The first Friday in April has been dominated by the Fast Furious franchise for over a decade, nevertheless some gems have slipped through the cracks on this day in movie nudity history...
2015: The Girl is in Trouble
Though the film boasts Spike Lee as an Executive Producer, there's not much to write home about in this gangland drama starring Wilmer Valderrama. Just fourteen minutes into the film, we get a quick sex scene with the gorgeous Juliet Tondowski briefly baring her left breast while getting banged against the wall of a scummy bathroom...
2009: Gigantic
There's no faster path to disappointment than finding out that an actress' only nude scene is distant, dimly lit, brief, or in the case of Zooey Deschanel, all three of those things. The youngest daughter of cinematographer Caleb Deschanel's one and only nude scene came in this completely forgotten quirky indie love story released ten years ago today.
Deschanel plays yet another one ofthose dreaded manic pixie dream girls* who becomes the not-so-obscure object of desire for yet another bland white guy with nodirection in life (Paul Dano). Just shy of the one hour mark, the two go for a sexy nighttime swim, and Deschanel takes a topless trip up to the high board...
We get another super brief look at her breasts when she pops up out of the water after her landing...
Though absolutely none of this is easy to see, the still of her popping out of the water is perhaps the only decent look we get at her breasts...
Unless you felt Garden State could've really used a subplot about Zach Braff trying to adopt a Chinese baby, you can go ahead and skip this one.
1998: Artemisia
In the early daysof his notoriously boorish behavior, Harvey Weinstein had a penchant for buying up erotic foreign films, re-editing them, and releasing them in America for art house perverts—the sorts of viewers who equate foreign films solely with sex, nudity, and readin'. This true story of 17th century artistArtemisia Gentileschi, played here by the gorgeous Valentina Cervi, isn't exactly some lost classic, but it certainly deserved better treatment thanwhat wasafforded by Weinstein.
The film earned a modicum of notoriety in its original release when it was slapped with an NC-17 rating, though it seems a bit much in retrospect. It's not necessarily for the nudity, but rather the context around the nudity such as when Cervi is assaulted by her tutor and the only nudity comes from a brief nip slip...
Full frontal nudity was much more taboo in the 90s, and Cervi's brief full frontal flash at the 59 minute mark also contributed to the film's restrictive rating...
The film frames the relationship between Artemisia and her tutor Agostino Tassi as a more or less consensual relationship, which did not necessarily jive with reality. It was a point of contention for many viewers and continues being debated to this day thanks to the vagueness of the transcripts from the time.
Apart from all of the controversy, however, Artemisia's best nude scene is also its first, before any of the complications of the film have begun. Two minutes in, the budding artist sketches herself topless, setting the tone for the erotic adventure to come. In all honesty, the film never really gets better than this...
1985: Alamo Bay
Hot on the heels of his not particularly well-received crime caper Crackers, Louis Mallewas back behind the camera the following year for this drama starring Ed Harris and Amy Madigan. While filming Places in the Heart in 1983, Harris and Madigan were married, making this their first on-screen appearance together as husband and wife. Their intimacy off screen aided in their intimacy on screen, as they play a two minute scene in one take, with Madigan topless throughout the entire scene...
It's certainly not Malle's best film, even of this decade—My Dinner with Andre and Au Revoir les Enfants bookend this flick—but if you want to see both Harris and Madigan in their prime, you could do a lot worse.
1969: Goodbye Columbus
In the nascent days of the MPAA, back when there were only four ratings—G, PG, R, and X—it was a lot easier to see nudity in a PG film. PG basically encompassed everything that wasn't quite explicit enough to get an R, but some flicks would likely be slapped with the more restrictive rating in this day and age. This is thanks in no small part to the puritanical streak that runs through our ratings board who will give graphic violence a pass but balk at graphic nudity.
But I digress, the PG-rated romantic comedy Goodbye, Columbus starringRichard Benjamin and Ali MacGraw as summer lovers at a crossroads in their lives, hesitating about whether or not they stay together as life calls them in two different directions. Loosely based on the title story in Philip Roth's novella of the same name, the film is mostly forgotten fifty years after it came out, but it is a great reminder for the kids today of what a sex symbol Ali MacGraw was in her day!
MacGraw stripped down in front of the straight-laced Benjamin and gave an entire generation of guys a dream girl of their very own. We get another quick look at her breasts when she jumps into the water—what is it with topless swimming on this day in history?
Several minutes later, MacGraw gets out of bed, giving us a great but fleeting glimpse of her ass and right breast...
Anyone who has readRobert Evans'"The Kid Stays in the Picture" or seen the documentary will know what a damned fool he truly was to let MacGraw go, right into the arms of Steve McQueen. If you haven't read it or seen the movie, stop whatever you're doing and watch one of the definitive accounts of filmmaking in the 1970s.
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*All credit for the term "manic pixie dream girl" belongs to Nathan Rabin
