On movie sex and movie love...

Tag: Black and white

Casablanca

  • YEAR: 1942
  • DIRECTOR: Michael Curtiz
  • KEY ACTORS: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid
  • CERTIFICATE: U
  • IMDB SCORE: 8.5
  • ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 99%

SEX SCORE: 3.5/5

✔️ This is definitely rewatchable. From any point in the film, at any time.
✔️ And I definitely want to fuck the cast. Doesn’t everyone?
❓ I’m giving it a half mark for inspiring fantasies because it didn’t inspire anything directly, but it could be the source of so many other doomed romance/love triangle/being fought over by two men fantasies…
❌ Sadly, it fails the Bechdel Test. There are only three named female characters and they never speak, let alone talk about something other than a man.
✔️ I had to think about it, but I think Casablanca is sex positive. Sex seems to be both ever present and never spoken about, but I don’t recall any particularly negative moments so I’m giving it the mark!

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The Apartment

  • 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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