Julia Ilkiv. Desperation, from the series «State», 2023. Art design: huxley.media via Photoshop / Facebook, «Sil-sоl»
What is erotica? It is the artistic depiction of human sensual experiences in art. Erotica is often confused with pornography. The latter is indecent, not because it shows indecency but because it shows everything as it is. This is what sets it apart from erotica, which plays with our imagination. The erotic screen leaves much unsaid, showing only… the sensual experiences of a person.
Erotic scenes in cinema have served as a semi-forbidden lure for viewers for nearly a century, often existing without any real connection to the film’s plot. In the works of great directors, erotica and sex are usually more than just erotica and more than just sex because they signify something beyond mere physical action.
Sex, as a metaphor, can illustrate power dynamics (as in «American Beauty», 1999) or, for example, serve as a critical plot point illustrating humiliation in a character’s journey (as in «Leaving Las Vegas», 1995). But sex did not always have a place on the screen. Its legalization, including as a metaphor, was a long and challenging process divided into four distinct stages — scarcity, saturation, fulfillment, and oversaturation.
The first stage belongs to the early 20th century, when the screen, still shrouded in innocence, took its initial steps into the realm of erotica, carried by the femme fatales with vampiric names like Theda Bara and Asta Nielsen. They exuded sexuality, even without baring themselves, as cinema is an art of symbols and implications.
Several significant erotic breakthroughs marked the revolutionary avant-garde of the 1930s. First, the master of cinematic poetry, Alexander Dovzhenko, daringly bared actress Yelena Maksimova in his masterpiece «Earth» (1930) as she portrayed the tragedy of losing a loved one. The young girl, frantically running around the empty house completely naked, was not seductive. Her unsettling nudity was a metaphor for raw, burning emotion — the feeling of loss. Three years later, Czech avant-gardist Gustav Machaty created a film that was scandalous even by its title alone — «Ecstasy» (1933).
In this experimental melodrama about a love triangle, the first-ever on-screen bedroom scene was shown, leading to the film’s ban in some European countries and copies even being publicly burned.
By the mid-decade, fierce censorship took hold in Europe, the USSR, and the USA, enforcing screen morality. All forms of erotica were marginalized until the mid-1950s. Physical intimacy between a man and a woman on screen was replaced by dance, song, or powerful metaphor hinting at such closeness.
For instance, Elia Kazan resolved the rape scene in «A Streetcar Named Desire» (1951) by depicting a mirror shattering in the frame, and the seduction scene was conveyed through Alex North’s jazz improvisations. The great and terrifying Alfred Hitchcock came up with an even more complex solution in his thriller «North by Northwest» (1959): Cary Grant pulls Eva Marie Saint onto the upper berth of a train compartment, she moans, they merge in a passionate kiss, and the train enters a tunnel. The implication is unmistakable.
MORALITY UNBOUND BY CONVENTION
The dam burst in Europe around the late 1950s, even before the sexual revolution arrived. Paris Match journalist Roger Vadim’s debut film, «And God Created Woman» (1956), introduced the world to a universal symbol of eroticism — Brigitte Bardot, a former ballet student and, incidentally, the director’s wife.
The screen goddess presented an astonished audience not just with a captivating and utterly naked body but also with a morality unbound by convention. Her character, Juliette, an orphan, deceives a wealthy benefactor and marries the shy Michel, all the while secretly and passionately in love with his older brother Antoine.
For post-war France, «And God Created Woman» was like a punch to the gut. There were no new waves or Godard provocations yet, but this film was already pushing boundaries. The French were convinced that their new star spent the entire movie without underwear and actually engaged in actual sex with her on-screen partner, the young Jean-Louis Trintignant. Today, all of this seems entirely innocent, enchanting with its tenderly patriarchal world untouched by globalization and militant feminism.
Similarly, Anne Bancroft’s attempts to seduce a confused young Dustin Hoffman in «The Graduate» (1967) through a cascade of provocatively erotic scenes were a true challenge. The scenes featuring fragments of her nude body were a bold statement.
«WHEN I UNDRESS, I SET MYSELF FREE!»
Nevertheless, it was in the mid-1960s that cinematic erotica entered its second phase — «saturation», a period of contact and complete immersion. In the West, sexual values, orientations, and norms were transforming. This era would later be known as the sexual revolution, with its slogan: «When I undress, I set myself free!»
Nudity and unabashed sexuality became a pretext for discussing something more profound than just sex. On-screen erotica evolved into a tool of protest, social rebellion, and outright defiance.
LAST TANGO IN PARIS
However, perhaps the most erotic decade in cinema was the 1970s, with its crowning jewel being «Last Tango in Paris» (1972). The story of the American Paul, who locks in an animalistic embrace with a young Parisian woman right on the floor of a rented apartment, with no language, no name, and no past, only pretends to be an erotic drama.
Bertolucci crafted a classic tragedy where the central conflict can only be resolved by death. Here, sex is a symbol of nature. Marlon Brando’s character is a neophyte and romantic, a typical hero of the 20th century, a vanishing breed. Haunted by the past and suffering in the present, he desperately seeks a way to return — to nature, to the primal, to invent a new language and start anew.
For him, that language is anonymous sex without names or attachments. Brando growls and whimpers with such intensity that you worry for his health. Then, he falls in love and is the first to break the unspoken pact of anonymity. He slips into ordinary humanity and immediately loses. «Last Tango…» is a story of an ending.
«Last Tango» is an astonishing film that strips everyone bare: the actors, the creators, and the audience. Rated X (for its eroticism, nudity, and coarse language), it became a groundbreaking work primarily due to its portrayal of brutal, unrestrained passion (with the notorious scene of anal sex involving butter), which had never been so explicitly depicted in any artistic film before.
Intellectuals at the time found this raw exposure revolutionary. Critics wrote, «Bertolucci and Brando have changed the face of art». The film’s premiere date (October 14, 1972) was hailed as «a milestone in the history of cinema, comparable to that evening in 1913 when Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring heralded the arrival of modern music».
