Sex Seen: The Emergence of Modern Sexuality in America

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For a movie about sex, Eyes Wide Shutdoesn’t have all that much of it – if anything, the hero’s journey into the New York night is an epic tour of missed opportunities. Gorgeous and tragic, Bernardo Bertolucci’s international romance deserves more than its naughty reputation, mainly due to one scene involving Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider and a stick of butter (easing things up only marginally). Say what you want about the not-so-vanilla scenes in this much-maligned movie series, the steamy, softcore BDSM sequences between Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan got people talking.

A schoolteacher living in West Berlin (played by director Ripploh himself) flits between his relationship, his work life and his penchant for anonymous sex in public places. 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. By using unfettered sexual mania as the catalyst for his jeremiad, Russell insured that he would whip viewers into a frenzy on par with the one he was depicting onscreen (albeit a frenzy of a different kind). Given that it features one of the most disturbing, controversial openings in cinema, it’s perhaps surprising that the film is still widely available.

In a movie expressly about a death cult, Cronenberg weds tortured flesh with glittering metal in a way that’s unnerving. Officially the first ever film to feature two people kissing, it caused an uproar, with one commentator writing that it was ‘beastly enough in life size on the stage, but magnified to gargantuan proportions and repeated three times over, it is absolutely disgusting. One of the '90s most eyebrow-raising movie moments happened when threesomes became part of normal conversation thanks to Denise Richards, Matt Dillon, and Neve Campbell looking to shed their glossy teen-movie personas.

But it’s really more about the era than the act – a moment of pure permissiveness and physical celebration marking the end of the old society and the messy, ecstatic birth of the new. The film isn’t as explicit as some others on the list, and according to all involved, the anal sex is simulated. In an increasingly conservative era, their indecency would instead lead to an abrupt and bloody death, with only the virginal heroine spared. The resulting effect allows viewers to choose their own adventure, closing one eye to see Bruneau’s pubic hair, and another to see Chevallier’s flaccid penis. But instead we prefer the moment where Jim (Biggs) is seduced by his flexible East European houseguest (Elizabeth), but sadly steps off the love train a stop or two early.

Remind Meis a seamless blend of widely scoped natural philosophy and intimate personal storytelling that gives sexuality equal standing. The burden of representation has long been a problematic topic in queer cinema: Do we want gay criminals and murderers onscreen?