Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies

This documentary covers nudity decade by decade beginning with the birth of the film industry. It was fine until they reached the 1980s then halfway through the runtime. But then It quickly became boring. Second half of the documentary sounded like the Charlie Brown teacher wah wah wah wah then insert nude scene from an 80,90,00,10 film and more wah wah wah. The documentary seem to have lost its focus during the second half. Became more about titillation the information on the film industry. More than 2hrs long.

I was fascinated with the stories about Audrey Munson, and the predatory Edison patent, but already knew about the idiotic Hays Code. After that, I actually remembered the kerfuffle over Jane Birkin's pubic hair and the introduction of the rating system.

Of course, I am old. You may not be. I remember the shock of Richard Gere's full frontal in 1981, and there's worse than it on cable now.

Enjoy the film.

Very surprised at how much nakedness there was before the 30s and the self censoring of the Hayes code. This documentary was full of facts and movies i never knew contained nudity there was a lot more in the Golden Age of Hollywood then i thought! I enjoyed hearing from the actresses point of view its very sad to hear how a lot of them were never told till the filming started and had very little choice in the 60s and 70s its good to see that we have moved on from doing things that ways and after the #MeToo movement things have really started to change hopefully things keep getting better

The evolution of sexuality in the cinema, where nudity is either tasteful, erotic, educational, gratuitous, or exploitative. Many historians, critics and actors are interviewed for their opinions on movies featuring their own nudity and commenting on the sex scenes of others (my favorites were Eric Roberts and Mariel Hemingway separately discussing "Star 80" and, by the end-credits, getting a bit off-track but still intriguing us). There was no innocent era for nudity on-screen; from the time Edison got a patent for the movie camera, men and women have been slipping out of their clothes. These by-gone years are the most fascinating: from the ill-fated Audrey Munson and swimmer Annette Kellerman, Hedy Lamarr in the Czech drama "Ecstasy", Mae West to Brigitte Bardot and Marilyn Monroe, the skirting of Joseph Breen's moral Code is, at once, funny and pathetic. In 1962, with the Code going out-of-fashion, nudity made a comeback (Russ Meyer's "The Immoral Mr. Teas" from 1959 was a watershed moment for permissiveness in a non-underground picture, while Antonioni's "Blow-Up" in 1966 is cited as the first movie to--fleetingly--show pubic hair). Informative and well-researched and produced, "Skin" has a great assortment of film clips and, well, lots of breasts and bums. *** from ****

Making a documentary about such a broad topic as nudity in film is tricky. On one end of the spectrum it can be about how nudity is liberating and how forces inside and outside the film industry have been threatened by it and have tried to suppress it. On the other hand it could be a diatribe about how women's unclothed bodies have been objectified and exploited by a male dominated film industry. The key is to find a balance between these two perspectives so that the audience can get a more complete picture of the role that nudity has played in motion pictures over the years. The filmmakers don't quite achieve that balance, favoring the former perspective over the latter. This is evidenced by the use of clips in the film. Rather than using clips efficiently to make its various points, the film devolves into a "greatest hits" of (mostly) female nude scenes and participants commenting on them. This is particularly true in the latter half of the film which focuses on the post-code era. Additionally, the film largely avoids the basic question of how nudity has been defined in motion pictures and by the society as a whole. Specifically, the film doesn't examine the differences in how male and female nudity are treated on screen. As a result, the film promotes the misleading narrative that nudity overwhelmingly involves women and not men and children. To the film's credit, it does touch upon challenging situations that women find themselves in regards to on screen nudity and sexuality vis-a-vis the experiences of their male counterparts. Overall, the film is a decent overview than might encourage some viewers to dig deeper into the subject on their own.