Nudity in film
Nudity in film has been a topic of discussion and debate since the beginning of film as a medium. It may be obvious or merely suggestive, such as when a person appears to be naked but is covered by a sheet. It is a distinct topic from sex in film, as many films contain nudity in a non-sexual context, although nudity is almost always present in pornographic films, and are commonly seen in erotic films.
Nude scenes are considered controversial in many cultures because they often challenge a community's standards of modesty. These standards vary by culture and depend on the type of nudity, who is exposed, which parts of the body are exposed, the duration of the exposure, the posing, the context, or other aspects.
Nudity in film may be subject to censorship or rating regimes that control the content of films. Many directors and producers apply self-censorship, limiting nudity in their films to avoid censorship or a strict rating.
Nude photography before cinema
Nudity has almost universally not been permitted on stage, but sheer or simulated nudity may have been. Devices used included flesh-colored bodystockings to simulate nudity or long hair as a cover for vital parts for roles such as Lady Godiva.File:Sarah Bernhardt portrait by Nadar.jpg|thumb|Sarah Bernhardt photographed nude by Nadar
American actress Adah Isaacs Menken created controversy in 1861 when she wore a flesh-colored bodystocking in the play Mazeppa, based on Byron's Mazeppa, in which she played a Polish man who was tied nude to the back of a wild horse by his enemies. She also posed nude for photographs.
Early in her career, French actress Sarah Bernhardt posed topless on several occasions for photographer Felix Nadar. At least one topless photograph of Bernhardt from 1873 survives. These nude sessions were not meant for public viewing but for the encouraging of theatrical employers or personal guests.
In the 1880s, Eadweard Muybridge used a device he called a zoopraxiscope to project a series of successive still photographs. The photos would then be played one after the other, giving the illusion of movement. Sometimes the same sequence would be filmed using several cameras. Many of Muybridge's photographic sessions using the zoopraxiscope had anonymous nude models, both female and male.
Early films: the silent era
The first films containing nudity were early erotic films. Production of such films commenced almost immediately after the invention of the motion picture. The earliest film containing a simulated nude scene is thought to be the 1897 After the Ball by French director George Méliès, in which the director's future wife wears a bodystocking to simulate nudity.Two of the earliest pioneers of erotica were French producer Eugène Pirou and director Albert Kirchner. Kirchner directed films for Pirou. The 1899 short film Le Coucher de la Mariée starred performing a bathroom striptease. Other French filmmakers considered that profits could be made from risqué films that showed women disrobing.
In Austria, Johann Schwarzer sought to break the dominance of French-produced erotic films being distributed by the Pathé brothers. Schwarzer formed his Saturn-Film production company, which between 1906 and 1911 produced 52 erotic productions, each of which contained young local women fully nude, to be shown at men-only theatre nights. These films were promoted as erotic and artistic, rather than pornographic, but in 1911, Saturn was dissolved by the censorship authorities and its films destroyed. However, copies of at least a half of the films have been found in private hands. Filmarchiv Austria has included four of Schwarzer's works on the Europa Film Treasures site: Das Sandbad, Baden Verboten, Das Eitle Stubenmädchen and Beim Fotografen. Internet Archive has included over twenty of Schwarzer's works on their site.
The 1911 Italian film Dante's Inferno, directed by Francesco Bertolini, is loosely adapted from Dante Alighieri's epic poem The Divine Comedy and inspired by the illustrations of Gustave Doré. In depicting tormented souls in Hell, there are frequent glimpses of nude male and female actors. Remade many times, the U.S. version, Dante's Inferno from the Fox Film Corporation, also contains groups of nude figures and scenes of flagellation.
Several early films of the silent era and early sound era include women in nude scenes, presented in a historical or religious context. One such film was the anticlerical Hypocrites, directed by Lois Weber and released in January 1915, which was the first American motion picture with a central role played entirely in the nude. It contained several sequences with Margaret Edwards appearing fully nude as a ghostly apparition representing Truth. Her scenes were created using innovative travelling double exposure sequences which made her appear as a semi-transparent spirit. Inspiration, released in November 1915, is believed to be the first American motion picture with a named leading actor in a nude scene. The nudity in the film was that of an artist's model, played by Audrey Munson. Munson appeared nude again in a similar role in the 1916 film Purity. In these films, Munson was a tableau vivant, not being required to move, and only her backside and breasts were in view. Annette Kellermann, the famous Australian swimming star, appeared fully nude in an active role in Fox's A Daughter of the Gods in 1916. Though shot from the front, most of Kellerman's body is covered by her long hair.
Historical and "exotic" contexts were also used as justifications for nude or near-nude scenes. In 1917, Fox produced the lavish Cleopatra in which Theda Bara wore a number of risqué outfits. Gordon Griffith appeared as a young naked Tarzan in Tarzan of the Apes, making him the first child actor to appear naked on screen. Nell Shipman appeared nude in the Canadian film Back to God's Country. Fox produced The Queen of Sheba in 1921 starring Betty Blythe, who displayed ample nudity even when wearing 28 different diaphanous costumes. There is also a brief moment of nudity in D. W. Griffith's Orphans of the Storm to display the debauchery of the French aristocracy. Hula is a feature film in which popular star Clara Bow performs a nude bathing scene.
Is Your Daughter Safe? was one of the earliest exploitation films in which nudity appeared. A compilation of medical documentary films and stock footage of nude scenes dating back to the 1900s, it was presented as an educational film about the dangers of venereal disease, white slavery, and prostitution. Exploitation short subjects with comedic plots and frequent nudity were also produced in the silent era. A few have survived, including Forbidden Daughters, directed by prominent nude photographer Albert Arthur Allen, Hollywood Script Girl, and Uncle Si and the Sirens. These were the forerunners of the "nudie" comedy feature films that emerged in the late 1950s. Years later, when the Hays Code came into force in the US, these films were considered too obscene to be reshown; most were lost.
In France in the 1920s, short-subject films were made of a topless Josephine Baker performing exotic dance routines. The 1922 Swedish/Danish silent horror film Häxan contained nude scenes, torture and sexual perversion. The film was banned in the U.S. and had to be edited before it was shown in other countries. The 1929 Soviet film Man with a Movie Camera by Dziga Vertov featured nudity within the context of naturism, including live childbirth.
American cinema since 1929
Overview
Filmmaking started in the 1890s, and the first feature-length film was produced in 1906. Nude scenes appeared in films from the start of the new invention. Several Hollywood films produced in the 1910s and 1920s, which contained only brief nudity, were controversial. Various groups objected to these features on moral grounds, and several states set up film censorship boards, arguing that such content was obscene and should be banned. Under pressure, the Motion Picture Association of America created its own censorship agency, the Hays Code, which brought an end to nudity and risqué content in films produced by the main Hollywood studios. The Code was adopted in 1930 and began to be effectively enforced in 1934. At the same time, the Catholic Legion of Decency was formed to keep an eye on the morals conveyed in films and indicate its disapproval by "condemning" films it considered morally objectionable. Theaters would not show a condemned film until this system declined in the 1960s.American social and official attitudes toward nudity later began to ease, and the Code came under repeated challenge in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1958, the New York Court of Appeals ruled that a film that merely contains nudity was not obscene. The Code was abandoned in 1968 in favor of the MPAA film rating system.
Even today, the presence of nudity in a film is invariably noted by critics and censors. Until the 1980s, male nudity was rarely shown on screen. Though female nudity was routinely treated with respect and solemnity, male nudity, when it finally found its way onto the screen, was generally treated humorously and mockingly.
Pre-Hays Code Hollywood, 1929–1934
The silent film era came to an end in 1929. In 1930, the Motion Picture Association of America drew up the Motion Picture Production Code, also known as the Hays Code, to raise the moral standards of films by directly restricting the materials which the major film studios could include in their films. The code authorized nudity only in naturist quasi-documentary films and in foreign films. However, the code was not enforced until 1934.After the end of silent films, movies with sound that included brief glimpses of nudity appeared as early as 1930 with All Quiet on the Western Front. Cecil B. DeMille, later known as a family entertainment specialist, included several nude scenes in his early films such as The Sign of the Cross, Four Frightened People, and Cleopatra. The "Dance of the Naked Moon" and orgy scene was cut for The Sign of the Cross in a 1938 reissue to comply with the production code. Other filmmakers followed suit, particularly in historical dramas such as The Scarlet Empress – which, among other things, shows topless women being burned at the stake – and contemporary stories filmed in exotic, mostly tropical, locations. Bird of Paradise, directed by King Vidor in 1932, featured a nude swimming scene with Dolores del Río, and Harry Lachman's Dante's Inferno featured many naked men and women suffering in hell.
The early Tarzan films with Johnny Weissmuller featured at least partial nudity justified by the natural surroundings in which the characters lived; in Tarzan and His Mate in 1934, Jane swims in the nude.
Under the pretense of being an educational ethnographic film, producers could justify showing half-clad natives in jungle epics and South-Sea-island documentaries. This was often done by editing in stock footage or fabricating new scenes with ethnic-looking stand-ins. Examples of docufiction include Ingagi, notorious for its fake scenes of semi-nude "native" girls filmed on a back lot. Forbidden Adventure is a 1912 Cambodia documentary with scenes added, for dramatic effect, of two explorers and a dozen topless female bearers, incongruously played by African-American women. The Sea Fiend, re-issued as Devil Monster, is a low-budget South-Sea drama spiced up with stock footage inserts of half-dressed native girls. Other films of questionable authenticity in this subgenre, sometimes referred to as goona-goona epics, include Moana, Trader Horn, The Blonde Captive, Tabu: A Story of the South Seas, Goona Goona a.k.a. Kriss, Isle of Paradise, Virgins of Bali, Bird of Paradise, Gow a.k.a. Gow the Killer, Inyaah, Jungle Goddess, Legong: Dance of the Virgins, Love Life of a Gorilla, Mau-Mau, and Naked Africa.
Due to the diaphanous or sheer nature of 1920s and 1930s fashions, female body parts or virtual nudity, or both, can be on display even when the performer is fully clothed. As a result, when the Hays Code came into force in 1934, studio wardrobe departments had to attire actresses in more conservative as well as contemporary dress.