Michael Winterbottom, director of the rather racy and recently released art-house piece 9 Songs, and the latest inductee to that all-too-meagre pantheon of taboo-busting filmmakers unafraid to commit to celluloid love in its most explicit manifestation, is pleased with his latest.

The respected auteur proclaims loudly, proudly (perhaps not unaware of the extra publicity doing so may afford his work) that motivation for making the ‘erotic’ 9 Songs lay mainly in his desire to shatter the numerous sexual inhibitions held widely by filmgoers and, indeed, society in general. And denying that the film fully accomplishes this ambition would certainly be difficult. 

The seventy minute picture is the first ever shown on general release to feature full and genuine onscreen sex between two actors, without being classified or marketed as pornography. So proud of his zeitgeist-baiting first is Winterbottom that, mere minutes into the film itself and mere minutes after the two protagonists have their inaugural bang, the pair are at it again, and then again, and then again, and then again ad nauseu; the actors (Acting Method without a choice in the matter?) are no doubt a little sore by the movie’s end. “It’s great to see that up on screen, absolutely great. Why on Earth shouldn’t the audience see everything?” the admired director/writer asks an interviewer, rhetorically.

What, then, differentiates base pornography from cerebral erotica, a tenderly-handled love scene from salacious filth? Supposedly - and this is the distinction ascribed to by censors - the difference is quite simple: the cold and performance-driven sex of backstreet Soho XXX video, with its absence of story and a sole focus on flesh from the chin down, highlights a simplistic, one-plus-one denigration of humankind’s most sacred act, whereas anything necessary to a film’s plot and shot with even a hint of shadow represents its celebration. In other words, if it’s not flagrantly voyeuristic, producers can probably get away with it.   

And they do. Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie maybe-or-maybe-not actually having sex in front of the cameras on the set of Don’t Look Now; that mortifying moment in Last Tango in Paris when Marlon Brando tells his partner to “get the butter”; even Sean Connery managing a straight-faced introduction to Pussy Galore in Goldfinger: sex has always had a part to play in the movies.

The first on-screen appearance of full nudity - at least in mainstream cinema - was platinum sex siren Jayne Mansfield’s unclothing in 1960’s Promises! Promises!, a film that was banned in most U.S. states but played to full-houses for months in more liberal-minded cinemas, the (unrated) film’s box-office receipts perhaps not reflective of the piece’s artistic merit. At first, things were slow to take off, onscreen taking off not truly taken up until 1965’s The Raw Ones, a film that extolled the virtues of casual naturism for 83 minutes, and in which top-billing was given to (forgive me) little friends rather than big names. 

And from that moment forth, like some awful Freudian nightmare, genitalia and popcorn became near synonymous. 

Well, not quite, though censors certainly began to liberalise their views on big-screen naughtiness, the Hay’s Act of 1966 suggesting “…restraint in the filming of ‘questionable’ scenes and lustful kissing…” (rather than prohibiting entirely the aforementioned, as had previously been the case), whilst “…full sin and scenes of passion which might excite the base emotions” were still forbidden. 

Just three years later, however, things had clearly moved on. 1969’s Midnight Cowboy, starring Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight, explicitly and repeatedly made reference to homosexuality, featured scenes of gang rape and full and lingering male and female nudity, and, what’s more, was one of the year’s most successful films and the winner of several Oscars. A seismic shift in the attitudes of both Hollywood and the general public had clearly taken place and, as films such as Don’t Look Now were soon to prove, very little was now off limits. Indeed, the previously referred to taboo-indexer 9 Songs suggests hardly any acts are now considered too taboo for the big screen. 

 What of actually shooting a sex scene? How on Earth does one manage to create an atmosphere of intimacy, sensuality, eroticism, whilst trying to keep a sound boom out of shot? David Cronenberg, director of A History of Violence, in which Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello make violent love against some stairs (voted the greatest sex scene of all time by the International Film Critics’ board, so who am I to argue?) explains “We tried to keep crew to a minimum, just tried to make things as natural as possible for the actors…we wanted to capture a moment between two people, so we didn’t want too many people on set! That’s the secret to a good love scene.” Surely though, capturing love on a camera must be difficult. Not according to smooth-talking Russell Crowe, who reportedly once said of sex scenes “I just get on with it. I’m on top, she’s underneath me, we do it…I just get on with it.” What a charmer.

What, then, of the role played by sex in filmmaking off-screen? The infamous ‘Casting Couch’, upon which aspirant actors supposedly set themselves seductively before the movie bigwigs holding mandate over their selection (or otherwise) for a coveted role, has certainly played a big part. The practice of exchanging sexual favours for parts in pictures has been repeatedly denied by Hollywood, but confirmed by many of those hopefuls who refused to kowtow with business conventions and as a consequence found themselves turned down for roles. Marilyn Monroe is a name often mentioned when talk of the Casting Couch’s prevalence in the early days of film comes up - and, I’ll admit, it never does - with the starlet’s suspiciously rapid rise to filmic omnipresence often accredited to an acceptance on her part that sex acted as major currency among producers. 

So, there you have it; sex is - and always has been - important in cinema, both on-screen and off. Fake orgasms; false phalluses; unclothing surrounded by a lecherous crew numbering well into double-figures; modesty-preserving merkins and shadows where shadows surely shouldn’t be are most definitely here to stay. And there’s nothing wrong with that. To re-quote Michael Winterbottom, “Why on Earth shouldn’t the audience see everything?”