Fifty Shades of Grey is not the first film trying to depict sex while keeping its mainstream appeal, writes Bob Thompson.
1 Midnight Cowboy (1969)
Most producers decided the street-smart James Leo Herlihy novel was too controversial for Hollywood’s big screens depicting two loser hustlers desperately trying to survive in the bleak slums of New York. Midnight Cowboy remains the only X-rated movie to win Best Picture at the Oscars.
2 Last Tango in Paris (1972)
Not to be out done by the U. S. film Midnight Cowboy, Bernardo Bertolucci’s erotic escapades in the Franco-Italian production profile the daringly graphic relationship between Marlon Brando’s grieving older American and a French waif (Maria Schneider) in Paris. The mainstream media labelled the film as “pretty pornography.” Women’s groups scolded the picture for promoting “male domination.”
3 Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
The slow build erotic thriller is loosely based on Arthur Schnitzler’s novella but the tone and style is all Stanley Kubrick; yet not always in the best way possible. Kubrick indulges himself while chronicling the decline of a New York doctor (played by a challenged Tom Cruise) who immerses himself in a bizarre night of anonymous group sex to the chagrin of his art curator wife (Nicole Kidman). Sadly, Kubrick died shortly after handing over his final cut. Kubrick loyalists claim the studio tamed down the film with a middle class censorship approach to further edits.
4 Caligula (1979)
All other disasters of erotica in film is measured by this incompetent mistake which inexplicably features such notables as Helen Mirren, Peter O’Toole, John Gielgud and Malcolm McDowell as the supposedly insane Roman emperor. Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione was the brains and money (not necessarily in that order) behind this laughable cult classic — perhaps explaining the ability to pay that high-profile cast.
5 Henry & June (1990)
That would be explicit writer of bawdy adventures, Henry Miller, and his wife and sex sidekick June who just want to be aroused in 1930s Paris as described in the diary of French author Anais Nin. In the end, Henry & June. The notoriety for this film had more to do with the U. S. rating system which hit the picture with a boxoffice limiting NC-17. It did manage a cinematography Oscar nomination.