I’m writing an article about those films of the late 60s and early 70s that featured explicit (or very suggestive) sex scenes, where actors were at least partially nude but totally and plainly engaged in sex acts on screen, sometimes using raw language that wouldn’t have been thinkable (either the nudity or the swearing) only a few years before. Which films exemplify this sudden trend in moviemaking best? I’ve got Midnight Cowboy and Klute so far, but there may be better examples. No porno films–I’m thinking of major Hollywood productions that were impossible to imagine in 1960 but were common by the early 1970s.,
Last Tango in Paris (1972) would be a strong example: it featured an Oscar-winning actor (Marlon Brando, though he had been in a low spot of his career in the late '60s and early '70s, until The Godfather came out, that same year), and was written and directed by a highly-regarded filmmaker (Bernardo Bertolucci). It was distributed by a major Hollywood studio, United Artists.
It was controversial, as it featured highly raw sexual content, and got an X rating in the U.S. Both Brando and Bertolucci received Academy Award nominations for the film.
A Clockwork Orange?
Yeah, Last Tango is perfect. Probably the archetype of what I want, thanks. Others? Maybe even earlier than Last Tango?
Caligula?
Maybe too late (IIRC it was from the early 80s)
You may find the Wikipedia article on the Motion Picture Production Code (a.k.a. the Hays Code) enlightening, particularly the section on its decline in the 1960s.
Technically, it was the Hays Code which discouraged major U.S. studios from creating and releasing films like Urban Cowboy and Last Tango in Paris. When it was replaced, in 1968, by the new MPAA code and ratings, it made it possible to create and market more explicit films in the U.S.
definitely too late. I’m really looking for the pioneering movies of this type, the ones that shocked older moviegoers. The Graduate was, for me, another of these films, even though it was a little coy in its technique. The famous shot cutting from Hoffman in bed with Bancroft to him in the pool was more implicit than explicit, but they were plainly supposed to be having sex in the movie.
1979, but yes, it was a bit of a different time by that point. That film was definitely an interesting case; the producer, Bob Guccione (publisher of Penthouse magazine), got a bunch of legitimate actors involved in the main production (including John Gielgud, Peter O’Toole, and Helen Mirren), and then added in additional, hardcore sex scenes (using Penthouse Pets as actresses) which he shot during post-production.
No title specified but there was presumably at least one:
“The letter X stands for a kiss, X marks the spot or a movie we can’t see.” - Dolly in The Family Circus, 19 February 1972 – nine months before Last Tango was anywhere.
Well, the X rating had been around since the introduction of the MPAA ratings system in 1968. Both Midnight Cowboy (1969) and A Clockwork Orange (1971) had been released to U.S. theaters with an X rating prior to that comic strip; I have no idea if other mainstream X-rated films had also come out during that same period.
Fritz the Cat (1972)?
An X-rated cartoon starring the voice of Skip “Fargo North” Hinnant likely would have been the subject of that Family Circus panel.
Though, the Family Circus cartoon you quoted was from February of '72, and the Wikipedia entry on Fritz the Cat indicates that the film was released in April of that year (and a limited release, at that).
Edit: though, it appears that there was a preview of a portion of the film, which was reviewed in Rolling Stone in November of '71.
Deleted upon noticing edit.
True enough, but I have no idea how widely-known the development of an indie film, by a relatively unknown creator, would have been at that time. FWIW, the character of Fritz was created by cartoonist R. Crumb in the 1960s, and featured in his underground comix, but again, I’m not sure how widely-known any of that would have been, either.
I am a Curious (Yellow) (1967, released in U.S., 1969) and I am a Curious (Blue) (1968, released in U.S. 1970) – Basically, the same film with some minor changes - not Hollywood films, but certainly influential on them (as was, to a lesser extent, Ekstase, 1933, released in U.S, 1936).
If…. (1968, released in U.S., 1969)
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)
Performance (1970)
How about Don’t Look Now? Came out in 1973 and featured an extremely realistic sex scene between Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. According to IMDB, the sex scene was the first thing they filmed and was apparently gruelling to get done but Nicholas Roeg, the director, wanted to get it out of the way lol. Anyway, it left a definite impression on me when I saw it as a teenager.
Cry Uncle has quite a bit of explicit sex, including inadvertent necrophilia. I don’t know if it was actually X-rated. It was a comedy and more bawdy than just about any other film.
The director later went on to direct Rocky and The Karate Kid.
Another film from that period, which I just remembered, is Straw Dogs (1971), directed by Sam Peckinpah, and starring Dustin Hoffman.
It features two violent rape scenes (and is, generally, a very violent film); apparently, the studio edited down the first rape scene for the film’s U.S. release, in order to get an R rating (instead of an X) from the MPAA.
Makes sense. Sometimes actors get cold feet about nudity or sex scenes, and if you’ve already put in all the time and effort to film the rest of the movie, that leaves the director in a difficult spot: You either recast the movie and re-shoot everything, re-write the script to cut out the explicit scenes, or do something like using body doubles in the explicit scene and hope nobody notices. If you do the explicit scene first, and actors back out, then you haven’t wasted any time and cast new actors until you get someone who will do it.