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There's a moment in Frangois Truffaut's "Shoot the Piano Player" when a young woman has slipped out of her clothes and into bed, gearing up to make love. We've already seen her breasts, but her partner reaches over and pulls the sheet modestly around them, saying mischievously, "That's the way it is in the movies, exactly like that."
It must have been such a funny little jibe in 1960, in a French movie (and everyone knew how racy those foreign films could be) made by a director enamored of American movie tradition. But what's surprising about the joke is that almost 40 years later, it's more apt than ever.
Supposedly there's more sex, and more nudity, in the movies today than ever before. But if there is, where is it? It's everywhere, if you listen to people at the extreme end of the spectrum, including fundamentalists and other stay-at-home cultural know-it-alls who think they know the content of most contemporary movies even though they actually go to very few. But even longtime serious moviegoers may not have thought much about the way sex is dealt with in contemporary movies, compared with the latitude filmmakers had in the late '60s and '70s. Concerned parents are often troubled by a vague sense of dread about the culture in general, but they don't always see a wide enough spectrum of movies to know exactly how sex is currently dealt with -- or, more frequently, not dealt with.
The issue of nudity in the movies also comes loaded with baggage left over from feminist attitudes of the '60s and '70s; some women would still argue that every woman who appears nude in a movie is being objectified. And others -- like the Boston Phoenix columnist who wrote an open letter to Susan Sarandon after "White Palace" came out, denouncing her for looking so good and giving such a great on-screen blow job that she only made the rest of us feel bad -- use movies as lightning rods for their own insecurities. It's convenient to denounce beautiful actresses, especially naked ones, as the natural enemy of womankind's self-esteem. But would it be preferable to have a culture geared toward not hurting our feelings? What's more, the women who feel most threatened may not have thought about all the ramifications that restricted nudity in the movies -- or excessively Puritan attitudes toward it -- could have on the art form in general.
The truth is that nudity is more of a dirty word in Hollywood than ever before. Starting with the advent of AIDS in the early 1980s, Hollywood's attitudes toward sex in the movies have become increasingly constricted; sex is rarely dealt with as frankly or with as much freewheeling ease as it was in the movies of the '70s. And anyone who's followed the movie industry with even half an eye open over the past 10 years or so knows that the Motion Picture Association of America ratings board is almost completely intolerant of sex. The release of James Toback's 1998 "Two Girls and a Guy" was held up while Toback battled the ratings board over a love scene that it said would earn the film an NC-17 rating; the board accepted the scene after Toback ended up making a few barely perceptible cuts, but the episode is indicative of how hard the MPAA is willing to dig its heels in when it comes to issues of sex.
There are probably plenty of people who simply say, So what? Who cares if there are fewer exposed body parts to look at in the movie theaters, especially in an age when too much casual sex in real life is liable to kill you? Maybe we've circled back to a time when all we need are symbols and suggestions -- a lingering fade to black, for example, to suggest that a couple are about to embark on a night of mad, passionate sex, like we used to get in '30s comedies. (There's something distressingly backward, though, about making a conscious choice to handle sexual content this way simply out of cowardice -- rather than out of necessity, as was the case with moviemakers in the '30s.) And there's some truth to the notion that naked skin isn't necessarily erotic by itself -- you really don't have to see everything in order to get turned on.
But the moviegoing climate in America today smacks a little too much of prudery, prissiness and, above all, fear. Nudity is handled much more gracefully and naturally in European movies, and is accepted much more casually by audiences. For an actor or actress, it's simply part of what goes with playing a role: Samantha Morton's nudity in the superb 1998 English film "Under the Skin" is so essential to the character's situation that it's anything but shocking. The nudity we see in contemporary American movies is often so carefully and artfully shot -- with sheets and blankets fastidiously arranged just so, lest we catch a forbidden glimpse of a breast or a penis -- that sometimes it barely registers. There's so much calculation to it that it ends up having no meaning.
If female moviegoers are the ones who are made to feel uncomfortable at the sight of a naked actress on-screen, they should also consider that cultivating a climate in which women's bodies are kept under wraps, revealed chastely and tastefully or not at all, isn't the answer to making them feel better -- if anything, it's only likely to make them feel more objectified. Mainstream American movies that deal with women's sensuality (or anybody's sensuality) in any significant way are rare, and the ones that do are either brutally misunderstood by audiences, slapped with an NC-17 rating or both -- as was the case with Philip Kaufman's 1990 "Henry and June." The more strictures placed on filmmakers and the actors they work with -- either by the ratings board, by the studios who are cowed by it or, more indirectly, by audiences -- the smaller their window for portraying experiences that actually reflect our own.
The vast majority of established actresses will not do nude scenes, presumably out of fear that they won't be taken seriously as practitioners of their craft. You can hardly blame them, given the fact that there's a nation of moviegoers out there -- many of them women -- who believe that ambitious young actresses will do anything, including take all their clothes off, just to get attention. While it's true that there's no shortage of actresses in revealing clothing on the magazine stands, it's hardly fair that the amount of skin they're willing to expose should be so readily held against them, regardless of their talent.
Actresses can be as judgmental about their peers as anyone. "I see these young women who are so overtly sexual," says Reese Witherspoon in the May Allure. "The pictures they pose for, and the outfits they wear, with their boobs pushed up like earmuffs. And it's like, that's wonderful, hon, when you are 20 years old, but what will you do when you are 35 and your boobs don't want to go that way anymore? Where does your self-worth or personal pride come from then?" That comment is particularly depressing, and puzzling, from an actress who's shown that it's possible to convey straightforward sexuality without shortchanging your brains. (She herself has done a nude scene, in "Twilight.")
And although we're all supposed to have gotten past judging a woman's worth by her sexual behavior, in the minds of much of the contemporary moviegoing public, a woman who takes her clothes off on-screen becomes something other than an actor -- the word "slut" comes immediately to mind. Many moviegoers seem to expect purity out of actresses, often at the expense of other qualities (fearlessness, tenderness, the ability to read a line as if they mean it) that are far more valuable.
Apr 26, 1999 | This isn't to say that women should be the only actors to peel down. One of the chief complaints of woman moviegoers is that we see don't get to see enough naked men, and it's a valid one -- though if you consider a man's penis to be the counterpart to a woman's clitoris, you have to admit that a man who bares everything is committing a bolder act than an actress who merely removes her shirt. (What's more, the freedom to do male nudity is an even tougher battle for filmmakers and actors to fight: The ratings board of the MPAA may be relatively tolerant of breasts, but the sight of a penis sends it around the bend.) Women also frequently complain that the actresses we see nude are all one "type." While I see nothing wrong with the aesthetic pleasures of watching a lithe young body on a movie screen, I also recall how lovely (and how moving) I found Isabella Rossellini, with her rounded tummy and Titian thighs, in "Blue Velvet." And I wonder what an actress with the presence and bearing of Camryn Manheim (of TV's "The Practice") would bring to a nude love scene.
That said, though, there's also a whiff of unfairness in the argument that if a woman with an "imperfect" body (Kathy Bates, for instance, in "At Play in the Fields of the Lord") does a nude scene, it's laudable as art, an actress performing her craft, a different thing altogether from, say, Sharon Stone's sly (and, in some scenes, completely nude) performance in "Basic Instinct." Stone is one actress who did nude scenes earlier in her career but who now refuses -- understandable, considering that "Basic Instinct" turned her into a marked woman. But why should actresses -- young, relatively inexperienced ones as well as those who are more seasoned -- be made to feel that the decision to strip down will weigh heavily on their image? That's a sure way to turn the question "To bare or not?" into one that plays right into Hollywood's (and movie audience's) prudery, dragging the focus away from the more important question of whether or not the actors are effective in the scene.
The dividing line between those who will and won't do nudity ends up creating a kind of pecking order among actresses. The unspoken understanding is that it's only the low-rent actresses, and the desperate newcomers, who take their clothes off. Once an actress has achieved a certain amount of cachet, she's much better off keeping every stitch on. I could hardly believe it when I learned that Charlize Theron -- an actress who'd received positive notices from a number of critics for her role in "Devil's Advocate" and who had enough of a buzz on her to land a spot on the cover of the terminally hype-conscious InStyle magazine -- had been featured in a nude spread in the May Playboy. It seemed to be an unprecedented move -- and a brave one -- for a young actress who'd already gained some notoriety. The perception that all hot young Hollywood actresses are willing and eager to take it all off to jump-start their careers is simply a fallacy. Very few actresses with healthy careers (Drew Barrymore is the one exception who springs to mind) are willing to bare it all in a magazine; it's the actresses desperately trying to resuscitate their livelihood (for instance, Judy Norton, who played Mary Ellen on "The Waltons" and later -- much later -- appeared in Playboy) that you see doing nude spreads.
The Theron pictures in Playboy were so tasteful and inoffensive -- some of them rendered in satiny black and white, focusing as much on her magnificent legs as on her breasts (I've seen racier-looking photographs in ads for women's shaving cream) -- that it would be easy enough to believe that the actress had posed for them specifically for Playboy. But if you read the magazine's contributors section, you learn that the photographs were taken during Theron's "days as a model." What looked like an unprecedented move -- a bold choice, a chance for an actress to prove she has no problem admitting that her sexuality is just one of any number of appealing things about her -- was probably just another instance of "recently discovered" nude pix. I was disappointed.
There's something dispiriting about the way an actress's willingness (or not) to go nude denotes her place in the hierarchy of her peers. In a minage ` trois scene in last year's "Wild Things" -- a hugely enjoyable movie, and an example of good, trashy fun that's also intelligent, uninhibited and witty -- relative newcomer Denise Richards exposes her breasts, while Neve Campbell, clothed chastely in a black tank top, gets to pour champagne on them. (In the middle of all this, Matt Dillon does the stock thing that every guy in a minage ` trois scene does: shows how he's barely able to contain his good fortune.) When Campbell finally does remove her shirt, she's shot from the back.
To be fair to Campbell, she does engage in a lengthy lesbian kiss on-screen, and she doesn't shrink away from her character's nastiness. In other words, she takes a fair amount of risk for being such a well-known actress. But while I like both actresses' performances in the movie, I give Richards extra points for her chutzpah. Nude scenes are extremely difficult for actors, presenting a special set of challenges to their skill and professionalism. (Not to mention that many actors are likely to feel the same shyness that most of us mere mortals feel about showing off our bodies.) Actors and actresses often claim they choose not to do nude scenes for personal reasons. But it's clear their reasons are tied to more outside factors than they'd care to admit: They may wonder whether they'll get cast again, or whether they'll be expected to take their clothes off every time. They may wonder whether they'll be remembered for their acting in a specific scene or simply for the fact that they appeared nude in it (an issue that Julianne Moore, an actress with an extraordinarily broad range, is probably all too aware of after her "bottomless" scene in Robert Altman's "Short Cuts"). And no actor -- least of all a woman -- wants to be branded as cheap. It's the "respectable" actors who are honored with Oscars.
Yet there are a few small rays of hope. Nicole Kidman, an actress who has enough clout to set her own terms, attracted a certain amount of attention for her willingness to appear nude onstage (if only facing away from the audience) in "The Blue Room." And when I saw "Shakespeare in Love" last year, I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw Gwyneth Paltrow's breasts, in her big love scene with Joseph Fiennes. I've since looked at the scene again and noticed how easily the shots could have been reframed to keep those breasts safely out of sight. There's no question that they represent a conscientious choice, both on the part of director John Madden and of Paltrow. An actress with the visibility and critical acclaim that Paltrow had, even before her Oscar nomination and win, doesn't need to show anything she doesn't want to. And especially for someone like Paltrow -- who, among the public, seems to be more frequently maligned for her privileged upbringing and patrician good looks than she is evaluated as an actual actress -- that single flash of skin represents a small act of bravery. Of the current crop of actresses, she's probably the last one I'd have expected to reveal so much of herself.
But she did, and now she's got her Oscar as well. Of course, the people who claim that actresses are baring themselves all over Hollywood are never going to believe that she's done anything unusual at all. They're too busy complaining about having to suffer the naked breasts of Michelle Pfeiffer, Sandra Bullock and Meg Ryan in movies that somehow none of the rest of us have seen. In the mainstream movies that most of us see, though, the ridiculously and artfully draped sheet is still the order of the day. That's the way it is in the movies, exactly like that.