Top 10 Films with Big Time Sensuality

[dreamdead]

http://www.hessdigital.com/cool/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/68k0in5.jpg

Top 10 Films with Big Time Sensuality, or, A Marxist Response to Women’s Performance of Sensuality

Issues of sexuality have always been a part of cinema. Within a decade of film’s creation, nickelodeons were already exploiting sensual glimpses of women (lingering on an ankle (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2X_BZpnWFc) or a staging a scenario where the woman’s dress puffs up (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8PVEkeRJQ0) to blithely reveal undergarments). Unmistakably, film’s sense of screening desire has led to cheesecake images, innuendo, sensual images, and explicit images. However, all too often these same images are devoid of cultural relevance or thematic value, existing as little more than empty titillation. The aim of this thread, then, is to celebrate those films that have intelligently woven their sensuality into the thematic core of their film.

However, in order to narrow down sensuality into something reasonable to tackle, I will only be treating those films that combine sensuality with Marx’s sense of commodity fetishism. When read in this lens, film treats the body as a commodity which is exchanged for capital, but all too often film neglects the implications of that, failing to consider that there is a negative-exchange at work just prior to any explicit screening of the flesh. That is to say, at that precarious moment before the clothing is removed, the film is negotiating a space where body and garment are signified as one. Furthermore, at this moment the power of suggestion can be just as tantalizing and erotic. What does that mean? Simply put, this thread will only be considering those films that fetishize the body through garments. Any film can eroticize the body with an explicit representation of sexuality; it takes a special film to eroticize the body through suggestive costuming, editing, and scripting. So this thread isn’t necessarily interested in nudity—though neither does this list avoid films that pair the two in a complementary fashion—rather, this thread is interested in the spectacle of the body and its accessories as performing sensuality.

It should be noted that several of these films counteract their very sensuality so that the overall affect leaves the spectator alienated rather than wanting. Where appropriate, this sense of estrangement will itself be remarked on.

This thread is a twofold project:

Firstly, to document a top ten list of sensuality,

And secondly, to visit your suggestions that have been sight unseen by me, and to compile a secondary list of sensuality at a later date, handily ensuring that this thread (so long as it receives comments) has a healthy life.

Posting of the list will be dependent on available time (no entry before Friday, in all likelihood) but should finish before the new year. At that point, I'll revisit this thread to begin work on a new list based off of your suggestions.

[Sven]

So, so, so very much anticipating this.

[Philosophe_rouge]

Sounds AMAZING, the first film that comes to mind is the silent Flesh and the Devil. As far as early cinema goes, Pandora's Box also fits the bill. This is a brilliant idea, and your first post is good enough to hold me over for a few days and your entry. Good luck!

[megladon8]

Sounds great! Can't wait!

[dreamdead]

#10: The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock, 1935)

Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps is one of the forerunners to his now-classic depiction of the wrong man accused of a crime he did not commit. Yet within this now-familiar genre trapping, there are a slew of bawdy visual as well as thematic asides that render this film perhaps Hitchock’s most playful in its depiction of sensuality. Minutes into the opening, we understand that Richard Hanney (Robert Donat) is carefree emotionally, nondescriptly accepting the unfamilar Miss Smith’s request to let her come home with him. This very forwardness stands as a testament to the transgressiveness that will follow. After Miss Smith is murdered, Hanney must flee and try to clear his name, all while uncovering clues as to what the mysterious 39 Steps are that Miss Smith mentioned before her death, and while struggling to convince the cultured Pamela (Madeleine Carroll) of his innocence . All this, of course, is incidental to the true thematic, the exploration of Hannay and Pamela’s contentious relationship from contempt to flirtation, from affection to love; all, naturally enough, played out over the span of 86 frenetic minutes.

Of course, since this is Hitchcock, these ideas get subversively reconfigured, with sensuality foregrounded with Miss Smith and Hanney. Later, after Hanney is fleeing, he shares a train cabin with two secondary characters discussing women’s undergarments until a clergyman sitting beside them leaves in disgust. Yet the conversation isn’t meant to as empty discourse, nor merely meant to allow Hitchcock to flash undergarments on the screen, but rather to situate the aims of sensuality within the larger narrative. The object is to bemusedly judge the reaction of the other travelers beside them; similarly, Hitchcock is structuring this event to titillate and judge his audience, all while winking at them. The aspect of undergarments will be revisited later, to greater psychological impact. When Pamela is handcuffed to the arrested Hanney, though, Hitchcock builds to the film’s triumph vis-a-vis an exploration of sensuality.

http://i163.photobucket.com/albums/t292/icaruschild/The39Steps10.jpg

Others, such as Robin Wood, have interpreted the handcuffs to transgressively represent a symbolic marriage. Yet what is vital for the sake of this thread is how Hitchcock frames the repercussions of this bounded relationship. Though it’s played for farce, the sensuality present hits its peak when Hannay and Pamela flee, damp with rain, into a hotel and are forced masquerade as a married couple. Naturally,this is much to the chagrin of Pamela , and she must be threatened with a “gun” (Hannay’s pipe in his pocket) for her to commit to the performance. Yet Hannay has revealed his central innocence several times in dialogue, and her distrust of him is, on some level, tempered by a doubt as to the fullness of his accused crimes.

http://thisdistractedglobe.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/39%20Steps%20pic%203.jpg

Once they get inside the room, Pamela makes to remove her wet stocking, yet the physics of the scene necessitate that Hannay’s handcuffed hand go where her hand goes. The camera settles on her legs, and the internal drama is thus demarcated. She cannot remove the stockings without Hannay’s hand trailing hers in abject encouragement. As such, Hitchcock frames the scene so that Hannay’s hand is contemptuously dragged across Pamela’s ankle and thigh, until her stockings are removed and her legs are exposed. The erotic tension comes entirely from Pamela’s suspicions of Hannay’s guilt, yet the understanding that she must allow him (albeit limited) access to her body. Naturally, any sense of lechery is outwardly displaced by Hannay’s holding of a sandwich, but this object is merely an empty prop. He, and by proxy the spectator, is concerned only with the limits of Pamela’s indignation.

Here Hitchcock’s obsessionality becomes fully represented. The camera lingers on her leg for so long that her stockinged leg becomes a landscape for Hitchcock, and as Pamela pulls the stocking off, Hannay’s hand traces her leg until he knows it. Leg and stocking together become ornamentalized, yet the unveiling of one determines the unveiling of the other. When the stocking comes off, Pamela is forced to bear Hannay’s touch, and that touch, full of playful eroticism, is the first step toward confirming his innocence, and their growing affection.

http://thegoodolddays.org/39steps2.jpg

There is a knowing sense from Hitchcock that this scene entirely rests on flirtation, on the fact that two bodies are forced to touch by necessity if not by choice. And the power of suggestion is all; Hannay’s exposure to Pamela’s body reifies his central innocence. Their performance, with hands touching legs and a simple removal of stockings, becomes fully eroticized. The fact that he does not threaten her sexually situates this moment as one based entirely around concepts of virtue-based eroticism, flirtation, and sensuality. Hannay’s bemused mock-disinterest, seen best in this production still of the film, is the last word about this remarkably transgressive film.

http://www.mimifroufrou.com/scentedsalamander/The-39-Steps.jpg

A landmark in situating sensuality against the backdrop of the action-suspense genre, the 39 Steps' trappings of handcuffs and stockings establish the latent sexuality that privileges eroticism over explicitness, suggestion over overtness. Simply put, this is a marvel in thematic and visual design.

[dreamdead]

Sounds AMAZING, the first film that comes to mind is the silent Flesh and the Devil. As far as early cinema goes, Pandora's Box also fits the bill. This is a brilliant idea, and your first post is good enough to hold me over for a few days and your entry. Good luck!

You've pimped Flesh and the Devil for so long at so many boards that I will finally cave in and watch it. My first entry to be reviewed for the later revisiting of this thread, I suppose. :)

[Yxklyx]

Hope to see some Louis Malle perhaps?

[Philosophe_rouge]

You've pimped Flesh and the Devil for so long at so many boards that I will finally cave in and watch it. My first entry to be reviewed for the later revisiting of this thread, I suppose. :)
At the very least, it's very sexy :D

The 39 Steps didn't come to mind when I first read the thread, but it is certainly befitting of the title. It's sensuality and the eventual tenderness (forced or not), is one of the reasons it's among my favourite Hitchcock films. You're essay is one of the best I've read on the site, keep up the good work! I'm excited to see what you have lined up next

[ledfloyd]

there are few things i like more than bjork and hitchcock. i approve of this thread.

[dreamdead]

Sorry for the lack of updates. Hopefully I'll be back on a regular update schedule now that the semester's over.

#9 Conversations with Other Women (Hans Canosa, 2005)

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As a study on the subjectivity of the filmic gaze, Hans Canosa‘s Conversations with Other Women (2005) is woefully neglected by critics, who seem to instead treasure the far more messy and convoluted Steven Soderbergh real-time film Full Frontal (2002). However, it is Canosa’s limited scope that keeps his project grounded, so that the experiment in subjectivity does not descend into hollow affectations. The film feels humane and tragic, and that is its great strength. The film’s camera retains a joie de vivre that most experiments cannot replicate. Framed entirely with split-screen that covers the expressions and actions of each actor, Canosa’s film seeks to represent the subjective experience of both the Man (Aaron Eckhart) and the Woman (Helena Bonham Carter), who unite at the Man’s sister’s wedding for a night of confession and intimacy.

http://www.indiewire.com/people/CarterEchart2.jpg

One of the hardest things to grapple with this film is how it maintains an anomalous sensuality when the whole thing is covered with a veneer of fatalism. Yet, for a film as defeatist as this, it is remarkably teasing and sensual. Its dedication to mischievous dialogue builds erotic tension for almost half of the film’s length, and when the eroticism is consummated, the sensuality remains. Yet, odd for a film on such a list as this, it is a mournful, elegiac sexiness, one that remains trapped in the liminal space between subjectivities precisely because these two individuals are so divided.

One of the most rudimentary aspects of Conversations with Other Women is how the screen separates the space of the two characters psychologically as well as cinematically. The thrill of the film, then, comes when the Man and Woman cross their confines of cinematic space and unite, if ever so briefly. Casona doesn’t cheapen these moments, though, but builds up to them in a crescendo of adult desire. The moment yields one of the sexiest kisses I’ve seen in cinema because of the verbal sparring, which would be at home in an adult and updated black-hearted screwball comedy, when words die away and attraction is given full voice.

http://www.worstpreviews.com/images/conversationswithotherwomen.gi f

Beyond its status as a film fully dedicated to the performances, Casona pays attention to the erotics of dress. Clothing performs as both tempting entryway (the Woman’s dress) and as revealer of age (the Man’s white T-shirt) which reveals a paunch of flesh around the Man’s waist. Yet the film’s gaze treats them both with equal attention, eroticizing the flesh while not shying away from the effects of age. It’s a tender moment when the Man traces the Woman’s stomach with his lips, or when he gives his assistance in removing the dress, with the camera fetishizing each step of the removal. Even the sex scenes offer a clever dialectic, showing the present intimacy concurrent with earlier sexual encounters. For their part, other flashbacks are teasingly rearranged as memories slide into place, so that women’s jeans become summer dresses.

Despite existing as fully developed characters, the film is informed by our extratextual awareness of the actors’ earlier roles. Eckhart, for example, exhibits traces of Chad’s (In the Company of Men) latent misogyny, while Carter lets twinkles of Marla (Fight Club) lasciviousness enter the frame. The performances are always trying new things, doubling back over a line here or there to shed different dimensions on the line delivery, yet Casano here too prevents the affair from becoming mechanical by maintaining the second subjective presence. Such an endeavor prevents us from falling under the spell of an actor’s monologue, since it is always contrasted by the other’s response. In a lesser film, for example, we would see only the Man’s perspective as he monologues while the Woman is in the shower. Here his admission of emotional stuntedness is disclosed with a cleansing fierceness that is downright primal, and a lesser film would frame this virtuoso moment as an Oscar-style speech. Canosa and writer Gabrielle Zevin, however, contrast the Man’s words against the mundane details of the shower that the Woman takes. The theatrical is always distilled back to the human.

If you like your sensuality boiled until it drips with hopelessness, here is your film.

[Sven]

Any chance that we'll see a certain Cameron Diaz/Curtis Hanson film on this list?

Loving this, by the way.

[Sven]

You really think critics treasured Full Frontal? It was pretty universally hated.

[dreamdead]

Any chance that we'll see a certain Cameron Diaz/Curtis Hanson film on this list?


Cameron Diaz (the Mask excepted) is antithetical to sensuality.

I mourn the fact that no Verhoeven makes the list, though. I toyed with Turkish Delight but somehow the sexuality never feels sensual to me; too earnestly playful.

[dreamdead]

You really think critics treasured Full Frontal? It was pretty universally hated.

For some reason it keeps popping up in film textbooks that academic presses hand out. Naturally, it's used for conversations with real-time experiments and not as an indicator of overall quality, but the very fact that these academics think we should be examining that film is itself troubling.

[dreamdead]

#8 Lady Chatterley (Pascale Ferran, 2006)

http://www.abc.net.au/atthemovies/img/2007/ep29/lady01.jpg

Were this list to be about fetishism of clothing only, Pascale Ferran’s Lady Chatterley (2006) would likely be tops, as its coverage of stockings being slipped off is continual and ritualized. As such, the unveiling of the body becomes ceremonial in this film, and it is thus partitioned and compartmentalized as Ferran allows each piece of clothing its own close-up as it is removed from the body. In this manner, the performative implications of clothing are rendered transparent; they suggest a ritual that Constance (Marina Hands) gains experience with through her forays into infidelity, so that her exposure of flesh becomes more confident and naturalized.

However, the film suffers from a simplicity of sexuality that prevents it from ranking higher. The way that Ferran chooses to adapt D. H. Lawrence’s novel impels her to celebrate an earthy and (though nonstated) pagan celebration of the body, wherein personal consequences are obviated by the joy that Constance comes to treasure. For instance, beyond his declaration that she not sleep with anyone of lower class or breed than himself, Constance’s invalid and impotent husband is ambivalent about her indiscretions. Without corollary, though, the impact of the story is insular, and the cultural relevance is cursory, fleeting. We see that this is a film about sexual awakening, and that awakening is ritualized indeed in the longer cut of Ferran’s film, but the expanse of the film is shorted because of its narrow cultural vision. In terms of another film that celebrates open sexuality but lacks a cultural lens we find Adrian Lyne’s 9 ½ Weeks. Both films fetishize the amoral couple who engage in bouts of unbridled and frequently animal passion, but neither delves into how their respective couples are symptomatic of a wider cultural experimentation with sexuality to liberate otherwise stifled lives. In so doing, both films suffer from the same simplicity. Ferran’s film, however, is more cinematic and conscious of its characters’ maturity in their affairs, so it gets the nod of the two here.

http://www.cd-cc.si/pic/galerija/823/1%20-%20Lady%20Chatterley%20(Pascal e%20Ferran)%201_gal.jpg

This is a way of saying, then, that Ferran’s film does possess artistry, even if so much of that artistry is dependent on the film’s coverage of the country estate where she lives. Where someone like Terrence Malick would frame the natural landscape to reveal a Transcendentalist view of the world, here in Ferran’s lens the framing is more pagan and focused on a physical, and not metaphysical, ontology. Scenes of Constance wandering the estate grounds have their own austere quality of grace, but that grace is always positioned toward self-discovery of the flesh. The flesh awakens the mind. And nature awakens the flesh. As such, Ferran warrants her film with the necessary cinematic, though oft invisible techniques of shot composition and framing, but ultimately her concerns come back to the body.

http://www.reverseshot.com/files/images/pre-issue22/chatt.preview.jpg

It is no surprise, then, that so much of the film is centered on Constance and her lover, Parkin (Jean-Louis Coulloc’h), and their frivolities. The scene where Constance and Parkin run about in the rain is marvelously led into, but that is one of the film scenes where clothes aren’t a part of the film’s sensuality. At nearly all other times Ferran eroticizes the ways in which disrobing of one’s garments leads to sex, and unnaturally refuses to cut beyond that minutiae since it so vitally foregrounds the dynamism at play in sensuality, and it is for this reason that her film possesses the strength that it does. Though Ferran misses an opportunity to open this film up to a wider cultural critique, her framing and careful composition of the body makes Lady Chatterley an invaluable entry into how women (and men) are fetishized into distinct frames of flesh for future sexual consumption.

[Rowland]

I love The 39 Steps and consider Conversations with Other Women woefully underseen, so kudos for including those. I always meant to catch up with Lady Chatterlay, so here's another excuse to do so.

[Philosophe_rouge]

I will have to see this film very soon. Sounds right up my alley.

[Boner M]

I didn't think Lady Chatterley would turn up based on your intro, although your writeup perfectly outlines why it should nonwithstanding. Kudos!

[thefourthwall]

In terms of another film that celebrations open sexuality but lacks a cultural lens we find Adrian Lyne’s 9 ½ Weeks. Both films fetishize the amoral couple who engage in bouts of unbridled and frequently animal passion, but neither delves into how their respective couples are symptomatic of a wider cultural experimentation with sexuality to liberate otherwise stifled lives. In so doing, both films suffer from the same simplicity. Ferran’s film, however, is more cinematic and conscious of its characters’ maturity in their affairs, so it gets the nod of the two here.


I think the juxtaposition of these is intriguing and spot on, not one I had thought of. So often, we fault narratives for not having a universal quality, for being too tied to a particular place, time, or culture, but here it's interesting how the insularity of the films is actually slightly detrimental to their impact.

[ledfloyd]

i need to see lady chatterly now. i thought conversations with other women was just ok.