| I have a special fondness for "daring" movies. There's an electric moment when you first sense that a movie doesn't plan to follow the rules. It's like Harrison Bergeron freeing the ballerina from her weights. Suddenly anything seems possible. The fact that Maureen O'Sullivan swims around naked in TARZAN AND HIS MATE (1934) kills me. It's so cool... I've seen people in movies swim naked but not in Hollywood movies from 1934. Sadly, TARZAN AND HIS MATE's version of paradise went the way of all paradises. The incoming 1930s censorship code made sure that in the next installment, TARZAN ESCAPES (1936), O'Sullivan had to wear a frumpy leather smock. I can't get over old Hollywood movies like SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS (1961) that still seem too shocking for television. SPLENDOR is actually tame by contemporary TV standards but it feels over the edge. It's that relative sense of pushing the envelope... we can feel it when even old movies are straining at their moorings because everyone involved in making them knew they were in uncharted territory. A list with no introduction... Hollywood code-breakers. Movies that push back against the old MPPA production code, the current MPPA ratings system and other social/commercial conventions. Art-house movies. There have always been movies made outside the studio frame-work that self-consciously push the envelope. I'm particularly interested in recent NC17 style European dramas and anything else that ventures out of the R-rating framework without stepping into the mass-market porn framework. Old "adults only" movies. This genre turned out badly in the end but the 1960-1980 period is fascinating–roughly the span from the first modern movies with any nudity through the BOOGIE NIGHTS era. Those old movies were sometimes better made and more inventive than they had any reason to be. (They're also a lot more erotic than most contemporary movies.) It was a genre just bristling with artistic, historical, sociological and flat-out human interest–a great cultural story that intersects and informs every other great cultural story of the last fifty years. Commercial, personal and professional risk. Who was crazy enough to spend real money on this idea? To play this part? To do that in a movie? I applaud crazy movies that bankrupt studios and end careers. Foreign movies. Non-American movies sometimes don't always conform to American sensibilities because, well... they're not American. A safe foreign movie might seem daring here and visa versa. Some older Italian and Spanish movies defied the Catholic church in ways that don't seem so edgy here in America. Many older European movies dealt with sex in ways that seemed normal there, but edgy here. European movies today are, on average, somewhat freer about sex. They are also much edgier in terms of critiquing society. Mainstream(ish) Movies that "drop a dime on civilization." (The phrase is from a movie producer describing a kind of movie nobody wants to see in David Mamet's SPEED THE PLOW) SAFE, HAPPINESS, STARSHIP TROOPERS, THE LOVED ONE, IT'S A GIFT, THE RAPTURE, DOCTOR STRANGELOVE, FEARLESS, BRAZIL, WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE, ELECTION, OFFICE SPACE, 12 MONKEYS... Anything that doesn't reek of propaganda. About Nudity All things being equal, I favor it. I think people are interesting looking. If I were a platypus I might think otherwise. Film-nudity controversies are generally couched in moral terms. WTF? Anyone who thinks there is a moral dimension to nudity in art is a crazy. Seriously... it's an insane sort of thing to worry about. | ||||
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