Part I: Appreciating True Erotica in Cinema

Even though I am of a certain age, I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m an aficionada of true cinematic erotica. Unfortunately it does not exist in today’s offerings which can only be described as soft porn and even beyond that. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica:

The word erotica typically applies to works in which the sexual element is regarded as part of the larger aesthetic aspect. It is usually distinguished from pornography, which can also have literary merit but which is usually understood to have sexual arousal as its main purpose.

Erotica should be what arouses sensuality and sexual desire in the imagination. Pornography is a cheap substitute to genuine sensuality by replacing it with naked thrusts and bursts of faux gasps of passion. How trite compared to visions created in our minds stimulated by a simple touch, look or gesture. Last night I watched the TCM channel which ran a surprising example of true erotica-Tarzan-the Ape Man.

Laugh if you will but Johnny Weismuller and Maureen O’Sullivan generate more heat in this 1932 action adventure film then any of the actors and actresses starring buck naked and writhing in today’s features.

I had seen the Tarzan movie on TV as a very young girl and didn’t quite understand anything other than the exciting animal scenes that would enrage PETA today. This time around I was fascinated by the primal sexual tension between the virginal Jane and her handsome savage abductor Tarzan; the feral child raised by apes to manhood and the future Lord Greystoke. Jane has warmed up to Tarzan as he has saved her time and again from other jungle creatures. After frolicking in the water, Jane lies back on some branches and puts her hand on Tarzan’s bare chest. After she says to him, “I bet you don’t even know what I mean by a kiss,” he looks at her, she looks back at her, and the long silence between them speaks volumes. He then looks up into the trees which holds her sleeping area and throws her over his shoulders. The next shot is Jane, stretching her arms behind her head and blissfully smiling, saying that she’s so happy. Her self satisfied expression of ecstasy says all we need to know about that night of love in the treetops with her Apollo. Needless to say, it’s all off screen and in the televised screening I viewed, Tarzan and Jane never even kiss.

Another eye opening oldie was with Marlene Dietrich in the 1933 torcher “Song of Songs”. Dietrich portrays an innocent country girl who meets a handsome sculptor. She agrees to pose nude for him but we only see her from the shoulders up. The artist however, is molding a full size nude statue and as he slowly caresses and smoothes the clay over its breasts- whew! That’s erotica.

The irony is that these films and many more like them were made under the guidelines of the Motion Picture production Code a.k.a. Hays Code. One of the restrictions in the code was: “Scenes of Passion” were not to be introduced when not essential to the plot. “Excessive and lustful kissing” was to be avoided, along with any other treatment that might “stimulate the lower and baser element.”

Although the code was not seriously enforced until 1934, it’s clear that filmmakers in that era were particularly adroit in producing erotica that still met the stringent format of the Hays Code. That skill is sorely missing in today’s directors and screenwriters who rely on the obligatory sex scene to score an R rating.

There have been a few notable exceptions that induced swoons and sighs sans nudity, grunts and groans, but these are at least a few decades old. In the 1979 movie “Tim”, a very young, gorgeous Mel Gibson suddenly grabbing Piper Laurie and planting a wet one on the older woman’s shocked face sent hearts racing. My husband, who admits to having seen “Deep Throat ” and “Behind the Green Door,” found the love scenes in the aptly named, “Sword of Lancelot” (1963) much more arousing.

As a child of the sixties and a visual artist, I’m not writing this as a Victorian prude but rather as a film buff who has observed with increasing dismay the lack of effort from Hollywood in producing quality sensual art that does not border on the obscene.

Can anyone claim that the 1981 remake of “The Postman Always Rings Twice” was an improvement over the original 1946 one starring John Garfield and Lana Turner because Jack Nicholson boinked Jessica Lange on a table?

[Tomorrow: Modern Cinema Hasn’t a Clue about Eroticism.]