Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies

The most interesting part was the beginning and the history of the code, once you got into the early mid 60s it got a bit repetitive. At the one hour mark I fast forward to end. I gave in and eight because it is a good and interesting movie at least for the first hour the second half I would rate it about a five. This is quite common with documentaries.

Wonderful! Surprisingly thoughtful and well-done. I actually expected this documentary to be gratuitous... nothing could have been further from that than this exceptional film!

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 ****

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.

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.