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 (MPAA) 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 (1932),
Four Frightened People (1934), and
Cleopatra (1934). 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 (1934) – 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 (
Maureen O'Sullivan,
doubled by Olympic swimmer
Josephine McKim) 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 (1930), notorious for its fake scenes of semi-nude "native" girls filmed on a back lot.
Forbidden Adventure (1937) 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 (1936), re-issued as
Devil Monster (1946), 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 (1926),
Trader Horn,
The Blonde Captive,
Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (all 1931),
Goona Goona a.k.a.
Kriss,
Isle of Paradise,
Virgins of Bali,
Bird of Paradise (all 1932),
Gow a.k.a.
Gow the Killer (1934, re-released as
Cannibal Island in 1956),
Inyaah, Jungle Goddess (1934),
Legong: Dance of the Virgins (1935),
Love Life of a Gorilla (1937),
Mau-Mau (1955), and
Naked Africa (1957). 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.
Hays Code Hollywood, 1934–1960s Though in place, the Hays Code was not enforced until 1934, spurred on in response to objections voiced by several groups to the content of Hollywood films – provoked at least partly by the notorious 1933 Czech film
Ecstasy, which was highly controversial in its time largely because of a nude swimming scene by
Hedy Lamarr as well as perhaps the first non-pornographic film to portray sexual intercourse, although never showing more than the actors' faces. It has also been called the first on-screen depiction of a female orgasm. The restrictions of the production code were strictly enforced from 1934 until the early 1960s to restrict nudity in films produced by the studios. United States-produced films were also under the scrutiny of moral guardians, such as the Catholic Legion of Decency, which had an influence on the content and subject matter of films in the 1930s and 1940s. They were also subject to constraints of state censorship authorities. These bodies followed inconsistent guidelines through which the film producers had to navigate, with some films being exhibited in cut versions in some states. The Hays Code was so strict that even the display of cleavage was controversial. Producer
Howard Hughes created controversy by his emphasis on cleavage, especially that of
Jane Russell, first in the 1941 film
The Outlaw and also in the 1953 film
The French Line. The film was found objectionable under the Hays Code because of Russell's "breast shots in bathtub, cleavage and breast exposure" while some of her
decollete gowns were regarded to be "intentionally designed to give a bosom peep-show effect beyond even extreme decolletage". Both films were condemned by the Legion of Decency and were released only in cut versions. Independent film producers – i.e., those outside the studio system – were not bound by the restrictions of the Hays Code. However, they were subject to state censorship regimes and could be excluded from so-called family theatres. These films claimed to be educational and dealt with taboo topics such as drug parties, prostitution, and sexually transmitted infections. In the course of presenting the message, nudity at times made an appearance. These films, which emerged in the 1930s, were obliged to play in independent theaters or traveled across the United States in "roadshow" fashion. They were normally low-budget, and described as sensationalized
exploitation films. Using this framework, brief nude scenes of women appeared in
Maniac (1934) and
Sex Madness (1937), and nude swimming sequences in
Marihuana (1936) and
Child Bride (1938).
Child Bride was controversial because it included a topless and skinny-dipping scene by 12-year-old
Shirley Mills, though in some versions the topless scene was cut out. Exploitative films with pseudo-ethnographic pretensions continued well into the 1960s. For example,
Mau-Mau (1955), presented as a documentary of the violent nationalist uprising in Kenya, played the
grindhouse circuit. Fabricated scenes filmed in front of a painted backdrop of an African village show nude and semi-clad "native" women being raped, strangled, and stabbed by machete-wielding maniacs. Other films containing nudity were the early underground 8mm
pornographic films and fetish reels which, due to various censorship regimes, had only limited (usually clandestine) means of distribution and were only shown in private until the 1970s.
Childhood nudity 20th century films often depicted nude boys at a time when boys often engaged in
nude swimming and used
communal showers. The 1960 film
Pollyanna begins with a scene of boys swimming nude in a river in a 1910s
rural American setting. The 1968 film
Robby, based upon
Robinson Crusoe, shows full frontal nudity of two prepubescent boys for most of the film. The 1976 film
1900 contains a scene where two prepubescent boys undress, compare their
penises, and discuss
masturbation methods. As late as 1990,
A Cry in the Wild depicted a nude adolescent boy diving into a lake. However, depictions of nude girls occasionally led to controversy—the 1938 film
Child Bride received bans and backlash for its depiction of 12-year-old
Shirley Mills engaging in nude swimming. The film failed to receive a certificate of approval from the
Production Code Administration because of the onscreen female child nudity.
Nudist films Nudist films first appeared in the early 1930s as documentaries,
Utopian and docu-dramas promoting the healthy lifestyle of the naturist movement in Europe and the U.S. Earliest examples include
This Nude World (1933), a narrated documentary filmed in the U.S., France, and Germany, and
Elysia, Valley of the Nude (1933), a docu-drama filmed at a
nudist camp in Elsinore, California. Throughout the thirties, nudist films like
Why Nudism? (1933),
Nudist Land (1937), and
The Unashamed (1938) flourished in road shows, but disappeared entirely in the forties. The nudist-camp movie was revived in the 1950s with
Garden of Eden (1954), the first naturist film shot in color. Changes in censorship laws led to a flood of films such as
Naked Venus (1958) directed by
Edgar G. Ulmer,
Nudist Memories (1959), and
Daughter of the Sun (1962) by
David F. Friedman and
Herschell Gordon Lewis.
Doris Wishman was probably the most active producer/director in the genre, with eight nudist films to her credit between 1960 and 1964, with
Hideout in the Sun (1960),
Nude on the Moon (1961),
Diary of a Nudist (1961),
Blaze Starr Goes Nudist (1962),
Gentlemen Prefer Nature Girls (1963),
Playgirls International (1963),
Behind the Nudist Curtain (1964), and
The Prince and the Nature Girl (1964).
Edward Craven Walker (1918–2000), the inventor of the
lava lamp, was a major figure in the naturist movement. He made three nudist films under the name Michael Keatering. They were
Travelling Light (1959),
Sunswept (1962), and
Eves on Skis (1963). Ramsey Harrington produced
The Nudist Story (1960) (retitled "For Members Only" or "Pussycat's Paradise" for the U.S. market), Arthur Knight produced
My Bare Lady (1963) and
Leo Orenstein (under the pseudonym Alan Overton) directed
Have Figure, Will Travel (1963). Exploitation producer
George Weiss also released films such as
Nudist Life (1961), which comprised vintage nudist camp footage. In the same year, in England,
Harrison Marks released
Naked as Nature Intended which starred
Pamela Green and was a box office success (Marks soon went to make softcore pornographic and caning / spanking fetish films). In that film, the context for the presentation of female nudity was the fantasies of the main character. The film is widely considered the first pornographic feature not confined to under-the-counter distribution, and the film was commercially successful. Russ Meyer made two more nudie-cuties:
Wild Gals of the Naked West, and
Eve and the Handyman, starring his wife Eve in the title role. For the next few years a wave of such films, known as "nudies" or "nudie-cuties", were produced for adult theatres (in the United States sometimes called
grindhouse theatres). The films bailed out movie houses that were facing stiff competition from television at the time. Nudie-cutie advertising was packed with tag-lines such as "You'll Never See This on TV". Films in this genre included
Doris Wishman's science fiction spoof
Nude on the Moon (1961), the
Herschell Gordon Lewis and
David F. Friedman film
The Adventures of Lucky Pierre (1961), and
Ed Woods horror-nudie
Orgy of the Dead (1965), with its bevy of topless dancers from beyond the grave, following his
Western screenplay
Revenge of the Virgins (1959), which shows a fierce tribe of bare-breasted native women hunting a group of treasure seekers. There were very many other similar films and sequels. One of the most renowned nudie-cuties is
The Imp-probable Mr Weegee, a pseudo-documentary in which famed crime photographer
Arthur Fellig, nicknamed "Mr. WeeGee", stars as himself. In the film, he falls in love with a store window dummy. Besides
Russ Meyer, the only director in this field to go on to critical success is
Francis Ford Coppola, who began his career writing and directing a pair of nudie comedies in 1962,
Tonight for Sure and
The Bellboy and the Playgirls.
Harrison Marks's
The Naked World of Harrison Marks (1967) and
Nine Ages of Nakedness (1969) could be considered late additions to the genre.
Challenges to the Hays Code, 1960–1966 In
Michael Powell's controversial British film
Peeping Tom, released in 1960, a model (
Pamela Green) lies back on a bed waiting to be photographed by the killer in a key scene. She undoes her top briefly exposing one of her breasts. The scene is regarded as the first female nude scene in a mainstream postwar English-language feature film, and notably the first such scene for a British film. The movie was panned by critics at the time and it reportedly destroyed Powell's directing career in the UK. The film is now seen as a
cult classic;
Martin Scorsese re-released it in 1979. Another 1960 release, the American horror film
Macumba Love, featured a brief topless scene of
June Wilkinson frolicking in the ocean. This segment, which caused a sensation at the time, only was seen in the European release of the film. By now the Production Code had been revised so that it served less as a doctrine of rules and more as a workable set of precautions, including those on sex and nudity, to which filmmakers were advised on the more graphic depictions and given exceptions that could be made. It gave the MPAA the power to label certain films that were seen as containing adult or provocative material as "Suggested for Mature Audiences".
First major nude scenes in studio films The
unfinished 1962 film ''
Something's Got to Give'' included a nude pool swim scene with
Marilyn Monroe. For the filming of the scene, a body stocking was made for Monroe, and the set was to be closed to all but necessary crew. However, Monroe asked photographers to come in, including
William Woodfield, and took off the body stocking and swam in only a flesh-colored bikini bottom. After filming was completed, Monroe was photographed in the bikini bottom, and without it. Had the project been completed and released as planned, it would have been the first Hollywood film of the sound era to feature a mainstream actress in the nude. However, this was not the first instance of Monroe being filmed in the nude. In the 1961
John Huston film
The Misfits, Monroe, playing the lead female character, drops a sheet during an intimate scene, exposing herself on camera. Huston, however, decided not to include the footage in the final cut, as he believed it was of no value to the story. The distinction of being the first mainstream American actress to appear nude in a starring role went to actress
Jayne Mansfield in the 1963 film
Promises! Promises!, though her pubic area is never visible on film. The film was banned in Cleveland and some other cities, though later the Cleveland court decided the nude scenes in the film were not lewd. Both the original and an edited version enjoyed box office success elsewhere. However,
Chicago Sun-Times movie critic
Roger Ebert wrote, "Finally in
Promises! Promises! she does what no Hollywood star ever does except in desperation. She does a nudie. In 1963, that kind of box office appeal was all she had left." Mansfield's autobiographical book ''Jayne Mansfield's Wild, Wild World
—which she co-wrote with Mickey Hargitay—was published directly after the release of the film. It contains 32 pages of black-and-white photographs from the movie printed on glossy paper. Photographs of a naked Mansfield on the set were published in the June 1963 edition of Playboy''.
The Pawnbroker, released in 1964, breached the Motion Picture Production Code with actresses
Linda Geiser and Thelma Oliver (who later became the mystic and yoga teacher
Krishna Kaur Khalsa) fully exposing their breasts. Allied Artists refused to cut the film and released it to theaters without a Production Code seal. The nudity resulted in a backlash from moral and religious conservatives, including the Catholic Legion (which by that time had become a virtually powerless fringe organization). However, critical and overall public response was positive, and many Catholics rebuked the Legion's condemnation of the film. The National Council of Churches even gave the movie an award for Best Picture of the Year. The 1965 thriller
The Collector contained mild nudity of
Samantha Eggar and added to the challenge to the blanket prohibition of nudity in films. That same year
Paula Prentiss performed a strip-tease in the
Woody Allen-scripted comedy ''
What's New Pussycat?, which ended up on the cutting room floor but resurfaced on the pages of Playboy
, and Julie Christie appeared nude in the British drama film Darling''. U.S. release prints of the film and even later U.S. video and DVD versions cut the nudity. In 1966,
Michelangelo Antonioni's seminal film
Blowup was the first English-language film to show a woman's pubic hair. Antonioni's
mod-influenced murder-mystery contained a scene involving two girls undressing before being chased around a studio by a fashion photographer, who wrestles them to the ground and exposes their torsos. There are additional scenes depicting sexuality and partial nudity, as well as blatant drug use. The film was produced in Britain and released to American audiences by
MGM without Production Code approval, the first mainstream motion picture containing nudity to be released by a major studio in the US and the first open defiance by a major studio of the Code. That same year the biblical epic based on the book of Genesis,
The Bible: In the Beginning..., was released by
Twentieth Century Fox featuring a nude sequence of Adam and Eve. Another epic, the historical film
Hawaii (1966), featured scenes of topless native girls.
John Frankenheimer's 1966 sci-fi thriller
Seconds contained an extended sequence of full frontal male and female nudity that was deleted from the original American release in which bohemian revelers dance and play in a wine vat. By 1967, the MPAA had abandoned the Production Code altogether, and in November 1968, the voluntary MPAA film rating system was implemented. The rating system has changed in minor ways since its inception, but the type and intensity of nudity continue to be rating criteria.
Sexploitation films in the U.S. By the mid-1960s, the novelty of the purely voyeuristic nudie-cutie/nudist camp comedy had dissipated. A new cycle of more realistic sex dramas and gritty, film noir-inspired crime stories (mostly filmed in black-and-white) emerged to dominate the adult market. These films had a much harder edge and dealt with racy subjects such as infidelity, wife-swapping, prostitution, lesbianism, drugs, white slavery, rape, psycho-killers, sex cults, decadence, sadomasochism, and sexual perversion. The films that concentrate on the dark and violent side of sexuality are generally known as "roughies". Prime examples of roughie
sexploitation include Lewis and Friedman's
Scum of the Earth! (1963); Russ Meyer's
Lorna (1964); Joseph P. Mawra's Olga trilogy,
White Slaves of Chinatown, ''Olga's Girls
, and Olga's House of Shame'' (all 1964); R. Lee Frost's
The Defilers (1965); Doris Wishman's
Bad Girls Go to Hell (1965);
The Sexploiters (1965);
The Agony of Love (1966); and
Michael Findlay's
Body of a Female (1965) and psycho-killer trilogy starting with
The Touch of Her Flesh (1967). Sexploitation films initially played in grindhouse theatres and struggling independent theaters. However, by the end of the 1960s they were playing in established cinema chains. As the genre developed during the 1960s films began showing scenes of simulated sex. By the late 1960s, the films were attracting a larger and broader audience, including couples rather than the single males who originally made up the vast majority of patrons. The genre rapidly declined in the early 1970s due to advertising bans, the closure of many grindhouses and drive-in theaters, and the growth of hardcore pornography in the "
Golden Age of Porn". During this period a number of
adult films that were sexually explicit received general theatrical releases, including
Blue Movie (1969),
Mona the Virgin Nymph (1970),
Deep Throat (1972), and others. Frost's
Love Camp 7 (1968) was the forerunner of the women in prison and
Nazi exploitation subgenres, which continue to be produced. Their stories feature women in prison who are subjected to sexual and physical abuse, typically by sadistic male or female prison wardens and guards. The genre also features many films in which imprisoned women engage in lesbian sex. These films discarded all moralistic pretensions and were works of pure fantasy intended only to titillate the audience with a lurid mix of sex and violence, including voyeurism (strip searches, group shower scenes, cat-fights) to sexual fantasies (lesbianism), to fetishism (bondage, whipping, degradation), and outright sadism (rape, sexual slavery, beatings, torture, cruelty).
Since 1968 In 1968, the Hays Code was replaced by the
MPAA film rating system. Since then, nudity in various forms has become more common. A number of actors have appeared nude or partially nude in films, with female nudity in particular being common; full-frontal male nudity, while much rarer, has increased in films and
streaming content. Notable actresses who have appeared topless include
Jane Fonda (
Coming Home, 1978),
Julie Andrews (
S.O.B., 1981),
Kate Winslet (
Titanic, 1997),
Gwyneth Paltrow (
Shakespeare in Love, 1998),
Reese Witherspoon (
Twilight, 1998),
Rene Russo (
The Thomas Crown Affair, 1999),
Katie Holmes (
The Gift, 2000), and
Halle Berry (
Swordfish, 2001). In an interview in March 2007, Berry said that her toplessness in
Swordfish was "gratuitous" to the movie, but that she needed to do so to get over her fear of nudity, and that it was the best thing she did for her career. Having overcome her inhibitions, she went on to a role in ''
Monster's Ball, which required her to be nude in a sex scene featuring her and Billy Bob Thornton, and which won her an Academy Award for Best Actress. Some actors prefer to use body doubles or prosthetics for nude scenes. Ewan McGregor (The Pillow Book, Trainspotting 1996), and Bradley Cooper (Nightmare Alley'', 2021). In 2007, writer/director
Judd Apatow announced "I'm gonna get a penis or a vagina in every movie I do from now on. ... It really makes me laugh in this day and age, with how psychotic our world is, that anyone is troubled by seeing any part of the human body." On 11 October 2010, the MPAA's Classification and Rating Administration announced that it would specifically note in the future which films contained "male nudity", in direct response to parental concerns about the content of the
satire film
Brüno. Actors and actresses are typically informed of nude scenes well in advance, and nudity waivers require directors to state what will be shown and its presentation. This is generally stipulated in the
nudity clause of a performer's contract. Actress
Anne Hathaway, who appeared nude in movies
Brokeback Mountain (2005) and
Love & Other Drugs (2010), said in an interview with the
National Public Radio, "The director submits a shot list, and you look over them for approval. And a lot of times, if an actor feels the shot demands a lot of them, they'll demand money for it." In the wake of the
MeToo movement, in which multiple actors and actresses alleged to being forced to push past their comfort zones in the name of artistic integrity, the use of
intimacy coordinators has become a common industry practice to ensure the actors' boundaries are respected and that there is consent given for any nude scenes. The tastefulness of nude scenes in film continues to be a hotly debated issue in the United States. Some journalists have argued that scenes of nudity may hurt a film's commercial potential. == European cinema since 1929 ==