Fine. Then every piece of nudity in any movie ever is gratuitous, because someone deliberately wrote the script to include that nudity.
“Eastern Promises”. And it is the opposite of gratuitous. It establishes, clearly, that Nikolai is profoundly vulnerable in this attack, (much like he is quite vulnerable in his position in the crime family) and that he only survives because he is tougher, more willing to do whatever to survive, than anyone else.
Chill dude. Don’t harsh gratuitous nudity.
Of course you’re technically right, that’s just the most natural thing. But if I approached every piece of fiction with this mindset, I’d have no fun with it whatsoever and couldn’t endlessly quibble about the stories like we do here in CS.
Wait… which hair did she shake?
Perhaps someone could start a “What was the most gratuitous cancer you’ve ever seen in a movie?” topic.
Since, you know, cancer in a movie doesn’t occur spontaneously.
All jokes aside, that was an interesting link. Thanks!
I’m not familiar with the movie or the scene, but while you are technically correct, this is irrelevant to the subject of the OP. The question then just becomes “what is the most gratuitous nudity in a movie script?”
The question is whether the nudity is in the movie merely to titillate or shock, or whether there is some dramatic purpose to it. The nudity will be in the script either way, but in one case it will be gratuitous and in the other not.
They didn’t have to put that line in the dialogue to include the nude scene. The nude scene could have come out of the blue without any prior set-up, and have no relation to the character’s personality. The earlier line gives a motivation for the nude scene. Now maybe the nude scene wasn’t really necessary to establish the character was a risk-taker, but including it makes it less gratuitous than it otherwise would have been.
That’s my point. You have to look at the work as a whole and ask what it’s about. Then you can determine if individual pieces of the work add to the whole.
Manson said that the nude scene wasn’t gratuitous because it was set up in the script. I disagreed.
The nude scene in Teachers did not add to the story about a cynical teacher getting his belief in the educational system restored. The nude scene was in the movie so people could see an attractive woman naked. So even though the nude scene was in the script, it was gratuitous because it wasn’t there to tell the story.
Perhaps we watched different movies. Because the Teachers I saw was NOT a story about a cynical teacher getting his belief in the educational system restored.
Not counting schlocky D-grade junk:
-Beverly D’Angelo’s shower scene in National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983)
-Jill Schoelen’s shower scene in The Stepfather (1987)
-Karen Allen’s shower scene in Backfire (1988)
-Jodie Foster’s shower scene in Catchfire (1990)
-Blanchard Ryan in Open Water (2003). Even the actress thought it was gratuitous
-That closeup of Bryce Dallas Howard’s bush in Manderlay (2005)
-Alexandra Daddario in True Detective
-Rooney Mara’s shower scene in Una (2017)
-Maggie Gyllenhaal’s shower scene in The Kindergarten Teacher (2018)
There’s also a ton of scenes that are not gratuitous on paper, but feel gratuitous by the execution of the scene. You could argue that Alexandra Daddario falls into this category, but the creator of True Detective himself said the nudity was HBO mandated.
Dina Meyer Shower scene in Starship Troopers
To tie this to the recent passing of Larry Kramer, the nude wrestling scene between Alan Bates and Oliver Reed in Women in Love.
Most of the ones I would suggest have already been mentioned, but I’ll add the Topless Telegram delivery in the first remake of Not of This Earth – the one starring Traci Lords. Only it’s not her – I think it’s Becky LeBeau.
The most pointless nudity in a book is probably the naked lady running around the Titanic in Clive Cussler’s Raise the Titanic. They didn’t use that scene in the movie version, though.
Not nudity, but there’s a pretty gratuitous instance of the male gaze in one of the Justice League movies. Bruce Wayne and Barry Allen are exiting a private jet, to be met by a waiting Diana Prince. As Wayne, Allen, and Wayne’s car descend a freight lift, the camera dollies up from ground level, briefly but not-incidentally framing Gal Gadot’s leather-clad ass.
I came across this five-minute clip on YouTube last night. Guess which shot was the thumbnail?
The scene is interrupted when Bruce Wayne spots the Bat-signal in the clouds. Which made me wonder for the first time (not being familiar with the Batman canon), what does Commissioner Gordon do when he needs to talk to Batman in the daytime?
It is NEVER daytime in Gotham. It is perpetually nighttime, like in* Dark City*.
Borat naked wrestling with his sidekick. One of the funniest movie scenes ever. Probably not as funny if they had clothes on.
Shower scenes are the most likely to be gratuitous.
Sex scenes can be about about passion and the characters in them.
Getting naked somewhere else plausibly tells you something about the character of the person getting naked or the characters reacting to it.
But everyone takes showers, and does so nude, so unless something happens in the shower other than nudity and cleanliness, it’s pretty much gratuitous.
Has anyone mentioned yet Jamie Lee Curtis’s topless scene in Trading Places?
NOT that I’m not grateful…