Throughout cinema history, there have been some iconic nude scenes that have transcended the bounds of the films in which they appeared. Our new column Anatomy of a Scene's Manatomy will take an in-depth look at these scenes, their history, their deeper meanings, and their legacy. We start with one of the most amazing male nude scenes in the history of cinema, where manly men Oliver Reed and Alan Bates strip completely nude and wrestle by the fireside in Ken Russell's 1969 adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love.
A film adaptation of the novel had been kicking around since the early 60s, with directorSilvio Narizzano attached todirect after his filmGeorgy Girlbecame a box office sensation in the UK. Narizzano backed out of the film shortly before production was to start, and several directors—including Stanley Kubrick—were sought to come in and save the project from development hell. Enter Ken Russell, who was best known at this point in the late 60s for a handful of well-received BBC documentaries and two feature films—French Dressing and Billion Dollar Brain—which were not so well-received.
Proclaiming the novel to be"probably the best English novel ever written," Russell worked with screenwriter Larry Kramer (The Normal Heart) to supplement the story with biographical details from D.H. Lawrence's own life, including the now infamous wrestling scene. After much hemming and hawing, Russellbegan to lean towardcutting the scene from the film for two reasons. First, he thought it would never pass uncut by the censorship board, and second, he thought it would be toodifficult to film. Where on earth was he going to find two actors comfortable enough in their own bodies to wrestle fully nude on screen for four minutes?
Kramer's friend, actor Alan Bates, was a perfect fit for the Lawrence surrogate in the film, Rupert Birkin, and accepted the role with no hesitation. Russell had a much more difficult time casting the part of Birkin's best friend, the boorish coal mine heir Gerald Crich.Russellwanted to cast Michael Caine, with whom he'd just worked on Billion Dollar Brain, but Caine scoffed at the notion of appearing fully nude on film for that length of time. It was then that Russellbegan to seriously entertain the notion of excising the wrestling scene, assuming that it was turning off every major actor in the UK at the time. Then the script landed in the lap of notorious bad boy Oliver Reed.
Reed's star had been on the rise since the early 60s, where he played several leading roles in Hammer Studios horror films, and his stardom had just exploded with the 1968 release of Carol Reed's Best Picture winner Oliver!, in which he played the villainous Bill Sykes. Though his casting would have obviously been a coup for the production, easily securing them the financing they needed, Russell hesitated because the swarthy Reed didn't match Lawrence's description of the character as "blond, glacial, and Nordic."However, Russell was won over by Reed's intensity and drive, later admitting that while he wasn't the most obvious choice for the role, he turned out to be the best possible actor to play Crich.
When Reed got word that Russell was intending to cut the wrestling scene, he paid the director a visit at his home. In his 1993 book The Lion Roars, Russell recounted the tense exchange between the two men over Russell's decision to cut the scene, referring to Reed by his affectionate nickname for him, Oily...
"Oily talked me into it. He wrestled with me, jujitsu style, in my kitchen, and wouldn’t let me up until I said, ‘OK, OK, you win, I’ll do it.’ Hell! I was in pain. Thanks, Oily, we made history."
On the day the scene was to be shot, Reed came to set drunk.He claimed that it was the only way he would expose himself on camera, and he soon convinced Bates to join him in getting soused. The macho actors were apparently quite insecure as to which of them had a bigger member, but the alcohol and a pre-shoot comparison alleviated those fears when Reed and Bates determined they were of equal size. Their insecurities behind them—or at least washed away in a fog of booze—the actors spent the entire day shooting the scene.
As it appears in the film, the scene arrives56 minutes into the film—interestingly enough before we've seen a single female member of the cast naked. Gerald and Ruperthave become fast friends and Rupert is enthralled by Gerald's descriptions of Japanese wrestling, wherein the men would strip nude and battle with one another in an unfettered assertion of their dominance over one another. With their female companions having retired to their bedrooms, the men decide to give it a go, stripping nude by the fireplace.
It starts out innocently enough, with Gerald being the more aggressive of the two, particularly after Rupert is the first to knock Gerald to the ground, twice in fairly short succession. That's when Gerald really gets fired up, pulling Rupert into a bear hug, holding him aloft and squeezing his midsection for over 10 seconds. Throughout the fight, it's clear that Gerald is underestimating Rupert's strength, his arrogance often getting the best of him. Rupert, on the other hand, begins to show that he's experiencing a form of intimacy he's never shared with a woman.
Interestingly, the scene is also played without any score for the first ninety seconds. French composer Georges Delerue's woodwind heavy score then begins to fade in, adding another layer of intimacy to the scene as the fight becomes more passionate. It culminates in the men coming face to face with one another, so close in fact that they look as if they're about to share a kiss, until Gerald finally manages to put his full weight on Rupert and send him to the ground.
Gerald asks, "Was it too much for you?" to which Rupert responds, "No, one ought to strive and wrestle and be physically close. It makes one... sane." This is a physical closeness that has clearly aroused something in Rupert, in virtually every sense of the word. Gerald simply views this as a form of horseplay he can only perform with another man, whereas Rupert is drawn in by the intimacy of it, rather than the brutality. Each man has satisfied whatever urge drove them to this demonstration of their masculinity, but only Rupert comes away from it as a changed man.
Devoid of any overt sexual content, the scene passed the British censors with only minor cuts being requested,all of them long, lingering shots of the men standing nude in front of one another before the wrestling commenced. The homoeroticism of the moment was not lost on audiences or critics, however, and the scene almost completely transcended the film around it. In his aforementioned book The Lion Roars, Russell muses on why the film connected with audiences in a way many such period pieces had not...
"I’ve made better films than Women in Love but obviously it had something that tickled the public’s fancy, and it wasn’t just the male members of Messrs Bates and Reed. It might have probed intimacy between the sexes as few movies had before, but I can take scant credit for that. I was only putting on the screen what D.H. Lawrence had written half a century before. But the film did have some excellent performances... and both Alan and Oily really came to grips with the subject, especially in the nude wrestling scene. I wonder if people would still be talking about the film today if i hadn't included that particular scene."
Probably not, as the scene is probably the thing that most people remember about the film. Thank goodness Oliver Reed pinned Ken Russell to the ground in his kitchen or else we'd have had nothing to talk about today.
