The Naked Screen: SEX & Nudity In Cinema (Part 2)
|
The 1930s saw the end of the silent era, and the beginning of self-censorship among the major Hollywood studios with the introduction of the Motion Picture Production Code, more commonly referred to as the Hays Code after the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA)president Will. H. Hays. The code was adopted in 1930, and by 1934 strictly enforced. Thus sex and nudity in mainstream cinema all but disappeared, allowed only in naturist and "ethnographic" quasi-documentary movies and in foreign films. However outside of the Hollywood system, independent exploitation movies literally exploited adults desire for titillation, by producing educational "warning" movies as an excuse for showing sex and nudity on screen.
In the early 1930s, major studios managed to fly under the Hays Code with a series of ethnographic quasi-documentary movies, usually set in the exotic South Seas. Although they often spliced actual documentary footage of semi-nude natives with back-lot shot footage, to pad out the movies, and give them some semblance of narrative. Rather than these movies just being an excuse for showing a bit of bare Balinese boob. one of the earliest of these "South Seas" movies of the period was Tabu, a Story of the South Seas (1931). A docu-drama, set on the island of Bora Bora, it's a story of illicit love between to Romeo and Juliet styled characters. It featured scenes of semi-nude natives swimming and dancing. The title "Tabu", is a play on the English word "taboo", which in turn is derived from the Polynesian term "tapu" or "tabu" which means something holy or sacred, with "spiritual restriction" or "implied prohibition". Not unlike the Hays Code! |
|
In the early 1930s, before that strict enforcement of the Hays Code, a good number of these type of movies were produced. Often filmed in the exotic Indonesian island of Bali, which created a long fascination with the island, that carried on right through into the 1950s and early 1960s, culminating in the 1958 musical movie South Pacific, and the song that coined the term "Bali Ha'i". The desire for seeing the nubile natives of Bali on screen spawned Goona-Goona (1932), a melodrama, that came to encompass the genre of anthropology/sexploitation films set in exotic locations. The film sparked the obsession with Bali that even continues to this day. Goona-Goona is a word for "magic" in Balinese, but also became the name of a narcotic "love powder"!
The Island of the Demons (1933), which was filmed during 1931, while a crowd of film people were staying at Walter Spies' house in Campuhan, Ubud, Bali. The film featured the now famous "kecak" dance, known as the monkey-dance. Another Bali based movie was Virgins of Bali (1932). Often double-billed with "Eat 'em Alive", another piece of the early exploitation cinema, that was disguised titillation as education. Finally there was Legong: Dance of the Virgins (1935). One of the last films shot using the two-colour Technicolor process, and one of the last from the silent era released by a major studio, Paramount Pictures. Some adverts promoted the film in large letters as “NUDITY WITHOUT CRUDITY". By this point however the Hays Code was in full censorship swing, and the movie was heavily edited for the United States audience, taking out all the nudity that was considered prurient, and thus slashing the movies running time by half. |
There were a couple of movies of the period that went for all-out exploitation of audiences lust for movies set in exotic locations. Mostly filmed in an "exotic" Los Angeles back-lot with spiced in footage, men in gorilla suits and local actresses made-up and dressed (or undressed) to appear as native girls. The two movies in question were Ingagi (1930) and Beyond Shanghai (1935) (it's UK release title) or Forbidden Adventure in Angkor (1937) (in the USA), which did the exploitation road-show circuit on a double-bill for years. Ingagi was claimed to be a documentary of Sir Hubert Winstead of London on an expedition to Africa. Part of the publicity created by producer Nat Spitzer who establish Congo Pictures, expressly to make and distribute the movie. The story-line revolved around a African tribe of gorilla-worshipping women, who gave themselves over as sex slaves to the gorillas. The movie featured white actresses in black-face and men in gorilla suits, and is believed to have inspired RKO Pictures to make 1933's King Kong. The other movie of the two, Forbidden Adventures in Angkor, was supposedly of found footage of an expedition to Angkor in the early part of the century. When in fact the producer Marshal Gordon hired 12 African-American girls from Selma Avenue brothels, located between Hollywood and Sunset Boulevard, and paid each of them $10 to be in the movie.
|
Foreign films initially made it under the Hays Code radar, most notably of the pre-1934 era was the 1933 Czech romantic drama directed by Gustav Machatý and starring the actress that would later become the Hollywood queen of glamour Hedy Lamarr. The movie was controversial not only for the amount of nudity it featured, but also that it was the first non-pornographic movie to show sex and a female orgasm, hence the name "Ecstasy". The movie was considered relatively controversial in most countries it was released, but nothing like the hysteria and moral outrage to caused in the United States. It was the first foreign film to be denounced by the Catholic Legion of Decency, and copies of the movie were confiscated in raids by agents of the Treasury Department. The first movie to be blocked from being imported into the United States for reasons of censorship. Ecstasy was not released in the United States until December 24th ,1940. It eventually had a limited run in the United States without the Hays seal, where it played in mostly independent arthouse cinemas, often with restrictions of with cuts made to it. In some parts of the country, it was banned out-right.
One notable foreign film that came out in 1938, is Olympia. The highly acclaimed but essentially Nazi propaganda documentary about the 1936 Olympic Games, directed and produced by Leni Riefenstahl. The opening scenes feature naked athletes and dancers, posed to look like Greek statues come-to-life. The documentary is acclaimed for its use of advanced film-making techniques for the time and innovative cinematography. |
|
A still to this day controversial movie that also came out in 1938, is Child Bride. Tag-lined as "A throbbing drama of shackled youth!", it was advertised as an "educational" movie about the lack of legislation in many parts of the United States against child marriage. The movie was set in remote hillbilly town, in the Ozarks Mountains region. It's most known for its controversial nude swimming scene featuring the child-actress Shirley Mills, who was only 12 years old at the time. Child Bride managed to get around the Hays Code, by distributing the movie independent of the studio system, without certification. Despite its claims of being an "educational" piece, it was banned in many places, and spent years doing the rounds on the exploitation circuit, in places that would become known as grindhouses.
Infamous exploitation film-maker Dwain Esper, who threw everything salacious he could into his movies, obviously included a good amount of nudity in his movies. Esper had been a producer on Forbidden Adventure in Angkor, and directed the now cult exploitation classics Maniac (1934), Marihuana (1936) and Sex Madness (1938). All of which contained nude scenes, from topless to skinny-dipping in Marihuana. In fact skinny-dipping was a popular way of showing nudity in exploitation movies, with Edgar J. Ulmer using it in his exploitation flick Damaged Lives (also known as The Shocking Truth) in 1933. Another way some film-makers justified nudity in movies, was to make nudist films. |
Nudist films, which in some quarters were seen as more wholesome and acceptable than straight stag films or the more salacious films of the exploitation circuit. Even though nudist films often did the same circuit as their more infamous counterparts. Films such as Why Nudism? (1933), This Nude World (1933), Nudist Land (1937) and The Unashamed (1938) had a short period of popularity in the 1930s, but fell out of favour in the 1940s. Though they would see a revival in the 1950s, as there became a rise in the popularity of nudist camp movies, and what would become known as Nudie Cuties. But that's all for next time, when part 3 of Naked Screen will examine sex and nudity in cinema during the war period and in the socially conservative 1950s.
|
The Naked Screen: Sex & Nudity In Cinema (Part 1) - Since the first movie cameras were cranked into action, sex & nudity has been a provocative subject for film-makers.
|
Stoned On Screen: Drugs In The Movies (Part 1) - Since the dawn of motion pictures, the portrayal of illegal drug use or references to drugs at all has been a controversial one in the United States.
|
|
Tijuana Bibles: Comic Book Porn In Your Pocket - The salacious story of early underground comic books, generally known as Tijuana Bibles. Little 8-page, wallet sized piece of pornography.
|
Zoro Gardens Nudist Colony - Between 1935 and 1936, at an exposition in Balboa Park, San Diego, two side-show promoters created a controversial nudist colony as a visitor attraction.
|