Table Of ContentSex and Film
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Sex and Film
The Erotic in British, American
and World Cinema
Barry Forshaw
© Barry Forshaw 2015
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in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2015 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
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ISBN 978– 1– 1 37– 39004– 2 hardback
ISBN 978– 1– 1 37– 39005–9 paperback
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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.
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 T wenty- 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
Acknowledgements
My thanks to Judith Forshaw for her diligent copyediting, f act- checking
and proofreading – and her (sometimes reluctant) readiness to watch
films ranging from the classic to the meretricious.
And to the unknown manager of the northern cinema who pro-
grammed Bergman’s Summer with Monika and Fellini’s La Dolce Vita for
just a handful of patrons; in my early teens, I was lucky enough to be
one of them.
vi
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 a nti-
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
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
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 p aid- for
sex between a m iddle- a ged 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. But the context
of this conversation was the detailed description of the coupling that
preceded it, and censors have rarely looked beyond the physical act in
such scenarios.
Serious films, such as Ingmar Bergman’s The Silence – with its con-
troversial scenes of sexual intercourse (in a cinema, in fact) and female
masturbation – outraged censors in the 1960s, and those who cut the film
were not persuaded by either the Swedish director’s impeccable artistic
credentials or the fact that he had utilised the joyless sex scenes to make
points about the arid emotional lives of his characters. Of The Silence,
the Legion of Decency (clearly an unimpeachable authority concern-
ing matters of artistic taste) said: ‘His [Bergman’s] selection of images is
sometimes vulgar, insulting to a mature audience, and dangerously close
to pornography ... he has seriously violated artistic taste and sensitivity
and leaves the film’s presentation open to a sensational exploitation by
the irresponsible.’
The treatment of sexuality in film can be multifaceted, and, just as
in literature, it may function as an index of the zeitgeist, often through
a reading of what is permitted or omitted. The Victorian novel, for
instance, was not able to touch on the pornography of the period,
