OurStaff Pickscolumntakes you back to a time when video stores reigned supreme andthe "Staff Picks" section was the placetofind outwhat films were worthy of one's time.Of course, our version ofStaff Pickshas a decidedly skintillating angle, as we suss outwhich films from a particular subgenre are the best to find great nudity. This week, truth is nuder than fiction in these documentary flicks that don't shy away from the sexier side of life!
This coming Tuesday, August 18, sees the release of the skintillating new documentary SKIN: A History of Nudity in Movies featuring our very own Mr. Skin, so we've clearly got documentaries on the brain at the moment. The documentary is as old as cinema itself, but the truly modern documentary form as we know it came into being in the late 1960s, born out of the cinema vérité movement. Filmmakers like D.A. Pennebaker, The Maysles Brothers, Frederick Wiseman, and Barbara Koppel came to define what we now accept as "the documentary form."
Of course, many filmmakers since then have tinkered with the format, including some of the films we're discussing today, but overall the phrase "documentary" conjures up the same images of talking head interviews, archival footage, and a deep dive into a particular subject. Sometimes the film is done all handheld, following the subject going about their daily routine. There are many shapes and forms documentaries can take and we're talking about several different kinds today, all of them great films and all of them featuring nudity.
Some other documentaries that are recommendedbut we don't have time to cover include Boobs, Kink, Narcissister Organ Player, Thinking XXX, I am Thor, Je suis Femen, and Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami.
F for Fake (1974)
Portions of the following text are excerpted from our Anatomy of a Nude Scene: Orson Welles Distracts Us with a Nude Oja Kodar in F for Fake...
An absolute masterclass in editing,Orson Welles'F for Faketraffics in trickery, illusion, slight of hand, and plenty of distraction to drive home its narrative points. Initially, the project was started as a documentary about famous art forger Elmyr de Hory, directed by François Reichenbach, with Welles hired to serve as the film's narrator. One of the men initially interviewed was Clifford Irving, who had written a biography of de Hory's life, but during the course ofthefilm being made, Irving became even more famous when his "authorized" biography of notorious recluse Howard Hughes was debunked by no less than Hughes himself.This obviously caused everything about the project to change.
Welles asked Reichenbach if he could take over the film and finish directing it himself, but not at the expense of everythingthat had already been filmed. Instead, Welles took Reichenbach's footage and supplemented it with additional material, morphing the film into less of a documentary and more of a filmed essayabout fakery in general. Welles bolstered the story of the two notorious fakers—Irving and de Hory—by weavingin his own experiences perpetrating a hoax on the world with his infamous "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast. He also adds in tales of the many urban legends that cropped around Hughes when he dropped out of society, as well as an anecdote about a young woman,Oja Kodar, who conned Picasso out of two dozen paintings.
Despite Welles having been married to Paola Mori since 1955, hecarried on an affair with Ms. Kodar that spanned the last twenty years of his life. Welles thought of Oja (pronounced Oy-ah) as both a personal and professional muse, inserting her intoseveral sequences ofF for Fake. The film's opening titles are played over footage of Ms. Kodar walking the streets of Italy in a very skimpy dress, intercut with the many, many Italian men ogling her as she walks. Welles, briefly inhabiting the role of a more intellectual Allen Funt, tells us that these men have no idea they're on film, admiring them for acting away without being paid a single penny for their work.
To readthe rest of the story about Oja and Picasso, check out our Anatomy of a Nude Scene on F for Fake by clicking here!
**Available to stream free for members via Criteron Channel or HBO Max, or to rent or own via Amazon Prime Video
Madonna: Truth or Dare (1991)
The Material Girl herself, inthemost sexually adventurous phase of her career to date, invited cameras to follow her on her Blonde Ambition tour, throughout 1990 and the release of Warren Beatty's film Dick Tracy, which featured Madge in a major supporting role. Just prior to the Reality Television age, Madonna proved herself a master of the genre, showing a side of herself her fans had never seen before, while also being majorly guarded about her image, protecting it at all costs. It's the tightrope she walked her entire career, and seeing her in her early 30s, being wild and carefree while also totally "on" all the time makes for a fascinating journey.
We also remember all the great bits of backstage nudity from Madonna, including her twirling bra pop, her flash in a bathrobe, and her see-through bra. What steals the show, however, is her non-nude talent of fellating a bottle, showing off not unlike the star of our next film we're going to discuss. Bottom line, the brief flashes of nudity are great, the bottle deep throat is even better, I just can't show it to you because I'm saving my scene embed for the real deal here in a minute...
Truth or Dare's box office take of $29 million stood as a record haul for a documentary for 11 years until the release of Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. It was generally well received, but nevertheless earned Madonna a Razzie Award nomination for Worst Actress. They were on to something, saying that she was "acting" in this film, because she almost always is to a certain extent. However, she's not the worst at it by any means, so bad form Razzies, as always.
**Available to stream free for members via CBS All Access or to rent or own via Amazon Prime Video
Inside Deep Throat (2005)
The closest that pornography ever got to mainstream wasin that glorious period in the early 70s when porno houses started attracting everyday folks looking for a kinky good time. While this period saw lots of dirty filmsenter the public zeitgeist, none achieved the same level of success as 1972's Deep Throat.The film made over a million dollars in its first seven weeks in release in 1972 and early 1973, an unheard of sum for an adult film. This caused the film to get picked up by mainstream theaters and sort of help porn go legit, for a little while anyway. This 2005 doc, from Oscar winning producers Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, chronicles the film's meteoric rise and catastrophic fall.
The film's confirmed box office receipts are somewhere in the $30-50 million range, which is damn impressive for an adult movie. However, the producers and various stakeholders in the film have continually inflated the film's actual box office take to somewhere in the neighborhood of $600. The doc touches on this and the whole phenomenon surrounding the film's release, not to mention to sad fallout of the whole endeavor. Most of the major players who were still alive at the time of filming—like Harry Reems and director Gerard Damiano—are all on hand, and it's a great deep dive into a porno flick that transcended that label.
Of course, Deep Throathas now permeated the public consciousness, being associated as it is with a huge governmental conspiracy. As a result, it's easy to forget all about the actual movie at the center of all this controversy. This doc does a great job of reminding us that this whole cultural phenomenon started with a premise involving a woman with no gag reflex. The doc was slapped with an NC-17 for featuring 15 seconds of Linda Lovelace performing her talent, and it was worth it because to deny the audience the thrill of seeing that would have diminished the film entirely—not to mention this article...
**Available to own via Fandango Now
Bettie Page Reveals All (2013)
How literal do you like your titles? If you like them literal in several senses of the words involved, you're gonna love Bettie Page Reveals All! While a great many people knew who Bettie Page was long before the 2005 biopic The Notorious Bettie Page, at least that film showed the world that there was a lot of sadness and tragedy surrounding Bettie's life and stardom. This doc helped the late Ms. Page reclaim her image as a sex idol on her own terms. It showed her to be a master marketer of herself and her own image. Yes, it deals with the more melancholy aspects of her life and career, but it helps to reestablish her as one of the foremost sex symbols of the 20th century.
Among the talking head interviews in the film are Hugh Hefner,Dita Von Teese,Rebecca Romijn, Mamie Van Doren, and Naomi Campbell. The most fascinating anecdotes, however, belong to Bunny Yeager, Bettie's long time friend and fellow pin-up model. The film is chock full of pictures, some never before seen, of Bettie posing for pictures and just generally showing off her affable side as a playful lover of life and a woman who had fully embraced her sexuality and its power...
**Available to rent, own, or stream free for members via Amazon Prime Video
