Nudity in film
The 1899 short film Le Coucher de la Mariée starred Louise Willy [af; ca; fr; vo] performing a bathroom striptease.
Her scenes were created using innovative travelling double exposure sequences (photographed by the legendary early cinematographer Dal Clawson) which made her appear as a semi-transparent spirit.
Under pressure, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) created its own censorship agency, the Hays Code, which brought an end to nudity and risqué content in films produced by the main Hollywood studios.
Other filmmakers followed suit, particularly in historical dramas such as The Scarlet Empress (1934) – which, among other things, shows topless women being burned at the stake – and contemporary stories filmed in exotic, mostly tropical, locations.
Forbidden Adventure (1937) is a 1912 Cambodia documentary with scenes added, for dramatic effect, of two explorers and a dozen topless female bearers, incongruously played by African-American women.
Gow the Killer (1934, re-released as Cannibal Island in 1956), Inyaah, Jungle Goddess (1934), Legong: Dance of the Virgins (1935), Love Life of a Gorilla (1937), Mau-Mau (1955), and Naked Africa (1957).
Fabricated scenes filmed in front of a painted backdrop of an African village show nude and semi-clad "native" women being raped, strangled, and stabbed by machete-wielding maniacs.
Changes in censorship laws led to a flood of films such as Naked Venus (1958) directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, Nudist Memories (1959), and Daughter of the Sun (1962) by David F. Friedman and Herschell Gordon Lewis.
Besides Russ Meyer, the only director in this field to go on to critical success is Francis Ford Coppola, who began his career writing and directing a pair of nudie comedies in 1962, Tonight for Sure and The Bellboy and the Playgirls.
In Michael Powell's controversial British film Peeping Tom,[22] released in 1960, a model (Pamela Green) lies back on a bed waiting to be photographed by the killer in a key scene.
By now the Production Code had been revised so that it served less as a doctrine of rules and more as a workable set of precautions, including those on sex and nudity, to which filmmakers were advised on the more graphic depictions and given exceptions that could be made.
The Pawnbroker, released in 1964, breached the Motion Picture Production Code with actresses Linda Geiser and Thelma Oliver (who later became the mystic and yoga teacher Krishna Kaur Khalsa) fully exposing their breasts.
That same year Paula Prentiss performed a strip-tease in the Woody Allen-scripted comedy What's New Pussycat?, which ended up on the cutting room floor but resurfaced on the pages of Playboy, and Julie Christie appeared nude in the British drama film Darling.
John Frankenheimer's 1966 sci-fi thriller Seconds contained an extended sequence of full frontal male and female nudity that was deleted from the original American release in which bohemian revelers dance and play in a wine vat.
These films had a much harder edge and dealt with racy subjects such as infidelity, wife-swapping, prostitution, lesbianism, drugs, white slavery, rape, psycho-killers, sex cults, decadence, sadomasochism, and sexual perversion.
[43] The genre rapidly declined in the early 1970s due to advertising bans, the closure of many grindhouses and drive-in theaters, and the growth of hardcore pornography in the "Golden Age of Porn".
[40] During this period a number of adult films that were sexually explicit received general theatrical releases, including Blue Movie (1969), Mona the Virgin Nymph (1970), Deep Throat (1972), and others.
[44][45] Notable actresses who have appeared topless include Jane Fonda (Coming Home, 1978), Julie Andrews (S.O.B., 1981), Kate Winslet (Titanic, 1997), Gwyneth Paltrow (Shakespeare in Love, 1998), Reese Witherspoon (Twilight, 1998), Rene Russo (The Thomas Crown Affair, 1999), Katie Holmes (The Gift, 2000), and Halle Berry (Swordfish, 2001).
[47][45] Notable actors who have done full frontal male nudity in films include Richard Gere (American Gigolo, 1980),[44] Harvey Keitel (Bad Lieutenant 1992, The Piano 1993),[48] Ewan McGregor (The Pillow Book, Trainspotting 1996),[48] Peter Sarsgaard (Kinsey, 2004),[48] Viggo Mortensen (Eastern Promises, 2007),[48] Michael Fassbender (Shame, 2011),[48] Chris Pine (Outlaw King, 2018),[49] and Bradley Cooper (Nightmare Alley, 2021).
Actress Anne Hathaway, who appeared nude in movies Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Love & Other Drugs (2010), said in an interview with the National Public Radio, "The director submits a shot list, and you look over them for approval.
Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia (1938), which was produced as Nazi propaganda and a documentary of the 1936 Summer Olympics, has an opening sequence noted for its idealized, non-exploitive use of male and female nudity.
From about the beginning of the 21st century, explicit, unsimulated sexual intercourse has taken place in movies which target the general moviegoing audience, albeit those usually labeled 'arthouse'; for example, Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs (in which the male character is depicted ejaculating) and Lars von Trier's The Idiots.
Novecento, includes an explicit scene of Robert De Niro and Gérard Depardieu, who are shown on either side of the actress Stefania Casini as she fondles their exposed penises.
For example, The Blue Lagoon (1980) shows the awakening of the sexual instinct in two shipwrecked young cousins – one male, one female – on a tropical island where nudity is a natural part of the environment in which they find themselves.
[73] In 1953, American director Josef von Sternberg worked with the newly formed Daiwa Studios to direct Anatahan, the story of a group of Japanese soldiers and one woman (played by Akemi Negishi) stranded on an island at the end of the war.
Toei's output in the late 1960's turned more extreme some films dealing in Ero guro such as Shogun's Joy of Torture (1968) by Teruo Ishii, with scenes of sadomasochism or female victims being bound.
In the following year, the Filipino actors Coco Martin and Kristofer King appeared frontally naked, with erections, in separate scenes with female lovers, in the Cannes entry Philippines film Service (2008), directed by Dante Mendoza.
In the same year, Filipino actor Marco Morales appeared in full-frontal nudity in two scenes in the Philippines film Walang Kawala, also known as No Way Out,[84] directed by Joel Lamangan.
One Asian-Australian movie in 2013 features full-frontal nudity, with Asian Australian Actor Matthew Victor Pastor showing his genitals for the Made In Australia opening title sequence.
[96] The Hong Kong Chinese film Utopians tells a story of a student's attraction to his Professor, and several scenes of full-frontal male nudity include one in which the main character, played by mainland China actor Adonis He Fei, is shown masturbating his erect penis until ejaculation.
