Sex, Love and Videotape

On movie sex and movie love...

Category: 1960s

The Apartment

December 11, 2020 / / 0 Comments
  • YEAR: 1960
  • DIRECTOR: Billy Wilder
  • KEY ACTORS: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine
  • CERTIFICATE: PG
  • IMDB SCORE: 8.3
  • ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 93%

SEX SCORE: 4/5

✔️ This passes the Bechdel Test, although the site I use to check described its passing as ‘by accident!’
✔️ And it is definitely rewatchable. I’d even say that I’ve not watched it enough!
✔️ Just like Mad Men, it did inspire fantasies of being wined and dined in 1960s New York but they are probably not very healthy fantasies…
❌ But I didn’t want to fuck the cast. Although Lemmon is less sycophantic and more likeable by the end, he’s still not for me!
✔️ I thought a lot about the question of sex positivity and I’ve decided that it is sex positive. Even within the constraints of the Hays Code, the women are having consensually fun sex lives and any consequences are blamed on the toxic men rather than the sexually liberated women!

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Rosemary’s Baby

October 16, 2020 / / 5 Comments
  • YEAR: 1968
  • DIRECTOR: Roman Polanski
  • KEY ACTORS: Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmur
  • CERTIFICATE: 18
  • IMBD SCORE: 8.0
  • ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 96%

SEX SCORE: 2/5

✔️ It passes the Bechdel Test without any trouble!
❌ But it didn’t inspire fantasies…
❌ …I don’t want to fuck the cast, although Mia Farrow’s pixie cut is iconic…
❌ …and it’s really not sex positive!!
✔️ I will give it a mark for being rewatchable. It’s horrifying and disturbing and traumatic and terrifying, but it is enthralling.

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The Graduate

February 18, 2020 / / 1 Comment

YEAR: 1967
DIRECTOR: Mike Nichols
KEY ACTORS: Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, Katharine Rose
CERTIFICATE: 15
IMDB SCORE: 8.0
ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 86%

SEX SCORE: 2/5
❌ It fails the Bechdel Test – the two named women (and there are only two!) share two lines of dialogue at the very end of the movie, but they are about Ben so it fails!
✔️ But it is rewatchable. Whatever you might think of the sexual politics and disaffection, it is a beautiful, funny and interesting movie.
✔️ It did inspire fantasies. Not so much about the age difference or the seduction by a older, more experienced person but for the late night assignations at hotels, meeting and fucking and not speaking except to arrange the next meeting. Hot. So hot.
❌ I don’t want to fuck the cast though. Mrs Robinson is glamorous and beautiful and can really wear a pair of stockings but I’d rather be her than fuck her, and Benjamin is just too annoying to contemplate.
❌ This can’t be a sex positive film when so much sexually predatory behaviour is considered sources of comedy!

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1960s

Lolita

February 9, 2020 / / 0 Comments

YEAR: 1962
DIRECTOR: Stanley Kubrick
KEY ACTORS: Sue Lyons, James Mason, Peter Sellers
CERTIFICATE: 15
IMDB SCORE: 7.6
ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 93%

SEX SCORE: 1/5
✔️Lolita does pass the Bechdel Test.
❌ But that may be the last mark this movie gets in my sex score!! It certainly didn’t inspire fantasies – the sexual premise is not supposed to be attractive!
❌ And I don’t want to fuck the cast for similar reasons. Lolita is too young and Humbert is too distasteful!
❌ While this film doesn’t overtly judge the character’s sexual choices, instead leading the audience to make that judgement themselves, it is not sex positive. In its simplest form, it is about a non-consensual sexual relationship.
❌ It’s a good film; better than I expected. But it’s not rewatchable. It made me too uncomfortable to want to watch again.

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