Let's have a history lesson! You might be surprised to hear that there was nudity in the earliest days of cinema. Let's be honest: sex sells and sex has always sold! One of the first nude scenes in cinema goes back to an 1897 film called After the Ball which showed a woman's ass. Before that, however, was the first "gay" film!
In 1894 a film known as The Dickson Experimental Sound Film aka The Gay Brothers depicted two men dancing together. Not very controversial to us, but apparently the playful dance shocked audiences due to its "subversion of conventional male behavior". Gay themes were often subtextual and male nudity was scarce, but there are some films that defy all of that. Let's look at those films!
Until the 1980s, male nudity was pretty rare - even though women were undressing all over the 70s! It's not that it didn't happen...it just didn't happen nearly as often. Here are shocking movies with male nudity in early cinema:
THE CAMERAMAN, 1928
Did you know that silent film comedian Buster Keaton showed his ass? It's true! And we never talk about it! He is one of the most famous comedic actors of all time and in his 1928 film, he dove nude into a body of water to show his body. Get a camera and focus on Buster's backside. It might make you bust!
FIREWORKS, 1947
Kenneth Anger directed this early piece of queer history when he was just a teen. He plays a shirtless man named Dreamer who, appropriately, dreams of a hot sailor with rippling muscles. As he dreams of the sailor carrying him in his buff arms, Dreamer has surrealist visions that go from sexual to violent. While the nudity is not explicit, his clever use of cuts and surrealist imagery lets us put pieces together. It also helps that there appears to be cum dripping down his body!
UN CHANT D'AMOUR, 1950
I always have to hand it to the French to get to the sexy stuff before the rest of us. Writer Jean Genet made history with his sexy short film about two prisoners who want human connection. The prisoners attempt to talk to one another - and even touch each other - in various ways. One guard watches through a peephole to see Coco Le Martiniquais dance in his cell and to see the extra sexy Andre Reybaz show his ass.
Andre does more than that! There is an implied blowjob and some sexy gay poses that show us some booty, giving us just enough to imagine the rest.
THIS SPORTING LIFE, 1963
While not considered much of anything to our modern sensibilities, This Sporting Life sent a shock through British audiences in 1963 for having slight glimpses and suggestions of male nudity. In this hypermasculine movie, a rugby player struggles to find himself while his star rises in the sport. He wonders: is there more to life than being an athlete? Yeah, I think there is and it's men.
Richard Harris and Colin Blakely hang out in a shallow pool. They are goofing around when they soon begin to homoerotically wrestle each other. This scene is such a tease, but it was enough to shock audiences who swore they saw something more beneath the water.
REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE, 1967
Classic queer cinema alert! This adaptation of the 1944 novel by Carson McCullers was brought to us by the one and only John Huston. That is a surprise when you consider the film deals with themes of sexual repression as a young Marlon Brando keeps his gay desires secret from his wife, played by Elizabeth Taylor.
We do not get to see Marlon nude in the film, but Robert Forster winds up seducing Brando's wife in the movie. He can seduce the pants off of me when he rides nude on a horse. He was doing hot gay cowboy way before Brokeback!
WHO'S THAT KNOCKING AT MY DOOR, 1967
Martin Scorcese has always been an incredible filmmaker, so it should be no surprise that he experimented with male nudity in one of his earliest films. Harvey Keitel plays an Italian-American young man in New York who wants to settle down with his lady, but when he learned that she is assaulted he flips out. The film delves deep into Italian Catholic beliefs as the naked Keitel nearly shows full frontal. We only see pubes, so he leaves us knocking at the door for more.
IF..., 1968
If... is THE mod film to come out of the UK and it is notable for multiple reasons. This is one of Malcolm McDowell's first roles and it happens to be lousy with male nudity. The film is set in a boarding school in England and features a scene in which several nude lads are showering together.
Famously, there is a scene where Malcolm wrestles a woman naked. We see his ass in that scene, but according to cinema history legend there were frontal shots that were removed from the film. We've never seen those alleged shots, but I believe they exist.
WOMEN IN LOVE, 1969
And, finally, we land on what is considered the first full frontal male scene in a movie: Women in Love. Full-frontal female nudity goes all the way back to 1915 with the film Inspiration, but men had to wait decades into filmmaking to take their pants off and show dick. And boy did they show it! There isn't just a small glimpse or suggestion of penis in this movie - we see A LOT of penis. No wonder those women are in love...
Ken Russell delivered sexy male nudity and then some when Oliver Reed and Alan Bates iconically wrestled one another in the buff. Now THAT'S how you deliver the first male full frontal scene in movie history: give us double!
