Throughout cinema history, there have been some iconic nude scenes that have transcended the bounds of the films in which they appeared. Our weekly column Anatomy of a Scene's Manatomy will take an in-depth look at these scenes, their history, their deeper meanings, and their legacy. This week, Michael Pitt and Louis Garrel get catapulted to stardom thanks to their revealing roles in Bertolucci's The Dreamers!
Bernardo Bertolucci spent his career courting controversy thanks to his poetic mix of hot button political issues and taboo sexuality through films like Last Tango in Paris, 1900, Stealing Beauty, and his Oscar-winning classic The Last Emperor. When approaching what would be his penultimate film, 2003's The Dreamers, he initially set out to do a faithful adaptation of Gilbert Adair's novel "The Holy Innocents," itself inspired by Jean-Pierre Melville's film Les Enfants Terribles. However, Bertolucci began infusing the film and its characters with a love of film that would allow the film to be a celebration of cinema as much as it was a celebration of the end of the Bohemian-era in post-WWII Europe.
The basic story remained the same, an American exchange student named Matthew (Michael Pitt) is in Paris to study French. He soon falls in with free-spirited twins Théo (Louis Garrel) and Isabelle (Eva Green) who introduce him to the free loving Bohemian lifestyle, with none of them realizing that's about to come to a crashing halt with the encroaching 1968 Parisian student riots. Initially the three bond over their shared love of cinema, Bertolucci's most crucial addition to the narrative. However, they end up bonding over a lot more than that, as the sexually repressed American soon gets turned on to the free-love scene the twins have been drenched in their entire lives.
New Jersey native Michael Pitt had stormed onto the scene with 2001's Hedwig and the Angry Inch and was quickly becoming a hot commodity. He had already proven he wasn't risk averse when it came to roles and doing something as explicit as this helped to cement his image as a more sexually adventurous Leonardo DiCaprio type. 19-year old Paris-born actor Louis Garrel, on the other hand, was appearing in only his second film, but obviously made a huge enough impression to have launched his career following this film.
For as much sexually explicit content as there is in the film, it's all of the staunchly heterosexual variety. There are certainly undertones and scenes that dance around a potential attraction between Pitt and Garrel—such as the one where Garrel holds Pitt while Green takes off his pants—but none of them commit to anything that's not at least 99% heterosexual. The closest they get is when they share the bathtub with Green, and though both men get out of the tub almost immediately, they spent two minutes completely nude talking and arguing in the bathroom...
One curious omission in the film, particularly when compared with the source material, is the absence of any sort of sexual activity between Matthew and Théo. In the book, they become lovers, but Bertolucci told The Guardian in an interview at the time of the film's release, that it was "just too much" for the film...
Bertolucci gives a very Latin shrug. "The gay sex was in the first script, but I had a feeling that it was just too much stuff. It became redundant. I told Gilbert: 'Please don't feel betrayed, but when a book becomes a movie it becomes a whole new conception.' And he told me: 'Be totally unfaithful'. So I think that I've been faithful to the spirit of the book but not the letter. I had to make it mine."
For his part, columnist Xan Brooks didn't think much of that answer...
The Dreamers began life as a novel (The Holy Innocents) by Gilbert Adair, who also wrote the screenplay. But the director retooled it in his own image. He peppered the narrative with clips from the films he loves. He cut out the gay sex and emphasised the straight. So instead of a menage-a-trois drama that tips towards homosexuality, we're left with the tale of a callow Yank who has sex with a foxy French girl while her possessive brother broods on the sidelines.
Bertolucci was likely staring down his own increasing obsolescence as a filmmaker, with ambitious young men half his age like Alfonso Cuarón making films like Y Tu Mamá También that put the more hesitant sexual fluidity of Bertolucci's earlier work to shame. Perhaps he felt he couldn't honestly tell that story as a filmmaker, which is a valid concern to have when dealing with a subject outside one's own purview, but it feels like a terrible cop out in hindsight.
It's probably for the best that he made The Dreamers a much more classical style of film, rather than trying to ape the more popular verité-style that was becoming the hot thing in the new millennium. By steeping a film about a love of old movies with an aesthetic that matches those films, it makes The Dreamers something special and anomalous in the 21st century.
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Catch up with ALL of our other editions of Anatomy of a Scene's Manatomy...
—Oliver Reed Alan Bates in Women in Love
—Ewan McGregor in Velvet Goldmine
—A Pair of Stars are Born in Y Tu Mamá También
—Harvey Keitel in Bad Lieutenant
—Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises
—Jason Segel in Forgetting Sarah Marshall
—Jaye Davidson in The Crying Game
—David Bowie and Rip Torn in The Man Who Fell to Earth
—John Cameron Mitchell in Hedwig and the Angry Inch
—Ross Lynch in My Friend Dahmer
—Rocketman vs. Bohemian Rhapsody
—Bruce Willis in Color of Night
—Robert De Niro and Gerard Depardieu in Bertolucci's 1900
—Louis Garrel in Godard Mon Amour
—Henry June and the NC-17 Rating
—The Gay Cowboys of Brokeback Mountain
—Eddie Redmayne in Danish Girl
—Tom Cruise in All the Right Moves
—Christopher Atkins in The Blue Lagoon
—Sylvester Stallone in The Italian Stallion
—9 Songs Combines Real Music with Real Sex
—The Naked Men of A Room with a View
—John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus
—Ben Affleck's Abnormally Smooth Dick in Gone Girl
—Joseph Gordon-Levitt inMysterious Skin
—Will Smith in Six Degrees of Separation
—Richard Gere in American Gigolo
—Ralph Fiennes and Matthias Schoenaerts in A Bigger Splash
—The Naked Gay Men of Love! Valour! Compassion!
—Jude Law in The Talented Mr. Ripley
—David Naughton in An American Werewolf in London
—Cillian Murphy in 28 Days Later
—Malcolm McDowell in Cat People
—Chris Evans in Not Another Teen Movie
—Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix in My Own Private Idaho
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