Breaking the sex code

I adore researching these essays on classic Hollywood. From Saturday's Review section in the Irish Independent.

Red hot in black & white
As Liam Neeson's new film is slammed as 'a porno farce', Susan Daly looks back at Hollywood's more innocent age -- or was it?

Saturday April 10 2010

The opening of a movie starring Liam Neeson and Julianne Moore should be cause for celebration. So why the tightly pursed lips among film critics?

Chloe, a tale of sexual obsession in which a housewife hires a high-class prostitute to seduce her husband in order to test his fidelity, was the movie Neeson was shooting when his wife Natasha Richardson died in a skiing accident last year. Despite the goodwill out there towards Neeson for this reason, Chloe was not well received when it opened in the US this past week.

The New Yorker called it a "porno farce"; the New York Post "a Skinemax movie cloaked in art house fancy dress".

When Chloe did the rounds here a few weeks earlier -- perhaps testing this side of the Atlantic first because we're, you know, European and supposedly more blasé about the kinky stuff -- it didn't do much better.

Chloe does, however, serve the purpose of showing how far we've moved from the censorious age of cinema.

Seventy years ago, at the height of the notorious Hays Code for films, married couples weren't even allowed to sleep in the same bed on screen, never mind indulge in a ménage à trois.

This has not been so much a gradual descent into a sexual free-for-all on screen, as the movies coming full circle.

The Victorian era, stereotyped as an age in which folk went around trussing their piano legs in frilly ankle-warmers, was quite libertarian about moving pictures. George Melies, a famous pioneer of cinema, was quick to churn out an "adult" film, After The Ball, in 1897, featuring a racy nude scene.

The new century then found itself enthralled to film's first sexpot, Theda Bara. It was the era of the silent movie but words were made redundant by Bara's transparent outfits, nipple tassels and sexually-voracious expressions.

But the excesses of Hollywood in the Roaring Twenties culminated in a series of scandals, the most notorious of which saw actor Fatty Arbuckle accused of raping and killing the starlet Virginia Rappe. The calls to clean up 'Sin City', as Los Angeles was being labelled, were getting louder.

Will Hays at the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors Association (MPPDA) came up with a list of 'Don'ts and Be Carefuls' for movie-makers in 1927. No excessive (over 3 seconds) and lustful kissing -- and if it happened anywhere in the vicinity of a bed, at least one of the parties had to have a foot on the ground.

Hollywood studios, heading into the Depression of the 1930s and desperate to attract audiences, pretty much ignored the cautions. The response of the censors was to introduce an expanded Hays Code in 1930. Sex was for married people only, and where affairs had to be mentioned, they should not be "presented attractively".

Sex was not "the proper subject for comedy" (no Carry On . . . movies, then). Dance moves that encouraged "movement of the breasts" were regarded as pure filth. The new, iron-cast code was formulated by a Jesuit, Fr Daniel Lord.

The Hollywood Reporter asked in 1931: "Does any producer pay attention to the 'Hays Code'?", knowing no one did. At this time, Jean Harlow was still getting away with asking, "Would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable?" in Hell's Angel (1930), while Maureen O'Sullivan's Jane went skinny-dipping with Tarzan in the 1932 and 1934 loincloth-and-vine films.

Resistance to the censorious overlords was futile, however. By 1933, the powerful Catholic League of Decency had launched a 'down with this sort of thing' crusade on the movies. In 1939, Gone With The Wind producer David O Selznick was fined $5,000 for leaving the final word intact in what is now cinema's most quotable lines: "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

Not everyone could afford to do a Selznick but, this being an industry of wheeler-dealers, creative ways were found to circumvent the code. Mae West films were jam-packed with double entendres, the brazen blonde firing off lines like "I feel like a million tonight -- but one at a time".

And where would Bogie and Bacall be without word play? "You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together -- and blow." (To Have and Have Not, 1944).

West was particularly crafty. She used to write outrageous "decoy" scenes into risqué movies like I'm No Angel (1933) so that the moral guardians would focus on cutting those and let other, more subtly raunchy, material slip through.

A great deal of nod-nod, wink-wink was employed to keep the audience in on the joke. No one was under any illusion that Bette Davis's "nightclub hostess" in Marked Woman (1937) was a euphemism for prostitute. Similarly, Claire Trevor's woman of the night in Dead End (1937) is said to be suffering from consumption when it is clear from her implied occupation it was more likely to be syphilis.

Where the explicit was no longer allowed, the implicit became a loaded currency. Metaphors were everywhere, from Bela Lugosi's blood-sucking kisses in Dracula (1931) to the shared cigarettes that acted as a substitute for sex in Now, Voyager (1942).

By the 1950s, Alfred Hitchcock was the master at breaking the code. From James Stewart's phallic, voyeuristic telephoto lens in Rear Window (1954) to the provocative question, "Do you want a leg or a breast?" during a picnic in To Catch A Thief (1955), his films were seething with what the League of Decency would probably call ulterior motives.

He had been practising for some time -- the famous kiss between Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant in his 1946 film Notorious appears to ignore the three-second rule as they move through the apartment in a marathon snog. In fact, Hitchcock had Bergman and Grant kiss briefly but repeatedly while Grant took a phone call. The illusion is that the kiss goes on and on, but no actual rules were broken.

Others used more brazen tactics to titillate. The code enforcers were gentler on a film if it purported to purvey a moral message. This resulted in a sudden demand for films in the "sexual hygiene" genre, many of which were of dubious educational value.

Ultimately, as foreign films (not bound by the code) made inroads into US theatres and some distributors began to break links with the MPPDA, the code lost its grip and was scrapped in 1968. The new "golden age" of American cinema of the 1970s could not have flourished otherwise.

Even so, some of Hollywood's greatest movies were made within the confines of the code. Even the cartoonists were in on it. In Tweety Bird's first screen appearance in 1942, one cat trying to catch him says to another, "Give me the bird! Give me the bird!" The second cat replies: "If the Hays office would only let me, I'd give him the bird, alright!"

One imagines the reference to sticking up one's middle finger sailed over the heads of watching kiddies -- but hit Hays where it hurt.

ULTERIOR MOTIVES: Films with hidden meanings
King Kong (1933): The finished film was heavily edited but still managed to raise hackles for its perceived inter-racial love story (banned by the Code) as represented by the beauty and the beast. Kong was punished by falling off the most phallic-looking erection in New York, the Empire State Building.
It Happened One Night (1934): Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert chastely share a bedroom by hanging a blanket (“the wall of Jericho”) between their single beds. In the final scene, when Colbert signals her love for Gable, there is no literal consummation – but the blanket is seen to fall to the floor as a trumpet sounds out.
The 39 Steps (1935): As mentioned, unmarried couples were not permitted to sleep in the same room. So Alfred Hitchcock – who else? – inserted a plot device that had Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll handcuffed together and forced to share a bedroom. It was out of their control, see?
Citizen Kane (1941): Kane’s lost sleigh, inscribed ‘Rosebud’, was at face value a metaphor for loss of innocence. Director Orson Welles happened to know it was also a pet name that newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst – lampooned by the film - had for his mistress’s nether regions.
Red Dust (1942): Jean Harlow is in a love triangle with Clark Gable and Mary Astor. In the final scene, while reading a children’s story, Harlow mutters: “A chipmunk and a rabbit. Hey, I wonder how this comes out?”
The Big Sleep (1946): Humphrey Bogart shares a drink with a bookshop assistant during a rainstorm, and she removes her spectacles. Next thing we see, Bogie is leaving the bookshop. As the rain has completely stopped, we can assume he had lots of time to… buy some books. A similarly suggestive fadeout is used when Ilsa visits Rick’s flat, alone, in Casablanca (1942).
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946): The 1980s version of the movie didn’t skimp on kitchen-table knee-tremblers, but the original had to make do with lingering shots of a “Man Wanted” sign in the diner window, sizzling meat on the grill and wild cats playfighting to signal sexual tension.
Rebel Without A Cause (1955): James Dean wasn’t the true rebel here – it was Sal Mineo’s Plato with his crush on Dean and a picture of movie star Alan Ladd in his school locker. Of course, true to the Code, the ‘sexual deviant’ (as homosexuality was then classed) was punished by death.
North By Northwest (1959): Alfred Hitchcock excelled his own history of sexual innuendo by getting Eva Marie Saint to tell Cary Grant: “You’re a big boy now” before sending the couple off into a blatantly phallic closing shot of a train carrying the newlyweds off into a tunnel.
Kiss Me, Stupid (1964): Dean Martin shows streetwalker Kim Novak around the house where she is to pose as his wife with the comment: “It’s small, but it’s clean.” Cue a knowing giggle from the worldy Ms Novak.
Goldfinger (1964): The Hays Code was on the way out but the 007 movies were establishing the penchant for double entendres that allowed them to moonlight as family movies, despite the sexual undertow. This one was hardly subtle though, with its Bond girls Pussy Galore and Holly Goodhead.


FIRST PUBLISHED HERE: http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/film-cinema/red-hot-in-black-white-2132690.html

Lie back and think of the lunch menu

The less-than-sexy truth about filming lurve scenes (from the Irish Independent's Review on Jan 30 last)...
http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/film-cinema/grab-her-thigh--now-2040324.html

Grab her thigh -- now
Sex scenes sizzle on screen but Neil Jordan says that filming them is embarrassing for all involved. SUSAN DALY talks to actors and directors about the passion-killing work that goes into faking it.

FILM directors can be very precious about their work. There is a reason why the ‘director’s cut’ tends to only make it as an added extra on DVD – only diehard fans can sit through their full, ass-numbing vision.

Neil Jordan, then, has gone against the grain by voluntarily cutting a lengthy sex scene involving Colin Farrell from his new movie Ondine. Far from shedding tears in the editing suite, Jordan was unsentimental about losing the scene. “Sex scenes are embarrassing for anyone involved,” he said.

Not all erotically-charged scenes are as disposable. The plot of Jordan’s Oscar-winning The Crying Game pivots around that scene of mind-bending nudity.

Back when the Hays Code confined Hollywood within a chastity belt of legislation, actors didn’t have to worry about preserving their modesty. Now that sexual matters can be depicted so much more freely on screen – the 1927 Code decried any kiss lasting over three seconds as “excessive” - love scenes are all in a day’s work for the actor.

Getting paid to lie naked with Johnny Depp sounds like a dream job. We, the audience, see beautiful people writhing in a symphony of slick limbs and soft lighting. Just out of frame, however, is the soundguy holding the boom mike, the make-up girl waiting to panstick the actors’ bottoms and the director yelling: ‘Grab his thigh – now!’

Actress Victoria Smurfit has acted out her fair share of love scenes in a career that has spanned TV dramas and movies from Cold Feet to The Beach. The reality of filming them, she says, is not sexy at all. “Usually by take three, I’m wondering what’s on the lunch menu,” she laughs.

“They can be awkward. You talk about it beforehand, who’s going to put what where, and you get on with the physical bit. Then you realise that you have lines to say – there’s the bloody dialogue to think about! It’s more like stuntwork than anything.”

Like any stunt, sex scenes are heavily choreographed. This has two purposes: so that the camera can be in the right place at the right time, and secondly, to make the actors feel more secure.

When actor James McAvoy spoke to me about kissing Angelina Jolie in the thriller Wanted – not as nice as “kissing someone you love” - he referred to the rather more steamy scene he shared with Keira Knightley in Atonement. It wasn’t fun, he said, but director Joe Wright made it easier by directing their every groan and grind.

“Joe was great because he set the boundaries very clearly. When you have boundaries you can totally go for it, you can get totally committed. Whereas if there are no boundaries, touching your hand to theirs might be too much, you know what I mean?
“You don’t want to get too into it, you don’t want to violate someone - and I don’t want to be violated either!”

As with McAvoy’s experience of having to cling precariously to a bookshelf while ravishing Knightley, not all actors are afforded the luxury of filming their sex scenes in a bed. A new Irish film, One Hundred Mornings, has an uncomfortable scene where two of the actors have a loveless tryst up against a tree. Actress Kelly Campbell is looking forward to the film getting an airing at the upcoming Jameson Dublin International Film Festival – it will certainly more enjoyable than filming that outdoor romp.

“Invariably, it’s always first thing in the morning when you film these scenes, it’s half-eight and you’re in the nip,” she says drolly. “My experience though is that directors are very respectful. Weeks before we shot the scene, we discussed it. I would approach it as a dancer would – you break it down into movements and look at it in a mechanical way.

“Conor (Horgan, the director) was very specific which was helpful. He would shout, ‘More vocal, less vocal, move your leg that way’, and it’s taken out of your hands and makes it easier.”

Campbell certainly had no trust issues during the making of another film she has just finished shooting. In Sensation, she has a sex scene with Domhnall Gleeson, son of Brendan and a good friend of hers in real life. The director is Tom Hall, who happens to be Campbell’s husband. Awkward, much?

“Because we have worked together and we are very clear cut about our relationships, it was actually easy,” says Campbell. “I had more of an advantage because the scene we shot was outside the intensity of the schedule. We did it two months after filming finished because we all agreed it was needed for the plot.”

Kate Winslet’s husband Sam Mendes was more squeamish when he directed his wife in Revolutionary Road with her old Titanic squeeze Leonardo di Caprio, apparently removing himself to another room to watch their love ‘action’ on a monitor. Victoria Smurfit also found that familiarity breeds embarrassment. “I once filmed a scene with a guy where his brother was the director,” she remembers.

“Every time the actor reached over to pick up his script, his brother saw a lot more than he probably ever wished to see. It was awkward. It can be fine sometimes just to meet someone for the first time, shake hands, on with the flesh-coloured pants and get on with it.”

This chimes with an anecdote recounted by actor Simon Callow about the practicalities of a on-screen “quickie” for his character in Shakespeare in Love. “The furniture was quickly adjusted and, like a couple of mating dogs, we leaped on each other, our orgasm hailed by the director shouting: ‘Cut!’ Great satisfaction all round, hands shaken, off we went… A typical one-night stand, in other words.”

Intimacy between the actors – whether familiar to each other – is almost a moot point when the fake lovers are surrounded by a film crew. Even a so-called ‘closed set’ can be crowded.

“You have to have a camera operator, a focus puller, a boom operator, and if the
camera is moving, you have a grip,” says Dubliner Dan O’Hara, who has just directed an episode of the risqué Channel 4 drama Skins, which returned to our screens this week.

“You could have someone from the costume department standing by with a dressing-gown. I had one scene which called for an actor get out of bed naked, and within the two seconds of me saying ‘Cut’ and coming out from behind the monitor, he had his boxers on.”

Victoria Smurfit’s first love scene was filmed in a bog – she has a clear memory of lying in the mud on her back, staring up at the soles of the electricians’ boots as they adjusted lights up in the trees overhead.

Daisy-shaped plasters for nipples, careful editing, nude-coloured thongs and spray-on perspiration: the sweating flesh we see on screen is a game of smoke and mirrors. Kelly Campbell says that most performers use a protective barrier: “Only the most gung ho actor will say, ‘Whatever’.” If you’re Marlon Brando, you might plump for underpants and Wellingtons. That’s what the star insisted on wearing while filming a sex scene with Stephanie Beacham in The Nightcomers in 1971, forcing the cameraman to keep calling ‘pants’ or ‘Wellington boots’ every time they came into shot.

And what about this for a passion-killer – the need to adhere to health and safety laws. When director Declan Recks was preparing a scene for sex-drugs-and-the-Midlands TV series Pure Mule, the art department had to get involved to make sure the kitchen table on which two characters were to have sex was reinforced so it wouldn’t collapse.

“And there’s definitely nothing sexy about it when you’re doing it on a concrete floor in a building site,” says Recks. “There is all the practical stuff to think of, that a pair of jeans aren’t so tight that when the scene calls for them to be ripped off that nothing else comes down too.”

Most directors are happy to do whatever it takes to limit the scope for embarrassment. While some A-list actors can afford to write no-nudity clauses into their contracts, most working actors have to trust the director to get them through sex scenes with minimal trauma.

“Most Irish actresses won’t reveal a nipple or part of, for television and I wouldn’t blame them in the least. It’s a small audience - and they’re not getting paid enough!” says Recks.

Panel: FAKING IT
Booze, laughter and practical jokes are some of the tricks actors use to defuse the discomfort of a sex scene – although some admit that they enjoy it…

CHARLIZE THERON: Lesbian love scenes with Christina Ricci in Monster made Theron crack up on set. “We drove the sound guy bananas by giggling into his mike,” she said. “It was OK kissing Christina except for the dental implants I had to wear and
which sometimes came loose.”

KATE BOSWORTH: Superman actress Bosworth says can’t even remember filming a love scene in 21 with co-star Jim Sturgess. “We were both so drunk,” she said. The pair had downed shots of vodka to calm their nerves.

NAOMI WATTS: In We Don’t Live Here Anymore, Watts decided to lighten the mood during an outdoor romp with her co-star Mark Ruffalo. He explained: “We were up against the tree, completely naked, trying to act this scene in front of all the crew and cameras. And then Naomi, to ease the tension, had a fart maching going… Instant defuse.”

KEIRA KNIGHTLEY: Knightley dispelled her nerves while filming The Duchess by laughing at her co-star Dominic Cooper. “The director did actually come over and said: ‘Come on, pull yourself together, this is serious work here’ but I could not help it – Dominic standing there in a skin-coloured nappy! It’s the most unsexy thing ever.”

ANGELINA JOLIE: Never one to shy away from a love scene, Jolie said filming with good friend Ethan Hawke in Taking Lives was the best. “The first few times he backed me against the wall we just burst out laughing. When it’s a friend it makes it more comfortable.”

EWAN McGREGOR: McGregor says he is comfortable with sex scenes. “I’m never aware of the crew – you shouldn’t be,” he said. “I could have a soundman lying under the bed and I wouldn’t notice him.”

SALMA HAYEK: Her stunning turn in Desperado made Hayek a Hollywood star – but she cried all the way through what were her first movie love scenes. “I nearly got fired. I cried throughout the love scene. That’s why you never see long pieces. It’s little pieces cut together. I didn’t want to be naked in front of a camera. The whole time, I’m thinking of my father and my brother seeing it.”

JOSH HARTNETT: The Sin City and Black Hawk Down star says that sometimes a male actor just can’t win… “The biggest problem is if you don’t get aroused then the woman is mad at you, and if you do get aroused the woman is mad at you!”
And… there’s always one:

HUGH GRANT: Grant may have had tongue firmly in cheek when he said that he has always enjoyed sex scenes. He elaborated: “The classic answer is, ‘Oh, it’s not sexy at all because there are so many technicians standing around’. But I’ve always found them extremely arousing.”
ENDS