Welcome back to Consequence‘s Sex in Cinema Week, an exploration of movies, the Hays Code, and what society labels taboo. Read our introductory breakdown and check back throughout the week for essays, interviews, and lists examining censorship of movie sex scenes and the creativity it inspired in filmmakers.
As more people got their hands on early film cameras, movies quickly went from snapshots of someone sneezing to workers clocking out to full-blown narratives exploring life, love, and the human experience. But where there’s love and humans, there’s its beautiful, vulgar, ever-controversial cousin — sex.
Thomas Edison’s 1896 The May Irwin Kiss holds the title for presenting film’s first hint of sex, as it captures the first onscreen smooch. Poke around the internet, and you’ll predictably find stories of the Roman Catholic Church calling for censorship, excerpts from critics naming the film disgusting, and general accounts of public uproar. And yet, the sources for such information are shaky at best. As Ralph S.J. Dengler argues in his 2010 article for Journal of Popular Film and Television, “The First Screen Kiss and ‘The Cry of Censorship,'” the hysteria surrounding The May Irwin Kiss might have actually been retroactive, with the moralistic cries of later decades making their way backward in time. His argument is further supported by the several imitators and spin-offs, like the less remembered but equally important Something Good.
Through that lens, the story of The May Irwin Kiss changes from an example of how audiences were always afraid of sex in cinema to an indicator that such a fear was learned. The campaign against the ol’ hanky-panky is less of an ever-present feature of culture and more of a pendulum, and in the 1930s, that pendulum was about to swing in the favor of one Will H. Hays.
When it came to content, Hollywood studios spent their first few decades free from formal interference. Instead, they self-policed, which paradoxically both stifled overtly transgressive efforts and encouraged sensational work because, well, even 100 years ago, sex sold. Movies gradually began pushing the envelope, leading to a string of so-called “pre-code sex films” and the eventual introduction of the Hays Code (see our explainer here!) in 1930. Yet, the Hays Code wouldn’t be vigorously enforced for another four years. So, whether as an act of rebellion or a last hurrah, filmmakers started putting out particularly salacious pictures. Call it film’s first culture war.
But the hammer came down in 1934, resulting in a comparatively squeaky-clean few decades. We’ll save that conversation for another day. For now, let’s focus on the relative freedom artists had before Papa Hays busted in and ruined the orgy party.
Cleopatra (1917)
It stands to reason that one of history’s most sexualized figures would be one of the first to warrant a historical epic in their honor. Silent, sensual, and starring Theda Bara, most of the film has been lost to time (an unfortunate trend when it comes to Bara’s work). Only select stills and about 20 seconds of the film survived before 2023, when an additional 41 seconds resurfaced on eBay of all places. Even still, the film carries with it a sultry legacy, boasting a seductive narrative and revealing, likely historically inaccurate costumes. In retrospect, Cleopatra‘s commercial success and lasting impact are not only evidence that cinema featured sex before it featured sound, but evidence of how surprisingly uncontroversial the topic was. For those of us in the present, it’s easy to categorize the entirety of the past as less accepting of such blasé lovemaking, but as movies like Cleopatra make clear, it’s not always so black and white. (Okay, in this case, it is literally black and white, but you know what I mean.)
Morocco (1930)
It wasn’t just heterosexual lovemaking that was shockingly present in pre-code cinema, as depictions of gender fluidity and queerness made their way onto the big screen as well. Of course, it wasn’t as readily accepted, nor was it always done with taste (many gay or trans characters were played for laughs and presented as villains or buffoons), but the mere acknowledgment of those living outside of the heteronormative status quo is more than most films released under the Hays Code can claim. And every now and then, there emerged positive, accepting, empathetic portrayals of the LGBTQ community, like in the Marlene Dietrich-starring Morocco. Featuring cross-dressing, plenty of implied sex, and even an on-screen lesbian kiss, one might expect Morocco to have been some fringe art film rejected by the mainstream. Yet, the film nabbed four Academy Award nominations, a feat that, just a few years later, would be impossible for a film with such “scandalous” scenes.
Call Her Savage (1932)
As the roaring ’20s closed out and the American film industry continued to expand, naked bodies and activities that involved naked bodies began to raise an increasing amount of eyebrows. At the same time, sex continued to get butts into seats, and so Hollywood found itself conflicted between appeasing growing moralistic attitudes and leaning on the reliable cash cow of showing the odd boob here and there. Ultimately, until the strict enforcement of the Hayes Code, filmmakers and studios chose towards the latter, favoring spectacle over the apparent appetite for ‘good ol’ fashion values.’ Thus, a wave of sensational pictures entered the market, seemingly designed to spark a little outrage as a means of publicity.
Call Her Savage, is one such film, and one with a complicated legacy. Directed by John Francis Dillon and starring Clara Bow, the film’s “savage” protagonist is openly sexual, with characters making lewd jokes and double entendres throughout the runtime. On the one hand, a sexually empowered, independent woman strikes the modern viewer as somewhat progressive, and the film even boasts an early representation of gay men. On the other, the gay representation leaves quite a bit to be desired (as it feeds into the stereotypes of the time, even if it doesn’t outright villainize the characters), and the sexual freedom of Bow’s character is ultimately explained as a symptom of secretly being half Native American (the film uses the term “untamable”). Racism is quite the anti-aphrodisiac.
Red-Headed Woman (1932)
Directed by Jack Conway, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald (though uncredited), and starring Jean Harlow, Red-Headed Woman is similar in concept to Call Her Savage, minus the regrettable racial politics. Following Harlow’s Lillian “Lil” Andrews — an archetypical “woman from the wrong side of the tracks” — as she attempts to better her life primarily through seduction, the plot points of the narrative might as well have been the blueprint for the Hays Code. There’s premarital sex, extramarital affairs, sympathetic home-wreckers, and even attempted murder on the part of the film’s protagonist. Take notes, as the “woman in a tight spot uses sex in an attempt to get ahead” becomes an increasingly popular archetype for the remainder of the pre-code era.
I’m No Angel (1933)
Case in point, I’m No Angel, a Mae West vehicle that finds the icon at what might be her most alluring, seductive, and sharp. Despite releasing after the initial introduction of the Hays Code — but prior to its industry-wide adoption — the film drips with sex, squeezing innuendos and tight-fitting outfits into just about every scene. West, as well as the film as a whole, is utterly unapologetic in her celebration of physical attraction and desire. Even without an explicit sex scene, it’s one of the most risqué smash hits of the pre-code era. Remarkably, it’s also one of West’s least censored works. As if in direct response to I’m No Angel‘s mainstream success, Hays and company would make damn sure that the lack of censorship would not become the norm.
