Sex Seen: The Emergence of Modern Sexuality in America

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In a semidarkened room, Alma relates a tale of sex on the beach with her girlfriend and a pair of underage boys, an incident with dire consequences.

In what Varietydescribed at the time as ‘a masterpiece of discreet romantic eroticism,’ Sally (Fonda) and Luke (Voight) finally consummate their burgeoning romance. His handicap is the elephant in the room, but it does nothing to diminish the quality of their sex – in fact, Sally enjoys her first orgasm. Having spent their beach trip scrambling the boys’ image of themselves and their sexuality, Verdú initiates a threesome where, in their orgiastic delirium, Luna and Bernal share a sudden, passionate kiss. An ’80s version of Fifty Shades of Grey, Lyne’s soft-core erotic classic chronicles the brief relationship between a wealthy Wall Street arbitrator (Rourke, still human) and the young art-gallery employee (Basinger) he bends to his will.William Friedkin’s tawdry detective thriller stars Al Pacino as an undercover cop on a mission to uncover a killer in New York City’s gay leather scene. Inevitably, he gets in too deep. This undeniably erotic but also deeply sensitive French film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes for its free and frank portrayal of two young women, Adèle (Exarchopoulos), a schoolgirl, and Emma (Seydoux), an art student. They fall in love and face the challenge of sharing something in the long term other than sex. When chatty high-schooler Linda (Soles) and her boneheaded boyfriend Bob (Graham) get down to business in her parents’ bed, they have no idea that a killer is lurking downstairs. To paraphrase Basic Instinct, at least they get off before they get offed. Alex’s mother has invited a surgeon and his family to their beach house in Uruguay, to try out the idea of surgically ‘correcting’ her child’s ambiguous sex. The surgeon’s son hits it off with Alex, and the two end up having an unexpected sexual encounter. Frank meets an auto mechanic and later takes him home. This leads to the kinkiest sex in the film, complete with leather and water sports.

Czech director Machaty’s overheated melodrama about an impotent husband, a frisky young wife and the beau who spots her skinny-dipping made an international icon of 19-year-old Hedy Kiesler. US customs burned an uncensored print, but it didn’t stop MGM’s Louis B. Mayer from signing up the starlet, renaming her Hedy Lamarr and launching a new Hollywood goddess. Sensual and sensitive, funny and forlorn, Alfonso Cuarón’s break-out follows two exceptionally horny teenage boys (Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal, both also breaking out) on a transformative road trip through Mexico with an alluring older woman (Maribel Verdú). One evening in a park near Beijing’s Forbidden City (the Chinese capital’s prime cruising destination), a cop arrests A Lan, one of the furtive men seeking companionship. The ensuing interrogation lasts all night.

For his first sex scene, Diggler (Wahlberg) is paired with veteran porn icon Amber Waves (Moore). As the astonished crew witnesses the emergence of a major new talent, Amber’s warm maternal instincts help put her young costar at ease. The movie is full of professional penetration, but this scene – the Big Bang at the beginning of Dirk’s new life – is unique for its sweetness. Based on Annie Proulx’s story about the love affair between two cowboys, Ang Lee’s beautiful, swooning film starred Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger as range hands who fall in love.

When 20th-century kids Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon are mysteriously beamed into the monochrome world of 1950s TV show Pleasantville, they bring with them a whole lot of new and dangerous ideas. This German drama tells of Inge (Werner), a woman in her late 60s. Her marriage has lost its spark, so she starts an affair with Karl (Westphal), a man a decade older. In the ultimate show of commitment to their characters, the Idiots retreat to their house in the suburbs of Denmark and launch into a haphazard orgy, all while still pretending to be handicapped (they refer to the performance as ‘spazzing’). Karen isn’t explicitly involved in the action, but the rest of her newfound pals are a jumble of naked bodies on the living-room floor, erect penises poking out in all directions as the men and women groan and shake with fake palsies.Up in the sweltering attic, Elio writhes in sexual frustration. He takes a peach, crushes his thumb into it, removes the pit, and finds a cathartic use for the fleshy cavity he’s made. Then Oliver discovers him, and things get even hotter. Russell’s enduringly controversial masterpiece revisits the severe religious hysteria of 17th-century France, where a priest is bequeathed control of a small rural city only to find himself the defendant in a witchcraft trial. When Adèle and Emma first hit the bedsheets, Kechiche shows their lovemaking in intimate detail: a long, no-holds-barred sex scene. Amid the film’s labyrinthine not-exactly-plot, Hollywood wanna-be Betty (Watts) and amnesiac Rita (Harring) find a dead woman in a stranger’s apartment. They freak out and return home, where eventually the mood changes and they have sex for the first time. It’s love, it’s confusion, and it’s extremely memorable. Up there with Some Like it Hotand Annie Hall, this is one of the all-time rom-com greats. Sally (Ryan) and Harry (Crystal) stay friends for over 12 years – through traumas, break-ups and divorce – before they realize they’re made for each other.

A widower (Brando) and a young Parisian woman (Schneider) engage in an anonymous sexual relationship that can’t honestly be called ‘casual’, and soon goes beyond gratification into realms of dominance and obsession. Bluntly adapting Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel of the same name, Scorsese’s most controversial film portrays the Son of God as a fallible man, liable to the vices and temptations with which all human beings must contend.Possibly the most famous X-rated film of all time, comedic sex-romp Deep Throatstars 23-year-old Lovelace as a woman who discovers her clitoris is in her throat. Hope has grown tired of watching her protégé rise up the ranks. She hooks up with a fellow gymnast and frenemy (Stan) who took her virginity years earlier. Their athletic sex is a staggering display of sweaty leaps, lunges and impossible positions. Hedy’s much-cut nude swimming brought her notoriety, though even more groundbreaking is a semiclothed love scene, where the camera rests on her face as passion mounts. Note also the highly symbolic string of pearls falling to the floor. Not a sex scene, per se. We’re talking about the famous fake orgasm in Katz’s Deli, in which squeaky-clean Ryan reaches a screaming climax (presumably over the pastrami). Urged on by a conspiring Pepi, punky Bom stands on a chair and pees on meek Luci. Why? Because Luci is overheating of course. Next thing you know, they’re an item.