" Theda Bara as CleopatraShe became known as "the wickedest woman in the world." Although she played other non-vampish roles, her vamp appearances were destined to be the most lucrative.
Other suggestive, femme fatale vamp roles were in Herbert Brenon's Sin (1915), The Devil's Daughter (1915) - her third vamp film, and in The Tiger Woman (1917). She was also most notably seen nearly nude with the contours of her breasts held by two curving gold asps in her first film made in Hollywood - the very successful Cleopatra (1917). Bara's 'come-back' picture, The Unchastened Woman (1925), was a remake of an earlier 1918 film. [Most of Bara's films, however, are currently unavailable because few of the film prints have survived.]
Other Early Silent Films and Their Sexy Film Stars:
Traffic in Souls - 1913For the most part, the silent years were not known for explicit sexual content. However, there were some exceptions:
the first American feature-length sex film was Traffic in Souls (1913) (aka While New York Sleeps) - it was a "photo-drama" expose of white slavery at the turn of the century in NYC, although the film exploitatively promised steamy sex in its advertisements; this was one of the first films to understand that 'sex sells' although its producers worried that a 'feature-length' film wouldn't be successful; another vice film with the same historical theme of revealing the world of prostitution was The Inside of the White Slave Traffic (1913); Damaged Goods (1914) and The Sex Lure (1916) were similar melodramatic, "exploitation" films advertised as containing the "Shocking Truth"
A Free Ride (1915) (aka A Grass Sandwich) was reportedly the earliest-known US silent stag ('men only') or pornographic film - with explicit sex scenes of a wealthy man picking up two females with his model-T and then having sex with his hitchhikers by the side of the road. Its comic titles foretold its plot: Directed by A. Wise Guy, Photographed by Will B. Hard, and Titles by Will She. Because these kinds of films (with increasingly explicit amounts of nudity and sexuality) were completely illegal, they were shown in all-male locations, clubs, etc., not in mainstream theaters
A Free Ride - 1915Australian-born swimming and diving champ Annette Kellermann (the "Esther Williams of the silent era") caused a stir when she was seen naked with her flowing hair under a waterfall in director Herbert Brenon's and Fox's fairy-tale Daughter of the Gods (1916) - she was the first major female star to appear nude on screen (see also the next item)
in the same week, another female lead appeared nude for the first time in a feature film on screen - 16 year-old blonde starlet June Caprice (a Mary Pickford look-alike), in Fox's melodramatic Cinderella tale The Ragged Princess (1916), who appeared in a prolonged, nude swimming sequence
director D. W. Griffith threatened virginal and innocent Lillian Gish's defilement in the controversial The Birth of a Nation (1915), and his extravagant set of Babylon in Intolerance (1916) included half-naked, lightly-draped women in love temples
in Jack Conway's The Penitentes (1916), fanatical Roman Catholics staged actual crucifixions on Good Friday, with one crucifix holding a nude girl
director Richard Oswald's film Anders als die Andern (1919, Germ.) (aka Different From the Others) was reportedly the first representation of male homosexuality ("the third sex") in a feature-length film, and the first screen depiction of a gay bar (with gay males and butch females); the two ill-fated lovers were prominent pianist Paul Korner (Conrad Veidt) and his young music student, Kurt (Fritz Schulz); the film had a tragic ending (suicide for Korner) due to the effects of blackmail (threats of exposure), jail time for violating anti-homosexuality statutes, and the social stigma of being outed
Cecil B. DeMille's Male and Female (1919) included Gloria Swanson's notorious, half-clad disrobing scene in preparation for a lavish bath in a sunken tub
Yvonne Gardelle appeared naked as temptress demon-wife Lilith to Adam in a pantomimed Garden of Eden prologue sequence in The Tree of Knowledge (1920), directed by Cecil B. DeMille's brother William; press kit materials tauted: "An old legend says that the tempter in Eden was not a serpent, but a beautiful women, Lillith, the demon wife of Adam before Eve was created"
nude bathing/swimming scenes were evident in The Isle of Love (1918) (recut and re-released in 1922) and The Branding Iron (1920)
Ben-Hur - 1925 Rudolph Valentino wowed audiences as a passionate Latin lover with his portrayal of a dashing Arabian sheik in romantic fantasies including The Sheik (1921), Blood and Sand (1922), and Son of the Sheik (1926)
in Fred Niblo's Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925), in two-color Technicolor, a remarkable segment showed rows of bare-breasted flower girls dancing in a pageant/procession as they tossed flowers to the crowd lining the street
a decadent orgy scene and semi-nude musicians in Erich von Stroheim's silent operetta The Merry Widow (1925), and the sexually-excessive depiction of a wickedly-decadent Queen Regina in von Stroheim's tawdry, grotesque and fragmentary film Queen Kelly (1929)
Hula - 1927screen lover John Barrymore starred in Don Juan (1926) with Mary Astor and Estelle Taylor, a film with a record number of kisses (reportedly 127)
romantic lead John Gilbert (the sexy successor to Rudolph Valentino) played opposite exotic vamp Greta Garbo in her star-making film Flesh and the Devil (1926)
Lili Damita, Hope Hampton, and Sue Carol all briefly appeared in the nude in respectively - Michael Curtiz' Red Heels (1925, Austrian) (aka Das Spielzeug von Paris), the melodramatic Lover's Island (1925), and the lost film In Line of Duty (1931)
flapper icon Clara Bow, dubbed the "It" girl during the 20s and one of the earliest sex symbols, appeared nude as Hula Calhoun in an opening bathing scene, and performed a sexy hula dance, in the romantic comedy Hula (1927)
American actress Louise Brooks was featured as an amoral and insatiable cabaret star/prostitute Lulu in G. W. Pabst's classic German silent film melodrama Pandora's Box (1929, Ger.) with blatant sexual themes, a memorable lesbian dance/tango scene with Countess Anna Geschwitz (Alice Roberts) during Lulu's wedding party, and her murder by the infamous 'Jack the Ripper' killer with a gleaming knifeblade stuck into her stomach during an erotic embrace
Tabu - 1931actress Kay Johnson starred as a wicked woman in Cecil B. De Mille's bizarre Madam Satan (1930) - a film that challenged the code with a racy party sequence aboard a zeppelin
German expressionistic director F. W. Murnau's last film (co-scripted with pioneering documentary film-maker Robert J. Flaherty) presented a lush tale of ill-fated native South Seas love (with flower-garlanded, bare-breasted native dancers) and the breaking of a sexual tabu (filmed entirely on location in Tahiti) - a very-late black/white silent film Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931) - and an Oscar-winning effort for Floyd Crosby's cinematography
The 'Naughty' Pre-Code Days:
Censorship bills were introduced in many states and localities - but the vast complexity of various local, state and national censorship laws added to the problem of enforcement, i.e. in some states an ankle couldn't be displayed, or pregnancy couldn't be mentioned. In 1922, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) was formed by the studios. Conservative former Postmaster General William H. Hays was appointed to head the organization, to begin efforts to clean up the motion picture industry before the public's anger at declining morality depicted in films hurt the movie business. One of his first acts in 'cleaning-up' Hollywood, due to pressure from Hollywood's top film executives, was to banish the acquitted actor-comedian Roscie "Fatty" Arbuckle from film, at least temporarily, in order to distract the public. [Arbuckle would continue to make films as a director under the pseudonym William Goodrich between 1925 and 1932.] Hays also approved the use of morality clauses in the standard actor's contract, to control the conduct of performers.
The Hays Office, with restrictions and guidelines on movie content to establish "correct standards of life," issued a self-regulating list of "Don'ts' and 'Be Carefuls' for film-makers in 1927. The following were targeted and specifically to be avoided:
suggestive nudity or perversion
lustful kissing
miscegenation
criminal murder
drugs
brutal violence, rape or attempted rape
cruelty to animals and children
racial slurs or anti-government diatribes
a man and woman in bed together
deliberate seduction of girls
profane swearing
capital punishment (hangings or electrocutions)
Most studios basically ignored the regulatory restrictions, because there was no enforcement that was effective, and they knew that film-going audiences wanted to see the kinds of things (sex and crime) that were being blacklisted. Many times, studios would circumvent problems with the new restrictions by wrapping up a film filled with sex and sinning with a quick climactic scene of moral repentance. Some of the illicit behaviors could be exhibited -- if later punished within the film. Other film-makers avoided censorship by changing the titles of plays forbidden to be adapted into films. One of the major difficulties with the repressive code was that it was open to varying interpretations. Hays assured state and local censorship boards that he would properly regulate the industry.
Two Female Challengers to Film Morality:
Hell's Angels - 1930A number of notable and successful films produced in the early 30s before the Code was strictly enforced -- so-called "bad girl" movies -- showed women using their sexuality to get ahead, such as in the taboo-breaking comedy Red Headed Woman (1932) starring Jean Harlow.
Jean Harlow
One of the earliest sex stars of the silver screen was smart-mouthed, 18-year old platinum blonde Jean Harlow, who shocked audiences as a sexy floozy with generous glimpses of flesh and her famous line of dialogue - "Would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable?" - in her first major role in Hell's Angels (1930). In Goldie (1931), she was noted as the first woman specifically referred to as a "tramp" in a talking picture. She also appeared as an adulteress in Red-Headed Woman (1932), and had a starring role as a stranded, wise-cracking floozy opposite Clark Gable and a bourgeois, middle-class Mary Astor in a tropical, steamy setting in Red Dust (1932) - Harlow was best seen bathing in a rain barrel. She has often been acknowledged as the first screen actress to place erotic emphasis upon her breasts in a time when flat-chested women were the rage.
Marlene Dietrich
The Blue Angel - 1930In a number of films made by obsessed, Svengali-styled mentor/director Josef von Sternberg, Marlene Dietrich played seductive, cool females in sexually perverse melodramas. She was Lola Lola, a cheap, smoky-voiced, sensual cabaret singer with stockinged-legs and top hat atop a beer barrel in the Blue Angel nightclub in her greatest film, The Blue Angel (1930), Germany's first sound film. In the atmospheric, seedy film, she manipulatively lured a repressed and obsessed Professor Emmanuel Rath (Emil Jannings) towards his doom by her teasing exoticism while singing Falling In Love Again.
Morocco - 1930And she scandalously wore a men's tuxedo in Morocco (1930) and accepted both a rose and a mouth-to-mouth kiss from a young lady in the cabaret audience - one of the earliest (if not the first) female-to-female kisses. In the highly-stylized Blonde Venus (1932), she performed a cabaret striptease from her full-bodied gorilla suit and then donned a bushy Afro blonde wig to sing "Hot Voodoo" in a throaty, hoarse voice to the beat of an African drum ("...That African tempo has made me a slave, hot voodoo - dance of sin, hot voodoo, worse than gin, I'd follow a cave man right into his cave"). Adultery and sadomachism were evident in the unusually frank and suggestive The Scarlet Empress (1934), in which Dietrich played Catherine the Great.
In the days before the film industry's stringent Production Code was established in 1930 (known as the Hays Code after Will Hays, the head of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America - MPPDA) and strictly enforced after 1934 to regulate "morally offensive" content, many silent and 'Pre-Code' taboo-breaking films contained adult-oriented material. In addition to nudity, sexuality and violence, they included candid depictions of drug use, prostitution, lawlessness, and religious blasphemy.
See also this site's multi-part, illustrated History of Sex in Cinema, 50 Sexiest Films of All-Time, and Sexy Hollywood Bombshells
Since the abandonment of the Hays Code in the late 60s, and the fairly recent establishment of various rating systems, sexual or erotic films with even small amounts of nudity have become more abundant. They often include frank adult content, violence and explicit language, or just suggestions of eroticism or sensuality. Teen sex comedies, erotic dramas or thrillers, sexploitation films, and other films dealing with sexual content are included in this wide-ranging category.
The Earliest Films:
Shortly after the Lumieres conducted the first public screening of a film (in December 1895), pioneering French film-maker Georges Melies directed the very short B/W 'adult' film Après Le Bal (1897, Fr.) (After the Ball, Bath) with one of the earliest nude scenes in film history. Reportedly around the same time, "blue movie" pornographer Eugene Pirou pioneered the risque film (called "smoking concert" or stag party films) when he produced the slightly erotic Le Coucher de la Marie (1896, Fr.) (aka Bedtime for the Bride) in which Louise Willy performed the first strip tease onscreen during a bathing scene -- the short pornographic film (of which only a few minutes exist) was directed by Léar (real name Albert Kirchner).
Fatima's Coochie-Coochie Dance - 1896Another similar film was Fatima’s Coochie-Coochie Dance (1896) a short nickelodeon kinetoscope/film of a gyrating belly dancer named Fatima (well-known for her dancing shows at the Columbia World's Exhibition in 1893). It became the first film in which a scene was censored - for her gyrating and moving pelvis - it was covered up by what appeared to be a white picket fence (a grid-like pattern of white lines).
The Kiss - 1896The very first kiss on film was between a Victorian couple seen in the Edison kinetoscope The May Irwin Kiss (1896) (aka The Kiss, or The Irwin-Rice Kiss in a filmed scene from the stage play The Widow Jones). This titillating short 20-second film, with a close-up of a kiss, was denounced as shocking and pornographic to early moviegoers and caused the Roman Catholic Church to call for censorship.
And Eadweard Muybridge's primitive motion studies (from 1884-1887) included test footage with cinematic glimpses of naked men and women. Lois Weber's and Paramount's 4-reel silent film Hypocrites (1914) featured full female nudity in the guise of an unclad lady (Margaret Edwards) - 'the Naked Truth' - who occasionally appeared as a transitional plot element between scenes.
Audrey Munson (a real-life model) first appeared artistically nude in George Foster Platt's controversial Inspiration (1915) from the Mutual Film Corporation, as a sculptor's model. It was the first known film in which a leading actress stripped down to be naked, making her the first nude film star. Munson also appeared nude in another silent film, Rea Burger's 7-reel Purity (1916), in a dual role as a spirit figure and as an artist's nude model named Purity/Virtue.
Theda Bara: The Vamp and First Sex Symbol
A Fool There Was - 1915Sex was portrayed in the earliest films as something exotic and foreign. The original vamp and first movie sex goddess, the full-bosomed Theda Bara, starred in a number of early silents for the Fox Film Corporation - her first lurid, slinky vamp appearance (and first lead role) was in Fox's melodramatic A Fool There Was (1915), in which she portrayed a worldly, predatory woman who stole a married man away from his wife and child. Her most famous line in this film was: "Kiss me, my Fool!" Theda Bara as CleopatraShe became known as "the wickedest woman in the world." Although she played other non-vampish roles, her vamp appearances were destined to be the most lucrative.
Other suggestive, femme fatale vamp roles were in Herbert Brenon's Sin (1915), The Devil's Daughter (1915) - her third vamp film, and in The Tiger Woman (1917). She was also most notably seen nearly nude with the contours of her breasts held by two curving gold asps in her first film made in Hollywood - the very successful Cleopatra (1917). Bara's 'come-back' picture, The Unchastened Woman (1925), was a remake of an earlier 1918 film. [Most of Bara's films, however, are currently unavailable because few of the film prints have survived.]
Other Early Silent Films and Their Sexy Film Stars:
Traffic in Souls - 1913For the most part, the silent years were not known for explicit sexual content. However, there were some exceptions:
the first American feature-length sex film was Traffic in Souls (1913) (aka While New York Sleeps) - it was a "photo-drama" expose of white slavery at the turn of the century in NYC, although the film exploitatively promised steamy sex in its advertisements; this was one of the first films to understand that 'sex sells' although its producers worried that a 'feature-length' film wouldn't be successful; another vice film with the same historical theme of revealing the world of prostitution was The Inside of the White Slave Traffic (1913); Damaged Goods (1914) and The Sex Lure (1916) were similar melodramatic, "exploitation" films advertised as containing the "Shocking Truth"
A Free Ride (1915) (aka A Grass Sandwich) was reportedly the earliest-known US silent stag ('men only') or pornographic film - with explicit sex scenes of a wealthy man picking up two females with his model-T and then having sex with his hitchhikers by the side of the road. Its comic titles foretold its plot: Directed by A. Wise Guy, Photographed by Will B. Hard, and Titles by Will She. Because these kinds of films (with increasingly explicit amounts of nudity and sexuality) were completely illegal, they were shown in all-male locations, clubs, etc., not in mainstream theaters
A Free Ride - 1915Australian-born swimming and diving champ Annette Kellermann (the "Esther Williams of the silent era") caused a stir when she was seen naked with her flowing hair under a waterfall in director Herbert Brenon's and Fox's fairy-tale Daughter of the Gods (1916) - she was the first major female star to appear nude on screen (see also the next item)
in the same week, another female lead appeared nude for the first time in a feature film on screen - 16 year-old blonde starlet June Caprice (a Mary Pickford look-alike), in Fox's melodramatic Cinderella tale The Ragged Princess (1916), who appeared in a prolonged, nude swimming sequence
director D. W. Griffith threatened virginal and innocent Lillian Gish's defilement in the controversial The Birth of a Nation (1915), and his extravagant set of Babylon in Intolerance (1916) included half-naked, lightly-draped women in love temples
in Jack Conway's The Penitentes (1916), fanatical Roman Catholics staged actual crucifixions on Good Friday, with one crucifix holding a nude girl
director Richard Oswald's film Anders als die Andern (1919, Germ.) (aka Different From the Others) was reportedly the first representation of male homosexuality ("the third sex") in a feature-length film, and the first screen depiction of a gay bar (with gay males and butch females); the two ill-fated lovers were prominent pianist Paul Korner (Conrad Veidt) and his young music student, Kurt (Fritz Schulz); the film had a tragic ending (suicide for Korner) due to the effects of blackmail (threats of exposure), jail time for violating anti-homosexuality statutes, and the social stigma of being outed
Cecil B. DeMille's Male and Female (1919) included Gloria Swanson's notorious, half-clad disrobing scene in preparation for a lavish bath in a sunken tub
Yvonne Gardelle appeared naked as temptress demon-wife Lilith to Adam in a pantomimed Garden of Eden prologue sequence in The Tree of Knowledge (1920), directed by Cecil B. DeMille's brother William; press kit materials tauted: "An old legend says that the tempter in Eden was not a serpent, but a beautiful women, Lillith, the demon wife of Adam before Eve was created"
nude bathing/swimming scenes were evident in The Isle of Love (1918) (recut and re-released in 1922) and The Branding Iron (1920)
Ben-Hur - 1925 Rudolph Valentino wowed audiences as a passionate Latin lover with his portrayal of a dashing Arabian sheik in romantic fantasies including The Sheik (1921), Blood and Sand (1922), and Son of the Sheik (1926)
in Fred Niblo's Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925), in two-color Technicolor, a remarkable segment showed rows of bare-breasted flower girls dancing in a pageant/procession as they tossed flowers to the crowd lining the street
a decadent orgy scene and semi-nude musicians in Erich von Stroheim's silent operetta The Merry Widow (1925), and the sexually-excessive depiction of a wickedly-decadent Queen Regina in von Stroheim's tawdry, grotesque and fragmentary film Queen Kelly (1929)
Hula - 1927screen lover John Barrymore starred in Don Juan (1926) with Mary Astor and Estelle Taylor, a film with a record number of kisses (reportedly 127)
romantic lead John Gilbert (the sexy successor to Rudolph Valentino) played opposite exotic vamp Greta Garbo in her star-making film Flesh and the Devil (1926)
Lili Damita, Hope Hampton, and Sue Carol all briefly appeared in the nude in respectively - Michael Curtiz' Red Heels (1925, Austrian) (aka Das Spielzeug von Paris), the melodramatic Lover's Island (1925), and the lost film In Line of Duty (1931)
flapper icon Clara Bow, dubbed the "It" girl during the 20s and one of the earliest sex symbols, appeared nude as Hula Calhoun in an opening bathing scene, and performed a sexy hula dance, in the romantic comedy Hula (1927)
American actress Louise Brooks was featured as an amoral and insatiable cabaret star/prostitute Lulu in G. W. Pabst's classic German silent film melodrama Pandora's Box (1929, Ger.) with blatant sexual themes, a memorable lesbian dance/tango scene with Countess Anna Geschwitz (Alice Roberts) during Lulu's wedding party, and her murder by the infamous 'Jack the Ripper' killer with a gleaming knifeblade stuck into her stomach during an erotic embrace
Tabu - 1931actress Kay Johnson starred as a wicked woman in Cecil B. De Mille's bizarre Madam Satan (1930) - a film that challenged the code with a racy party sequence aboard a zeppelin
German expressionistic director F. W. Murnau's last film (co-scripted with pioneering documentary film-maker Robert J. Flaherty) presented a lush tale of ill-fated native South Seas love (with flower-garlanded, bare-breasted native dancers) and the breaking of a sexual tabu (filmed entirely on location in Tahiti) - a very-late black/white silent film Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931) - and an Oscar-winning effort for Floyd Crosby's cinematography
The 'Naughty' Pre-Code Days:
Censorship bills were introduced in many states and localities - but the vast complexity of various local, state and national censorship laws added to the problem of enforcement, i.e. in some states an ankle couldn't be displayed, or pregnancy couldn't be mentioned. In 1922, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) was formed by the studios. Conservative former Postmaster General William H. Hays was appointed to head the organization, to begin efforts to clean up the motion picture industry before the public's anger at declining morality depicted in films hurt the movie business. One of his first acts in 'cleaning-up' Hollywood, due to pressure from Hollywood's top film executives, was to banish the acquitted actor-comedian Roscie "Fatty" Arbuckle from film, at least temporarily, in order to distract the public. [Arbuckle would continue to make films as a director under the pseudonym William Goodrich between 1925 and 1932.] Hays also approved the use of morality clauses in the standard actor's contract, to control the conduct of performers.
The Hays Office, with restrictions and guidelines on movie content to establish "correct standards of life," issued a self-regulating list of "Don'ts' and 'Be Carefuls' for film-makers in 1927. The following were targeted and specifically to be avoided:
suggestive nudity or perversion
lustful kissing
miscegenation
criminal murder
drugs
brutal violence, rape or attempted rape
cruelty to animals and children
racial slurs or anti-government diatribes
a man and woman in bed together
deliberate seduction of girls
profane swearing
capital punishment (hangings or electrocutions)
Most studios basically ignored the regulatory restrictions, because there was no enforcement that was effective, and they knew that film-going audiences wanted to see the kinds of things (sex and crime) that were being blacklisted. Many times, studios would circumvent problems with the new restrictions by wrapping up a film filled with sex and sinning with a quick climactic scene of moral repentance. Some of the illicit behaviors could be exhibited -- if later punished within the film. Other film-makers avoided censorship by changing the titles of plays forbidden to be adapted into films. One of the major difficulties with the repressive code was that it was open to varying interpretations. Hays assured state and local censorship boards that he would properly regulate the industry.
Two Female Challengers to Film Morality:
Hell's Angels - 1930A number of notable and successful films produced in the early 30s before the Code was strictly enforced -- so-called "bad girl" movies -- showed women using their sexuality to get ahead, such as in the taboo-breaking comedy Red Headed Woman (1932) starring Jean Harlow.
Jean Harlow
One of the earliest sex stars of the silver screen was smart-mouthed, 18-year old platinum blonde Jean Harlow, who shocked audiences as a sexy floozy with generous glimpses of flesh and her famous line of dialogue - "Would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable?" - in her first major role in Hell's Angels (1930). In Goldie (1931), she was noted as the first woman specifically referred to as a "tramp" in a talking picture. She also appeared as an adulteress in Red-Headed Woman (1932), and had a starring role as a stranded, wise-cracking floozy opposite Clark Gable and a bourgeois, middle-class Mary Astor in a tropical, steamy setting in Red Dust (1932) - Harlow was best seen bathing in a rain barrel. She has often been acknowledged as the first screen actress to place erotic emphasis upon her breasts in a time when flat-chested women were the rage.
Marlene Dietrich
The Blue Angel - 1930In a number of films made by obsessed, Svengali-styled mentor/director Josef von Sternberg, Marlene Dietrich played seductive, cool females in sexually perverse melodramas. She was Lola Lola, a cheap, smoky-voiced, sensual cabaret singer with stockinged-legs and top hat atop a beer barrel in the Blue Angel nightclub in her greatest film, The Blue Angel (1930), Germany's first sound film. In the atmospheric, seedy film, she manipulatively lured a repressed and obsessed Professor Emmanuel Rath (Emil Jannings) towards his doom by her teasing exoticism while singing Falling In Love Again.
Morocco - 1930And she scandalously wore a men's tuxedo in Morocco (1930) and accepted both a rose and a mouth-to-mouth kiss from a young lady in the cabaret audience - one of the earliest (if not the first) female-to-female kisses. In the highly-stylized Blonde Venus (1932), she performed a cabaret striptease from her full-bodied gorilla suit and then donned a bushy Afro blonde wig to sing "Hot Voodoo" in a throaty, hoarse voice to the beat of an African drum ("...That African tempo has made me a slave, hot voodoo - dance of sin, hot voodoo, worse than gin, I'd follow a cave man right into his cave"). Adultery and sadomachism were evident in the unusually frank and suggestive The Scarlet Empress (1934), in which Dietrich played Catherine the Great.
Brad Pitt
William Bradley "Brad" Pitt, born December 18, 1963 is an American
actor and film producer. Pitt has received four Academy Award
nominations and five Golden Globe Award nominations, winning one Golden
Globe. He has been described as one of the world's most attractive men, a
label for which he has received substantial media attention.
Pitt first gained recognition as a cowboy hitchhiker in the road
movie Thelma & Louise (1991). His first leading roles in big-budget
productions came with A River Runs Through It (1992), Interview with the
Vampire (1994), and Legends of the Fall (1994). In 1995, he gave
critically acclaimed performances in the crime thriller Seven and the
science fiction film 12 Monkeys, the latter earning him a Golden Globe
Award for Best Supporting Actor and an Academy Award nomination. Four
years later, Pitt starred in the cult hit Fight Club. He then starred in
the major international hit Ocean's Eleven (2001) and its sequels,
Ocean's Twelve (2004) and Ocean's Thirteen (2007). His greatest
commercial successes have been Troy (2004) and Mr. & Mrs. Smith
(2005). Pitt received his second and third Academy Award nominations for
his leading performances in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
and Moneyball (2011). In addition, Pitt owns a production company, Plan B
Entertainment, whose productions include The Departed (2006), which won
the Academy Award for Best Picture, and Moneyball, which garnered a
Best Picture nomination.
Following a high-profile relationship with actress Gwyneth Paltrow,
Pitt was married to actress Jennifer Aniston for five years. Pitt lives
with actress Angelina Jolie in a relationship that has attracted wide
publicity.[4] He and Jolie have six children—Maddox, Pax, Zahara,
Shiloh, Knox, and Vivienne. Since beginning his relationship with Jolie,
he has become increasingly involved in social issues both in the United
States and internationally.
Humanitarian and political causes
A Caucasian male bent over a table autographing a movie poster. He
has light brown hair with blonde highlights, and is wearing a
dark-colored trench coat with a white shirt. Visible in the background
and foreground are other people, some of whom are also signing
autographs.
Pitt signing autographs for troops during his 2001 visit to Incirlik Air Base
Pitt visited the University of Missouri campus in October 2004 to
encourage students to vote in the 2004 U.S. presidential election,[125]
in which he supported John Kerry.[125][126] Later in October he publicly
supported the principle of public funding for embryonic stem-cell
research. "We have to make sure that we open up these avenues so that
our best and our brightest can go find these cures that they believe
they will find," he said. In support of this he endorsed Proposition 71,
a California ballot initiative intended to provide federal government
funding for stem-cell research.
Pitt supports the ONE Campaign, an organization aimed at combating
AIDS and poverty in the developing world. He narrated the 2005 PBS
public television series Rx for Survival: A Global Health Challenge,
which discusses current global health issues and traveled to Pakistan in
November 2005 with Angelina Jolie to see the impact of the 2005 Kashmir
earthquake.The following year Pitt and Jolie flew to Haiti, where they
visited a school supported by Yéle Haïti, a charity founded by
Haitian-born hip hop musician Wyclef Jean. In May 2007, Pitt and Jolie
donated $1 million to three organizations in Chad and Sudan dedicated to
those affected by the crisis in the Darfur region.Along with Clooney,
Damon, Don Cheadle, and Jerry Weintraub, Pitt is one of the founders of
"Not On Our Watch", an organization that tries to focus global attention
and resources to stop and prevent genocides such as that in Darfur.
Pitt has a sustained interest in architecture and has narrated Design
e2, a PBS television series focused on worldwide efforts to build
environmentally friendly structures through sustainable architecture and
design. He founded the Make It Right Foundation in 2006, organizing
housing professionals in New Orleans to finance and construct 150
sustainable, affordable new houses in New Orleans's Ninth Ward following
the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. The project involves 13
architectural firms and the environmental organization Global Green USA,
with several of the firms donating their services. Pitt and
philanthropist Steve Bing have each committed $5 million in donations.
The first six homes were completed in October 2008, and in September
2009 Pitt received an award in recognition of the project from the U.S.
Green Building Council, a non-profit trade organization that promotes
sustainability in how buildings are designed, built and operated.Pitt
met with U.S. President Barack Obama and Speaker of the House of
Representatives Nancy Pelosi in March 2009 to promote his concept of
green housing as a national model and to discuss federal funding
possibilities.
In September 2006, Pitt and Jolie established a charitable
organization, the Jolie-Pitt Foundation, to aid humanitarian causes
around the world. The foundation made initial donations of $1 million
each to Global Action for Children and Doctors Without Borders, followed
by an October 2006 donation of $100,000 to the Daniel Pearl Foundation,
an organization created in memory of the late American journalist
Daniel Pearl. According to federal filings, Pitt and Jolie invested $8.5
million into the foundation in 2006; it gave away $2.4 million in 2006
and $3.4 million in 2007. In June 2009 the Jolie-Pitt Foundation donated
$1 million to a U.N. refugee agency to help Pakistanis displaced by
fighting between troops and Taliban militants. In January 2010 the
foundation donated $1 million to Doctors Without Borders for emergency
medical assistance to help victims of the Haiti earthquake.
Pitt is a supporter of same-sex marriage. In an October 2006
interview with Esquire, Pitt said that he would marry Jolie when
everyone in America is legally able to marry. He reaffirmed his stance
to Parade in August 2009, and again to People in July 2011. In September
2008, he donated $100,000 to the campaign against California's 2008
ballot proposition Proposition 8, an initiative to overturn the state
Supreme Court decision that had legalized same-sex marriage. Pitt stated
his reasons for the stance: "Because no one has the right to deny
another their life, even though they disagree with it, because everyone
has the right to live the life they so desire if it doesn't harm another
and because discrimination has no place in America, my vote will be for
equality and against Proposition 8. In March 2012, Pitt was featured in
a performance of Dustin Lance Black's play, '8' — a staged reenactment
of the federal trial that overturned California's Prop 8 ban on same-sex
marriage — as Judge Vaughn Walker.The production was held at the
Wilshire Ebell Theatre and broadcast on YouTube to raise money for the
American Foundation for Equal Rights, a non-profit organization funding
the plaintiffs' legal team and sponsoring the play.
In the media
A Caucasian male with dyed blonde hair is being interviewed. He is
wearing a black suit and tie, with a white shirt, and is standing on a
red carpet. People standing behind barricades are visible in the
background, while microphones are visible in the foreground.
Pitt interviewed by the news media at the Palm Springs International Film Festival in 2007
Pitt's sex appeal has been picked up by many sources including
Empire, who named him one of the 25 sexiest stars in film history in
1995.The same year, Pitt won People's Sexiest Man Alive, an accolade he
won again in 2000. Pitt appeared on Forbes's annual Celebrity 100 list
of the 100 most powerful celebrities in 2006, 2007, and 2008, at No. 20,
No. 5, and No. 10 respectively. In 2007 he was listed among the Time
100, a compilation of the 100 most influential people in the world, as
selected annually by TIME. The magazine credited Pitt with using "his
star power to get people to look to where cameras don't usually catch".
Pitt was again included in the Time 100 in 2009, this time in the
Builders and Titans list.
Starting in 2005, Pitt's relationship with Angelina Jolie became one
of the most reported celebrity stories worldwide. After confirming that
Jolie was pregnant in early 2006, the unprecedented media hype
surrounding the couple reached what Reuters, in a story titled "The
Brangelina fever," called "the point of insanity". To avoid media
attention the couple flew to Namibia for the birth of their daughter
Shiloh, "the most anticipated baby since Jesus Christ." Similarly
intense media interest greeted the announcement two years later of
Jolie's second pregnancy; for the two weeks Jolie spent in a seaside
hospital in Nice, reporters and photographers camped outside on the
promenade to report on the birth.
In a 2006 global industry survey by ACNielsen in 42 international
markets, Pitt, together with Jolie, was found to be the favorite
celebrity endorser for brands and products worldwide. Pitt has appeared
in several television commercials. For the U.S. market, he starred in a
Heineken commercial aired during the 2005 Super Bowl; it was directed by
David Fincher, who had directed Pitt in Seven, Fight Club and The
Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Other commercial appearances came in
television spots designed for Asian markets, advertising such products
as the Acura Integra, in which he was featured opposite Russian model
Tatiana Sorokko,as well as SoftBank and Edwin Jeans.
Personal life
A Caucasian man and woman in the foreground of the image, while
others are visible behind them. The woman has brown hair, which is tied
back. The man has his dark brown hair parted. He is wearing a black suit
and bow-tie with a white shirt.
Angelina Jolie and Pitt at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Pitt was involved in successive
relationships with several of his co-stars, including Robin Givens (Head
of the Class),Jill Schoelen (Cutting Class),[176] and Juliette Lewis
(Too Young to Die? and Kalifornia), who, at the age of 16, was ten years
his junior when they started dating.[29] In addition, Pitt had a
much-publicized romance and engagement to his Seven co-star Gwyneth
Paltrow, whom he dated from 1994 to 1997.
Pitt met Friends actress Jennifer Aniston in 1998 and married her in a
private wedding ceremony in Malibu on July 29, 2000. For years their
marriage was considered a rare Hollywood success; however, in January
2005, Pitt and Aniston announced that they had decided formally to
separate after seven years together. Two months later Aniston filed for
divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. Pitt and Aniston's divorce
was finalized by the Los Angeles Superior Court on October 2, 2005,
legally ending their marriage. Despite media reports that Pitt and
Aniston have an acrimonious relationship, Pitt said in a February 2009
interview that he and Aniston "check in with each other", adding that
they were both big parts of each others' lives.
During Pitt's divorce from Aniston, his involvement with his Mr.
& Mrs. Smith co-star Angelina Jolie attracted vigorous media
attention. While Pitt denied claims of adultery, he admitted that he
"fell in love" with Jolie on the set. In April 2005, one month after
Aniston filed for divorce, a set of paparazzi photographs emerged
showing Pitt, Jolie and her son Maddox at a beach in Kenya; the pictures
were construed in the press as evidence of a relationship between Pitt
and Jolie. During the summer of 2005, the two were seen together with
increasing frequency, and the entertainment media dubbed the couple
"Brangelina". On January 11, 2006, Jolie confirmed to People that she
was pregnant with Pitt's child, thereby publicly acknowledging their
relationship for the first time. Pitt and Jolie announced their
engagement in April 2012 after seven years together.
Children
In July 2005, Pitt accompanied Jolie to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where
she adopted her second child, six-month-old Zahara Marley a decision
which Jolie later stated she and Pitt had made together. Pitt's
publicist announced in December 2005 that Pitt was seeking to legally
adopt Jolie's two children, Zahara and Cambodia-born Maddox Chivan.On
January 19, 2006, a California judge granted Jolie's request to change
the children's surnames from "Jolie" to "Jolie-Pitt".The adoptions were
finalized soon after
Jolie gave birth to daughter Shiloh Nouvel in Swakopmund, Namibia, on
May 27, 2006. Pitt confirmed that their newborn daughter would have a
Namibian passport. The couple sold the first pictures of Shiloh through
the distributor Getty Images; the North American rights were purchased
by People for over $4.1 million, while Hello! obtained the British
rights for approximately $3.5 million. The proceeds from the sale were
donated to charities serving African children Madame Tussauds in New
York unveiled a wax figure of two-month-old Shiloh; it marked the first
time an infant was recreated in wax by Madame Tussauds.
On March 15, 2007, Jolie adopted three-year-old Pax Thien from an
orphanage in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Since Vietnam does not allow
unmarried couples to adopt, Jolie adopted Pax as a single parent. In
April 2007, Jolie filed a request to legally change her son's surname
from "Jolie" to "Jolie-Pitt", which was approved on May 31, 2007.The
rights for the first post-adoption images of Pax were sold to People for
a reported $2 million, as well as to Hello! for an undisclosed amount.
Pitt adopted Pax in the United States on February 21, 2008.
At the Cannes Film Festival in May 2008, Jolie confirmed that she was
expecting twins. She gave birth to son Knox Léon and daughter Vivienne
Marcheline on July 12, 2008 in Nice, France. The rights for the first
images of Knox and Vivienne were jointly sold to People and Hello! for
$14 million—the most expensive celebrity pictures ever taken. The couple
donated the proceeds to the Jolie-Pitt Foundation.
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