Here’s a production number from the 1933 Eddie Cantor vehicle “Roman Scandals” that will leave you…well…I don’t know…it kind of depends on your pre-code tolerance for things that one doesn’t expect to see even in pre-code movies. I’ll leave it at that. Though the movie was directed by the underrated
All week we’ve been watching people disrobe without ever getting down to the skin. Today we’ll jump ahead to what happens once the clothing is removed–or, more accurately, what happens a couple of steps after the clothes have come off. It seems that in pre-Code era the act of taking
Yesterday we watched a Victorian-era woman undress without every getting anywhere near being clothes free. Today’s ancient peek into voyerisum, early-20th century style, consists of something even less revealing. It’s a short clip of three women thinking about disrobing. So little happens in this piece of film that must have
It appears that early ‘adult’ cinema included a genre that can only be referred to as ‘Undressing Porn’. But porn isn’t an accurate word in this case because the examples of this genre that I’m finding don’t really go much beyond the outer layer of undergarments. Perhaps it was a
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb2U9wMtzcM Here’s a frustrating but fascinating reel highlighting a number of suggestive and alternative interactions between people from what one-hundred years later came to be known as the LGBTQ community. Aside from referencing some footage from pioneering German sexologistt Magnus Hirshfields scandalous 1927 ‘Laws Of Love’-an early ‘informational’ film on
From the moment the camera was invented, the desire to photograph erotica of any and all sorts came into being. Pornography in cinema goes back to the turn of the century and while much of the film is lost (but documented orally, so to speak) certain specimens survive that cannot
My interest this past week in period movie sword fights–we didn’t venture any further than 1940– was triggered (yes, I said triggered) by TCM’s showing of “Captain Blood” last weekend. So it’s only befitting that we end with he sword fight that kicked off this madness to begin with. Once
Here’s the wonderful climactic sword fight from the 1938 ‘Adventures oF Robin Hood’ starring Errol Flynn. This is something special as it really is two fights in one–a mass sword fight that breaks off into a private dual between Flynn and (who else?) Basil Rathbone. Hijinks ensue, of course, but
Yesterday I posted the sword fight from the 1920 version of ‘The Mark Of Zorro’ starring Douglas Fairbanks. Today I’ve jumped up twenty years to show you the same fight as staged by director Rouben Mamoulian in his 1940 remake. In this version, Tyrone Power faces down Basil Rathbone, who
Continuing this little survey of sword fights in movies that we began yesterday, I thought it might put things in context to look at what is generally considered the first great sword fight in movie history–Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in ‘The Mark Of Zorro’ (1920). There probably were sword fights in