One Hundred Sex Scenes that Changed Cinema
by Neil Fulwood
Category: Performing Arts

100 Sex Scenes that Changed Cinema explores the representation of sexuality and sexual expression in cinema by tracing the key scenes that helped change, develop and influence one of the world's most powerful medium. The 100 films are arranged thematically in the following chapters: Implicit (Not-explicit) sex scenes - the lure of sex in film noir (Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice and Gilda; suggestiveness through dialogue ('snails and oysters' scene in Spartacus; visual metaphors (food scene in Tom Jones); Explicit sex scenes - films that have shocked, challenged and disturbed, pushing back the boundaries of what can be shown on screen. From Hiroshima, Mon Amour through Ai No Corrida, Emmanuelle, 9 1/2 Weeks to Intimacy and The Piano Teacher. Also with details of homo-eroticism (from Caravaggio to Mulholland Drive) and Rites of passage/sexual awakening; The European Aesthetic - the five European directors whose work is marked by a frank, uncompromising approach to sexuality: Bertolucci (Last Tango in Paris, Stealing Beauty), Bunuel (Belle de Jour, That Obscure Object of Desire), Almodovar (Labyrinth of Passion, Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down), Chabrol (Les Biches), and Greenaway (The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, The Pillow Book). Pleasure and Payment - the darker side of on-screen sexuality: obsessive/self-destructive behaviour (Breaking the Waves, Henry and June, The Night Porter); Bondage and sado-masochism (The Servant, The Opposite of Sex); Voyeurism/pornography (Body Double, Boogie Nights); Prostitution (My Own Private Idaho, Midnight Cowboy and American Gigolo); the role of sex in horror film (Ginger Snaps, Angel Heart); Forbidden Flesh - taboo subjects: incest (Close my Eyes, The Cement Garden, Spanking the Monkey) and necrophilia (suggested in Vertigo but explicit in Kissed).