Nudity in Film - European Cinema Since 1929

European Cinema Since 1929

Europeans were more relaxed about nudity in film than the U.S. The 1931 Greek film Daphnis and Chloe by Orestis Laskos featured the first nude scene in a European fiction film, showing Chloe bathing in a fountain.

Gustav Machatý's Extase (1933) with Hedy Lamarr was condemned by Pope Pius XI. It was very controversial on its release in the United States and credited with contributing to the repressive regime under the Hays Code.

Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia (1938), which was produced as Nazi propaganda and a documentary of the 1936 Summer Olympics held in Berlin, has an opening sequence noted for its idealized, non-exploitive use of male and female nudity. Another less artistic film from Germany, Liane, Jungle Goddess (1956), featured Marion Michael as a topless female variant on the Tarzan legend.

Alessandro Blasetti's La cena delle beffe (Dinner of fun, 1941) had Clara Calamai topless in what is credited as being the first topless scene in an Italian film. Other noteworthy European films which contained nudity include Era Lui, Si Si (1952, with Sophia Loren), Ingmar Bergman's Summer with Monika (1953), Jean-Pierre Melville's Bob le flambeur (1956, with Isabelle Corey, then aged 16), François Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player (1960), Brigitte Bardot's casual nude scenes in Contempt (1963) by Jean-Luc Godard, the French film The Game Is Over (1966, with Jane Fonda), Luis Buñuel's Belle de Jour (1967, with Catherine Deneuve), and Isadora (1968, with Vanessa Redgrave).

Makers of the British film The Pleasure Girls (1965) shot an alternate version of a party scene with brief nudity that only appears in the export print. The 1966 British-Italian film Blowup became the first mainstream English-language film to show a woman's pubic hair, although the particular shot was only a few seconds long. (Some sources, such as Playboy magazine's History of Sex in Cinema series, have stated that the pubic hair exposure was unintended.)

Two Swedish films from 1967, I Am Curious (Yellow) and Inga, were ground-breaking—and notorious—for showing explicit sex and nudity. Both were initially banned in the U.S., and were rated X when they were shown in 1968. I Am Curious (Yellow) was banned in Massachusetts, more on the basis of the sexuality than the nudity, and was the subject of prosecution. The film was held not to be obscene.

There was a surge in nudity in film in the United Kingdom after 1960. The gritty social drama This Sporting Life (1963) was among the first to include glimpses of male nudity. Ken Russell's Women in Love (1969) was especially controversial for showing frontal male nudity in a wrestling scene between Oliver Reed and Alan Bates. Glenda Jackson won the Academy Award for Best Actress in that film, the first performer to win for a role that included nude scenes. There was also a long line of sex comedies, beginning with Mary Had a Little... (1961), which were more intended to display nudity than sexuality. Other British sex comedies included What's Good for the Goose (1969). There apparently are two versions of the film, one being an uncensored version (105 minutes versus the cut 98 minute version), which shows nudity from Sally Geeson; this version was released in continental Europe. Other films include Percy and its sequel, Percy's Progress, as well as the Carry On series, which added nudity to its saucy seaside postcard innuendo. Series producer Peter Rogers saw the George Segal movie Loving and added his two favourite words to the title, making Carry On Loving the twentieth in the series, followed by Carry On Girls, based around a Miss World-style beauty contest. Next in the series was Carry On Dick, with more risque humour and Sid James and Barbara Windsor's on- and off-screen lovemaking. There were also biographical films like Savage Messiah (1972) which contained a long nude scene.

The Italian produced Last Tango in Paris (1973), directed by Bernardo Bertolucci was one of the first films to openly contain nudity in a commercial film, and led to the boom of fashion erotic films between 1970 and 1980, such as the French produced Emmanuelle (1974) and the Frenco-German production Story of O (1975) by Just Jaeckin, the Franco-Japanese production In the Realm of the Senses (1976) by Nagisa Oshima, and the Italian-American produced Caligula (1979) by Tinto Brass.

The films of Catherine Breillat, a French filmmaker, are notorious for containing explicit nudity. Her film Une vraie jeune fille (1975) contains close-ups of actress Charlotte Alexandra's vulva and actor Bruno Balp's penis, some of which are particularly graphic in nature (including a sequence where an earthworm is inserted into Alexandra's vagina). This resulted in the film not officially being released until 1999. Other actresses who have appeared in explicit full-frontal nude scenes in Breillat's films include Caroline Ducey in Romance (1999) and Roxane Mesquida in Sex Is Comedy (2002). Bernardo Bertolucci's film The Dreamers (2003), included extensive full frontal nude scenes, male and female, and graphic sex scenes.

European attitudes towards depictions of nudity tend to be relatively relaxed and there are few taboos around it. Showing of full frontal nudity in movies, even by major actors, is common and it is not considered damaging to the actors' careers. In recent years explicit unsimulated sexual intercourse occurs in movies which target the general movie-going audience, albeit those usually labeled 'arthouse' product; for example, Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs and Lars von Trier's The Idiots.

The Finnish documentary Steam of Life about men in saunas shows nudity throughout the film.

In the Dutch movie All Stars 2: Old Stars the main characters stay in a nudist campsite. Much full frontal nudity is displayed, but not of any of the main characters.