Ernst Lubitsch | SpoutBlog

10 Sexiest Non-Sex Scenes

By Christopher Campbell posted 8 months ago

One of the most popular sex scenes of all time is the kitchen scene from the 1981 version of The Postman Always Rings Twice. But many people find the more implicit parts of the 1946 version to be sexier. These people include the earlier film’s female lead, Lana Turner, who wrote in her autobiography, “[The makers of the 1981 film] didn’t have to worry about the censors. I’d had to project a rather intense sexual presence, but always with my clothes on. I was amused to read that [NY Times film critic] Vincent Canby considered the remake a pale, rather sexless imitation of my version.”

Yes, a film with neither nudity nor simulated lovemaking can be quite sexy, likely sexier than an explicit remake, for innuendo and other teasing maneuvers around either the Hays Code or the MPAA ratings board’s restrictions are far more tantalizing than any bare and balls-out displays of graphic sex common in movies today. Though many classic implications of sex on the big screen were rather obvious and quick, giving the audience a nudge but hardly a rise (think the Eisensteinian metaphors of a train entering a tunnel in North by Northwest or fireworks exploding in To Catch a Thief), loads of films turned up the heat through the use of careful camerawork, daring dialogue and more subtly suggestive actions. Sometimes such sexy moments of tension and/or playfulness are definite forms of foreplay and serve as lead-ins to actual sex acts, on or off screen. But not always.

Everyone has his or her own ideas of what’s sexy, so feel free to disagree with our choices and/or suggest your own (I can guess what the first suggestion will be). Consider our list simply a starting point for discussion.
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Classics, Lists

Jennifer Jones, I Love You

By Karina Longworth posted 1 year ago

I’m leaving for Cannes tomorrow, which is, you know, fantastic, but there are things going on in New York over the next week or so that I’m sad to miss. The other night, I went to Lincoln Center to see Jonah Who Will Be 25 In The Year 2000 (about which I have good things to say, but begrudgingly––I can’t help but suspect that this was the template for that micro-genre of milquetoast Oscar bait, the Remember When We Were Young, Liberal and Semi-Bohemian? ensemble dramedy, which always portends relevance but rarely manages to pull off a whole hell of a lot beyond getting ten people to, eventually, eat dinner together), and that was the first I’d heard of the Film Society’s tribute to Jennifer Jones, which begins Friday (the day I arrive in Cannes) and ends May 24 (the day before I leave).

Drat, and all the more annoying because I’ve been longing for the time to devote to a Jennifer Jones kick lately, ever seeing Ruby Gentry two weeks ago at Anthology. And also, because Dan Callahan’s profile of Jones timed to the series at The House Next Door gives such a great picture of what I’m missing. I’d kill to see Jones in Ernst Lubitsch’s last finished film, Cluny Brown. Jones “turns her own (feigned?) obliviousness into the drollest, most sophisticated of dirty jokes,” Callahan writes. “As low-born Cluny, whose love of plumbing stands in for her incipient sexual possibilities, Jones is an unending delight, finding just the right note of wide-eyed eccentricity for Lubitsch’s satire of English mores.”

Sigh –– I love it when plumbing stands in for incipient sexual possibilities. If you’re in town over through next weekend, check out one or two of these films and let us know what you think. I’ll just have to make do with the above, hauntingly weird “homage” to Cluny Brown, scored to Bjork.

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Classics