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Nudist-Friendly Movies You
Can Watch with Your Children (Feb. 2014)
Normally, this column will be
short. But this first time, I need to explain what I am doing.
There are people who know a lot more
about movies than I do. But nobody is writing about things
nudist adults and their children or grandchildren can do
together. The main value of these movies is the family
discussion afterward—about topics raised, such as school
bullying or equal respect for girls and boys. Therefore,
these are not the latest flicks playing at your local cinema, but
classic movies and forgotten gems you can watch together at home.
I came to film rather late in
life. I had not realized that the last third of the twentieth
century was a sort of golden
age of child-friendly, nudist-friendly movies. That was
before the confusion and hysteria about so-called child pornography
scared a lot of movie-makers away. By now, some of those
films are popular favorites at your public library, or available for a
dollar or so at your neighborhood thrift store.
At my age, I don't have little children
underfoot. I have pretty much retired from college teaching,
but still work with teenagers, and have a fair grasp of what they can
handle. They can handle some uncomfortable topics.
My aim is to point out films meaningful to young people, that happen to
include a bit of natural nudity.
I will probably discuss two or three movies each
time: one for the whole family (including small children), and one or
more for
teens and their parents. We all know that families change;
what is inappropriate for your child now may be fine next
year. This column is no substitute for parental guidance.
Movie ratings are not much help, because
the people who decide those things seem to think one skinnydip is the
equivalent of about five murders. Likewise, the fine list of
naturist-friendly movies at http://www.clothesfree.com/movies.html
contains some with far more violence and ugliness than I welcome into
my living room. You will not agree with all of my
choices—or all of my rejections. That's OK.
I am aware of only a limited number of
nudist-friendly movies—especially for the younger
children. I welcome any suggestions of favorites at your
house. Just write paullevalley@peoplepc.com.
Now for this season's picks:
For
the whole family
Kirikou
and the Sorceress (1998) is a
cartoon for all ages. This west African folktale has survived
through the generations because it contains wisdom that parents,
children, and grandparents can equally appreciate. It's about
a baby boy who accomplishes heroic deeds, and saves his people.
In true African fashion, the women live
topfree, and children go nude. American theatre owners kept
the French movie out of this country for four years, insisting that the
artist, Michel Ocelot, paint clothes over all of his figures.
He refused.
As a home video, the movie is available
only in French, with English subtitles. So the kids have to
be old enough to read—unless you want to read the captions to
them. It is all worth the effort.
With the cartoon's popularity, the
artist has released two spin-off films in 2005 and 2012. Both
are again in French. So far, only Kirikou and the Wild Beasts
is available with English subtitles.
For
teens and older
I remember in the late 1960s and early
'70s, teenagers were rebelling against the expectations of their
parents, but found a lot in common with their grandparents.
Time has rolled around. Today's teenagers can sit down with
their hippy grandparents who lived those experiences, and
watch—not one, but two—classic movies together.
Hair
was the ultimate sixties musical, though the movie version had to wait
a decade until 1979. The original stage play was a joyous
in-your-face songfest, a be-in, a rock-rhythm hootenanny. The
movie makers decided it needed a plot, so they added a lame one about a
ranch boy enjoying one last weekend of freedom in New York's Central
Park, before reporting for military duty in Vietnam. It's not
the same, but much of the great fun still comes through.
Young people are singing right out loud
about such forbidden topics as race, sex, drugs, and peace.
No one should be surprised that one scene of this movie about the
sixties is a hallucinatory drug trip.
The musical originally ended with all of
the young actors nude and facing the audience on the dimly lit stage,
while singing "Let the Sun Shine In." That nudity was later
moved to just before the intermission, so actors could return for
curtain calls at the end. The tamer movie instead gives us a
nighttime skinny-dip, with bare butts and breasts, while avoiding any
frontal nudity below the belt.
Still, the music of a generation
continues to throb with joy and significance.
For another perspective on the sixties and the Vietnam draft, also
watch Alice's
Restaurant (1969).
This is a true story about Arlo Guthrie's singing commercial that grew
into a movie. Some families have made it a Thanksgiving
tradition to re-watch this film every year.
Before seeing it, today's teenagers need
to be reminded that Arlo's father, Woody Guthrie, was the
mid-twentieth-century's greatest folk song writer. But
illness debilitated him by the sixties. Pete Seeger, another
folk song legend, puts in a cameo appearance singing Woody's songs.
The plot begins when a couple in a
strained marriage buy an old church and turn it into a hangout for all
their young hippy friends. Despite the cover art, there is
not much nudity in this movie—just one pair of bare
breasts. Even for the army physical exam, cameramen aimed
above the waist.
My disc offers the option of viewing the
film again, with commentary from Arlo Guthrie today. That is
an excellent reason for seeing it twice.
So watch all three of these movies
together, and start some family discussions. If you don't
have family, they're still great to watch.
Nude Swimming in School (May 2014)
Today's topic is schools—boys'
schools—and the nude swimming that was a part of them for
centuries.
For the whole family:
Tom Brown's Schooldays (1951) is a
movie about school bullying at Rugby in England. Thomas Hughes
wrote the book a century earlier in 1857, back when long-windedness was
in fashion. It makes heavy slogging today. (The bullying
takes up only a chapter-and-a-half during Tom's first year or so at the
school.)
The book has been made into a movie five
times. Only the 1951 British version, starring John Howard
Davies, includes the skinny-dipping which was a part of every
schoolboy's experience in the nineteenth century. After all, the
events happen in the early 1830s, and swimsuits wouldn't even be
invented until about 1870. Hughes wrote that during warm weather
"they spent a large portion of the day in nature's garb by the river
side, and so when tired of swimming, would get out on the other side
and fish."
In the 1830s, Dr. Thomas Arnold (father of poet
Matthew Arnold) was reforming Rugby school. He cleaned up the
bullying, brought in modern subjects, yet firmly believed in the
ancient Greek ideal of a well developed mind in a well developed
body. Athletics (including swimming) formed an important part of
school life. You don't need to understand the rules of cricket or
Rugby football to appreciate the film.
By the way, we learn from the book (but not the
movies) that beer was regularly on the school menu. How times
have changed.
Be aware that the 1951 movie was made in black and
white. It is still readily available.
Here is a fine opportunity for parents to openly
discuss bullying with their children. You will need to explain
beforehand that in English schools, "fag" meant a younger student
running errands for an older student—nothing more.
For teens and older:
Heaven Help Us (1985) is a
forgotten gem of a movie. It takes us inside a Catholic boys'
high school in Brooklyn in 1965. (The film is known in Europe
under the title, Catholic Boys.)
Except that the girls go to a separate school, and the teachers wear
robes, it is much like any other inner-city school during the early
sixties. The rough talk rings true.
The big-talking bully in this case quickly joins the
hero and some other misfits, to form an oddly assorted group of loyal
friends. The real bully is one of the teachers.
Among the daily activities, we see the boys lined up
nude beside the school swimming pool. The first view is frontal,
blurry, and brief. Then we see them from the back and sides,
while their instructor gives them a grouchy pep talk. This is not
central to the plot—just a routine moment in an ordinary school
day.
A bit of history: In the early years of the
twentieth century, schools in larger cities built indoor swimming
pools. Lint clogged the early filters, so nudity was mandatory
for everyone—including the teachers. All classes were
single-sex. After World War II the nudity requirement relaxed for
girls—but not for boys. They still were expected to do the
manly thing and swim nude. On rare occasions, that even extended
to competition between schools before a mixed-sex audience.
But by 1965, most American public schools had
switched to requiring swim suits. Some private schools and the
YMCA held onto traditional nude swimming for another five or ten
years. And so the movie shows us the waning days of a standard
dress code that had been a part of boys' schools for centuries.
But what about a nude
classroom? We must turn to imagination. On YouTube, you can
find Olivier Smolders' ten-minute film of 1988, Point de Fuite—which
translates as The Vanishing Point.
A Belgian teacher walks into a high school geometry class to find her
male and female students all nude. She eventually joins them, but
they are tricking her. Do NOT buy the disc. It contains
many other dreadful things you don't want near your children. Be
content to watch the only good part of this one on YouTube. Make
sure you have a version with English subtitles.
Though no movie will show it to you, boys of all
ages in ancient Greece spent their entire school day nude. In
Egypt, neither boys nor girls wore any clothing until well into
puberty. During our lifetime, an ancient and venerated tradition
has ended. Why?
Two Classic Movies by Zeffirelli (July 2014)
At the risk of telling people what they already
know, let me recommend two film classics directed by Franco Zeffirelli.
For the whole family:
Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972)
tells the story of St. Francis of Assisi. There are no children
in this movie, no slapstick humor, none of the usual gimmicks to lure
kids into watching. Yet it is a fine uplifting film for the whole
family to experience together. In fact, parents need to be there
during the first several minutes, when younger children witness St.
Francis having nightmares about his war experience.
The rest is simple joy—helped along by
Donovan's heartfelt songs.
The turning-point comes when St. Francis famously
strips off all worldly goods—handing his clothes back to his
cloth-merchant father—and appearing in all his naked splendor
before God. Naked ascetics exist in several religions. But
St. Francis is the best-known and most beloved Christian example.
We only see him from the back, yet we also see the sense of wonderment
and comprehension on the faces of bystanders. Yes, nudity can be
a religious experience.
The movie ends after Pope Innocent III, the most
powerful pope in history, gives his blessing to the founding of the
Franciscan order of monks. We do not see Francis' trusting female
friend also start the Poor Clares. (Actually, she was twelve
years younger than him—a fact that Zeffirelli chose to
ignore.) But we see enough to tell the story. The movie
captures the best of the Christian spirit, in all of its loving
simplicity. Watch it as a family.
For teens and older:
Shakespeare's
ever-popular Romeo and Juliet
has been filmed more than 75 times around the world, including opera
and ballet versions like West Side
Story. Yet Franco Zeffirelli broke new ground in
1968. He used young actors, instead of experienced
veterans. He put them in authentic Renaissance clothing, with
young men proudly strutting around town in their brightly colored
codpieces. And we see Romeo and Juliet waking up nude—as
most people do on the morning of their honeymoon.
How did Shakespeare play this scene? At the
back of his open stage, there was a small curtained room, with another
one like it upstairs off the famous balcony. Shakespeare gives us
double action: downstairs, Juliet's parents plan her marriage to count
Paris, while upstairs, Juliet is already celebrating her honeymoon with
Romeo.
Nightshirts had just been invented in Shakespeare's
time. Only a few very rich people owned one. Most of
Shakespeare's audience had never seen such an outfit, and would have
laughed at the idea of putting on clothes to go to bed. (In the
next century, Puritans would try to get everybody into nightshirts, as
a way to dull the senses.) Shakespeare's audience expected people
to arise nude from bed.
Yet another problem complicated that. There
would be no actresses for another fifty years. Young boys played
all of the female roles. That was how they served their
apprenticeship.
So how did Shakespeare do it? When the curtain
opened, awakening Romeo could bunch the sheets in front of him as he
reached over and pulled on his trousers. (No one wore underwear
then.) And Juliet could wrap the sheet around herself as she
rose. In a more private setting, Zeffirelli gives us a lingering
view of Romeo's bare butt, and a blurred flash of Juliet's
breasts. (Did I see that, or didn't I?)
This scene gives high school English teachers
fits. Some skip it; others show it without comment; I know one
otherwise excellent teacher who is wide enough to stand in front of the
television screen, blocking her students' view until that scene is
over. All can be under pressure from parents and administrators.
I have taught this movie many times—mostly to
high school Freshmen and Sophomores. To avoid snickers about the
codpieces, I like to begin with a study of Renaissance art: examples
such as Michelangelo's David,
Botticelli's Birth of Venus,
and Leonardo's Vitruvian Man.
The excitement of the Renaissance was the discovery of man and human
potential. People took pride in who they were, and in their
bodies. Teenagers can understand and respect this healthy
attitude.
By the way, small breasts were in fashion for
Renaissance girls. A similar thing happened in the 1920s.
The actress playing Juliet was not built that way, so they tried
cramming her into the tight Renaissance bodices anyway; it didn't work.
Young people who don't attend churches where they
still use a lot of "thees" and "thous" may find the Elizabethan English
going by too fast. Turning on the English subtitles can
help. But viewers won't miss a lot, because most of the dirty
jokes were taken out of the movie version. I always have to
explain that Shakespeare wrote for two audiences: aristocrats in the
high-priced seats, and lowly groundlings who stood around waiting for
the crude humor. That is what makes Shakespeare's language so
rich. Double-entendre abounds.
When I teach this movie, I like to follow with
Tchaikovsky's musical version of the story. Actually, he just
captured certain moods: peace, street fighting, love, funeral.
Some teens find the two intertwining melodies of its love theme even
more gripping than the play or the film. Definitely, listen for
yourself.
In the years since this
movie appeared, several of
Shakespeare's other plays have been filmed with a bit of nudity: a
bathing child and a madwoman in Macbeth
(1973), lots of people bathing during the opening credits of Much Ado About Nothing (1991), nude
sleepers in A Midsummer Night's Dream
(1999), and more male nudity than is strictly necessary in Prospero's Books [The Tempest] (1991). King Lear has rarely been staged
with two nude men during the storm scene, but never on film, that I
know of.
The 1996 gangster version called Romeo + Juliet is far too ugly for
watching. And to the relief of squeamish schoolteachers, Romeo in
the 2013 movie jumps out of his wedding bed wearing long john
bottoms—centuries before they were invented.
And so Zeffirelli is to be commended for two
magnificent films that not only capture the spirit of their times, but
also bring body-positive messages to young people growing up today.
Treating Boys and Girls with Equal Respect (Sept. 2014)
This time, we look at a couple of gritty movies from
the hardscrabble south. Both have rough edges, but offer much for
family discussion.
For the whole family:
Shadrach (1998) provides some fine
lessons in racial harmony and social understanding. It's 1935 in
the depths of the Great Depression, when an old former slave returns
home to die in Virginia. He discovers that his master's
descendants have deteriorated into a bunch of foul-mouthed
bootleggers. But they remain decent people of compassion, who
will see that the right thing is done.
When the family goes swimming together, the boys do
it nude. Their older sister strips down only to her underwear,
while the youngest girl jumps in the water wearing nearly all of her
clothes. It's an odd double standard of southern expectations for
boys and girls in the same family. The old slave, too, fondly
remembers youthful skinny-dipping as the moment he felt most free.
Be aware that this film contains salty language that
you may not want to expose your children to. Or maybe they've
already heard it all. Use your judgement. The tape version
is becoming scarce, but still shows up occasionally at thrift stores
for a dollar or so. The disc works only on European machines or
your computer.
For teens and older:
With a mostly
off-camera rape and murder, Buster
and Billie (1974) is definitely not a movie for the little
kiddies. But it wrestles mightily with teen concerns.
It's 1948 in Georgia, and the double standard reigns
supreme: boys are expected to learn about sex wherever they can find
it, but for a girl to do so means total disgrace. The same goes
for teen drinking and smoking (even in front of the sheriff).
Trouble begins when the handsomest redneck in the
senior class treats a too-willing girl with respect. When he
invites her to church with him, that upsets the whole town's moral
balance. This is a tender love story that ends in tragedy.
But so is Romeo and Juliet.
The skinny-dip scene is a classic. For a whole
generation of young people, this was their first glimpse of male
frontal nudity on the big screen. Though movie-makers
commonly exploit female nudity, while shying away from naked men, this
time, cameras show the girl only from the back or side.
Men over a certain age will recognize the boys'
bathroom with its open stalls and trough urinal. Modesty was not
really an option back then. Such piling on of historic details
gives the story believability and power.
The tape version of this important film has become
rare; Sunshine Vintage Movies are sole distributors of the DVD.
Of course, no
discussion of southern movies is complete without mentioning Steel Magnolias (1989). This
third film is wholesome enough for small children to be in the room,
but the best parts probably stretch beyond their emotional
experience. It has rightly been called "the funniest movie you
ever cried through."
Among its many riches, we see two older women doing
a radio broadcast from a boys' locker room. These are not actors,
but the actual high school football team of Natchitoches,
Louisiana. (That was in the days before boys became afraid to
take showers.) We don't see much—just a few bare
butts—so one of the old ladies whips out her mirror to get a
better view.
The movie came from a play about resilient women who
rose above the double standard of expectations, and took control of
their lives. The play happened entirely in a beauty
parlor—no men on stage, and no mention of the locker room.
Likewise, a 2013 remake of the movie with an all-black cast watered it
down for television, and left out the locker room scene. Stay
with the 1989 version.
Shadrach, Buster
and Billie, Steel Magnolias:
these three classic southern films are worth finding and discussing,
y'all.
I Met a Man Who Wasn't There: Invisibility in the Movies (Nov.
2014)
As I
was walking up the stair,
I met a man who
wasn't there.
He wasn't
there again today.
I wish, I
wish, he'd go away.
--nursery rhyme
If it is not a contradiction of terms and ideas,
today we look at a couple of movies from the 1980s about invisible
naked people.
For the whole family:
H.G. Wells wrote his
1897 science-fiction novella, The
Invisible Man, about a man who can disappear, but his clothes
can't—so he takes them off. Since 1933, lots of
movie-makers have had fun with the special effects needed for this
concept. And none had more fun than the makers of The Invisible Kid in 1988.
The kid is actually a nerdy high school senior,
trying to complete the scientific work of his dead father. When
his less mature friend learns about the invisibility powder, the
friend's first urge is to sneak into the girls' locker room. We
briefly see two girls' breasts, and the boys' bare butts when the
invisibility suddenly wears off.
At one point, the heroine does an invisible strip
tease. We see nothing there but discarded clothes moving through
the air.
The film has all the dumb elements of a kids' flick:
slapstick humor, a bunch of over-reacting dimwits, and a fast car
chase. And of course, the boy gets the girl. Yet the first
bad guy we meet turns out to have a little depth of character.
The high school principal is the real villain. The movie copies
bits from several other juvenile films of the time; as in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, one more
little scene comes after all the credits.
This is a movie to watch after a bad day, when you
or your family want some mindless enjoyment.
For teens and older:
In The Emerald Forest (1985), we meet
an Amazon jungle tribe known as the Invisible People because they grind
emeralds into a paste, and paint their nearly nude bodies for
camouflage. No one is quite nude; males and females all wear
something over the pubic area—even when swimming. Breasts
and buttocks are naturally visible.
It is based on a true story of a blond boy kidnaped
from an engineer in charge of constructing a huge dam. The father
finds the boy ten years later: a teenager raised in jungle ways, and
about to marry.
The dam project has displaced a nasty group of
cannibals, who are now invading the lands of these gentle Invisible
People. When the menfolk are away, Fierce People overrun the
village, and sell the young women to the white owners of a bordello on
the frontier. Father and son work together to rescue them.
As the girls return to the purity of nature, the first thing they do is
throw off their humiliating clothes.
The father comes to realize that his dam will
destroy the traditional way of life that his son has chosen. He
is prepared to blow up his work of ten years. But that proves
unnecessary; nature takes care of itself.
Yes, there is violence in this movie; yet the beauty
of natural living leaves a far more enduring impression. When
young men attempt to enter the bulldozer-ravaged landscape, the old
chief warns, "We are not invisible in the dead world,"—only in
the land of green and living things. As the writing on the screen
says at the end, these people still know what we have forgotten about
blending naturally into nature.
Funny or movingly serious, both of these films about
invisibility and nudity show us people who are far more than their
clothes.
Stranded on a Deserted Island (March 2015)
Many movies have been made
about people marooned on an unpopulated island, where they don't have
to worry about what the neighbors think. They can dress or
undress freely. Some films, such as Castaway (1986), contain
considerable nudity. These will interest young children and
teenagers:
For the whole family:
Robby (1968) is a retelling of the
Robinson Crusoe story with kids in the leading roles. When
shipwrecked nine-year-old Robby meets a native boy, he follows the old
plot and calls him Friday. Next, he makes clothes for the happily
naked kid. From then on, they both swim nude, but wear clothes on
land. Why?
The director was an ASA official, with his
neighbor's son in
the title role. So you know it's good clean fun. In its
original version, the movie lasted half-an-hour longer, and was
criticized because it dragged. Later, they shortened the film for
the home version, and added new music. The scenery is
beautiful. It's a great hour of family entertainment with lots of
things to talk about afterward.
For teens and older:
The Blue Lagoon (1980) is THE teen
nude movie. A boy and a girl grow up on a deserted island in the
Pacific. With no adults around, they, in their teen years, have
to figure out matters of sex (and later parenting) all by
themselves. It is a wonderful tale of innocence and naturalness
in the midst of beautiful nature.
For some reason, the teenagers also wear skimpy
clothes on land, but of course swim nude. Young Christopher
Atkins did his own nude scenes. Brooke Shields did not. Her
mother was on the set at all times, making sure the girl's hair stayed
taped over her breasts.
Henry De Vere Stacpoole wrote the original story way
back in 1908. In that age of lingering Victorian prudery, he
devoted only a few pages to the years of teenage discovery.
Reportedly, the same thing happened in the British film versions of
1923 and 1949—though neither is available for comparison.
The 1980 movie inspired
several attempts to cash in on its success. Move the scene to a
middle-eastern oasis, don't waste time on innocent years, provide
several nude scenes (mostly female), add a conventional villain, some
chase scenes, and a couple of chimpanzees for dumb laughs—plus a
happy ending—and you have the formula for Paradise, made just two years later
in 1982. Even the hairstyles are copied. The film still has
charm. If you watch this one, make sure you get an old tape
version; South Koreans blurred all the nudity on the disc. Cover
art has been discretely nude for European sales, but clothed for
American editions.
A year later, in 1983, came an Indonesian adaptation
of The Blue Lagoon filled
with prejudice against native people. It was remade as a horror
movie in 2010.
Stacpoole wrote two more novels about the next
generation. Part of The Garden
of God went into the 1991 film, Return to the Blue Lagoon.
But by 1991, producers feared to show any teen nudity—even when
swimming. Still, the sequel raises some interesting questions
about the values of civilization, and is worth watching.
Blue Lagoon: The
Awakening (2012) is just a television rip-off of the
title—about modern high school students wearing swimsuits in the
Caribbean. Yet the 1980 film remains a wonderful classic.
Robby's adult rescuer asks, "Are you sure you want
to go back?" He does. But the teenagers in some of the
other movies have grown enough to realize that living naturally in
nature has charms missing in modern civilization. They have found
their roots where they are.
What is Human Nature? (May 2015)
What does it mean to be human? To be
natural? Two views have long persisted.
One claims that man must struggle to rise above his
animal nature. Religion, clothing, civilization elevate him above
the beasts. The idea of progress is closely linked: things are
getting better and better; we modern people have become far more
civilized than, say, the ancient Greeks with their naked athletics.
The other view insists that babies are born
innocent, good, and free. Children are likely to tell the truth,
until society corrupts them. Education should largely be a matter
of discovering our own creative potential and our role in the natural
world around us. At certain glorious times, individuals have
shucked off their false material trappings, and found their way back to
the garden. We can do it too.
Without really thinking about it, most of us believe
some combination of these ideas. Let us look at movies
contrasting these two views of human nature.
For the whole family:
The Wild Child (1970) documents a
historical case study from the late 1700s: the discovery in France of
an 11-or-12-year-old boy who had been raised by wolves.
Completely naked, he had not learned language or how to walk
upright. Using the latest educational philosophies of
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a kindly doctor set about bringing the boy into
human society.
There have been other known cases of children raised
by animals. Those children were never able to explain what it was
like, because, unless children learn language by a certain age, they
never will.
The director chose to film in black and white,
claiming that would give it a more authentically documentary
look. (Like rare original film footage preserved from the
1790s? I don't pretend to understand his logic.) The movie
is in French, with English subtitles.
This interesting documentary should not be confused
with a much later film about a misbehaving girl called simply Wild Child.
For teens and older:
For the same optimistic
viewpoint, teen and adult readers may also be interested in Nell (1994) about a young woman
raised in the woods and speaking her own language. It includes a
few moonlit skinny-dips.
But after seeing the
bestiality of two world wars, William Golding reached a more
pessimistic
view of human nature: Without ongoing civilization, without normal
rules, people throw off their clothes and become savages. That
was the premise of his book, Lord of
the Flies, made into a British movie in 1963. The director
chose the harsh contrast of black-and-white photography, rather than
the subtleties of color.
A group of proper schoolboys stranded on a tropical
island quickly revert to savagery. That includes some nudity, and
killing off anyone who disagrees with them. And they mesmerize
themselves into that condition while marching and singing hymns.
So church and state have often led peaceable citizens into warfare.
In Golding's book, all of the boys skinny-dip
frequently, and sometimes stay undressed afterward. In the movie,
we see only the young and the innocent choosing to go totally
nude—not the older half-naked savages. Except for the
rational fat boy, they excite themselves into fearing a beast.
The book points out more clearly that the beast lies deep within their
own natures. The philosophic boy who figures out some of these
things does not play a significant part in the movie.
The American remake of Lord of the Flies in 1990 used full
color, but fell short in every other way. They "improved" the
story to make it more American—that is, more military, more gore,
much more foul language, and without any religious irony or
nudity. Stick to the original version.
[The Bulletin
did not print the next paragraph.]
The idea of kids run
amok without the structure of rules shows up in other movies. As
an extreme example, unsupervised teenagers in The Cement Garden (1993) go so far
as incest. With a liberating nude dance in the rain, the film is
actually a sensitive treatment of a potentially dangerous topic.
This one is best left for adult viewing.
It is not unusual for movie-makers to examine basic
human nature by looking at children free of rules and free of
clothing. Some reach an optimistic conclusion, some less
hopeful. Next time we will discuss a more joyous nudist-friendly
film influenced by Lord of the Flies.
Beach Boys (July 2015)
What brings more joy to the heart than the sight and
sounds of children gamboling free and naturally on a beach? In
our video selections this time, they all happen to be boys.
For the whole family:
Have you ever been tempted to
sell your kids? If so, Popi
(1979) is the movie for you. We meet a Puerto Rican father
hustling to hold down three jobs in an effort to raise his two young
sons in a rugged neighborhood of New York City. (The boys have
picked up some rough language, that occasionally slips out.) When
the father hears that Cubans are sending their children to the United
States as refugees, in hope that rich people will adopt them and give
them a better life, he decides to try the same for his sons. This
sacrifice is difficult because he loves them and they love him.
The last straw comes when a neighborhood gang strip
his sons naked and tie them up. So he takes them to Miami, where
we briefly see them playing nude on the beach. (These cottontail
actors were not experienced skinny-dippers—which fits with the
story.) There is no frontal nudity. There are, however, a
couple of spoken references to sex, yet the movie's G rating is
deserved.
From the beginning, all sorts of things go
wrong. Children will love the slapstick humor. Parents will
appreciate the bonds of family love. Before the movie starts, you
should probably explain US-Cuba relations and waves of refugees.
For teens and older:
The Genesis Children (1972) is not your
run-of-the-mill movie. In the late '60s and early '70s, Lyric
Films International produced several short amateur home videos that
they sold through nudist magazines. The 8-milimeter films
featured pretty
much the same group of boys—one time at a pool party, another
time playing with motorcycles, another time on vacation in
Europe. None are available today. (If anybody still has
one, I would be curious to see a copy.) The Genesis Children was their only
full-length feature film. By then, all but two of the boys were
teenagers.
We see eight boys from an English-speaking school in
Rome recruited for a sort of live theatre on the beach. They are
given no script or plot. So they act naturally, and go
skinny-dipping whenever they feel like it. They explore and just
have fun. This film contains more teen male nudity than any other
movie I am aware of. The focus is almost entirely on the boys;
one person plays most of the adult roles.
In the early '70s, the only model for a movie about
nude boys away from home was Lord of
the Flies. So the screen writers decided to have the boys
abuse their freedom and go too far (while the same hymn plays in the
background that the trouble-makers marched to in the earlier
movie). They torch an old van abandoned at the seashore.
The realization that they have done something wrong ends the innocence
of their Eden-like stay at the beach. We see some biblical
parallels.
When the raw footage got edited down, most of the
nude scenes ended up on the cutting room floor, and the movie ran way
too short. So the producers fired their big-name editor, and
hired a new one to repair the damage. He decided to go
artsy. He restored the omitted scenes in odd places, forcing the
viewer to move back and forth in time. Hint: All of the clothed
in-town scenes are flashbacks that actually happened before the nude
beach scenes. The movie provides no blurry beginnings to let you
know when you are entering a flashback; clothes and scenery are the
signals.
I showed this movie a few years ago at a Mid-Winter
Naturist Festival. Most of the older people in the room disliked
it because it didn't follow a traditional plot from beginning to
end. But I like it for the sheer joy of living.
The Genesis
Children asks some profound questions, yet falls short in
answers. The movie also has great music—some of it
reinforcing the aura of sacred nudity, other moments throbbing with
excitement.
But trouble lurked behind the cameras. In the
1970s, the line between nudity and sex was blurring—even in
nudist magazines. Unfortunately, the man with the money behind
these innocent films also invested in a company that produced
pornography, and he got in trouble for that. So all production
ended abruptly. Still, we have their one glorious movie.
Popi and The Genesis Children both overflow
with joy—symbolized by boys running free and naked at the
seashore.
Boys Will Be Boys (Nov. 2015)
I had not intended to discuss movies about boys two
times in a row. But current events are dictating otherwise.
Read on.
For the Whole Family:
American movies about Tom
Sawyer have shown very little of the traditional nudity described in
Mark Twain's book. In 1938, David O. Selznick filmed a distant
skinny-dip for the beginning of his movie. Company censors
removed it, and it has never been restored.
A brief flash of bare butts while the boys swam in
the delightful 1973 musical version of Tom Sawyer caused a
sensation. Aunt Polly openly sang about the boys "swimming in the
nude." With a compassionate Aunt Polly and Warren Oates'
endearing performance as the town drunk, this was, and remains, a great
family movie. But after that, American movie makers grew more
cautious again.
Huckleberry Finn and His Friends (1979) was a Canadian-German
production filmed in Canada—and that explains a lot. With
three skinny-dip scenes, the two-year TV series has been repeated many
times on children's television in Canada, Germany, Scandinavian
countries, England, Australia, Venezuela and much of Latin
America—but never the United States. The DVD is in a
European format; even Canadians can't watch it now, except on their
computers or a region-free DVD player (which is not expensive.)
To get a more professional performance from
children, movie directors frequently use actors older than the roles
they are playing. Several of the boys in this series were
actually actors in their mid-teens. They could shave their pubic
hair for the skinny-dip scenes, but there was no easy way to disguise
their deepening voices.
The boys' handlers made sure the two main stars were
photographed nude mostly from the back and sides. Fortunately,
Twain included a third boy in their island adventure; all lingering
frontal views are of him. Yet the skinny-dipping scenes were shot
from such a distance that not much detail can be seen. They come
in season 1, episodes 1, 6, and 7. The series is available as a
4-disc set, though the first disc (which happens to contain all of the
skinny-dip scenes) was originally sold separately. Dailymotion
has posted all episodes on the Internet, so you can watch them that way
if you don't mind a little jerky motion.
Season 2 focused on Huck's raft trip down the river,
and there all nudity stopped—despite his insistence in the book
that "we was always naked, day and night." For 130 years, no book
illustrator or movie producer has ever dared to show Huckleberry Finn
nude during his long raft adventure.
Then this summer, The Whitney Museum of American Art
in New York City refused to exhibit the larger-than-life nude sculpture
of Huck and Jim by Charles
Ray. The artist explained that Huck bends down to catch food in
the water, while Jim blesses his effort. The Art Institute of
Chicago did show the group in an inconspicuous place. Nervous
officials at both museums said they were not worried about reactions of
museum-goers, but of the ignorant people who never go to museums, yet
could start a lot of trouble on Facebook or Twitter. They also
worried about differences in race and age—something our society
obsesses on right now. Nobody mentioned that the black man is
circumcised—something totally inappropriate for the nineteenth
century.
Museums (and advertising) are full of female
nudes—but not many males. In contrast, movies have lots of
skinny-dipping boys, but few girls. Go figure.
For Teens and Older:
What would Tom, Huck,
and Joe be like at age 18? Their kind of mischief remains
timeless. Calendar Girl
(1993) gives us three similar boys in the early 1960s. Just
graduated from high school, they travel across country to catch a
glimpse of their heroine, Marilyn Monroe.
The title comes from
her famous nude Playboy calendar picture, and the opening credits
include some famous nude paintings. This movie should not be
confused with the plural Calendar
Girls, about aging English housewives
(which is also excellent, but not particularly appealing to teenagers).
At one point, the boys pursue Marilyn onto an early
California nude beach. Though the cameramen filmed only a few
backsides, the beach looks pretty authentic.
It's a funny movie, until one of the boys actually
meets Marilyn, and they have a serious conversation. She was far
more than a pretty body.
This and the two Twain movies are all great fun to
watch. Actually, Tom, Huck, and the boys in Calendar Girl were not the only
young people who knew how to get into mischief. Next time: Girls
Will Be Girls.
Girls Will Be Girls (Jan. 2016)
This time, we look at movies about girls—girls
who can get into just as much mischief as the boys can.
For the whole family:
From 1934 to 1968, the Hays Code of censorship
stifled Hollywood movies. As a precaution, film studios hired
their own censors to eliminate anything that might not pass the
code. In 1938, nervous company officials removed the boys'
skinny-dip scene from the beginning of David O. Selznick's Tom Sawyer. Then all through
the 1950s and 60s, movie producers pushed the limits of the code, until
it was finally abandoned.
Walt Disney, with his solid
reputation for wholesome family films, struck his blow for common sense
about innocent child nudity in Pollyanna
in 1960. He recreated the banned boys' skinny-dip scene and put
it at the beginning of this girls' movie. Only this time, it had
nothing to do with the plot—just setting the mood of small-town
America at the turn of the twentieth century. And he got away
with it.
The movie begins with a close-up of a nude boy's
back, as he swings out over the water, and drops in to join several
other skinny-dipping boys. The part was played by a local extra,
who got a new bicycle for his pay. Pollyanna never goes swimming,
though we do see lots of nude sculptures in the houses of the wealthy.
Like Tom Sawyer, Pollyanna can get into her share of
mischief—from sneaking out of her room, to climbing trees, to
trespassing. But mostly, her cheerful optimism makes a lot of
grumpy people happy.
Though few men and boys went to see it in the
theatres, they missed a good family movie. It's hard to keep a
dry eye during the ending.
For teens and older:
We look at two movies about teenage girls.
Both contain some of the same stock characters. Both include
locker room scenes.
Sixteen Candles (1984) is about an
awkward but good-hearted girl whose family all forget her sixteenth
birthday. (They're preparing for her sister's wedding the next
day.) She tries to not feel too hurt.
The sight of a beautiful girl showering makes her
feel even more inadequate, yet two very sincere guys take an interest
in her. (The younger boy grows as much as she does, adding some
depth to an otherwise shallow film.)
The movie is both sad and funny—if you like
physical humor reminiscent of the Keystone Kops. The loopy
wedding has to be one of the most laughable on film. Even some of
the background music is ironic. But be aware that the girls do
not always use the most ladylike language.
On the other
hand, Just One of the Guys
(1985) is a modern adaptation of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, where,
for her safety, a girl disguised herself as her twin brother. In
the old play, romantic complications arose, and then the brother showed
up. The movie has only a younger brother (charming, though too
desperately in search of sex). Yet this girl must cope with
something Shakespeare never thought of: high school gym class.
Rather than admit she chose a boring topic, a
student decides that her journalism article did not win an award
because of her teacher's gender bias. So she disguises herself as
a boy, and resubmits it in another school, where it also gets
rejected. (The movie certainly makes fun of male sexist
attitudes, but they can't be blamed for everything.)
Meanwhile, the girl has to figure out what to do
about gym class, and changing in the boys' locker room. These
were the days when students still took showers after gym class.
We only see boys above the waist or wearing jock straps—no actual
male nudity on screen. The girl does, however, bare her breasts
at the end.
(Eight years later, the producers tried reversing
the situation in Just One of the
Girls. Though it included real locker room
nudity—female this time—the male hero just wasn't
convincing as a girl. It flopped.)
Today's examples show us why it is difficult to find
movies about girls and innocent nudity. In movie convention,
pre-teen boys can skinny-dip, but to show a girl doing it would be too
shocking. Then at about age 14, the convention reverses: Female
nudity becomes sexy and desirable, but frontal male nudity is just too
shocking to show. None of this makes much sense. But that's
the way most movies are.
Defective Detectives (Mar. 2016)
Inept investigators have provided the humor for many
a mystery movie. And some people think that nakedness should be
funny. This time, we look at whodunits that involve nudity.
Unfortunately, none of them qualify as non-violent. Few detective
stories do.
For the whole family:
The Nude Bomb (1980) was based on
the Get Smart television series. There are no children in this
film, but the plot and the jokes are too dumb for words.
Ten-year-olds will love it.
A mad scientist has developed a bomb that destroys
only clothes, leaving people naked. This possibility has the
American president quaking. World leaders wonder how they will be
able to wage war if armies can't tell each other apart by their
uniforms. Actually, we only see some bare behinds and
strategically placed briefcases and rifles.
So they call in a blundering detective, surrounded
by beautiful women and amazing gadgets. He eventually saves the
world from nudity.
There are a few bad words, and a few jokes with
double meanings that will pass right over the heads of the
innocent. The violence at the end is a spoof on all movie
shoot-outs. If it's any consolation, only clones die. You
may need to explain what cloning is, but the kids probably know more
about that than you do.
For Teens and Older:
If you want more
sophisticated humor in a detective story that is beyond the experience
of young people, take a look at A
Shot in the Dark (1964). It's part of the Pink Panther
series, and has the bumbling Inspector Clouseau going undercover in a
nudist resort. Much of the plot revolves around marital fidelity
(or lack thereof). Other than the zany humor, there's not a lot
to interest teens.
Most teenagers would
probably prefer to hone their skills of detection watching Wildthings (1998). It's an
edgy movie, not appropriate for younger children. A rich Florida
high school girl accuses her guidance counselor of rape. He
protests vigorously that he did nothing of the sort. So who is
telling the truth? Or is the truth far more complicated than
that? I thought I had sort-of figured it out. Then came
lots of additional scenes during the end credits, and I realized I had
gotten it all wrong.
The detective also gets it partially wrong, and this
time there is nothing funny about it. They made two versions of
this movie; you want the unrated (not R) version because it provides
far more clues. Just be aware that it has more sexy scenes too.
In either version, we see some ordinary household
nudity, as a man casually steps out of a shower. A couple of
girls also swim topfree, though one always keeps her back to the
camera. (The screenplay called for this girl of trashy background
to reveal tattoos and body jewelry, but the producers accepted a
no-nudity clause to get a well-known actress. In contrast, the
other actress refused to use a body double, playing her own semi-nude
self wherever the script called for it.) Both were in their
mid-twenties, playing teenagers.
Three so-called sequels have used different actors
slogging through pretty much the same deceptive plot. Don't waste
your time or money on them.
There are many mysteries in life greater than what
lies beneath people's clothes. I suppose one of them is how
totally incompetent people manage to survive. Another is how,
despite facts, people can leap to such erroneous conclusions. All
is revealed in these enjoyable movies.
Turning Nude Stereotypes Upside-Down (May 2016)
We've all encountered the misperceptions about
nudists. And we have grown rather tired of the coy ways nudity is
almost-but-not-quite shown in the movies. Let's look at two films
that cleverly stand some of those conventions on their heads.
For the whole family:
At last—a movie now
playing in neighborhood theatres that deals with nudity and is fit for
kids to watch. That used to happen often in the 1970s, '80s, and
'90s, but in the twenty-first century has become a rare event.
Disney's Zootopia (2016)
works at different levels for people of all ages. Kids will see
an action-packed detective story. Sophisticated adults will see
parallels to glass ceilings, racism, and stereotyping. But nobody
will miss the sly references to nudity.
The animals have formed a Utopia where they
all get along. But, as so often happens, the cartoon animals all
wear clothes. For no very good reason, the crime trail leads
through what they call a "naturalist" park where a few animals wear
nothing. Imagine that—animals without clothes. How
shocking! But that's where any understanding ends. The
film-makers fall back on old stereotypes by showing us a bunch of hairy
animal butts in awkward positions. This scene lasts only a couple
of minutes; still, the point has been made that clothing is not always
logical.
The movie comes in 3-D and regular versions.
The few 3-D effects are not worth the price difference. There is
no home version yet.
For a movie with absolutely no nude people in it,
the mere mention of nudity gave this cartoon a PG rating. Ignore
that, and enjoy.
For teens and older:
Flirting (1991) is a story of
interracial dating in Australia. A misfit intellectual boy and a
sophisticated daughter of the Ugandan ambassador find each other in
nearby private and oppressive schools. The time is
1965—just before the Existential "shape your life by making your
own choices" philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre hit the streets in the
hippie movement. He is reading Sartre; she has met the famous
man. When they have to disguise their names, they choose Camus,
another Existential philosopher.
We get a brief view of the boys' showers. But
instead of the usual cutsie waist-up view in most teen movies, we see
the boys only from the waist down—and not all of them with their
backs turned. Later, there's a glimpse of her breast.
Teenagers need to know something about the Idi Amin
dictatorship in Uganda to understand the ending.
Don't be confused by the cover art that emphasizes
one of the supporting actresses. This is a thoughtful and tender
movie about a boy and a girl with depth of character, who gradually win
the respect of their more traditional classmates.
Actually, this movie is a sequel to The Year My Voice Broke (1987),
about the boy's first crush. That earlier film is good, but
without nudity, and in a quite different mood. Flirting can stand very well on its
own.
So yes, thoughtful references to nudity can and do
show up in movies that young people can watch and understand. The
encouraging news is that it occasionally still happens today.
Three Great Native American Films (July 2016)
This time, we examine three fine films about native
Americans—and not a cowboy in sight.
For the whole family:
Surprisingly few movies have been made about
American Indian childhood. Indian
Paint (1965) is a good one, but it includes no nudity. Let
us instead look at one that does.
For the warmth of native
American family love, it's hard to beat Windwalker (1981). A
windwalker is the spirit of a person who has died. In this case,
the Great Spirit calls an old Cheyenne back from death to finish his
task of finding his twin son, who had been stolen as a baby. The
movie should not be confused with the horror film, Wind Walkers, or with Windtalkers, about Navaho code
messengers during World War II.
No, this story happens during the 1700s, after the
arrival on the plains of the white men's horses, but before the arrival
of white men, themselves. Instead, Cheyennes and Crows keep
fighting each other.
The costuming is completely inappropriate for the
times. We do see the little boys playing naked. But their
parents wear leather clothes to go swimming. Women never covered
their breasts during warm weather, until they had trouble with white
settlers. Here they wear the full-length dresses of the late
1800s. The movie-going public get what they have become used to.
Children may have a little difficulty following the
plot because, at one point, the action keeps shifting between three
different groups of people until they all come together. Some
phrases are spoken in Cheyenne and Crow with English subtitles, but
most of the movie is in English. Using native languages was such
a new idea that the movie could not qualify for an Academy Award, for
lack of a category; only foreign films had subtitles back then.
The American Anthropological Society has voted this the greatest
anthropological movie of all time.
For teens and older:
Dances with Wolves (1990) is a far
grander film about a Civil War soldier who makes friends with a wolf
and his Lakota Sioux neighbors. He eventually marries into the
tribe.
The soldier of course bathes nude (though we see him
only from the back). But while the Indians camp along a river, we
never see any of them swimming or bathing. Three boys keep
showing up where they shouldn't be, but they never strip down. As
in the earlier movie, the women all cover their breasts before they
have had any contact with white women's dress styles.
The tribesmen speak Siouan (with English
subtitles). We see everyone gradually learning each other's
language. And the theme music will stick in your head for weeks.
This movie was immensely popular, and deservedly
so. Now that the disc is available, it seems like every thrift
shop in America has about three copies of the tape version.
If you
take film seriously, you could also try Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner
(2001). This Canadian movie re-enacts an important shift in Inuit
history around 1200. Sons of tribal leaders had a bad habit of
murdering their fathers to gain power. The hero came from a
different family, and ended that tradition.
It's not a movie to everybody's taste. The
plot jumps along slowly, and pale yellow subtitles against a background
of ice and snow don't help a lot. You will get lost if you don't
first read about the legend and family relationships in Wikipedia. Basically, the
hero takes a second wife, the sister of his ruling enemies—and
she betrays him to her murderous brothers. He escapes naked from
his bed (yes, Eskimos sleep unclothed), and is chased for miles across
the ice. Advertising on the case calls it erotic; we all know
that nude running is nothing of the sort. And the photography is
honest—without shy camera angles trying to hide the nudity.
Not as heart-warming as the other two, this long
movie does not flinch from the tough realities of daily survival.
All three show us people centuries ago, living naturally in nature.
With more languages and tribes than Europe ever had,
the natives of North America cannot be understood by watching these
three movies. But it's not a bad place to begin. Some other
time, we will look at films about the lives of modern American Indians.
Growing Up Too Fast (Sept. 2016)
This time, we look at movies about young people
growing up too fast. Adolescents go through many natural changes,
and perhaps a few experiments. But a youthful experiment must
never be confused with a lifetime commitment. That is why people
should not marry too young, or declare their sexual orientation before
they have finished growing.
These three classic films have always been
controversial, but they can teach us much.
For the whole family:
Child Bride (1938) deals with some
heavy stuff, including a couple of off-screen murders, and hooded thugs
with torches. Yet most movie critics say children should not
watch it because the twelve-year-girl with beginning breasts goes
skinny-dipping. (It would be OK for a boy that age to swim nude,
but not a girl.) I am more concerned that parents be there during
the scary scenes.
The girl's well-meaning teacher has filled her head
with a bunch of conventional nonsense about being too old to skinny-dip
with boys, so she does it with a clothed boy watching. That's
supposed to be better.
The movie is set in hillbilly country, where
children sometimes married way too young—and not always to people
their own age. This will require some explanation
beforehand. You may or may not need to explain moonshining.
And you need to be there at the end to clarify who stopped the villain.
It is a black-and-white film, only an hour
long. Because it was independently produced, it escaped the
censorship of the Hays Code that was paralyzing Hollywood at the time.
For Teens and Older:
More than thirty years later,
the charming heroes of Friends
(1971) are not the sort of role models that parents want for their
children. He is a 15-year-old, irresponsible, rich English boy
living with his too-busy father in Paris. She is a poor,
newly-orphaned, 14-year-old French girl, sent to live with an uncaring
relative. These unappreciated young people find each other, and
run away to the countryside, where they play house for a year.
Though both are bilingual, they speak English with each other.
Their initial embarrassment on bathing in a washtub
is amusing. (We only see them from the back or above the
waist.) But they soon get over that timidness, and find
themselves pregnant. He has to take up menial jobs to support
them, and learns responsibility for the first time in his life.
Yet their love never fades. He is there to deliver the baby.
The movie ends with the
police about to nab him as a runaway. In the hard-to-find sequel,
Paul & Michelle (1974), we
learn that his father packed him off to an exclusive high school in
England, where he graduated with honors three years later. Back
in France and admitted as a student at the Sorbonne, he is determined
to spend the summer looking for Michelle. He eventually finds her
and their daughter, but not the dream world where they once
lived. The grim reality of supporting a family sets in.
While they sleep nude and she no longer wears a bra, this sequel
continues to avoid anything frontal below the waist.
Friends
has nothing to do with a later television series of the same name.
Another excellent
movie, You Are Not Alone
(1978) takes place in a small private high school for slightly troubled
boys. There are a couple of natural shower scenes, but the boys
swim and sleep in their underwear. They also sport the long
hairstyles of the '70s. The movie is in Danish, with English
subtitles—including a few blunt expressions.
Until now, I have hesitated to recommend this movie
because it hints at possible homosexual attraction. But with
transgendered students and their bathroom use now in the headlines, the
public discussion has moved way beyond this. It is true that two
boys kiss at the end of the movie, but nothing more happens; the young
13-year-old hero is simply looking for the affection he is not finding
at home. That doesn't make him gay for the rest of his life.
I would not want to take the responsibility of
showing this movie to a young person going through confusion about who
he or she is. Self-confident teenagers of any leaning can handle
it with ease. Or if your family is already in the midst of coping
with gender-identification issues, this movie could be a way to reopen
some family discussion and understanding.
But don't rush into these things. All three
movies warn us of the dangers of kids taking on adult burdens too soon.
The Tarzan Movies (Oct. 2016)
More than 200 Tarzan movies have been made.
Mostly, the actors wear skimpy clothing; only four of those movies have
famous nude scenes.
For the whole family:
As early as 1918, Tarzan of the Apes showed the
eleven-year-old boy growing up naturally in the jungle. Most of
the camera angles view him from the side, but there is a brief flash of
frontal nudity. Was there a public outcry? Of course
not. People a century ago had much more sense about childhood
nudity than they do today.
We also see bare-breasted black women (local
Louisiana extras), and the backsides of two men who go skinny-dipping
so young Tarzan can steal their clothes. Only when he discovers
clothes, does the boy feel complete—an awful message.
The movie skips the teen years, and we next see the
hero as a very hefty man.
Over the years, local censors cut out scenes of
nudity, romance, violence, or racism. Of the original two-hour
movie, only 73 minutes are left. This silent film set the
standard for all those that would follow, and is still worth watching
today. Children must be old enough to read the captions.
For teens and older:
In American movies, nude males are OK, but only
before they reach age 14. Nude females are more than OK, but only
after they reach age 18. This double standard makes no sense at
all. Yet we encounter both in the Tarzan films.
Tarzan and His Mate (1934) included
a nude Jane and loincloth-clad Tarzan in a long swim. It was
completed just before the Hays Code went into effect, but censors
insisted that the nude scene be taken out before the film could be
shown in theatres. The censors won (though the cut footage has
since been restored for the home versions).
Yet it remains a violent movie. The body count
at the end runs to something like 1 elephant, 1 rhinoceros, 1
crocodile, 2 gorillas, 3 chimpanzees, 8 lions, and at least 52
people. But no immoral nudity. The censors smiled.
Despite this black-and-white movie's importance in film history and
nudist history, I hesitate to recommend it for young people in their
formative years.
Half a century
later, in 1981, the same formula of nude Jane and loincloth-clad Tarzan
worked in Tarzan, the Ape Man.
Lots of Tarzan fans don't like this one because it focuses on Jane, and
is not the typical shoot-em-up. The two heroes provide eye-candy
and not a lot more.
Jane has come to Africa to meet her eccentric but
foul-mouthed father. Like him, she has no fear of
adventure. With welcome historical accuracy, Jane and the few
native women frequently appear topfree. Someone with nothing
better to do has counted 38 breast exposures. Take that for
whatever it's worth.
When Tarzan is not carrying off Jane, we see some
shy boy-meets-girl scenes. I find it refreshing that onscreen
nudity does not lead to immediate passion. Nude or nearly nude
people are treated like people.
Greystoke: the Legend of Tarzan, Lord
of the Apes (1984) is far the most thoughtful of these
movies. It returns to the original story of Tarzan's
boyhood. In fact, they used four nude boys to show Tarzan at all
ages from infancy through the beginning of pubic hair. Then he
wears a loincloth.
The last half of the story takes him to England to
adjust and live with his grandfather. But civilization proves
more savage than the jungle, and the hero longs to return. Jane
(who always keeps her clothes on) accompanies him back to Africa, but
stops short at the edge of the jungle.
And so we have two movies with nude boys, and two
with nude women—but never, ever a nude girl or man. Next
time we look at the female versions of Tarzan.
The Female Versions of Tarzan (Dec. 2016)
A return to nature—that's what naturists dream
of. Yet with over 200 Tarzan films, I am aware of only two decent
movies that star a female swinging from vine to vine. That's
1%. Hollywood has still not caught up with the nudist movement.
For the whole family:
Movie theatres in
Germany and Australia played Liane,
Jungle Goddess (1956) as a children's matinee. In the
United States, it was labeled adults only. As a curious teenager,
I would have appreciated that movie when it came out, but of course I
never heard of it until decades later. It was dubbed into English
in 1959.
The 15-year-old German actress and lots of young
African women live authentically topfree. But no one ever removes
a skimpy loincloth—even for swimming. We see a few nude
children from the back. Disappointingly, much of the movie has
the heroine clothed in Germany, but she returns to the freedom of
Africa at the end.
It's the typical story of a white baby orphaned in
Africa, and raised by a tribe who think her white skin and blond hair
are something special. In the movies, such a person always grows
up as the acknowldged tribal leader. And in film, such a person
usually has a wealthy grandfather eager to meet the missing person.
With the movie's financial success, its German
producers the next year threw together a sequel known in English as Jungle Girl and the Slaver.
By then, the actress was looking more like a woman than a girl, so they
went for a burlesque look, with lots of desert scenes, writhing dances,
and seashells glued over her nipples. Ouch! Though native
women still go bare-breasted, the entire tribe—men and
women—have suddenly switched to wearing shorts instead of
loincloths. A handsome young German even showers in his
underwear. A portfolio film called Liane, die Tochter des Dschungels
(1961) combines some scenes from both movies. Don't waste your
time on either of these.
For teens and older:
Sheena (1984) was based on a comic
book series that started in 1937. In 1956, there was a
black-and-white television series (without nudity, of course).
Another late-night TV series followed in 2000-2002—with an
occasional flash of flesh.
In the movie, we again have a young blond woman
swinging through the trees, the leader of a whole tribe. Though
she wears slightly more clothes than Liane, they are clothes designed
to look sexy—as though half ripped off. Teenage girls will
admire her command of any situation. Teenage boys (and their
fathers) will admire her beauty.
Twice we see the heroine nude for bathing.
Twice we see bare-breasted dancers. And twice we see a nude
man—though only from a long distance. They used three
actresses to play the heroine as she grew—but they skipped the
teen years.
Unlike the canned wildlife footage of Liane (which includes a South
American toucan), Sheena was
filmed entirely on location in Kenya. Still, this is definitely a
grade-B movie with a bunch of bad guys, and lots of things going up in
flames. The zebra the heroine rides is actually a painted
horse. Horses whinny; zebras bark—and this "zebra" clearly
whinnies on a couple of occasions. But oh, it's such good fun.
Movie critics hate this production.
Generations of young and old viewers love it.
Both discs come with sensational cover art and
slogans, but are clean in content. These two movies about young
jungle women are every bit as entertaining as all the Tarzan films.
Art Films, Artists and Models (Jan. 2017)
This time, we look at different approaches to
art. An art film is a series of images arranged to make people
think. We also consider movies about painters and their nude
models.
For the whole family:
Baraka (1998) has nothing to do
with Barak Obama, and should not be confused with another movie called Boys of Baraka. The word
comes from Sufi mysticism, and means the flow of blessings from God to
humans. This is not a traditional movie with actors, plot, or
even a narrative. Rather, it is an experience the whole family
can share.
In this film, we see a wordless travelogue through
24 countries—a montage of images from the spectrum of the natural
world and human activity (including a bit of tribal nudity).
Adults can connect the juxtaposed images, but will probably need to
explain to small children the transition from Jewish worshipers to
Islamic whirling dervishes, or the comparison of subway commuters to
baby chickens being produced on an assembly line.
If you're looking for an action-packed movie, this
isn't it. If you're open to a moving experience, you've come to
the right place. Just sit back and take it all in.
For teens and older:
Lots of movies have been made about artists and
their sometimes nude models. Here are a couple that will
especially appeal to teenagers:
Art School Confidential (2006)
begins as an exposé of the shallow types of people one can find
in an art school (or any school, for that matter). We see male
and female models posing nude for the drawing class. There are
also several instances of crude language. Don't let the cover art
mislead you; this is no cartoon.
Our 18-year-old hero can't seem to do anything
right. Finally, in desperation, he tries to pass off the work of
another artist as his own. That bit of plagiarism lands him in
far deeper trouble than he ever imagined, and he finds himself in jail
as a murder suspect.
But in jail, he finally finds the peace to paint the
girl of his dreams—and the celebrity that causes others to take
his art seriously. The movie is full of irony.
Much earlier, Norman
Lindsay was an Australian artist who filled his canvases with lots of
female nudes. In 1935, he also wrote a partly autobiographical
novel called Age of Consent,
about a middle-aged artist and the half-wild 17-year-old girl who
models for him, bringing him fresh inspiration. (In real life, he
was still in his mid-twenties when they met; she took over as his
business manager, and years later became his second wife.)
In 1969, the book was made into a movie starring
Helen Mirren in her first nude role. (Be careful; other movies
before and since have used this same title.) They tried to update
the film; it's a bit jarring to see Norman Lindsay painting in an
abstract style that was the latest thing in 1969. Once the action
moves to a sparsely populated island, everything is much more
consistent.
The artist treats his model very
professionally. But, having been raised by an abusive
grandmother, the girl is looking for a little bit of affection.
This delightful movie was a big hit in
Australia. Yet for distribution to British and American theatres,
the producers censored out most of the nude scenes. They have
been restored in the disc version.
I should also mention that in Sirens (1993), a young Anglican
priest and his wife visit the same Norman Lindsay's studio, where nude
models cavort freely. This is a few years into the second
marriage, when the girl we met before has matured into a businesslike
wife (with different color hair). Instead, action centers on the
minister's cold wife gradually losing her rigidity and growing more
compassionate. This is a sensuous story of love in marriage that
probably interests adults more than teenagers.
From their different perspectives, these fine films
each explore the importance of the nude in art—a subject that
never stops fascinating.
Home Sweet Home (Feb. 2017)
Home can be an island of personal freedom.
Home is a place where you don't have to let ugliness in. Home is
usually a place you can come back to. Let us look at three movies
from three countries, about the meaning of home and home towns.
For the whole family:
What is a nudist family to do
when they loose their privacy? Home
(2008) takes us inside such a family in Switzerland. With two
teenage daughters and a younger son, they live in an isolated house
next to a long-unfinished freeway. While they stay clothed most
of the time, it is refreshing to see ordinary household nudity at bath
time and laundry time. They have a lot of fun splashing water.
This delightful world comes crashing down when the
highway suddenly opens. The defiant older daughter continues to
sunbathe discretely in the yard. The rest of the family pull
together to protect the fragile mother, who does not want to leave the
place where she has found happiness. They try to wall themselves
off from the outside world—to the point that they almost
suffocate. They are not even aware that they have also walled out
the oldest daughter.
Aside from a brief lapse into frustrated domestic
violence and too much smoking, there is nothing in this film that small
children could not watch. But the decreasing happiness may not
appeal to them. The movie is in French with English subtitles
that may go by too fast for slow readers.
Finding a copy can be a bit challenging.
Because search engines have trouble isolating a single-word title, you
may need to add the name of the lead actress: Isabelle Huppert.
But how many other movies are there about nudist families? This
one is worth the hunt.
For teens and older:
For contrast, let us
look at a movie about homeless people. Greenhouse Effect (2005) is not
about the environment, but a 13-year-old Russian street boy who sleeps
in a warm greenhouse and showers at a car wash. With hard work
(and some sneakiness), he has managed rather well. Then he meets
an 18-year-old pregnant girl suddenly thrown on the streets. He
takes her in and tries to help.
We see each of them showering separately.
Mostly, this is a movie about kindly people who help out in small ways.
The movie is in Russian—including the buttons
to find the English subtitles (which don't appear until after the
militaristic previews). Fortunately, my disc came with a sheet of
easy English instructions.
Unlike the other two
movies, the American Doc Hollywood
(1991) has no teenagers in it. Yet the leading
characters—all in their twenties—are still grappling with a
concern of most young people: whether to shake off the dust of their
home town and venture out into the larger world. In this case,
it's a small friendly southern town where everybody knows everybody
else's business. Some of the minor characters are full of
delightful idiosyncracies.
When the heroine steps out of the water after her
skinny-dip, and finds the young doctor staring at her, she calmly
informs him that she doesn't have anything he hasn't seen before.
(Actually, the cameras stay above the waist.) After she has
pulled on some clothes, she tells him he can blink now.
The young doctor believes he has escaped his
small-town roots and is headed for a well-paid career as a plastic
surgeon in Hollywood. But when he finally gets there, he sees
what the place has done to another man from his same home town.
He needs to rethink. This is a warm movie about the value of
caring friends and of love.
Home is where you make it. Home is what you
make it. These three movies help us appreciate the many values of
home.
Good Irish Movies (with some
French roots)
(March
2017)
Our movies this time are largely Irish, and all
include the occasional nudity of boys.
For the whole family:
French author Louis
Pergaud wrote The War of the
Buttons, a Novel of My Twelfth Year in 1912, to point out the
childish stupidity of war. He died in World War I. In his
book, boys from neighboring villages fight, and cut the buttons off the
losers' clothes. Then one group cleverly go into battle naked, so
they have nothing to lose. The book has been made into a movie
five times. The 1936 French film is not available today.
The popular 1962 movie (directed by Yves Robert)
contains a lot of social bite. The fathers act worse than the
boys, who can at least pause for moments of kindness. Summing it
up, one of the boys asks, "Do you think, when we're their age, we'll be
as dumb as they are?" Rarely translated into English, this early
version can be watched in French on the Internet.
We see the nude boys from the back or at a great
distance. Only the youngest boy runs toward the camera, but he
cups his genitals with his hand, as though ashamed. When the
movie played in Japan, posters featured him. German posters
clearly showed cartoon penises. When was the last time you saw
movie posters like these?
Director John Roberts moved the 1994 version to
Ireland, where everyone speaks English. He left out the bad
behavior of adults and added a helicopter rescue, but otherwise
faithfully followed the same plot. His boys are a little older,
some with deep voices, and we see a little more nudity—though
anything frontal is blurred in the sunlight. The girls, however,
do see, and check out the older boys approvingly. (One French
juvenile book illustration also shows the boys about 14, instead of 11,
as written.)
The best moments of this Irish movie occur when the
opposing gang leaders gradually learn to respect each other.
Then came two rival French versions in
2011—released within a week of each other. Both
disappoint. Don't waste your time on The New War of the Buttons
(directed by Christophe Barratier), where the boys charge in
undershirts and underpants. And though Yann Samuel's War of the Buttons claims the boys
are nude, they run through a wheat field, so we never see them below
the waist. Directors in the twenty-first century are losing their
nerve. For English-speaking viewers, the 1994 Irish version
remains the best.
For teens and older:
Angela's Ashes is a sad film about
growing up poor in an Irish city, where it constantly rains. Yet
the few moments of joy all seem to involve nudity. We see boys'
backsides on four occasions, and girls' breasts once.
A Protestant man is married to a Catholic woman, who
is bringing the children up Catholic. Young people need to be
aware of the long bitter religious history before watching this.
Though the title comes from the mother's hopes all turning to ashes, we
follow the difficulties in the life of the oldest son. Three
actors play him at various ages.
It's a long but gripping movie. And it follows
an actual autobiography. Real people went through real
suffering. If you find the story too gray and depressing, cheer
yourself up by watching War of the
Buttons.
Or you might try
another autobiographical movie (made the same year) about growing up
rich in Scotland. My Life So
Far is about a ten-year-old boy in an eccentric family. In
his grandfather's old books, he is stumbling onto fragments of sex
education that he does not yet understand—and, in his innocence,
the boy blurts out some things inappropriate for younger ears.
The two skinny-dip scenes seem too short, yet the humor throughout
remains delightful.
At some other date, we will discuss The Secret of Roan Inish. But
for now, these movies offer a wide enough variety to mark Saint
Patrick's day.
Adam and Eve (April 2017)
Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden: It is an ideal
to which jungle tribes and nudists come closer than anyone else.
Let us look at two movie versions of the Bible story:
For the whole family:
The Creation (1988) is a 28-minute
cartoon about three kids traveling back to the beginning of time.
Be aware that the Bible gives us two creation stories. Scholars
believe that the Bible originally began with Genesis, chapter 2, verse
4, the famous Adam and Eve tale. But from the beginning, many
people did not like that version—especially women and people who
believe things should happen in a logical sequence. And so the
more scientific chapter 1 was added on at an early date. The
cartoon ignores that, and retells Genesis, chapters 2 and 3.
The movie does allow for some scientific
understanding when it shows the earth being formed by volcanic action
and the moving of tectonic plates—but not when God creates plants
before the sun. (Genesis 1 corrected that, and also the notion
that woman came as an afterthought.) Both Bible versions missed
the dinosaur age—and so some literalists claim that dinosaurs
never existed. To remedy that, the movie-makers threw in a
dinosaur with all the fuzzy mammals (which scientists tell us appeared
long after the giant reptiles went extinct.) There are lots of
other unbelievable movies about humans battling dinosaurs, so this one
has plenty of company.
We see Adam from the back, the side, or from the
waist up. Though we glimpse hints of Eve's breasts, her long hair
always covers both nipples and her vagina. We wouldn't want to
shock the children into thinking that their ancestors had the same
equipment they have. This cartoon would pass muster with most
fundamentalists, yet is informative for children of any religious
background.
It comes from a series of a dozen mostly Old
Testament cartoons called The
Greatest Adventure: Stories from the Bible (which includes a
fully clothed David fighting Goliath).
For teens and older:
The Annunciation (1984) is a
strange yet thought-provoking movie based on the story of Adam and
Eve. Like in a Sunday-school pageant, the actors are all children
aged 8 to 12. They represent a time when the whole world was
young. They speak their lines in a deadpan way (in Hungarian,
with English subtitles).
The plot follows a nineteenth-century play, The Tragedy of Man, by Imre
Madach. After they have left the garden, young Adam demands that
young Lucifer keep his promise of the knowledge of good and evil.
It is a knowledge of the human foibles their descendants will commit
down through history. Lucifer leads Adam in a dream sequence
through democracy run amok in ancient Athens, religion getting in the
way of love in medieval Byzantium, persecution of scientists and
Protestants and witches in Renaissance Prague, the bloodshed and
betrayals of the French revolution, and life in the slums of Dickens'
London. Foibles indeed. Adam asks, when will an individual
break out of these repetitious circles, and ascend to something better?
This is not an easy movie to watch; it requires some
concentration. And you still may not catch all of the historic
references. The movie quotes, for instance, lines by Shakespeare,
William Blake and Emily Dickinson. Small children would get bored
with this intellectual activity. On the other hand, prudes might
feel alarm at naked children playing harmless adult
roles—including words of affection that hold any family together.
Young Adam and Eve are nude at the beginning of the
film, and still sleep nude at the end—though we see them mostly
above the waist. There is nothing remarkable about Adam, but the
few nude girls in movies are usually younger or older than this
Eve. To see a nude girl in the early stages of breast development
is most rare. Yet this is not an occasion for looking, but for
learning. This girl is all girls; this boy is all boys.
Though occasionally reissued, the disc of this
unusual movie is hard to find, and expensive. The entire thing
can be viewed on the Internet; just make sure you get one with English
subtitles. Since there are other movies with the same name, you
may need to add the Hungarian title: Angyali
Üdvözlet.
We have not exhausted the subject of Adam and Eve in
the movies, so will take it up again some other time.
Freedom from Religion (May 2017)
Last month, we looked at Bible stories; now we give
equal time to the other side. We have all run into people who
think of religion and nudity as opposites. Of course, nudists of
faith know better. Yet the notion persists. Today we
examine movies about young non-believers who happen to enjoy a bit of
skinny-dipping. Most are teenage girls.
For the whole family:
We are well into
the twenty-first century, yet it is hard to find an American movie made
since 2000 where teenagers are nude for any reason other than
sex. Some Things That Stay
(2004) is a refreshing exception.
Interestingly, the family are atheists, resisting
the pressures of their Baptist neighbors. (The religious girl
uses bad language.) The title comes from the fact that the family
moves around a lot, and the oldest girl wants to put down roots
somewhere.
The box of my disc specifically states: "Not
recommended for small children." I suppose that is because the
children of two families go skinny-dipping (though we see little more
than their upper backs). A menstrual period is vaguely mentioned,
but that will pass right over the head of anyone too young to
understand.
The family learns to cope with sadness: the mother's
long illness, and the recent death of their landlords' son. But
love holds them all together. This movie has depth.
For teens and older:
It should not be surprising that religious
skepticism appears more often in movies appropriate for teens. We
have choices from several countries.
The Other Side of Sunday (1996)
follows the daughter of a strict Lutheran minister in Norway. As
she approaches her confirmation into church membership, she has a lot
of religious doubts. And she wonders what teen pleasures she has
been missing. She befriends a young widow in the church, who
encourages her to loosen up a bit. This is a spiritual journey,
and skinny-dipping forms a natural part of that discovery.
The story is set in the 1950s. The characters
speak Norwegian—with blue English subtitles. As a portrayal
of a religion that forgot about joy, this is a daring movie.
Love Like Poison (2010) gives us a
French girl having doubts about her confirmation into the Catholic
church. The young priest is an understanding friend of the
family. She is at the awkward age of 14: an innocent heart in a
woman's body. Her mother wisely advises her that beauty comes
from carrying her body with pride. The girl does bare her breasts
a couple of times.
She cares for her ailing and earthy grandfather,
while missing her absent father. A boy has a crush on her, but
his voice has not yet deepened. We see each of the characters
going through changes.
The film is directed by a woman young enough to
still remember her teen feelings. Not a lot happens; this is
mostly a mood piece—but a good one. The movie is in French,
with English subtitles. The DVD works only on a region-free
player or an older computer.
The Fool Killer (1965) is a
black-and-white classic, set in the American south after the Civil
War. A 12-year-old runaway boy befriends several interesting
characters, including a shell-shocked ex-soldier. Unlike the
girls in the other movies, this boy is gullible. He falls for the
legend of the fool-killer. (O. Henry, Stephen Vincent Benet, and
especially George Ade all wrote stories about this personage with the
responsibility of thinning out the pompous and the hypocrites.)
The boy also falls under the spell of a revivalist
preacher. When the self-righteous minister is murdered, the boy
concludes that the fool-killer did it, and he suspects that his
skeptical friend may actually be the fool-killer. We never do
find out.
The skinny-dip scene is brief, but that is where the
young veteran explains his deepest philosophy. This rare film is
available only on tape or the Internet.
All four of these movies introduce us to good people
who hold out for rationality over belief. Yet skinny-dipping
keeps an important place in each of their lives.
Learning About Columbus (June 2017)
Today, we look at a couple of documentary films
about uncommon schools—plus a historical drama. All three
owe much to Christopher Columbus.
For the whole family:
Western Lights: In the Wake of Christopher
Columbus (1990) was a French television documentary about ten
boys and their teachers whose floating classroom retraced one of the
voyages of Columbus. The series ran fifteen hours over as many
weeks. The home movie version has been edited down to just two
hours. It is refreshing to see a television program that includes
a few short scenes of boys nude for bathing, diving, or sleeping
(though thy edited out anything frontal). The boys range in age
from 10 to 15.
The movie is certainly safe enough for the whole
family, but young children may get bored. They also have to be
old enough to read the English subtitles, which go by rather quickly
and include a couple of swear words.
The boat is a floating schoolhouse—education
at its best. We see the boys learning hands-on geography,
archaeology, biology, history—as well as practical skills like
sailing, woodworking, baking, and filming a television documentary.
For teens and older:
Two years later,
several movies celebrated the 500th anniversary of Columbus' first
voyage. Christopher Columbus:
the Discovery did it best. Teenagers will appreciate the
hero's mild flirtation with queen Isabella. Near the end, we see
native American women authentically bare-breasted. Less
authentically, they all seem to be about age 20.
We tend to forget that Ferdinand and Isabella
expelled the highly cultured Muslims and Jews from Spain the same year
Columbus sailed. That forms an important subplot in the movie.
Yet absolutely no one believed the world was
flat. Washington Irving invented that story in the early
nineteenth century. Ancient Greeks had figured out the curvature
and circumference of the earth, and scholars knew those
calculations. Columbus got hold of some faulty figures (where the
man had forgotten to multiply by pi), and thought the world was only
one-third its actual size—and therefore, he could sail to India
in a couple of weeks. No wonder no one believed him. When
Columbus finally reached America, he was lost, and never did figure it
out.
Another inaccuracy: The movie shows Columbus
demonstrating how to stand an egg on end. Actually, that was the
architect, Brunelleschi, who built the dome of the Florence cathedral
70 years earlier.
But back to education.
One of the Spanish traditions transported to the new world was
bullfighting. Some people think bullfighting is immoral.
Some people think nudity is immoral. What happens when the two
are combined? Something beautiful, if the movie is Tu Solo (1984).
It's called a docu-drama. That means there's
not much plot. Mostly, the cameras follow a couple of teenage
boys at a bullfighting school. There are no actors—just the
young students going about their daily learning and practice in the
arena.
One of the boys reads about a famous matador who
once faced a bull nude. So six of them sneak out at night to try
the same by moonlight. Those five minutes make a graceful ballet
of man and nature—well worth sitting through the whole film.
This movie is in Spanish, with English
subtitles. The title means "on your own"—the reality of
matadors in the bullring. We see the boys growing into that
confidence and skill.
Aside from a few bulls dying, there is nothing here
that small children could not watch. But I suspect most would get
bored and wander away. Teenagers will find much more to interest
them.
Award Films International has reissued this and Western Lights. There don't
seem to be used copies around of either one; you will have to pay full
price for both.
By the way, Summerhill
School in England led the way in alternative education. But the
documentary, Summerhill at 70
disappoints with its too-brief nudity, daily trivialities, crude
language and some weapons. That rare documentary is available on
the Internet for free. Don't spend money on it. Instead,
enjoy these other three movies.
Loose Lips Sink Ships (July 2017)
Loose lips sink ships: That was a U.S. slogan during
World War II. The Germans had their own less poetic version, that
translates as "Shame on you, blabbermouth." We won't look at any
ships this time, but loose lips aplenty. We see the
misunderstandings that loose or deceptive talk can cause at any time.
For Little Kids:
Normally, I would label this section "For the Whole
Family." But I doubt that many people over the age of 10 would
find much of interest in these cartoons.
If ever a
children's story called for nudity, it is "The Emperor's New
Clothes." The tale had been around since medieval times.
Hans Christian Andersen added the detail of an innocent child being the
first to see through everybody's pretensions.
The one movie with live actors avoids anything
nude. Several cartoon versions have been made, but so far as I
know, only two of them actually show rear nudity. None show
anything frontal.
Michael Sporn's variation on the tale has almost
everyone in medieval costume and speaking in rhyme. It is paired
with another Andersen story on a disc called The Emperor's New Clothes and Nightingale
(1991). The special features include an interesting look at
cartoon-making from an adult perspective.
Nadine Westcott's shorter version of 1989 sticks
closer to the traditional story, and even has the emperor continuing to
parade proudly after he knows he is nude. Scholastic has put this
on more than one disc, including The
Emperor's New Clothes and More Hans Christian Anderson Fairy Tales
(2005), as well as The Hans
Christian Andersen Collection (2005).
A funnier third version by Gareth Williams, The Emperor's New Clothes (2006)
deserves honorable mention, though his cartoon only shows the fat
emperor in silly frilly underpants. But the spoken message is
body-positive. The prime minister explains, "The human body is a
beautiful creation, and nothing to be ashamed of—even
yours." Reader's Digest
has produced this one on a disc with simple learning exercises.
Book illustrators have been equally squeamish.
And so it is refreshing to see Lidia Postma's award-winning 1975 cover
design of the Dutch version of Andersen's tales. By the way, the
late INF president Bart Wijnberg wrote a whole article on book
illustrations for "The Emperor's New Clothes" in the Canadian journal, Going Natural, 28.3 (Fall
2013). pp. 16-19.
For teens and older:
The Crucible (1996) is about the
false accusations by teenage girls during the Salem witch trials.
Arthur Miller wrote the play while America was going through a similar
wave of hysteria during the McCarthy hearings of the early 1950s.
But this time, people were being accused, on equally flimsy evidence,
of being Communists.
A crucible is a place where metals or ideas get
tested by severe fires, and melted down to their essence. The
action in this historical drama focuses on one man trying to hold onto
the truth and his own self-respect while the whole world around him is
going crazy.
The movie begins with some girls dancing in the
woods around a love potion. One girl strips naked.
(Surprisingly, the earlier French version of 1957 skipped that
part.) The nudity in the American version is so brief that this
movie is commonly shown to high school classes after they have studied
the play.
And study it they should. There is no evidence
that we have seen the last of mass hysteria, or foolish decisions by
the majority. When talk becomes cheap and hurtful and deceptive,
who will speak truth? Who shall have the courage to say that the
emperor has no clothes?
Some American Indian Curiosities (Aug. 2017)
This time, we look at unusual but delightful films
about native Americans.
For the whole family:
There is a
curious little black-and-white grade-B Western called Revenge of the Virgins
(1959). It purports to portray the last of a California Indian
tribe whose men have all been killed off. The remaining women are
quite accurately shown bare-breasted, for California natives wore
little or nothing. They try to protect their territory from
greedy prospectors. So far, so good.
But the prancing maidens (all young and beautiful),
their blond leader, and their dancing are laughably phony. Still,
the semi-nudity is innocent enough that the whole family could watch
(if you don't mind bad guys getting an arrow in the back every few
minutes). Kids don't even need to know what a virgin is.
As part of the general sloppiness, the guide
identifies the women as Apaches—a large tribe that dressed in
heavy leather outfits and never lived in California. Pack donkeys
disappear and reappear without explanation, and the narrator continues
with the narration after he is killed off. Definitely grade-B.
Be aware that back in the fifties, any movie with
nude or semi-nude individuals (including nudists) was called an
exploitation film, because it exploited a niche market—not
because the actors were mistreated. Yet the movie does begin with
racial stereotypes about "primitive" people.
The movie lasts only an hour. The trouble with
short films is that they frequently get paired with less desirable
things. The most available pairing of this one is with another
nudie-cutie film about native Americans that is better, but too sexy
for young children. (And the sensational cover art is totally
misleading.) Yet since the producers failed to even copyright
this cheap production, Revenge of
the Virgins is available by itself as a free download on the
Internet. Enjoy.
For teens and older:
If you want to see
another western shoot-'em-up with an American Indian woman
skinny-dipping, Mackenna's Gold
(1969) contains such a scene.
But
for much greater fun, let us look to Brazil and How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman
(1971). It tells the story of Hans Staden, an early German
adventurer captured by naked Brazilian cannibals. He tried to
convince them he was one of their allies, the French. Staden
eventually returned to Germany, where he published his adventures with
lots of illustrations. He wrote:
"They go naked, without any covering; neither do
they pay more attention to exposing or concealing their shame than they
do to showing their faces, and in this respect they were very
innocent." Though he went nude for nine months, Staden never grew
into an early German naturist.
Smallpox wiped out the Tupinamba tribe soon
afterward. No one else ever reported meeting cannibals in South
America. Were they the only ones, or did their diet make them
especially vulnerable to the spread of human disease? More likely
the latter.
There's lots of irony from the beginning of this
film, as we watch the brutality of European settlers, while hearing
their self-righteous reports. The male and female natives are
authentically nude. But the lead actor is
circumcised—something that only Jews and Muslims did before the
twentieth century.
The casting is unrealistic, with all of the naked
women in their twenties. We see no old people or children in this
tribe. (No wonder they went extinct.)
The out-of-print disc has become prohibitively
expensive, though a few copies of the older tape version can still be
found. The movie is now available for viewing on the Internet.
A generation later, in
1999, the director's son tried his own version of the same adventure,
called Hans Staden—There He
Comes, Our Food Jumping. I have never found this as a home
video, but was able to download it from YouTube. The son tried to
be more historically accurate, so he took out the love story, had the
hero speak German, and had him rescued. There's still lots of
tribal nudity, but the witty humor is gone. We do see tribal
elders and only three children, yet most of the women appear young and
shapely. Worst of all, the lead actor is again circumcised.
Both subtitled versions are worth watching, but the original remains
the best.
Note for adult readers: Birdwatchers (2008) is a
beautifully filmed movie about the Guarani tribe in modern
Brazil. But one of its themes is teen suicide, so I do not
recommend it for teen viewing. It begins with nearly naked
Indians collecting their money for amazing the tourists, then huddling
back into their shabby clothes. The tribe confront a farmer about
taking back their land, yet love breaks out across all sorts of racial
and age divisions, complicating the situation. The movie is in
Italian with English subtitles, viewable only on a multi-region player
or a computer with free VLC Media Player.
The other three movies contain plenty of genuine
tribal nudity, offer some food for thought, and are great fun to watch.
Princes and Princesses (Sept. 2017)
This time, we examine four movies about princes,
princesses, and mistaken royalty.
For the whole family:
Romance with a Double Bass (1974)
is a delightful 40-minute film based on a short story by Chekhov, and
is set during his time in the late nineteenth century. A fairy
tale princess and a bumbling musician meet while skinny-dipping.
As frequently happens in the movies, someone steals their
clothes. Fortunately, he plays the double bass rather than the
piccolo, so she can crawl inside the case and be smuggled back into the
palace.
That's where Chekhov ended the original story.
The movie greatly improves on it by adding a lot of palace intrigue and
a fine ending.
The cameramen seemed more than willing to film
female nudity, but avoided any frontal male shots. There are no
children in this movie, yet it's good clean fun that the whole family
can watch together.
For teens and older:
Lady Jane (1986) is a fairly
faithful biography of Lady Jane Grey, the teenager who became queen of
England for a brief nine days in 1553. Powerful relatives forced
the studious girl into marriage with a worthless young nobleman.
To everyone's surprise, the couple found love and purpose in each
other. (At least that's the movie version.)
We see them together in a couple of discreet nude
and semi-nude scenes. That helps to personalize their small parts
in the sweep of larger historical events. It also reassures us
that the heroine was normal, despite the flat-chested fashion of
English court dresses. The grandeur of Renaissance costuming,
music, and dance greatly enrich this film.
But by no means, should this movie be confused with
a recent short piece of religious propaganda called The Forgotten Martyr: Lady Jane Grey.
Most of the action occurs during the brief reign of
King Edward VI. The same is true of The Prince and the Pauper (1977,
also known as Crossed Swords)—an
even better movie for the whole family, but without nudity. Lady
Jane Grey also appears in that film.
The Student Prince (1998) is a
British movie that should not be confused with the earlier American
musical of the same name. When the movie played on Masterpiece
Theatre, they called it Prince of
Hearts. To appreciate its depth, you must first watch Cyrano de Bergerac (1990), which is
another fine movie, but without nudity. (It shows up as a
play-within-the-play, but that is not enough; you must understand the
earlier plot well before then.)
When a fictitious fourth son of Queen Elizabeth II
goes to Cambridge, a young bodyguard is assigned to share his
room. The uneducated guardian turns out to be much smarter than
the prince. We see him jump out of bed nude, and later the two of
them and an American girl go skinny-dipping in the pool. It's a
good movie.
The royalty is only
imaginary in King of Hearts
(1966). During World War I, an abandoned French town is taken
over by the inmates of the lunatic asylum. (Such stories go back
as far as Pierre Cardenal in medieval times.) They manage rather
well, and have fun doing it. That is, until the soldiers show up
and start killing each other. People suddenly realize that war is
the ultimate insanity, and obedient soldiers act more stupid and
dangerous than the gentle lunatics. They rush back into the
safety of the asylum, discarding those items of clothing that briefly
marked their worldly positions.
The inept hero is mistaken for the long-awaited King
of Hearts. At the end, he discards his entire uniform, arriving
naked at the gate of the asylum—the nudity his sure ticket to
admittance.
This film alternates between French, English, and
German languages, but has been released several times with the English
subtitles varying from minimal (as in my copy) to overdone. Make
no mistake about it; this is a delightful anti-war movie, in the
tradition of The Mouse that Roared.
So popular was it, that one theatre held it over for five
years—playing it through most of the Vietnam War.
Each of these four films about royalty have
something to teach us, and are fun to watch.
Movies for Halloween (Oct. 2017)
This time, we have three movies to watch for
Halloween. All include nudity, but none of them are scary.
They won't give you nightmares.
For the whole family:
Soup and Me (1978) was a 23-minute
children's television episode in the ABC Weekend Special series.
Among other funny Halloween events, two mischievous boys go
skinny-dipping. As frequently happens in the movies, a girl comes
by. But instead of stealing their clothes, she throws them in the
water where the boys can't find them. Because this is television,
we only see bare backsides through tall grass.
The plot follows one of a series of 14 humorous
children's books written by Robert Newton Peck about growing up in
1930s Vermont. (The movie version updates the cars and such to
the 1950s.) But the producers spent some money getting a talented
and funny character actress to play the dignified mail lady. She
gives the film class.
The program was never issued as a home movie, but is
frequently rerun, and can sometimes be viewed or downloaded from the
Internet. There, you may also find a shorter film of the same
name featuring two girls acting out a different episode before an
audience. That's not it. Soup
for President (1978) does continue these same boys'
misadventures, though the sequel includes no nudity.
For teens and older:
Weird Science (1985) is another
high-school-nerd-gets-the-girl film. This time, there's a
pathetic pair of them. An old Frankenstein movie gives them an
idea, so they hack their way into powerful computers to create a
23-year-old super woman. She quickly sizes up the situation, and
sets about putting them through their wildest fantasies, but also some
challenges that will give them enough backbone to interest girls their
own age.
This does not happen on Halloween, but we see plenty
of electrical charges and spooky happenings. Unfortunately, the
tough guys fit into worst-nightmare stereotypes, including
racial. There is a bit of crude teen language, and also a lot of
house-wrecking—which gets undone when the clock is turned back.
The two nude scenes are brief, non-sexual, and not
very revealing. Yet one of them is pretty funny when an obnoxious
naked man hands his towel to his skimpily clad brother and tells him to
cover up. There is some wishful talk about sex, but in these
boys' lives, nothing actually happens. They even shower in their
bluejeans. It's mostly good clean fun.
Now to
something more questionable: Two of the three Porky's movies
deserve their bad reputation for focusing on a sleazy strip club.
But the producers disappointed their fans by failing to deliver the
expected raunchiness in Porky's II:
The Next Day (1983). They tried though. Opening
credits show a few scenes from the first movie. Then you have to
sit through half-an-hour of juvenile sex jokes (typically all big talk)
before you get to the good part: the minister and high school principal
outquoting each other with eyebrow-raising lines from Shakespeare and
the Bible. It is an absolutely classic scene, reminiscent of
William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow at the famous "monkey"
trial, and worth the wait.
This film is mostly a disconnected series of gags,
including a snake-in-the-toilet scene and a silly haunted cemetery
episode (with nudity). Then the movie begins to take on serious
challenges. The young rednecks surprise everyone by making a
stand for Shakespeare and racial justice. (The Ku Klux Klan
objects to a Seminole Indian student playing Romeo to a white
Juliette.) By the time they are done, our high school heroes have
the whole Klan stripped naked and exposed. Weasely politicians
get their comeuppance too. Yes, there are bad parts to this
movie, but I think the good parts outweigh them; everyone may not agree.
Incidentally, the final scene happens in a fancy
Miami restaurant with indoor pool. South Florida Free Beaches
once had that section screened off for skinny-dipping during a banquet
after a major symposium on non-sexual nudity. I was there.
And so we have a very wide range of choices for
Halloween viewing. Take your pick.
Star-Crossed Lovers (Nov. 2017)
Romeo and Juliet were not the only young people from
enemy families to fall in love. Today, we look at two magnificent
movies (plus a funny little film) from other European countries.
For the whole family:
Ronja Rövardotter (1984) has
to be one of the great family movies of all time. It relates a
Swedish tale about medieval robber-barons who live in a world of gnomes
and harpies. The two young heroes were born on the same night
that lightning split the castle in half. The kids happen to meet
at age 11, and form a brother-sister friendship that carries them
through many adventures over the next two years.
The plot faithfully follows Astrid Lindgren's
popular children's book, widely available as Ronia, the Robber's Daughter.
The movie has been translated into 39 languages—three times with
English subtitles. The first time, they changed all the
names. The newly released third version has disappointed
everybody but prudes, by censoring out all of the nude scenes.
You want the rare second English subtitled version, available only at
cvmc.net ($10 to rent, $30 to buy). Don't just rely on the
picture; other regions, other lengths, and other languages all use the
same cover art.
Be warned that the young heroine has a hot temper,
and frequently uses unladylike language. (The book translator
cleaned it up; the movie translator did not.) Hers is the
strongest personality in their world.
She comes by it naturally. Her mother, at one
point, throws all of the men out of the castle to bathe in the
snow. Lots of shrunken male frontal nudity there. In the
book, rival robber chiefs wrestle for supremacy, wearing nothing but
their shirts; they don't strip down in the movie. In both
formats, the two kids enjoy frequent skinny-dipping. (Don't waste
your time on the Japanese cartoon version, where the heroine swims in a
gown and the boy wears shorts.)
The mostly-male choral singing is magnificent.
The movie begins with childbirth, and contains the death of an old
man. The tale ends happily while the heroes are still children.
The movie was later made into a 6-part television
series, which they stretched out with 18 minutes of rejected footage
not included in the movie. Reportedly, there was no difference of
skinny-dipping time, while the snow-bathing scene actually lasted
longer in the short version.
There is no such thing as a used copy available,
because no one ever gets rid of this movie. It's that good.
For teens and older:
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
(1965) tells an old Ukranian story about children of rival families who
fall in love. Their childhood play includes long and glorious
skinny-dips. But before they can marry, she dies, and his life
falls apart.
Though he eventually does marry, his mind remains on
his first sweetheart. To win his affection, his wife resorts to a
nude witchcraft ritual—but then she falls under a sorcerer's
spell and grows unfaithful.
You may not understand everything the first time
through, but you know you have experienced something powerful.
The plot is rich in ritual—mostly of the Eastern Orthodox
religion. Innovative camera angles make the film visually
stunning—along with sonorous blasts of music from the trembitas,
smaller Ukranian versions of the alpenhorns.
Everyone speaks Ukranian, with easy-to-read English
subtitles. (The Soviet Union banned this movie—not just for
the religious emphasis—but especially because the patriotic
director refused to put it in Russian.)
This film has also been distributed under the less
appropriate name, Wild Horses of Fire.
On a much lesser
scale, the Belgian Jambon d'Ardenne
(1977) is also known as Ham and Chips.
Everyone speaks French, with English subtitles.
Two mothers are waging war. One owns a chaotic
but successful restaurant; the other runs a little French-fry trailer
across the street. (The subtitles use the British term,
chips.) If you like messy food fights, this is your movie.
Their 14-year-old children are far more interested
in each other than in their mothers' businesses. There is a
charming scene of the nude boy and girl chasing each other through the
fields after a skinny-dip. (In Europe, the DVD was sold with a
montage of the nude chase on the back of the case.)
Not a whole lot more happens. That's why
everyone was surprised when this delightful little film became a box
office success. Though sometimes scarce or overpriced, you can
find a reasonable copy at www.doktorfroyd.com.
We cannot be reminded too many times that young
people and love can break through old hatreds. These three movies
do it well.
Survival in the Wilderness (Dec. 2017)
One of these films has a Christmas connection; the
others do not. Three of the four are boys' coming-of-age stories.
For the whole family:
My Side of the Mountain (1969)
relates the adventures of a teenage boy who decides to live in the
wilderness. It was based on a book frequently studied in
schools. Film makers reduced his age from 15 to 13, and they
moved the story from Delhi, NY to Quebec. Most importantly, they
added a thoughtful dimension with the boy's knowledge of the writings
of Henry David Thoreau. This raises the story far above most
other kid adventure movies.
Among his accomplishments, the boy catches and
trains a peregrine falcon as a hunting hawk. The film people
seemed to think the plot needed several dramatic conflicts not in the
book. And they changed the ending: he admits defeat at
Christmastime and goes back home. In the book, he survives the
winter, and his understanding family come to join him so he can teach
the self-reliance he has learned to his younger brothers. I like
that original ending better.
The book briefly mentions that the boy took off all
of his clothes for daily bathing and swimming in the pond. The
movie keeps him below the surface, or at such a great distance that we
see very little. But it does establish that he swam nude.
For Teens and Older:
If you can't get
enough about survival in the Canadian wilderness, you could try the
less interesting A Cry in the Wild
(1990). It is based on a book called Hatchet. This boy is
supposedly also 13, but much less emotionally mature—all the more
noticeable because they used a 16-year-old actor for the part.
And he keeps flashing back to unresolved family problems back home.
He too skinny-dips at a great distance (then puts on
long-sleeved shirt and long pants for a close shot of more dangerous
swimming). Even with a plane crash and a bear attack for
excitement, this movie does not measure up to the others mentioned
here. And the sequel about white wolves contains no nudity.
Don't get confused by some horror movies with similar titles.
Captain Fantastic (2016) is a
surprisingly recent movie about a whole family of survivalists living
in the forests of the American northwest. Unlike most
survivalists in that part of the country, their politics are left-wing,
rather than right-wing. The parents are home-schooling their six
children, putting them through rugged mental and physical exercises.
About the only rule at their house is "clothes on
when we eat." It's a stupid rule, and the younger kids push its
boundaries. We see three brief instances of innocent
nudity—quite rare in 21st-century movies. That and a few
"f" words earned this film an R rating, but it is perfectly safe for
teenagers. The hunting scene and the mother's reported suicide
are too intense for small children.
The family's idealistic bubble gets burst when they
have to travel to the city for the mother's funeral. The children
are not prepared for fat people, junk food, or inane video games.
Disapproving relatives try to take the children away. The family
sticks together, but they do have to make some disappointing
compromises. This is a good movie about serious family concerns.
Surviving in the urban jungle can
indeed be more difficult than surviving in the wilderness. Kes (1969) is an English film about
a poor boy growing up in the city. Though 15, he is a late
maturer, so the other boys bully him. So do his older brother and
his teachers. Then he finds and trains a kestrel as a hunting
hawk—winning some respect. (By coincidence, this film was
released just two months before the similar episode in My Side of the
Mountain.)
One scene happens in the boys' shower room, where we
get brief glimpses of mostly rear nudity. Though it includes a
classic funny soccer game, much of this movie is grim. Still, the
British Film Institute has named it one of the ten best British movies
of the 20th century.
Everyone talks too fast—especially in the
black-and-white tape version. This is not the queen's
English. I sure wish this British movie had English subtitles, so
I could understand more of the lower-class pronunciation. The
disc is in color, but can only be viewed on an international player or
your computer. My copy looks bootlegged, with the edges clipped
off (including some heads). Watching it is a bit of a struggle,
but worth the effort.
And so we have four films about survival, and man's
place in nature. All of them include some natural nudity.
Many libraries loan out the first three. If your library doesn't,
you can easily get them through Interlibrary Loan.
Moving Back and Forth in Time (Jan. 2018)
The beginning of a new year is a good time to think
about past and future. We look at three movies that do just that.
For the whole family:
In Now and Then (1995), three career
women and a housewife relive the summer when they were all 12 and best
friends. You may want to run the opening credits twice to sort
out who everybody is when young and older. Otherwise the movie
makes no sense. Little red-haired Chrissy is now a pregnant
housewife. Conveniently, Roberta, the black-haired rational
tomboy, is now a doctor. Blond Teeny returns home as a movie
star. And superstitious brown-haired Samantha is now a
writer. She narrates the movie.
As often happens in the movies, the boys skinny-dip,
and the girls steal their clothes. Yet when the girls jumped into
the water earlier, they kept ALL of their street clothes on—even
shoes. It's the old double standard.
In their unguarded moments, the girls occasionally
throw in a rough word or two. There is some talk about sex, but
it's mostly by twelve-year-old girls worried about breast size.
There's also a birth.
This is a movie about girls growing up and growing
wiser. And in their maturity, they come to appreciate more deeply
their long friendship.
For teens and older:
Glen and Randa (1970) is a strange
and thoughtful movie. It begins in a Garden of Eden with two nude
teenagers. It's a timeless scene—except for that car up in
the tree. We quickly realize this is not a movie about the past,
but about the future: 20 years after the United States was bombed back
into the stone age.
Our teen heroes have seen only hints of that lost
civilization. Glen is interested in learning more. The few
people who remain don't talk much, reduced to wandering as foraging
bands, surviving on the canned foods they find in empty houses.
But they do think it necessary to wear clothes.
Then a fast-talking showman arrives, his jabbering
about Times Square as pointless as the blender and other gizmos he
brings. We realize how meaningless the trappings of civilization
are. But this inspires Glen to travel in search of a city.
Pregnant Randa tags along.
They eventually reach the Idaho seashore.
(Washington and Oregon no longer exist.) They meet a friendly old
man, and encounter other now-useless things such as a television
set. It's a movie to make you think.
In Planet of the Apes (1968), the
spaceship has two clocks—one for earth time, and one for human
travel at the speed of light. It takes us 2,000 years into the
future, after people have pretty much destroyed the earth. Again,
humans are reduced back to cave-men, while apes have evolved into the
dominant species.
This was not a totally new idea. For 240
years, people had been reading the fourth book of Gulliver's Travels,
where humans had degenerated into yahoos, and horses showed far more
intelligence. (And in their intelligence, they saw no use for
clothes.) The apes of the future do wear clothes.
When the astronauts land, one of the first things
they do is go skinny-dipping. Later, the hero must stand nude in
court. Though the cameras avoid anything frontal, and whether you
think of Charlton Heston as Moses or the head of the National Rifle
Association, it's ironic to see him standing there nude.
The movie was made a year before astronauts traveled
to the moon, so I suppose the film-makers can be forgiven for thinking
people can smoke a cigar on a spaceship. The hardest part to
believe is that the English language has not changed at all in 2,000
years. But I suppose that is no more far-fetched than to hear
Moses speaking English thousands of years before it was invented.
We have grown used to these conventions.
The only teenager in the movie is a clothed ape, but
he has all the refreshing teen impatience and skepticism. The
apes' religious myths also have a familiar ring.
Avoid all nine sequels and the 2001 remake.
All contain lots of violence, but no nudity. Thus they are
"moral" and officially approved for young viewing.
Back and forth in time we move with these three
movies. And we may even learn something along the way.
Timeless Stories from Ancient Greece (Feb. 2018)
Nude men and boys strolled everywhere in ancient
Greece. But you would never know that from watching the
movies. I am not aware of any film that shows nude Greek
athletes—even documentaries about the Olympics.
Tallahassee Naturally has pieced together a home
movie of the modern authentically nude College Greek Athletic Meet, but
that is not for sale. The whole family can watch it only at the
American Nudist Research Library.
Spartan boys wore no clothing most of the time from
age 7 through 17, and Spartan girls regularly served as nude waitresses
at banquets. You won't see those things in the movies either.
For the whole family:
Clash of the Titans (1981) tells
the story of Perseus—how he had to tame the winged horse Pegasus,
and kill the snaky-haired Medusa, so ugly her face could turn anyone to
stone. With it, he saved princess Andromeda from a sea monster.
This movie contains three very brief nude
scenes—hardly worth mentioning, except that one is a nude woman
breast-feeding her child. Though it contains monsters and
violence, that is to be expected in Greek mythology. The whole
family could watch this.
The ugly 2010 remake is nothing but continuous
mayhem—yet everybody keeps all their clothes on. Save
yourself some nightmares, and don't let that one into your house.
For teens and older:
For lack of anything
more authentic, I hesitantly recommend Young Aphrodites (1963). It
is loosely based on the ancient teen love story, Daphnis and Chloe.
During a drought, shepherds come down from the hills
to a coastal village when the menfolk are gone on a fishing
expedition. We follow two couples: the tender heroes in their
early teens, and an experienced pair in their twenties. The young
boy is ready to make a serious commitment to the girl; she is not so
sure what she wants. And another shepherd boy, about a year
older, lurks in the background.
But the costuming is weird. Though we
occasionally catch a side glimpse of a breast, everyone wears modern
underpants under their Greek outfits. Some of the men wear Greek
leggings that would not become traditional for another 2,000 years.
In the book, the girl watches her childhood playmate
bathing, and decides he is beginning to look like husband
material. That scene has troubled modern book illustrators;
sometimes they reverse it, and have him watching the girl bathe.
In the movie, he bathes in his sheepskin robe, if you can believe
that. The film avoids any male nudity—quite unlike ancient
Greece.
The movie is black-and-white. The plot unfolds
slowly and beautifully in the harshness of the rocky seashore.
The characters say little, and they say it in Greek; the English
subtitles don't stay up long enough, but that hardly matters.
There are two discreet sex scenes.
For greater authenticity,
let me point out two ancient Greek tragedies by Euripides. They
make us feel the horror of the first and last deaths in the Trojan
War. We start with Iphigenia
(1977). For a successful war, the gods demand that king Agamemnon
sacrifice his oldest daughter. This is heavy stuff, for, unlike
the story of Abraham and Isaac, this one does not have a happy
ending. But it certainly is powerful.
Twice (for only a second or two each time), we catch
glances of nude men—from the side, never the front. This
movie also is in Greek, with English subtitles.
Following ten years
of bloodshed, The Trojan Women
(1971) is Euripides' play about the aftermath of the Trojan
War—complete with Greek chorus.
The surviving women wait to be divvied up as
slaves. One by one, we see the fates of old queen Hecuba; her
daughter, the prophetess Cassandra; her daughter-in-law Andromache
(widow of Hector); her hated daughter-in-law Helen; and her doomed
little grandson Astyanax. This is not something you watch for
fun, but its anti-war message is as somber and powerful as ever.
Katherine Hepburn and other strong actresses leave a lasting impression.
And we do catch partial glimpses of Helen of Troy
stripped for bathing.
Be aware that another Euripides
play, Medea (1969) shows
three young boys nude—mostly for bathing. But this famous
murdering mother's story is hardly one whose family values I can
recommend. Much of that movie is brutal, boring, confusing, or
all three. Watch the others, instead.
Tales from the Islands (Mar. 2018)
This time, we consider three movies about isolated
islands with some nudity.
For the whole family:
In time for
St. Patrick's Day, we have a great Irish film, The Secret of Roan Inish
(1994). The name means "seal island," where people and seals have
looked after each other for generations. (Actually, there are no
seals in this movie; they're all more easily trained sea lions.)
Legend says an island ancestress was a selkie, who could alternate
between human and seal forms.
When people abandon the island, a baby boy drifts
out to sea, and is raised by seals until the people return. He
never wears clothes. In a flashback to another ancestor, a young
man is stripped of his wet clothes, but we see nothing revealing.
There's a lot of fine Irish storytelling. If
you have trouble understanding the Irish brogue, English subtitles are
available, though not really necessary. This is a good family
movie.
For teens and older:
The Wicker Man (1973) takes us to
an island off the coast of Scotland, where people still practice the
pre-Christian pagan religion. Some religions feel comfortable
accepting sexuality as a healthy part of life; others struggle against
it. Christianity tends to fall in the second group.
An uptight police sergeant visits the island to
investigate the rumor of a missing child. No one seems to
coöperate. He is appalled to see naked teenage girls dancing
in a Stonehenge-like stone circle, and leaping over a small fire.
"But they are naked." he exclaims. "Naturally," he is told.
"It's much too dangerous to jump through the fire with their clothes
on."
He also spies on a more voluptuous girl doing a nude
dance in the privacy of her bedroom. The cameramen are careful to
never show pubic hair.
The policeman fears that the traditional May Day
celebration (complete with maypole) may go so far as to include an
ancient human sacrifice. We see a huge wooden human figure to be
set alight during a burning man ceremony. (We are used to nudity
being acceptable at modern burning man re-enactments.) A real
twist comes at the end. You won't easily forget this movie.
The music sounds authentically ancient, and some of
the tavern songs have lusty lyrics. No real surprise there, but
the rigid sergeant feels uncomfortable about them.
There are three versions of this film—some
with most of the nudity censored out. The longer ones are
best. When searching, pay close attention to the lengths:
1:42 Original (1973—rare)
1:24 Theatrical version (1974)
1:34 Director's cut (1977)
If they won't tell you how long it is, don't buy it. Don't go by
the advertised date, because sometimes that is just the date of DVD
manufacture.
Beware, the ugly remake of 2006 contains no nudity
at all. (It also lasts an hour and 42 minutes.) To get the
right one, you want a version with Edward Woodward in the leading role.
Half a world away, Rapa Nui (1994) tells the story of
Easter Island, where Polynesians lived off the coast of South
America. There, the long-eared people held the short-eared people
in slavery—until they finally revolted. The chief's
grandson and a slave boy and a slave girl had been best of childhood
friends. When they grow up, the two men love the same woman, and
must fight it out in a rigorous annual egg-hunting contest.
The movie is mostly about strong men in thong
loincloths, as they carve the famous stone heads. The few visible
women live authentically bare-breasted, but no one ever gets totally
nude.
In this sweeping epic, we also see how foolish
religious policies destroyed the environment—stripping the island
of its trees. It can happen. It did happen. Except
for the personal lives, this is history.
Islands can be narrow enclosed societies.
Islands can also offer whole alternate ways of looking at life.
Watching these movies can open new worlds and make us more
understanding.
Movies with Islamic-Inspired Nudes (Apr. 2018)
Female nudes have long held a small place of honor
in Islamic art and literature. Paradise is traditionally
described as a harem of willing naked females. Male nudes are a
touchier subject.
This time we look at two movies from Tunisia, by a
director you never heard of: Ferid Boughedir. (Don't fall for the
salacious advertising on both boxes; they're safe enough.) We
also look at a Philippine film by Kidlat Tahimik.
For the whole family:
Halfaouine: Boy of the Terraces
(1990) stars the director's 13-year-old nephew in his only movie
role. The boy is getting too old to attend the women's
baths—partly because he is beginning to notice women's
bodies. At the same time, the family prepares to celebrate his
little brother's circumcision. That's about all of the
plot. But the film gives a detailed slice of Arab city
life. And it fulfills that centuries-old male wish: a lengthy
look inside the women's bath. We see some bare breasts, but the
women go to ridiculous lengths to hide their pubic areas. We do
not see the men's baths.
Small children will be bored to death. But as
they approach the boy's age—say 10 and up—they will take a
keen interest.
The movie is in Arabic with English subtitles.
You will probably need to explain that in conservative Arab cultures,
women dance with women, and men dance with men. For them to mix
would be scandalous.
For teens and older:
An easy air of
religious harmony flourished in Tunisia until 1967. A Summer in La Goulette (1996)
takes us back to that last golden summer, where we see three
17-year-old girls—one Islamic, one Jewish, one Christian.
They live next door to each other and are best of friends, just as
their fathers grew up together before them. It's like Moorish
Spain must have been.
This harmony gets tested when the girls choose
boyfriends of different faiths than their families. The girls
talk about losing their virginity, but nothing happens. The landlord is
an old holy man who feels tempted when he twice sees a girl naked, but
again nothing improper happens.
On first viewing, it's hard to sort out the
families. The fathers are easiest: the Muslim has a moustache and
conducts a train. The Catholic has grayed early. The Jew is
heavy, and his older daughter is getting married. (He should not
be confused with the even fatter cafe owner.) The girls'
younger brothers all run in a pack. The girls' boyfriends run in
an older pack. Families in this movie speak French, Arabic, and
some Italian—all with English subtitles.
What do movies from
Tunisia and the Philippines have in common? Like the first one, Perfumed Nightmare (1977) includes
a circumcision scene.
Muslims brought the practice to the Philippines long
before the Catholics arrived, and the church has never been able to
stamp it out. Jews and Muslims cut off a boy's foreskin (in the
Philippines at age 10-12) as a religious badge. Christians have
never subscribed to that idea. An exception occurred in the
20th-century United States, where doctors pushed infant circumcision as
a way to prevent the spread of venereal diseases. We can see how
effective that was. Europeans never believed the quackery, and
left their sons intact.
With quiet wit, the movie questions a lot of
American ideals, but not this one. The hero grows up in a
traditional Philippine village during the American occupation, and he
is totally ga-ga about Western progress. He wants to be an
astronaut. (Modern teens will have no idea who Werner von Braun
was, unless you explain it to them beforehand.)
Finally, our hero gets to Paris, and sees how a
modern supermarket displaces the friendly market vendors. He
begins to question the value of progress. It's a good thoughtful
movie.
Long out of print, this full-color film has recently
been made available on Amazon to rent or "purchase." A word of
caution: If you buy online viewing privileges from Amazon, all you own
is the right to watch it for as long as they choose to make it
available. They have been known to discontinue movies after
people have supposedly bought them.
Here are three top-quality movies from other parts
of the world—all with some Islamic customs. Be careful
though; you may find yourself growing in thoughtfulness and
understanding.
By the Sea, By the Beautiful Sea (May 2018)
There exist a very few movies about visiting a
nudist resort. Good movies about free beaches are even
rarer. Occasionally, a movie will include a brief nude beach
scene, but this time, we look at movies that happen entirely at the
seashore.
For the whole family:
The Girl and the Echo (1965) comes
from Lithuania, when it was part of the Soviet Union. The people
speak Russian, with English subtitles. Actually, there is not
much talking. This is truly a naturist film, with about half of
it an appreciation of the sea and the rocky crags.
Unfortunately, it is also a bit sexist. The
girl with beginning breasts feels at home in nature, and swims
nude. All of the boys and her father swim in their
underwear. She speaks with nature, and nature answers back with
magical echoes bouncing off the huge rocks.
A new boy is looking for friends. When forced
to choose between her and a gang of tough boys, he makes the wrong
choice—losing everyone's respect.
This slow-paced hour-long black-and-white movie is
fine for the whole family. Long a naturist classic, it has been
impossible to find the last few years. Now a region-free version
has become available on eBay.
For teens and older:
Exchange Lifeguards (1992) is a
harmless bit of fluff about young adults on an Australian beach with a
nude section. Yet everyone is artificially posed to expose only
butts and breasts. That seems particularly odd, since the hero,
Christopher Atkins, had already appeared fully nude in The Blue Lagoon.
Still, American distributors didn't think this movie
had enough advertizing pizzaz, so they changed the title to Wet
and Wild Summer! (with exclamation point) and put a sexy woman
in a skimpy swimsuit on the cover. (They put the man in a baggy
suit that no serious lifeguard would ever wear on duty.) Though
the movie remained the same, no manufacturer has found either title
worth putting on DVD, so you will have to watch this one on videotape
or online.
The plot revolves around American developers trying
to take over. The original cover blurb described it as a place
"where the dogs ride surfboards and the sharks wear business
suits." The developer's son goes undercover as a lifeguard, but
soon comes to realize that the beach community is precious and needs to
be saved. With bad guys getting ugly, and really rugged races on
a treacherous surf, there's enough action that teenagers can enjoy
it. In the end, love triumphs over greed.
Be aware of a more realistic movie filmed entirely
at another Australian clothing-optional swimming spot: Maslin Beach
of 1997. But it deals mostly with relationship problems of
adults. As people come and go, most of them place too much
emphasis on sex. Yes, we see casually nude male and female bodies
without artificial posing, but if you are looking for a true naturist
movie, this isn't it.
Then there is an 11-minute British film called Nudist Beach
(2011). A man and a woman in their twenties meet at a deserted
nude beach on a cold windy day. They waste ten minutes talking
each other into it, and then confuse nudity with romance. They
embrace instead of going into the cold water. The low-key British
humor is supposed to be funny. I was not amused. You can
watch this for free on Vimeo. Certainly don't spend money on it.
The first movie is wonderful, the second OK; the
other two miss the point. The Great Nude Beach Movie has yet to
be made.
But since we have drifted into the topic of
Australian films, adult and teen readers may also enjoy a non-beach
movie: The Coca-Cola Kid (1985).
It's a wacky satirical film about a macho American marketing expert in
Australia. Besides a crazy sexual scene, it includes a mother
naturally showering with her daughter. Facing a similar threat of
American enterprise, this movie pairs nicely with Exchange Lifeguards/Wet and Wild Summer!—and
has about as much substance. Yet it's fun to watch.
Down on the Farm (June 2018)
Today, we look at three movies about farm life.
For the whole family:
De Witte van Sichem (1980)
dramatizes a famous Belgian book about a mischievous 12-year-old boy
living on a farm around 1900. (Actually, the actor was 15, with a
deep voice and shaved pubic hair.) The first part of the title
translates as "Whitey," a popular nickname there for any blond
boy. Less likable than Tom Sawyer, the young hero can sometimes
be mean. He is always getting into trouble—much of it
deserved.
At one point, he sneaks away from his job to go
skinny-dipping with a bunch of other boys. In a twist from the
usual plot, his angry mother confiscates his clothes, so he has to walk
home naked. Yet he consistently cups his genitals with his hands,
as though ashamed of his body. (Or maybe that's just a device to
hide the actor's age.)
You may have to explain that most people in Belgium
drank beer—including women and children. Also we see a
conservative Catholic community who think the union organizers of the
city are agents of the devil. And it was an age when people
believed that a few cuffs would help children to grow up right.
Watching this enjoyable movie as a family means
overcoming several obstacles. It comes on a disc unplayable on
American television sets, but you can gather around your computer and
watch it there. Characters speak a dialect of Flemish, so there
are English subtitles (which must be set before you start). And
the story doesn't have much of an ending.
But before you watch it, google the 19th-century
paintings of Millet; you will see some of his same scenes brought to
life in the movie—right down to the wooden shoes. This film
gives a memorable picture of old-fashioned farm life. And the boy
can be charming, if not always admirable.
For teens and older:
Why do advertisers on eBay constantly list female
nudes as "sexy" and male nudes as "of gay interest?" These labels
reveal more about mistaken popular attitudes than about the
artworks--which usually stand innocent and pure.
Likewise, the 1988 movie,
Clay Farmers contains not one
iota of anything sexual, yet that doesn't stop some ugly
homophobia. A child-beating father whose stepson has committed
suicide lashes out at innocent skinny-dippers. Gossip turns nasty
in a hurry. Nudist parents will be reminded of a certain
child-abusing congressman who could not comprehend the wholesomeness of
AANR youth camps.
[The Bulletin refused
to print that last sentence.]
The topic is controversial; the movie is beautiful
and powerful. We meet two young men working on a California
vegetable farm, and two younger neighbor boys. They learn to care
about how others are being mistreated. In their spare time, the
young men make clay sculptures, including one with a nude woman's body.
By the way, skinny-dipping farm hands were so common
that in July of 1936, they made the cover of Farm Journal, the leading rural
magazine in America. In the movie, we never do see anything
frontal.
Be aware that this movie contains some crude
language, smoking, drunkenness, and a bar fight—also some fine
people. And it deals sensitively with deep emotional scars that
don't go away.
Because the movie lasts only an hour, it is usually
packaged with something less desirable. Be careful there.
The rare videotape includes a questionable short film of no nudist
interest. The only DVD version came from Award Films
International, who have suddenly disappeared from the Internet.
Fortunately, it can be viewed online—by itself or with other
things.
For a worse movie about
working on a California farm, you might try Untamed Youth (1957). The
black-and-white movie begins with two young women arrested for
skinny-dipping. (We don't actually see anything below their
shoulders or above their legs.) The female judge sends them to a
work farm, saying it will restore their sense of self-respect.
The wiser girl answers, "We never lost it."
The story goes downhill from there, with tough bad
guys and lots of fifties dancing. Where do they get the energy
after picking cotton all day? The Catholic Legion of Decency
banned this drive-in movie, not for the wiggling of the top-heavy
actress, but because it included rock-and-roll music. Yesterday's
controversies seem quaint today.
These three movies offer a wide spectrum of life
down on the farm, and the need to take a nude break.
Three Movies from South Africa (July 2018)
The Union of South Africa is an English-speaking
country that has produced some good movies—even during the
Apartheid years. Here are three with natural nudity:
For the whole family:
The Gods Must Be Crazy II (1989) is
a sequel. The first movie was a profound statement for thinking
adults about how something so simple as a Coca-Cola bottle can mess up
a traditional way of life. The second movie is better for
children, because it contains much less violence and has a couple of
kids in main roles. You don't need to see the first one to
understand the second.
It's about the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert.
The whole movie is several chase scenes that keep intersecting in crazy
ways. (You will need to explain the presence of ivory poachers
and a Cuban spy in Africa.) There's lots of slapstick to amuse
young viewers. Wildlife abounds. My mouth fell open when
the little girl ran under the giraffe.
Nobody is quite nude. Even the native children
wear skimpy thongs. Gone are the nursing mothers and
bare-breasted girls of the first film. They now wear lots of
rags, but are not on camera for long.
Though guns play a central role, this is a
delightful light-hearted movie the whole family can enjoy
together. The love that the Bushman family have for each other
adds special charm.
Be aware that a Chinese director then hired the main
Bushman actor for three other dreadful films that you don't want to see.
A little something for everyone:
Shaka Zulu (1986) was a South
African television mini-series of ten episodes. It tells the
story of Africa's greatest military leader and the first European
contacts. Like most war movies, it contains far more violence
than I can recommend for children. (To mollify white fears of
black uprising, television stations were provided with "option kits"
that showed other things while the worst violence was going on.)
But your whole family doesn't have to watch it all; there are stories
within stories.
Teenagers will like episode 3 on the romance of
Shaka's parents. Episode 4 on Shaka's childhood is probably tame
enough for children of all ages—though you may have to explain
about paternity, multiple wives, exile, and sacrifice. (The
biblical story of Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac will cover all of the
necessary points.) And a nude ceremony acknowledging the arrival
into manhood graces the beginning of episode 5. As often happens
in the movies, the series skips most of the hero's teen years.
The makers insisted on authentic costuming, so we
see bare breasts everywhere. Men wore a little flap in front of
the genitals. Everybody's butt shows. How could this happen
on television? First, most of the world is far less puritanical
than the United States. Secondly, there's the National Geographic
syndrome, where it's OK to see black people nude, but not white.
(Early on, we do see the backside of a British man casually stepping
out of his bath before male visitors, but that's all.)
Shaka was the second of three great southeast
African kings. We see Dingiswayo, the first one, but barely
notice Mzilikazi, the third. The other two were much kindlier
than Shaka.
Don't waste your time on the lame American
television remake of 2005 called Shaka
Zulu: The Last Great Warrior, also called Shaka Zulu: The Citadel.
Though recycling some of the same actors, the American attempt strayed
far from history, and avoided any nudity by overdressing everybody in
Arab robes, furs, and lots of feathers. It's rubbish.
Another South African
film, Yankee Zulu (1993),
begins with a black boy and a white boy skinny-dipping. As
happens in life, one boy's voice has changed earlier than his
friend's. Voice change usually comes at the same time as pubic
hair, but there are no frontal views to confirm that. Yet as so
often happens on the screen, skinny-dipping boys are confined to the
opening credits, and we never see nudity again.
This is such a nutty movie that kids will enjoy it
more than parents do. The humor is juvenile, at best. We
get an awful lot of slapstick, but it is cartoon-like violence where
nobody actually dies from it. Throw in Prince Charles, Prince
William as a boy and the ultimate Nazi, and you have a crazy formula
that keeps even sophisticated teenagers laughing.
Yet this movie struck such a balance that it seemed
funny to segregated audiences in black theatres and in white
theatres. That was quite an accomplishment. It's probably
worth watching once.
The usual age barriers, nudity barriers, and race
barriers break down in these South African films—all easily
available. Check them out.
Lessons in English History (Aug. 2018)
We do ourselves a disservice when we trace nudist
history back only as far as the 1890s. A few movies show us a
much longer tradition.
For the whole family:
Lady Godiva of Coventry (1955) is a
movie tame enough that the whole family can watch. During her
famous nude ride, her body is hidden with more long hair than any one
person is likely to own. Alas, there is no genuine nude Godiva
movie. An earlier actress also covered herself in hair in the
1911 short film. Three attempts to move the story into modern
times have been raunchy failures. This 1955 version is your only
choice.
We don't know a lot about the real Lady Godiva, but
we do know she was about 47 when she made that ride in 1057, and her
husband was 89. The movie would have us believe they were young
newlyweds. This version also obscures the fact that her ride was
a nude tax protest.
The movie does, however, give us a pretty accurate
picture of the political struggles in England in the years just before
the Norman Conquest of 1066.
BBC News recently compared the original Bayeaux
Tapestry (woven by French women shortly after William the Conqueror's
invasion) with the nineteenth-century English copy at Hastings.
The original has several lusty nude men and women in the lower band;
the Victorian ladies omitted all of the genitals or put clothes on
those figures. Nudity definitely did not start in the late 1800s.
For teens and older:
If you
want more English history, Robin
Hood, Prince of Thieves (1991), contains a lot of violent
warfare. This is not really a movie for young people, but we do
see the hero bathing in a distant waterfall. Maid Marion watches,
and approves of what she sees.
Let us move forward to
the nineteenth century. Because of the experimentation with
drugs, I would not normally recommend a movie like Haunted Summer (1988) for
teenagers. But this is, after all, a pretty accurate biography of
the poets Byron, Shelley and Shelley's 18-year-old girlfriend Mary
Godwin (who would soon become his second wife). They spent the
summer of 1816 together near Geneva. It's solid background for
the poems students are reading in school.
Near the beginning, we see Shelley's love of
skinny-dipping. (Six years later, his nude body would wash ashore
after a sailing accident.) His friend and biographer, Thomas
Jefferson Hogg, wasted several pages trying to deny reports that
Shelley was an early nudist—but did admit that he frequently
visited a nudist family. That family believed in a return to
nature. Their philosophy is worth quoting:
"In order to prepare mankind for the happy impending
restoration of perfect and universal nudity, children ought to be
accustomed at an early age to be, at least occasionally, naked.
It was alleged, moreover, that the practice of stripping young persons
sometimes is eminently conducive to their health, to strength of body,
symmetry, beauty, and to morality and virtue; and that even grown
persons may derive much benefit from remaining some hours, in mild
weather, without their clothes. It was most manifest that the
children liked to nakedize—such was the term of
art—exceedingly..."
We don't see that family in the
movie. The plot turns to events leading up to Mary's writing of
Frankenstein. In some
ways, this is a cleaned-up and much
improved version of Ken Russell's horror film, Gothic, released just two years
earlier. Though the predecessor includes three brief nude Shelley
scenes, I don't recommend it.
A third
Byron-Shelley-Frankenstein movie also appeared in 1988. Rowing with the Wind cleans up the
story by omitting the drugs but keeping the nude swim. Some good
family values there. Yet the result is more dull biography than
compelling story of people we can care about.
None of the three movies make it sufficiently clear
that Mary was the daughter of early feminist writer Mary
Wollstonecraft, who is also sometimes studied in school. In that
older generation, the poet William Blake and his wife also liked to
sunbathe nude in their garden. Freeing the body is indeed
connected to freeing the mind.
Skinny-dipping remained
popular through the nineteenth century, and the Victoria series on PBS television
even showed Prince Albert swimming nude with male attendants (season 2,
episode 5: "Entente Cordiale"). Though she presided over a very
prudish age, Victoria and her husband avidly collected nude art.
In the twentieth
century, Winston Churchill famously spent much of his time nude at
home, and even when visiting the White House. He told FDR "The
prime minister of England has nothing to hide from the president of the
United States." You can catch a glimpse of him getting out of bed
in The Gathering Storm
(2002)—another television movie. The brief nude part
happens in the first five minutes, and can be seen on YouTube.
So no, nudity did not begin in the 1890s. And
yes, these movies provide an entertaining way to learn English history.
Rambunctious Children and a Spunky Woman (Sept. 2018)
This time, we have two European films about
irrepressible children. That leads us to a third movie about an
indomitable young woman. Two of the three movies are about Jewish
families.
For the whole family:
You're Out of Your Mind, Maggie
(1979) is a delightful Swedish film about a couple of mischievous
little girls and their friends. The Swedish version has never
been available in English. Fortunately, the German version
(called Madita) offers
subtitles in four languages—including English with lots of
grammatical errors. But kids can have fun laughing at the
mistakes too. (Be careful; there are also discs with only German
and Swedish. I got mine from CVMC.)
The movie takes place in the early twentieth
century. It begins with two sisters frolicking nude in their
bedroom. We next see them clothed and walking with their maid
(not their mother). Later, four little girls go
skinny-dipping. Meanwhile, they get into lots of mischief, that
includes walking the peak of the steep schoolhouse roof. Religion
seems to form the central part of the curriculum in that particular
school.
On YouTube, I see pastiches from the
movie—including the heroine climbing a tree nude. That's
not in the German version. I assume it came from the slightly
longer Swedish version.
Two movies were made from Astrid Lindgren's
book. The other one, Madita
and Pim (1980) was compiled from a television series, and thus
contains no nudity. Though released later, it relates episodes
from earlier in the book.
You're Out of
Your Mind, Maggie is a fine family movie (assuming the kids are
old enough to read the captions). It presents good lessons about
treating the lowly and less fortunate with dignity. But you will
need to explain that the burgomistersha is the mayor's wife.
For teens and older:
The Revolt of Job (1983) tells the
story of an elderly Jewish couple in Hungary, who know the Nazis will
be coming for them soon. They want to adopt a little Christian
orphan boy, so they can leave their property and memories with him.
The opening scene is like the slave markets, in that
the couple inspect the boys nude before buying one. Half of the
boys wear swimsuits, the other half skinny-dip. (For the movie
trailer, producers carefully selected shots of mostly clothed boys that
aren't even in the finished film.)
The movie focuses on the little boy, and would be
fine for some whole families, but not others. Understanding the
Holocaust requires some emotional maturity. (My disc comes with
English subtitles and a short documentary on the Hungarian Jews.
That slide show goes by so fast that I had to watch it once to keep up
with the captions, and again to look at the pictures.) I
recommend that even teenagers watch that background slide show first to
get some understanding.
I grew up on a farm. I saw animals mating, and
drew some not-always-accurate conclusions about human sexuality.
So does this little boy. We do see a bit of discreet sexual
nudity, in addition to the skinny-dipping. Job teaches the boy
that all parts of life are sacred.
Catholic and Protestant villagers try to protect
their Jewish neighbors, but it does no good against government
policies. The ending is similar to Fiddler on the Roof (1971).
Though that heartfelt movie contains no nudity, it was based on the
short stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer.
So was Yentl (1983). Here we see a
feisty young woman with a passion for learning. To get into
school, she disguises herself as a boy. And as often happens in
such a plot, she has to figure out what to do when everybody goes
skinny-dipping. (There was also a brief earlier scene of younger
children bathing in the river.) We only get rear views both times.
Every teenager should watch this to experience the
excitement about learning that is embedded in Jewish tradition.
Our heroine is contrasted with a young dutiful
traditional wife—totally subservient. And that is what the
otherwise understanding hero prefers. Fittingly, Barbra Streisand
co-wrote, produced, directed, starred in, and sang the songs for this
movie. The musical moments are supposed to be soliloquies, where
she expresses her innermost feelings, while nobody but the audience
notices that she is belting out songs. It doesn't always
work. Still, it's a good movie.
Here we have three films about young people who do
not always do what they are told, but who charm us with their spunk.
Scary Movies (Oct. 2018)
Sometimes, kids like to be
scared—briefly. Halloween is one of those times. And
so we consider three movies with a little too much violence or sex,
that I would not normally recommend. All require parental
guidance—better yet, parental presence while watching.
For the whole family:
Witness (1985) is about an Amish
boy and his young widowed mother. The little boy happens to
witness a murder, and therefore stands in danger, himself. The
tough detective figures out that his boss is part of the crime ring,
and goes undercover among the Amish farmers to protect the
family. A romance develops, but can people from such different
worlds ever come together?
Amish farmers sometimes speak German, though you can
figure out the meaning without subtitles. And several scenes
don't need words. At one point, we see the shirtless mother
taking a sponge-bath, an everyday occurrence from times past that
usually gets left out of the movies.
The grandfather teaches non-violence, but it doesn't
always work with bullies or with big-time murderers. We see some
ugly things. Yet the peaceful Amish way of life makes this movie
worth watching—even for small children.
At the end, the bad guy surrenders—partly in
an appeal to his original ideals, and partly because too many
non-violent people have come to quietly stand as witness. The
title takes on added significance.
For Teens and older:
The Holy Mountain (1973) is one
very strange movie with some powerful messages. Just watch it
unfold. Some of the images will make you squirm. You will
spend the next day wondering what you saw. Then the following
night, watch it again—with the director's commentary turned
on. It will all take on a lot of meaning then. (Though the
movie is in English, the commentary is in Spanish, so you will need to
turn on English subtitles for that. Once I saw the English
commentary without the Spanish voiceover, but I don't remember how I
did that.)
The director is Alejandro Jodorowsky of Mexico, who
drew inspiration from the mystical writings of St. John of the Cross,
and an unfinished novel by a disciple of modern mystic, George
Gurdjieff. For the first year-and-a-half, the film was shown only
at midnight. The director explains the symbolism from many
religions, and especially the Tarot cards. Several of the
characters represent celestial qualities that we have ascribed to the
planets.
We see a thief who looks so much like our idea of
Jesus that sculptors use him as a nude model for casting
crucifixes. He and several other crooks (mostly wealthy
industrialists) climb the mountain seeking some sort of
immortality. One of these reforming climbers has been a
manufacturer of war toys. At another point, we watch the conquest
of the Aztecs by a bunch of Spanish toads—actual toads.
To get at our basic humanity, we see lots of nudity
and near-nudity—including a group of boys with their genitals
painted green. We get no explanation, no apologies.
The director mentions his
earlier film, El Topo (1970),
which has a seven-year-old boy inexplicably nude through the first
half-hour (blurred in the disc version, though unretouched on
tape). But that gunfighter movie is too violent for children or
anyone else. It's coarsening. You don't need to see it to
appreciate The Holy Mountain.
Let's switch to something totally different.
Of course, for Halloween, we
must have a ghost story. Haunted
(1995) is a twilight-zone-type of movie where nothing is quite as it
seems. A rational professor visits a castle, to prove it is not
haunted. But he sees several spirits, and mistakes most of them
for real people. He is also haunted by a tragic event from his
own childhood.
Free and innocent skinny-dipping forms an important
part of the plot. So does posing for nude art. And so does
one passionate sex scene that is necessary to make the movie
believable. Beware that there are even hints of incest, though we
never see anything improper.
The ending caught me by surprise. Fans of the
original novel by James Herbert don't like this film, because they say
it's less scary than the book. Hauntingly delusional?
Definitely. Scary? Not really.
Yet quality prevails. While these three movies
take us a little outside our comfort zone, they are all of them
excellently done.
The Crime of Being Indian in the Twentieth Century (Nov. 2018)
There are lots of movies about Indians chasing wagon
trains, but few about the lives of Native Americans today. Let us
consider some of the more interesting glimpses into modern conditions.
For the whole family:
In The Education of Little Tree
(1997), we see an 8-year-old orphan boy going to live with his white
moonshining grandfather and his Cherokee grandmother. There, he
begins to learn about his native heritage.
For a while, he gets hauled off to an Indian school,
with all its horrors. In the only nude scene, we see him being
scrubbed down and fumigated.
This happens in Tennessee during the
Depression. We witness the viciousness of religion, the
controlling dominance of teachers, and the indifference of
bureaucrats. There's even a romance with a little hillbilly
girl. Despite a few bad words, this is a movie for the whole
family.
For teens and older:
Powwow Highway (1989) takes us into
the leadership struggles of the modern-day Cheyenne in Montana.
This is a road trip movie, as our two warriors travel in an old jalopy
to New Mexico to rescue the hero's sister. But it is also a
spirit journey, as the fat dreaming sidekick begins to discover his
heritage and the quiet strength within himself. Even the tough
hero grows in understanding, and some of his hard edges begin to melt.
At one point, we see the endearing fat man crawl out
of bed nude. The tribal chief never loses faith in his people,
and at a key moment he turns a bunch of cattle loose to block the
pursuing police cars. And so everyone escapes.
Long out of print, this movie has become available
again. It incorporates native humor in a way that inspired two
other equally great films:
Dance Me Outside (1994) pulls
together some of the many volumes of funny-yet-serious short stories by
W. P. Kinsella. He wrote on two subjects: modern tribal life and
baseball. Everybody has seen his Field of Dreams; more people should
see this movie. Though film-makers moved the Cree reservation
from Alberta across the country to Quebec, we meet several characters
from the stories: Silas, the aspiring young writer; his smart-mouthed
sidekick, Frank Fencepost; and the overweight medicine lady, Mad Etta.
A white man murders a tribal girl. The young
men decide to take revenge, but their girlfriends intervene to protect
them. Also, the hero's brother-in-law is having a fertility
problem that gets solved in an untraditional way.
There is some dimly lit rear nudity during an
initiation ceremony. But the police strip search goes only so far
as underwear. That's also where the heroine stops when she burns
her clothes that could incriminate her.
A two-year Canadian television series called The Rez (1996-98) grew out of this
movie. Not as good as the books or the movie, it featured some of
the same actors, but no visible nudes.
Powwow Highway
also influenced Smoke Signals
(1998). Though it contains no nudity, this movie is so good that
we need to discuss it. Gary Farmer, the gentle idealistic
sidekick from the first movie (and the lazy chief on The Rez), returns here in a quite
different role as the hero's ne'er-do-well father. This is
another road trip and spiritual journey movie with a bitter hero and a
nerdy sidekick lost in his stories. They come from the Cour
d'Aline tribe in Idaho.
The film pulls together several amusing stories from
Sherman Alexie's collection, The
Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. The movie
version does not adequately explain the crazy girls with the car that
is stuck in reverse. And the film ends before Thomas goes to jail
because the police mistake one of his tales for a confession.
(The title of this column comes from another of his stories.) Yet
the soft-spoken movie sheriff breaks with the stereotype in an
absolutely delightful way.
An earlier movie, Running Brave of 1983 is less
interesting than any of these. It is more a documentary on the
life of Sioux Olympic racer, Billy Mills. He finds himself
fitting into neither reservation life, nor the white college world.
The only shower scene disappoints. Cameramen
focused above the waists, showing just one partial butt. Big
deal. This film can be seen free on the Internet. Don't
spend money on it.
From Tennessee to Idaho, and lots of places between,
the stories of modern native Americans deserve to be better
known. These movies tell them well.
Bible Stories (Dec. 2018)
We have discussed Adam and Eve before (April
2017). The Bible contains several more nude scenes, though film
makers have chosen to dramatize very few of them.
For the whole family:
The Bible: In the Beginning (1966)
retells, pretty literally, the book of Genesis. The movie begins
magnificently, with the wonders of creation, and a nude Adam and
Eve. Unfortunately, we see Adam only from the side or back, and
Eve's hair covers her breasts. It's not exactly clear how these
two are supposed to be fruitful and multiply.
The animals in Noah's ark will amaze and amuse the
children. But when the long movie drags through the tower of
Babel and the life of Abraham, it doggedly includes every boring and
grisly detail. One might question whether some of the violent
parts are suitable for children, had they come from any other
source. If you are watching this with young people of short
attention span, you may well choose to end at the intermission after
Noah's tale.
Incidentally, John Huston, the director, took the
liberty of having Abraham and Sarah recite some lines from the Song of
Solomon—which, after all, was a collection of love songs far
older than that wise king.
For teens and older:
Several other Bible stories
include a bit of nudity—David, Isaiah, baby Jesus, baptism, and
crucifixion, to name the most obvious. Though painters and
sculptors through the centuries have delighted in the bare skin,
movie-makers rarely dared to show it. A bold exception is Salomé (1985).
Actually, her story has inspired over a hundred films; you want the
hard-to-find 1985 version.
Shouldn't the whole family be watching a Bible
story? No, not this one. Things could get pretty decadent
at the court of Queen Herodias. Yet, except for some background
figures, the female nudity and male near-nudity remain highly sensual
without quite crossing the borderline into the sexual. (Try to
ignore the Roman soldiers in medieval suits of armor and Nazi
uniforms. That attempt at timelessness doesn't work.)
The slow-paced movie follows Oscar Wilde's 1894
play, in which Salomé is secretly in love with John the
Baptist—who rejects her charms. As William Congreve
famously said, "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."
Richard Strauss' opera version added a striptease in
the Dance of the Seven Veils. In some rare operatic performances,
the dancer takes off everything. So does 18-year-old Jo Ciampa in
this movie. We do not hear Strauss' music.
Isn't this wandering a long way from the main
message of the Bible? True, but the Bible is a big book that
includes lots of stories. Brace yourself for more.
In time for Christmas, we
have Hail Mary (also of
1985), a strange biblical movie. You definitely will not
understand all of it the first time through. About the third
time, most of it falls into place, and it's beautiful.
In this modern retelling, Mary plays college
basketball, and helps in her father's gas station. The angels
come in on airplanes. Her boyfriend Joseph drives a taxi that
delivers Gabriel, who tells her she is pregnant. But she has
slept with no one, she protests. Most of the tender movie is
about her and Joseph coming to accept these mysterious
happenings. I'm not a believer in miracles, but the realistic
treatment of their feelings makes it seem plausible.
Perhaps paralleling John the Baptist, a young
professor declares that life on earth was designed by intelligrent
beings from outer space. He and his blond student Eva have a
brief affair. The movie keeps cutting between the two couples and
shots of nature. Everyone speaks French, but a whole lot goes
unsaid. (The English subtitles show conversation as ordinary
lettering, and poetic thoughts in italics.)
We frequently see Mary nude, as she tries to puzzle
out the relationship between body and spirit. Bach's sacred music
helps. She has revealed herself before God. Later, she has
no hesitancy in teaching her spiritual child about body parts.
For its unorthodox approach, the pope condemned this movie (thus
boosting sales). It is not to everyone's taste.
The director paired
this with The Book of Mary, a
short film by his girlfriend. That one is about divorce splitting
a family. Though the short piece does show a mother and daughter
bathing, it has nothing to do with the biblical story, and can be
skipped.
The Bible is a far-ranging book that has inspired a
wide variety of movies—a few of them with appropriate nudity.
Classic Australian Movies (Jan. 2019)
This time, we look at two of the most popular
Australian movies you never heard of. We also consider an
American film about Australia.
For the whole family:
Fatty Finn (1980) is a much
improved remake of the 1927 silent movie, The Kid Stakes. Both
functioned as Australia's version of The Little Rascals. Based on
a newspaper cartoon strip that ran for fifty years, the movie is set
during the Depression, when the young hero is trying to raise money to
buy a radio. You will have to explain beforehand that radios
(then called crystal sets) were once the latest technology, and that
washing machines had wringers (called mangles in Australia). You
will also need to explain about strikes, scab workers, and the night
soil man.
As in the 1927 film, we see young boys and one or
two girls skinny-dipping together—though this time, one of the
boys has a deep voice. That means he probably has pubic hair, but
we don't know, because we never see anything frontal in either
version. At another point, the rival gang decides to depants our
hero, stuff him head-first in a trash barrel, and write on his exposed
behind—with red lipstick, no less. What could be more
humiliating for a ten-year-old boy?
This is definitely entertainment for the whole
family. Some of the humor is for children; other
spoofs—such as the gangster queen or the lady dancing
teacher—probably have more significance for adults. Even
the acting credits at the end are funny enough to watch.
The DVDs are Australian or British, which means they
must be watched on a multi-region player or computer. A few
copies of the universal tape version are still around. Or you can
watch the film free on the Internet.
For teens and older:
Sons of Matthew (1949) is a
black-and-white epic about clearing the jungles of northern
Australia. (Today, we cringe to see them cutting down the big
trees, but in 1949, that was still considered a heroic effort.)
The movie emphasizes the value of hard work and the family sticking
together.
We see ordinary household nudity, as a little girl
is bathed in the kitchen with men and boys in the room. When she
grows up, she bathes in the river. So do Matthew's five grown-up
sons (though filmed from a distance).
The movie was a big hit in Australia. But for
puritanical British and American distribution, the editors cut out
nearly 40% of the footage—especially the nude scenes—and
renamed it The Rugged O'Riordans.
That censored version flopped. The modern disc case is
mislabeled; it would have you believe this is the shortened version,
and playable only in region 4. Both statements are false; this is
the full movie, which you can watch on your television screen.
In contrast, the uncensored version played in Sweden
under the title, Jungle Brothers'
Woman, and posters there emphasized the nudity.
Americans are more
familiar with an even bigger epic film, The Thorn Birds (1983). This
gripping TV mini-series runs nearly eight hours, and covers three
generations of a wealthy land-owning Australian family (though filmed
in California). It focuses on a young Catholic priest, who helps
raise a little girl, but the girl grows up to fall in love with
him. Their care for each other endures through everything.
Surprising for American television, we do catch a
glimpse of the priest stripping off his wet clothes on the darkened
porch.
The movie is based on the book by Colleen
McCollough. But it skips over a 19-year period in the book's
middle. That prompted a sequel (middlequel?) called The Thorn Birds: The Missing Years
(1996). I recommend viewing the second film between scenes 5 and
6 of the final disc of the first one. It helps to fill our
understanding; yet, with all but one of the lead roles filled by
substitute actors, it is not totally convincing. We see no nudity
there.
Fatty Finn, Sons
of Matthew, and The Thorn
Birds: all three of these major movies help us feel the wide
panorama of the Australian experience.
Long Ago and Far Away (Feb. 2019)
This time, we look at some wonderful old classic
movies set in India and neighboring countries.
For the whole family:
To make Elephant Boy in 1937, producer
Alexander Korda found several young actors, but they were all scared of
elephants. Finally he discovered Sabu, a 13-year-old orphan
working in the Mysore royal elephant stables. And the kid could
act.
Using the short story, "Toomai of the Elephants" by
Rudyard Kipling, the movie adaptors made one inspired change, and two
bad decisions. The inspired change first: they made the boy a
member of the non-violent Jain religion. These are the Digambara
or "sky-clad" naked Jains, whose monks give up clothing. We see
no nude people. But near Mysore, stands the giant nude statue of
the Jain saint, Gommateshvara, who stood meditating so long that vines
grew up around his legs and arms. First bad decision: they built
their own smaller plaster statue with the genitals missing. It's
the only nudity in this movie. The boy prays for a successful
hunt. But this is a statue of a hero—not a god.
Jainism is a religion without gods or begging prayers.
According to Kipling, after a successful hunt, the
boy sees wild elephants gather by the hundreds and dance
together. Second bad decision: the movie makers have the boy
betray those elephants into captivity. Despite these
shortcomings, Sabu stole the show, and the black-and-white movie has
charm.
After doing some
lesser films, Sabu starred in the first movie version of Kipling's The Jungle Book in 1942, when he
was 18. That book had become such a British classic that Lord
Baden Powell named the Cub Scout ranks after its animals.
Raised by wolves, Mowgli would naturally be
nude. Kipling's father illustrated the books, with the boy seen
nude from the back or side. To get past movie censors (and
because Sabu no longer looked like a child), the producers had the
actor wear skin-colored shorts during the first part of the story, and
filmed him mostly above the waist. You really can't tell the
difference. (This movie is in color.) It is far better than
the Disney cartoon that puts him in a red diaper all his life.
While book illustrators have usually kept Mowgli nude, every recent
movie version has followed the Disney lead of showing him ridiculously
clothed.
The settings are a hodge-podge of Buddhist statues,
Hindu forehead decorations, and a ruined palace from Cambodia. It
was all shot in California.
Sabu never grew very tall, and got typecast into
juvenile roles. Finally, in Song
of India (1949), he got to play a handsome prince who frees the
trapped animals and gets the girl. But this movie has no nudity.
For teens and older:
Before
leaving Kipling, let me mention that another of his stories, "The Man
Who Would Be King," was made into a grand movie in 1975. It
follows two British soldiers of fortune on the route of Alexander the
Great in Afghanistan. Though the movie does show brief male and
female nudity, there is not a lot to interest young people.
Let us turn, instead, to
a movie of more universal appeal. Lost Horizon (1937) dramatizes
James Hilton's novel about a hidden happy valley in Tibet, where people
age very slowly. At a time of rising world tensions, it
envisioned a land where peace and common sense prevail. The hero,
an ambitious politician, learns to slow down and appreciate small
pleasures.
The book so impressed Franklin Delano Roosevelt that
he called the presidential retreat "Shangri-La" after the valley in the
story. President Eisenhower renamed the place Camp David after
his grandson.
At one point, a bunch of little boys and girls,
dismissed early from school, throw off their long robes and go
skinny-dipping. We see them only from the back. On another
occasion, their female teacher skinny-dips at a distance.
The original movie ran long—some say as long
as six hours. Theatre owners cut it drastically. By 1973,
only 2 hours and 12 minutes of soundtrack could be found, and even less
of the images. Restorers filled the visual gaps with still
shots. So that is the movie we see today.
Also in 1973, there was a color remake as a
song-and-dance film, but that one left out the nudity. Woody
Allen commented, "If I had my life to live over again I wouldn't change
anything—except for seeing the musical remake of Lost Horizon." Stick with the
original.
These marvelous old movies have withstood the test
of time. Their freshness and allure of faraway places enchant us
today as much as ever.
Sisters (March 2019)
In the movies, as in life, skinny-dipping boys far
outnumber skinny-dipping girls. Today, we look at three films
that focus on the way sisters relate to each other.
For the whole family:
The Parent Trap (1998) deals with
twin girls (played by one actress), and is a remake of the 1961 movie
(which had been based on a 1950 German film). The 1961 version
did have some fat nude cartoon Cupids at the beginning and end of the
film. It's not entirely clear why the same studio decided to
remake their classic Haley Mills movie 27 years later; the new actors
speak many of the same lines. But the latest version includes a
brief skinny-dip scene missing from the earlier films.
What happened between 1961 and 1998? Well, the
liberating sixties happened. Their impact lasted the rest of the
century. (In fact, this movie even includes a brief tribute to a
famous Beetles photograph.) Nude scenes, including natural child
nudity, appeared frequently in the last third of the twentieth century,
then fell off sharply, as paranoia about so-called child pornography
set in. 1998 came at the end of an era.
Lots of movies show boys skinny-dipping. To
admit that an underage girl might do it is rare. Her nude dive
lasts only a few seconds in the dark. Equally remarkable, these
are both Disney films, known for wholesome child entertainment.
As early as 1960, Disney had briefly shown boys skinny-dipping in Pollyana—but the
heroine? Never. At least, not until 1998.
These twin sisters can create a lot of mischief, and
their plotting to get their parents back together actually works.
It's great family fun.
For teens and older:
The Man in the Moon (1991) is about
the love triangle that develops when two teenage sisters become
infatuated with the same neighbor boy. This is a sad and gentle
story of people who care about and respect each other. We learn
the importance of talking out our troubles, even if sometimes we have
to talk to the man in the moon.
It happens in the rural south of the late 1950s,
when every teeny-bopper's heart throbbed to the music of Elvis
Presley. The action focuses on the younger girl, as she
experiences her first romance. She meets the boy while
skinny-dipping. On a couple of occasions, we see nude
divers—both male and female—but they move by so quickly
that we wonder if we really saw them. (Airlines showed a censored
version without nudity, though all DVDs on the market today seem to be
full length.)
Reese Witherspoon played the lead role, but because
this was her first movie, they gave top billing to the older
actors. Actually, the understanding and witty parents are
important too. Though it deals with tragedy, this warm treatment
remains one of the great teen family movies of all time.
In contrast, Angela (1995) is one strange
film. (Be careful. There are older and newer movies with
the same title.) We meet a family with two young daughters, and
quickly see that the mother's mind is going blank. What we don't
realize at first is that the intelligent and manipulative older
daughter (age 10) is also losing her grip on reality. She somehow
blames herself for her mother's condition. She takes religion too
seriously, and lives increasingly in an imaginative world of devils and
angels. This movie is about her gradually slipping over the edge
into a fantasy land. No histrionics here; it's all low-key.
When they are skinny-dipping, she goes through a
ritual of coating her sister's body with mud. That's about all
the nudity in this film.
My disc comes with the option of watching it again
while the director explains what is going on. That helps.
(The director, it turns out, was playwright Arthur Miller's daughter,
so she chose to make the movie mother look a lot like her own
step-mother, Marilyn Monroe.)
With one scene becoming sexual, this film is safe
enough for teenagers; but it's not one of my favorites.
All three of these movies show a close bond between
sisters—one or both of whom like to skinny-dip.
Classic movies with Classical Music (Apr. 2019)
Today we examine three movies with much music by
Beethoven and Mozart.
For the entire family:
Makers of animated cartoons
frequently use classical music in the background because it has lasted
beyond copyright, and is thus free. Walt Disney did the opposite
with Fantasia (1940).
He took well-known examples of classical music and brought them to
visual life.
It helps if you already know the names of the dances
in Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker:
the "Waltz of the Flowers" with little nude fairies flitting about, the
"Chinese Dance" done by mushrooms, and the "Russian Dance" performed by
thistles.
Paul Dukas' The
Sorcerer's Apprentice is a piece of program music—that is,
it tells a story printed in the program handed to concert-goers.
Here, Micky Mouse acts it out.
But the selection that interests us is a skillfully
abbreviated version of Beethoven's Sixth
Symphony—his nature symphony. This too is program
music, describing a beautiful day in nature, interrupted by a storm,
and then the majestic calm afterward. We see female centaurs
skinny-dipping, their breasts proudly on display. But as they
leave the water, the cartoonists felt it necessary to place flowery
leis over their chests. Lots of naked little cupids (with bare
butts but no genitals) pair the male and female centaurs into couples.
The entire movie is a marvelous experience that no
child (or adult) should miss. That later attempt, Fantasia 2000, doesn't even come
close.
For teens and older:
Amadeus (1984) tells the life of
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. His rival composer, Salieri, eventually
went insane and began blaming himself somehow for Mozart's early death
at age 35. No one believed him. This movie explores the
subtle possibilities of admiration mixed with jealousy.
Much of the action takes place at the court of that
greatest of enlightened despots, Emperor Josef II of Austria, who liked
to dabble in music. And the music in this film is heavenly.
The story of Mozart, the boy genius who never grew
up, appeals to teenagers—especially bright or unconventional
teenagers. I have shown it many times to delighted students.
It was a magnificent movie for twenty
years—before we ever learned that a bare-breasted scene had been
removed. That scene was restored in 2004. Packaging
remained almost the same. Look for the words, "Director's
Cut." If the package doesn't say that, keep looking until you
find one that does. The scene finally explains why Mozart's wife
so disliked Salieri. (There was always a bit of mild male nudity
in the insane asylum scenes at both ends of the movie.)
Nowhere as grand as
the other two, Bastien, Bastienne
(1979) is a hauntingly beautiful French film set in the middle of World
War I. A young doctor and his sister's husband have gone off to
the war, and may never return. Their wives, three sons (age about
10-12), and a couple of maids live in the old family home. As we
hear frequent shelling in the distance, they are told they must
evacuate. To forget her sorrows, the doctor's wife buries herself
in her painting and photography. The other wife busies herself
with packing. And the three boys divert everybody by putting on
costumes and performing Mozart's early one-act opera, Bastien und
Bastienne.
That is fitting because Mozart wrote this little
piece about a romance among shepherds when he also was 12. He
wrote it in German for soprano, tenor, and bass. But since the
boys' voices have not yet changed, we get a fine performance in French
by boy sopranos.
We occasionally see the younger maid and each of the
wives nude. But the boys wear two-piece swimsuits when they swim
with their mothers. (No doubt, they skinny-dipped when by
themselves, though we never see that.) Small children could
safely watch this but, with more music than action, they would get
bored. Many of the important things happen in silence.
The DVD comes with English subtitles, and is
available at CVMC. The version currently on YouTube is just the
performance (without subtitles) and cuts out all of the
twentieth-century plot—with its nude scenes.
For modern ballet movements
set to Mozart's music,
readers might want to check the Internet for Jiri Kylián's
17-minute Petit Mort of
1991. The dancers wear skin-colored outfits. There are a
couple more short examples of fully nude ballet by other composers that
I don't have room to describe.
So yes, classical music, graceful movement, and
beautiful nude bodies can all harmonize in a few fine movies.
The Place Is Beautiful; Wish You Were Here (May 2019)
Actually, I prefer "The place is here; wish you were
beautiful."
This time, we look at films about tourists.
They form moving picture postcards of faraway places.
For the whole family:
Iki Haole: Nico's Hawaiian Adventure
(1995) is more travelogue than story. It lasts 54
minutes—which is really stretching a 10-minute plot.
Surfing and swimming fill the rest of the time. The first part of
the title means "little foreigner." Fifteen-year-old Nico from
Rumania is visiting Hawaii (with no parents in sight). He makes
friends with a young man, who shows him around the island.
Eventually, they figure out that they don't need
shorts when swimming and sunbathing (but put them on again to go
surfing with other guys).
Caution: Advertising on the box seems aimed more at
attracting gawkers than kids. True enough, the theme is male
bonding; women appear in only one scene. There is a relieved hug
after one of the surfers goes missing, but nothing worse. Small
children can safely watch this and see only people acting naturally
amidst the natural wonders of Hawaii.
Another good film
for kids: There have been lots and lots of Indiana Jones movies
and television episodes. The
Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Travels with Father (1996)
appeared on television—which is surprising, because we see the
ten-year-old boy and his father skinny-dipping. We see more when
sheep eat their clothes—but never anything frontal.
While traveling in Russia with his family in 1908,
our hero decides to run away from home. He teams up with another
runaway—the aging author, Count Leo Tolstoy. In Greece, he
meets a not-yet-famous author, Nikos Kazantzakis.
This is not just a movie for children, but for the
whole family. There is enough discussion of Aristotle's
philosophy to keep adults thinking.
Though this episode is part of a series, a
replacement disc was also sold separately as series 1, disc 6. It
comes with great extra features on Tolstoy, Russian authors, and
Aristotle. Or you can watch the movie free on the Internet.
For teens and older:
National Lampoon's European Vacation (1985) does
contain one teen bare-breasted scene, but it is intended as a sexual
enticement. We can do better than that silliness.
Hideous Kinky (1998) takes us to
Marakesh, Morocco of the early 1970s, where a young English woman has
brought her two little girls to live as hippies. (The title comes
from two favorite expressions of the girls.) We see things
through the wonder-filled eyes of the younger daughter (whose absent
father was famous painter of nudes, Lucien Freud—grandson of
Sigmund). Breath-taking local color abounds. But there's
not much plot. Mostly, they drift from one place to another.
This movie came as directors were growing fearful of
showing nude children. We briefly see adults
skinny-dipping—but never the girls.
Such fears did not affect
Moroccan directors. Ali Zaoua,
Prince of the Streets came out two years later, and included a
boy being bathed. This award-winning film is a much darker story
about glue-sniffing kids on the gang-infested streets of
Casablanca. Tourists don't visit that part of town. The
movie is in Arabic and French, with English subtitles.
A young dreamer with grand plans dies early, and his
friends struggle to bury him with the respect he deserves.
Watching this film is a sad yet powerful experience.
A Room With a View (1985) is better
than any of these other movies. We meet English gentlefolk
touring in Florence at the beginning of the twentieth century. It
describes well the charming fellow-travelers one meets while
abroad. Fans of dames Maggie Smith and Judi Dench will be
delighted to find younger versions of both here in supporting roles.
E. M. Forster wrote the book, with its hilarious
skinny-dip scene: the heroine's younger brother, the young man she will
eventually marry, and the vicar all get caught trying to hide from the
ladies. There's enough full-frontal nudity for all to see.
We watch the passionate young Edwardian heroine
become her own woman, instead of doing what the proper Victorians
expected of her. It's a liberating and elegant film.
So relax. Just as there are many places to
visit, there are many movies to also take you there.
On the Back Streets of India--June 2019
Today, we look at movies about boys on the colorful,
but sometimes rough, streets of India.
For the whole family:
Maya
(1966) has nothing to do with the Maya Indians; rather it takes place
halfway around the world in eastern India, and Maya is the name of the
mother elephant. Around 1950, an American boy arrives at the
railway station, but his game-hunter father is not there to meet
him. So he has to find his own way to his father's
compound. The two disagree, and the boy sets off on his own
adventure. He soon meets an orphaned Hindu boy (played by a
Muslim actor) who is tasked with delivering a rare white baby elephant
to a temple. They must outwit thieves and tigers.
Jay North, having just outgrown his role as Dennis
the Menace, plays one of the boys. We catch a rear view of him
stripped down and drying off around the campfire. But it was
North's co-star, Sajid Khan, who became the teenage heartthrob.
Both boys were 14 with still-squeaky voices.
The few people who have traveled to Mahabalipuram
will laugh to see the boys arrive, after several harrowing adventures,
at the Shore Temple—actually about a mile from the temples where
they started. But we're not supposed to know that. Movie
directors find their scenery where they can.
The movie inspired a one-season American television
series (without nudity, except for bathing a baby in the final
episode). It starred the same two young actors—though 16
and with deep voices by then. This time, we never see the father,
and the boys search for him while evading the police. With the
luxury of 18 hours, the search could extend from Bombay in western
India, to Mysore in the south, to Kashmir far to the north. The
producers found time for a "Prince and the Pauper" episode, and a
"Jungle Book" episode (but the wild boy who has never seen another
human wears animal skins around his waist). The series was not
renewed, so the hero never found his father. The original movie
is better.
For Teens and Older:
Salaam Bombay (1988) contains so
little nudity that it scarcely qualifies as naturist-friendly.
But it is such a great movie that I recommend it anyway. (The
nude scene comes in the orphanage. Two boys sit under a tree,
discussing escape, while other boys shower in the background—only
one of them totally nude. We also glimpse a naked child—one
of the many unknowing "extras" in everyday street scenes.
Director Mira Nair would show several instances of female nudity by the
stars of her later film, Kama Sutra:
A Tale of Love.)
The street children in this movie are mostly
pre-teen, but they live in the gritty red-light district of modern
Bombay (now renamed Mumbai), where drug dealing is a persistent
problem. They witness things we would not willingly expose our
younger children to. Yet their lives spill over with joy.
In this movie, we learn to care when no one else does.
Filmed in Hindi with English subtitles, Salaam
Bombay is a moving experience. The profits from this film have
all gone to setting up a school to improve the lives of slum kids--a
movement that is spreading to other large Indian cities.
Those children are
Hindu. To understand the lives of Muslim street children in
India, you might watch Slumdog
Millionaire (2008)—also set in Bombay. This film
originally began with a little nude boy peeing from a rooftop onto a
policeman below—great symbolism for what follows. But to
get an R instead of an X rating, the American makers took that nude
scene out. They kept another brief one. They also kept a
whole lot of violence (which the film raters seem to think is
OK). My disc comes with the omitted scenes
separate—including a very important one about an opera based on
Greek mythology that explains why the action suddenly switches from
Agra back to Bombay. (Play it between scenes 12 and 13.)
The movie begins with police questioning a young man
from the slums, who they suspect of cheating on a quiz show. In a
series of flashbacks, he reveals how he happened to know the answers to
those particular questions. And there is a seemingly hopeless
romance.
They get through the whole movie without the typical
Indian interruptions of song and dance. Then they cut loose with
it during the end credits. Balancing the grim parts, Slumdog Millionaire has its
humorous moments and a happy ending.
All of these movies give us a realistic
glimpse—perhaps more realistic than we would like—of the
hazzards children can face on the back streets of India.
Chinese Nudes in the Movies--July 2019
This time, we look at movies set in China—a
land where nudes rarely appeared in traditional art.
For the whole family:
The Amazing Panda Adventure (1995)
is not entirely original. A spoiled American boy arrives in a
strange land, but his wildlife-expert father got the date wrong, and is
not there to meet him. So he must find his own way to his
father's compound. Wait a minute. Where have we seen this
plot before? It is the beginning of Maya (1966), reviewed last
month. Only this time, the action has moved to China, instead of
India, and the elephants are replaced by cute pandas. And instead
of teaming up with a native boy, our hero meets a Chinese girl who is
both a little older, and a little smarter, than he is. Much of
the charm of this movie lies in the friction between our two young
heroes.
In a panic to escape leaches, the children strip off
and dive into clean water. Then they wonder how to get out
without each other seeing. The boy puts it into perspective: "Me
seeing you in the buff would not exactly be the thrill of my
life." The audience never witnesses anything but bare shoulders
and a very distant view.
Turning on the English subtitles does no good, for
the Chinese bits are never translated—nor do they need to
be. The mountain scenery is magnificent in this heart-warming
family movie.
I'm not sure I should even
mention Disney's Mulan
(1998). Though intended for kids, there's lots of cartoon and
military violence. It's another case of a girl disguising herself
as a boy—until skinny-dip time comes. She bathes in a lake,
but we see only above her shoulders and below her knees. We see
lots of men below the knees, and a few fat ones above the waist.
This movie is supposed to encourage girls to be
independent, smart, and to dare great things.
Six years later, Disney released an unremarkable Mulan 2, without nudity.
Five years after that, a Chinese movie with real actors came
out—but it lacked any skinny-dip scene. Disney has
announced plans for a version with live actors in 2020—but nobody
has said anything yet about implied nudity.
For teens and older:
The Big Road (1935) was a Chinese
silent film, with goofy sound effects added later. Much of that
sound track has since deteriorated. The English captions don't
stay up long enough. We follow six young men and two girls
working on a road-building crew. For about three minutes, the
girls observe the men skinny-dipping—though at such a distance
that not much detail shows.
After an hour in search of a plot, the movie turns
to a traitorous leader and a Japanese attack. This is
propaganda. Though most of our heroes die at the end, their
spirit and coöperative work live on.
The Last Emperor (1987) is the
accurate life story of Henry Pu-yi, the last boy-emperor of
China. He later became the Japanese puppet emperor of Manchuria,
where his ancestors originally came from.
Early in the movie, we see the little boy splashing
in his bath; and a couple of times, we see his nurse's breast.
That's all of the nudity. His wife eventually becomes an opium
addict, so we witness how devastating that can be. You may have
to explain what a eunuch is.
Much of the movie takes place in a Chinese Communist
prison, with lots of flashbacks to happier days when life moved on a
grand scale in the Forbidden City. The film was made in English,
with a few Japanese remarks left untranslated.
A genuine Chinese film, Red Cherry (1996) contains a
delightful scene of Russian boys and girls in separate shower rooms,
throwing water over the wall between them, until the makeshift building
collapses. Then Nazis invade, and the plot turns too ugly for
children (or anyone else) to see. Besides pointless deaths,
permanent scars include a large Nazi tattoo on the bare back of one
girl. This sobering movie is a powerful indictment against the
harm that war does to children, but it's disturbing to watch.
People who make decisions about war need to see
this. I'm not sure we all do. And I'm not sure at what
age. I find it hard to recommend beyond the charming first 25
minutes. English subtitles cover the Russian, German, and Chinese
conversation.
Though Chairman Mao had been an enthusiastic
skinny-dipper, the Chinese government censors with a heavy hand.
So it is not surprising that three of these five movies with nudity are
American or British.
Movie Nudity During the Hays Code Years (July 2019)
This time, we go way back to some old classic movies
with innocent nudity. (Movies I already reviewed are marked with
an asterix.)
For the whole family:
The Blue Bird of 1918 should not be
confused with the 1940 remake starring Shirley Temple. This one
is silent, black-and-white, and deteriorated in spots. Yet it has
remained a classic for a century. Frankly, the later talking film
is easier for children to understand, but Hollywood had banned nudity
by then.
Both movies follow a story by Maurice Maeterlinck of
a young boy and girl who dream about their sugar, bread, milk, and fire
all coming to life. Together, they search through magical realms
for the bluebird of happiness. (Maeterlinck lived in Belgium,
where no birds are blue.)
There was no movie censorship in those early years,
so ordinary nudity does appear—in this case, connected with
sleeping. But you have to look fast, or you'll miss it.
Some viewers today get alarmed because the little boy and girl take off
their shirts while getting ready for bed (she with her back
turned). That, of course, is not nudity. But the children
later see the personification of Sleep as a young nude boy who simply
lies there sleeping. His slightly draped sister sleeps near
him. Big deal. Yet the movie has enduring charm.
When local communities started enacting a patchwork
of censorship laws, movie producers decided it would be better to have
one national standard of self-censorship. They began in 1934 by
removing the female skinny-dip from Tarzan
and His Mate.*
Some of the prohibitions made good sense—no
murders for instance. Others worked against public
health—forbidding any mention of venereal disease, or showing of
surgery. And others were just plain dumb—such as no
ridiculing of clergymen. There could be no interracial
couples. Married couples could not be seen in the same bed, and
kisses had to end after three seconds. Child Bride* (1938) could break
several of these rules because it was produced independently, and not
under control of the Hollywood studios.
Penrod and His Twin Brother (1938)
was based on Booth Tarkington's novels about the mischievous boys,
Penrod, Sam, and their friends. The movie versions copied the
chaos of Our Gang, but with the heroes in their early teens.
(Throw in a bunch of bank robbers, the police, a kidnaping, a pesky
dog, and you have a lot of action, if not a lot of coherence.)
This particular movie was concocted only because the
studio had twin boy actors under contract for The Prince and the Pauper (1937),
and they were looking for somewhere else the boys could star. So
they invented a plot of the hero and his dog mistaken for look-alikes.
Typical of the time (but not the movie rules), the
gang goes skinny-dipping. We actually see just one naked boy
dive, and only for a second, and only from the side. Moreover, he
was the youngest boy, and the only black boy in the gang. It's
the old National Geographic
syndrome, where it's OK to see black people
nude, but not white people. Be aware that this movie contains
both racial equality and insulting racial stereotypes. (The boy's
name is Vermin.) After the dive, the other boys stand arguing in
waist-deep water without revealing anything. (The nude diver
appears to be wearing something by then.)
For teens and older:
Kings Row (1942) begins with a
schoolboy and a schoolgirl skinny-dipping together. All is trust,
innocence, and normal expected behavior. We see only her back,
and don't see him below the neck. The boy later mentions that he
does not wear underwear.
The original novel by Henry Bellamann focused on the
teen years, and did not shrink from such controversial topics as teen
sex, atheism, race, homosexuality, suffering from cancer, mercy
killing, incest, and a hanging. The movie took all of those
things out, jumping abruptly from childhood to early adulthood.
The movie also put a different girl in the swimming scene—which
makes better sense.
So how did the skinny-dip make it past the censors
in those Hays Code years? Nobody seems to know. Perhaps
that seemed tame, in comparison to all the things they feared might be
included. Even Ronald Reagan was proud to have his name listed in
one of his best roles.
By the late 1950s, several famous movie directors
began openly breaking the rules. Walt Disney, for instance,
struck a blow for freedom in 1960 by taking the skinny-dip scene that
had been censored out of Tom Sawyer
in 1938, and recreating it at the beginning of Pollyanna,* where it really had
nothing to do with the plot.
Movie producers then went to an age-appropriate
rating system that still leaves much to be desired. American
movie raters get far more alarmed about innocent nudity than about
violence and murder. European countries have long been more
relaxed.
Great Latin-American Family Movies (Sept. 2019)
Here are three fine movies for Spanish-speaking
families. (Others can view them with English subtitles.)
All three are about boys. We also consider a dramatization of a
family novel from Chile.
For the whole family:
La Gran Aventura (1969) is a
Mexican movie. Two boys (age 9 and maybe 11) plus a dog get
separated from their families, and are on the run from the
police. Stowing away on truck, train, bus, horse, hay wagon,
plane, and boat, they criss-cross hundreds of miles through three
states in southern Mexico. The whole movie is one long chase
scene, meeting lots of humorous and greedy scoundrels along the way.
Other boys participate in just one scene, but oddly,
only these two wear shorts. When the boys pause for a skinny-dip,
it's brief and without revealing anything frontal.
You will need to explain some cultural things, such
as religious pilgrimages, pre-Aztec ruins, and differing expressions in
Mexican Spanish and that of Spain (like the differences between British
and American English). This old classic can be watched—with
English subtitles—on YouTube. Several other movies have
similar names.
Less known, but more
interesting, La Ultima Batalla
(1993) translates as The Final Battle.
Five little Mexican boys are skinny-dipping when an old tramp steals
their clothes. But, unlike in our culture, the boys feel more
worried about covering their butts from the eyes of the townspeople,
than hiding anything in front. This challenge is the beginning of
a war that both sides thoroughly enjoy. It gives the dying old
man a reason to keep living, and the boys learn to love their
resourceful adversary.
The action keeps switching between the boys and
their various families—some rich, some poor. It can be a
bit confusing at first.
This heart-warming film is available for free on the
Internet (with the option of ungrammatical English subtitles).
Physical copies in Spanish are easy to find, but about the only source
with the awkward English subtitles is CVMC.
For teens and older:
Chronicle of a Boy Alone (1965) was
banned in Argentina for 30 years--not because of the nudity, but
because it showed the harsh police-state for what it really was.
The eleven-year-old hero escapes from a strict and boring reformatory,
to enjoy one day of glorious freedom. He smokes cigarettes,
skinny-dips with other boys for a long time, appreciates the small
beauties of nature, and liberates an old cart-horse.
But Fascist attitudes have infected even such basic
freedoms as skinny-dipping; some boys bully another one. Our hero
fails to intervene.
This has been voted the best film ever made in
Argentina. But it is not for everyone. The action moves
slowly, filmed in black-and-white, and the English subtitles are hard
to read. Yet it remains a moving experience.
House of the Spirits (1993) tells
the story of a self-made man in Chile and his gentle clairvoyant
wife. It follows the novel of Isabella Allende, cousin of
murdered Chilean president, Salvador Allende. We see a country
move from unfeeling aristocracy, to brief hope for equality, to brutal
military dictatorship. That part really happened.
The skinny-dip scene is brief: a little boy and girl
having great fun. Actually, they did it every summer as they were
growing up, but we see them only when they started school. For,
unlike the other three movies that give us a snapshot of a short period
of time, this one sweeps through the decades. (People who have
read the book complain that the film truncates the younger generations
in an effort to keep it simple.) Through it all, the
less-than-admirable hero does eventually grow in understanding and
love. It is still a powerful movie.
This is available in the original Spanish or dubbed
into English. (That means the lips occasionally move in awkward
ways.)
Tu Solo
(from Spain, rather than Latin America) was reviewed earlier. So,
Spanish-speaking families rejoice. There are several
naturist-friendly movies you can enjoy together.
The Classic Nudist Films (Oct. 2019)
This happens to be the 50th article in my series of
nudist-friendly family-friendly movie reviews. Who would have
thought there are so many fine films available? I certainly did
not when I started.
What better occasion then, to state the
obvious? In all this time, I have yet to mention the movies made
especially for nudists.
For the whole family:
It's time to revisit
that wonderful old family classic, Garden
of Eden (1954). A mother and daughter's car breaks down
outside Lake Como Family Nudist Resort in Florida. They have to
stay a few days, and they learn to like the place. The woman is
fleeing from her crabby father-in-law. But when he sees how much
his granddaughter enjoys the freedom and friendliness, he softens up,
rediscovers his humanity, and becomes an enthusiastic member.
For 20 years, there had been amateurish movies about
nudist parks—with lots of ample-breasted young women moving
about. But this was the first one in color, the first one with
real actors, and the first one with a real plot. And this time,
the emphasis was on family.
The American Sunbathing Association sponsored the
filming. ASA executive director Norval Packwood even played the
(always clothed) camp director. But, as in the earlier movies,
cameramen never showed anything frontal below the waist (lots of
breasts and butts, though). Would you believe that all the men
and women put on shorts to play volleyball? One woman appears
several times carrying a strategically placed duck. The silly
duck scenes have been edited out of my copy.
For teens and older:
All of these naturist films are safe enough for
small children, but the following probably will not hold their
attention:
One of the
earliest nudist films, Elysia,
Valley of the Nude (1933), was really little more than an
illustrated lecture on the health benefits of nude living. It
also avoided anything frontal below the belt, but at least nobody put
on clothes to play volleyball in the distance. And unlike most
movies that followed, this one used a heroine of believable
proportions. It was filmed at Elysian Fields in California.
Every serious nudist should see this pioneering black-and-white movie
at least once.
But let's face it;
most deliberately nudist films are pretty bad. Nude on the Moon (1960) is so bad
that it's funny. Two scientists (dressed more like medieval
knights) supposedly reach the moon and find it inhabited by
bare-breasted young women wearing antennae on their heads. About
all these women do is pose for the camera—which gets boring
fast. Doris Wishman cranked out several nudie-cutie films like
this one.
The low-tech rocket ship invites comparison with the
much more entertaining Mouse on the
Moon (1963 sequel to the powerful Mouse that Roared). Though
they contained no nudity, at least those movies had plots and
interesting people—maybe even a lesson to teach us.
Far better to watch Educating Julie (1984), an English
nudist movie with real class. A shy college girl is given a
summer research topic: Nudity in the Eighties. Reluctantly, she
visits a couple of British nudist clubs, then goes to Cap d'Agde in
France, and a resort in Florida, gaining confidence along the way.
In a real breakthrough, this movie shows nudity
naturally and fully (except for a funny scene of her boyfriend's sudden
nervousness). Children are present, but not prominent.
Though it covers all of the nudist lecture points, this one is a joy to
watch.
For something
different, The Naked Venus
(1958) is not bad as a divorce court drama—hardly part of the
experience of most teenagers. But adults may enjoy this look into
the past, when many people judged visiting a nudist retreat as a moral
character flaw.
In this black-and-white film, an American mama's boy
marries a French art model and nudist. But when he brings her and
their daughter home to mother, the older woman objects, and sparks
fly. After a lot of heartbreak, he eventually comes to his senses
and recognizes the importance of his new family.
So there are several nudist films worth
watching. Yet some things don't seem to change. Notice that
every one of these movies has a naked woman on the cover, because
that's what sells.
Until recently, Something Weird Video kept these
movies in print. Now that company has gone out of business, and
prices have skyrocketed. Most of these important films can still
be watched online through Amazon.
We will discuss more recent nudist films on another
day.
In the Jungles of South America (Nov. 2019)
This time, we look at the long tradition of people
living naturally.
For the whole family:
I have not yet found a movie about nude South
American tribes that young children would understand. But there
are three fine ones where the boy wears nothing but a breechclout at
all times. The Venezuelan Ya-Koo
(1985) shows a native boy and a persnickety young nun canoeing into the
jungle. There are some sad moments. (Long unavailable, it
is now on YouTube—but in Spanish only.) Disney's
English-language Jungle 2 Jungle
(1997) is also a good clean family movie of a boy always in
loincloth. Never mind that this is an almost exact copy of the
French film, Little Indian, Big City
(1994). The Disney version has slightly more charm.
For full nudity, let us look
instead to North American Indians. Blauvogel (1979) is an East German
film about an English boy, kidnaped and raised by Iroquois during the
French and Indian War. They rename him Bluebird—not because
of his blue eyes, but because that was the name of the dead son he is
replacing. (The movie title is usually left in German to avoid
confusion with famous American films also called The Blue Bird).
Granted, it is a bit jarring to hear Englishmen,
Frenchmen, and Iroquois all conversing in German (and understanding
each other). You can find the movie with English subtitles at
CVMC.
They shot the film in Romania—which explains
why none of the bird calls sound familiar, none of the trees look
recognizable, the canoes are not made of birch bark, and nobody knows
how to properly paddle one.
Like most movies on Native Americans, this one makes
the mistake of overdressing the women and girls. In 1755,
Iroquois of both sexes still went shirtless all summer. You won't
see any of that in the movie. You do see the boy nude for ritual
bathing a couple of times. And he goes skinny-dipping with his
adoptive father and sister—though they mostly stay submerged.
The movie does not shrink from showing the grittier
side of Indian life—from winter hunger to gutting an elk.
It's still OK for small children.
Then the plot jumps from age 10 to age 17, when the
war has ended and prisoners are being exchanged. Our hero must
now choose between two ways of life.
For teens and older:
The Mission (1986) retells events
that actually happened on the Argentina-Brazil border in 1750.
Jesuit missionaries had done a good job of protecting the Indians from
slave-catchers. Now, to preserve their position of privilege in
Spain and Portugal, the Catholic church has decided to abandon their
South American responsibilities.
Some missionaries refuse to leave their post,
including one who had once been a slave-catcher. Their methods
differ, raising an important question of whether religious people
should resist force with force.
We see some bare breasts, but the missionaries have
gotten most of the women into dresses. Young boys do remove their
loincloths to enjoy swimming. After the missions have been
destroyed and promises broken, only a few children survive.
Symbolically, the first thing they do is throw off all clothing, and
retreat to the safety of the jungle where their ancestors lived.
There's some powerful music in this movie.
At Play in the Fields of the Lord
(1991) is a glorious three-hour movie about modern Protestant
missionaries among tribesmen of the Amazon. The plot follows
three intertwining stories. First, we have an aging missionary
whose younger wife tells him he has shrunk in compassion over the
years. Second, we see a young missionary family. The little
boy quickly understands the native families, and the father tries very
hard to. The mother cannot adjust. Third, we follow a
half-Cheyenne pilot who strips off his clothes and goes native as he
searches to understand himself and his heritage.
We see lots of genuine nudity. These are real
Indians—men and women wearing only the tiniest of genital
coverings, while the children roam completely nude. White people
occasionally get nude too.
Though devoted fans keep asking for it, there has
never been an official DVD version of this fine movie; yet The Vermont
Movie Store advertises one. You can also watch it on an old
cassette tape, or online at Amazon.
These two movies are
magnificent; Medicine Man
(1992) is merely good. The young woman in charge of a medical
research organization comes to check up on a reclusive and grumpy
doctor in his jungle laboratory. Through several adventures, they
gradually come to appreciate each other.
The tribespeople live nearly nude. In one
humorous shot, the camera pans past several bare breasts to the covered
breasts of the visiting researcher.
Altogether, these are some fine movies about native
people living naturally.
After Your Swash Has Buckled (Dec. 2019)
This time, we consider two movies about aging
swordsmen, one about a modern tale-spinner on his deathbed, and one
about an electrical engineer grown old before his time.
Surprisingly, these geriatric stories also have appeal for young people.
For the whole family:
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
(1988) follows the fantastic exploits of an old swashbuckler during the
new Enlightenment of the 1700s, when rationality mattered. It's a
plea for imagination.
A little girl accompanies him on his travels.
Among the many adventures, we glimpse a few discreetly nude women in
the sultan's harem, and witness the appearance of a shy Venus on the
clamshell—complete with naked little cupids.
Unfortunately, there is a constant background of
war, with heavy bombardment—though nobody seems to die from
it. There are also heads floating around separate from their
bodies. While intended for the whole family, this is not a movie
for those prone to nightmares. Parental guidance is needed.
For teens and older:
Big Fish (2004) is about a son's
tracking down his dying father's tall tales about his
adventures—only to discover they are mostly true. We learn
that a big fish needs a big pond to grow. Three times, we see
brief male or female nudity—mostly backsides. This
heart-warming movie should not be missed.
In contrast, I knew
an architect who defined himself by his job. And when he lost his
job, he lost his sense of who he was. He eventually found his way
back to his inner child, and from there was able to head out in a new
direction. That's sort of what Box
of Moonlight (1996) is about.
The middle-aged main character is a productive boss,
but way too clock-obsessed. That attitude also poisons his almost
nonexistent family life. Then he meets a free-spirited young man
who jolts him into seeing life from a fresh perspective. We
witness brief male nudity on a few occasions—mostly
skinny-dipping.
This movie is a lesson for those going through a
mid-life crisis; but teenagers can also appreciate the younger
characters. Be aware that one of them uses rough language.
Combining all
of these age-related themes (and better than any of them), The Man in the Iron Mask (1998) is
about teenagers and their fathers—mostly their fathers.
These were none other than the aging three musketeers (who had always
been four). Alexandre Dumas wrote two sequels about his heroes
twenty years after, and thirty years after their heyday. The
second sequel ran so long that it is usually broken into three separate
volumes of adventures. This is the last. It has been filmed
ten times.
According to legend, King Louis XIV had an identical
twin brother, who was kept in prison to avoid succession
problems. But young Louis grew up to become increasingly
nasty. So the four old musketeers decide to switch the
twins—both played by handsome young Leonardo DiCaprio.
The only nudity is an attempted romp in the hay by
the old sensual Porthos. (That same year, DiCaprio sued Playgirl to prevent their
publishing frontal nude pictures of him. By now, there are plenty
of them around.)
For an even better
drama about aging, let me also mention On Golden Pond (1981), and the
reluctant friendship that develops between a grumpy old high school
principal and his tough new step-grandson. Unfortunately, we
never see anyone below the neck during the much-discussed
skinny-dipping. But we do see Henry and Jane Fonda playing father
and daughter just before his death. This is the best movie on
aging that I know of.
I remember back in the 1960s when young people
rebelled against the boring attitudes of their parents—only to
discover that they had much more in common with their grandparents'
generation. That's the kind of movies these are.
Oriental Family Bathing (Jan. 2020)
An ancient tradition of nude family bathing
stretches from the saunas of Finland, across northern Russia, and down
into Korea and Japan.
For the whole family:
My Neighbor Totoro (1988) is an
early Japanese cartoon by Hayao Miyazaki, better known for his later
film, Spirited Away. (A
totoro—accented on the first syllable—is a large friendly
wood spirit, visible only to children.) A father and two small
daughters move to an old house in the country, while their mother
recuperates from tuberculosis at a sanitarium. Miyazaki's own
mother spent time in a sanitarium when he was a child, so he knew what
it felt like for the children.
At one point, we see the father and two daughters
bathing together in a tub—as Japanese families have for
centuries. The end credits show a picture of the returned mother
also bathing with her daughters. Disney studios sponsored the
English-dubbed version of the film, and they left the family bathing
scenes in—much to the consternation of a few people on the
Internet.
A historical note: From time immemorial, Japanese
families have bathed in sacred springs at Shinto temples. In the
late 1100s, military Shoguns took control of the government.
Under those no-nonsense soldiers, public bath houses flourished for
whole families during the next 700 years. But when the emperors
took control once more in the late nineteenth century, they tried to
cater to European and American customs, and decreed that men and women
must bathe separately. In many places, the locals simply strung a
rope through the pool. Families continued to bathe together in
the privacy of their own homes.
For teens and older:
Miyazaki got the
idea of using his mother's illness as the subject of a cartoon after
watching a 1984 movie from Taiwan, A
Summer at Grandpa's. Here too, the mother is hospitalized,
so the 11-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter are sent to spend the
summer with their maternal grandfather, a small-town doctor whose
family lives above his office.
When the boys go skinny-dipping, they think it
improper that the little sister watches. She says it's because
they are ashamed. Then we get the usual movie gag: she throws
their clothes in the river, and they have to sneak home naked. We
never do see anything frontal.
Amidst the simple everyday fun, the boy
learns a lot that summer about adult responsibilities—including
how people adjust to a couple of unplanned pregnancies. This
movie touches on some heavy questions, such as whether the mentally
retarded should have children.
The film-making is primitive by American standards,
with scenes that linger longer than expected, and digitally flawed
bleed-ins. Be warned: the online viewing sites claiming to have
English subtitles are loaded with viruses. You can safely buy a
rather expensive copy at CVMC—where they occasionally put it on
sale.
Now we consider a couple of questionable films.
There are many reasons
to not recommend the South Korean movie, Don't Tell Papa (2004)—also
known as Raising My Dad.
These include vulgar language, frequent hitting, drunkenness, and
transgendered dancers. If you can get past those distractions, it
is actually a warm story of a boy growing up with his loving but
immature father, while missing his mother. This is a cautionary
tale about teenagers having a baby before they have grown up,
themselves. The priest at the end makes sure everybody gets that
point.
This joyous movie begins with a long scene in a
men's bath house (where the men keep their backs to the camera.)
Later, we see the mother and her eight-year-old son bathing in a
traditional round tub.
The movie is in Korean, and the English subtitles
are hard to find. (Click setup, then go to the last box, last
Korean choice, and hit enter. When the highlight moves, hit enter
again.)
Different
families have different values. If you happen to think a heavy
dose of militarism is good for your kids, you can find another brief
humorous scene of Japanese nude family bathing in The Bridges at Toko-Ri
(1954). In the murky green water, we really can't see anyone
below the neck. Instead, we watch the Americans' embarrassed
reactions. I cannot recommend the sad and violent ending for
young children.
Yet there is nothing exotic about family
bathing. The Japanese were just many centuries ahead of us in the
construction of indoor bathrooms. I remember when most rural
American families had an outhouse. On Saturday night (more often
in the summer), Mother would bring the two washtubs into the kitchen,
and we would take turns: first my little brother and sister, then me
and the sister my age, then my parents. It's the most ordinary
thing in the world. These movies remind us of our very recent
past.
More Movies About Boys (Feb. 2020)
Sexy movies frequently feature nude women. If
you are looking for non-sexual nudity, the subject is more likely to be
a boy. (Girls and men need not apply to star in either type of
film.) Those are the conventions of the movie world. And so
it is not surprising that today we consider more movies about boys.
For the whole family:
Actually, The Bruce Nutting Story (c.1990) is
one nudist family's private slide show that escaped onto the Internet,
where it was sometimes sold as I Was
a Teenage Nudist. Today, it is very rare; you may have to
go to Sunsport Gardens or a nudist library to see it. Mine is a
copy of a copy with some discoloration. Nonetheless, nudist
families will love it.
The half-hour slide show documents the building of
Sunsport Gardens in Florida, and how much fun that was for the
kids. (To this day, Sunsport has lots of families and a fine
youth camp.) As a teenager, Bruce helped develop the first youth
camp at Sunsport. This film is especially good for teenagers who
go through delayed puberty, because he frankly discusses his own
experience as a late developer.
I knew Bruce Nutting's mother when she ran the
office at Sunsport Gardens. By then, Bruce was grown up and
gone. One time, Bruce's daughter was visiting her
grandmother. The girl had never seen the film. So we all
sat down and watched it then and there. She got to see her father
at about her own age. She loved it.
For teens and older:
The title of Les Turlupins (1980) is often
translated as The Rascals.
The title is an interesting choice, because the original Turlupins were
a group of medieval French Christians who, according to their enemies,
worshiped nude.
But the movie is about a Catholic boarding school
for boys in occupied France during World War II. (Young viewers
need to be aware that Germans occupied much of France, and that people
who collaborated with them—such as the mayor in the
movie—were later despised as traitors.)
We see several loosely connected boys' pranks, held
together by one boy's hesitant search for a first girlfriend. She
turns out to be a bit older, taller, and more experienced than
him. There are four brief nude scenes: lots of boys in the shower
room, a side view of a girl, another girl's breasts, and a couple
getting dressed. It's all quite discreet.
The film is in French, with hard-to-read English
subtitles.
Teenagers (2011) is one of the most
powerful movies so far in the 21st century. Though too quiet for
some people's taste, it has won many awards. It explores a novel
idea: What if someone actually followed the teachings of Jesus?
Lucas is a young man with the mind of a child. He writes songs
about love and religious harmony—and he doesn't like to wear
clothes. Muslim extremists send a boy to assassinate him.
But Lucas treats the boy with such kindness for many days, that the two
of them enter heaven together.
From there, Lucas is sent back in time as a nude
teen angel to help another boy who is going through a period of
bitterness.
The last third of this long movie switches to the
present, when yet another boy, inspired by the example of Lucas, is
able to save a teen gang leader from suicide. This is heavy stuff.
We see no violence—just quiet
conversation. But all of the characters speak in such rapid
French that you cannot read all of the English subtitles the first time
through. It helps that each voice is printed in a different
color. Though it includes nude teen boys and a few sympathetic
hugs, this is not a sexual movie.
Because of its importance, the film-makers have put
the last third, called Alexis,
on YouTube for free. It keeps some of the nudity, but for the
full impact, you need to see the whole movie. Yet for a film this
good, it's surprisingly hard to find. CVMC has it.
Adriaan Litzroth of the Netherlands did his painting
of nude guardian angels a decade or two before this movie came out, but
the spirit is similar.
So here we have three movies about nude
boys—two of them excellent.
Sports Movies Without Jockstraps (Mar. 2020)
The Greek word, "gymnasium" means "place of
nakedness." We seem to have forgotten that.
For the whole family:
No Bikini (2007) is a charming
little eight-and-a-half-minute Canadian film. A seven-year-old
girl removes her ill-fitting bikini top and passes for a long-haired
boy through six weeks of summer swim lessons. (They have
curtained changing stalls, and apparently are not required to
shower.) Thinking that boys should be brave, she overcomes her
fear of the high dive, and takes the top medal in her class. This
is a movie about self-empowerment.
You can buy this on a disc called Festival Shorts
Collection, but it contains other films not appropriate for
children. You might better watch this short one online.
For teens and older:
Cold Showers (2005) is a movie
about a poor French boy who serves as captain of his high school judo
team. He is so poor that he has to take cold showers at home to
save on electricity. Yet he attends a fancy school, where his
mother works as a night shift janitor. With her key, he can sneak
into the gym for extra workouts on the exercise machines.
Sometimes, he brings his long-time girlfriend, and they play around in
the pool or ice-skating rink. (Don't confuse her with his older
sister, who looks similar.)
[The Bulletin
refused to print the next paragraph.]
He is asked to help train a rich boy. Once or
twice, they even share his willing girlfriend. (Contrary to
rumor, in no way is this a gay film.)
We see full locker room nudity, and a less revealing
love scene. We also see athletes slipping off their shorts to
qualify during weigh-in—a practice very common until recently,
when cell-phone cameras appeared everywhere. And at home, the
high school senior steps out of the shower without bothering to cover
himself around his mother (though we only see him above the waist
there).
Like a bulemic, the boy struggles to lose a
significant amount of weight, so he can wrestle in a lighter
category. This abuse of his body makes him question the whole
purpose of sports.
The home disc was issued with subtitles in various
languages, but all versions have become expensive. You can now
see it on the Internet for free.
No movie about Greece has ever
shown properly undressed athletes. The closest we can come to
ancient Greek nudity is Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia (1936), where a statue of
the ancient Discus Thrower springs to life as an athlete seen only in
silhouette. Incidentally, the historic torch relay race happened
during the Panathenaic Festival in Athens, and was never part of the
ancient or modern Olympics until 1936, when Riefenstahl popularized it
in this movie.
This was the controversial Nazi Berlin Olympics,
presided over by Adolf Hitler. There, black American racer, Jesse
Owens, famously blew a hole in Hitler's white superiority theories.
The second part of the long film follows Finnish
athletes from skinny-dipping in the pond to the sauna and back.
There is nothing here that small children can not watch. But
without a plot, they would probably get bored.
The black-and-white movie was edited in German,
British, and American versions. You want the German version,
because it includes more male and female nudity (including a brief view
of Riefenstahl, herself, dancing). About the only narration is
athletes' names and their countries. Once you figure out that
"oosa" is USA, the rest is easy.
Though
there are several purported documentary films on the ancient Greek
Olympics, zero of them show nudity. There is one other
possibility. For 22 years, Tallahassee Naturally sponsored the
College Greek Athletic Meet. This was not the usual silliness of
fat nudists tossing eggs or running with garbage can lids.
Rather, it was the world's only authentically nude re-enactment of the
ancient Greek pentathlon. In the only departure from ancient
practice, male and female students competed on the same day. Very
amateur home movies have been edited to tell the story of a single
day. The early photography is poor, but it's all we have. College Greek Athletic Meet (2017)
has never been distributed, yet can be viewed at the American Nudist
Research Library. Small children could watch, but would soon run
out of patience.
Earlier articles in this series have mentioned the
nude locker room scenes in non-sport movies such as Steel Magnolias (male), The Invisible Kid (female), Just One of the Guys (male), Sixteen Candles (female), and Flirting (male). More such
scenes are yet to come.
Some Movies About Uncommon Families (April 2020)
Families come in many varieties. And they
sometimes find themselves in unusual situations. We look at five
such movies.
For the whole family:
The World of Ludovic (1993) is an
uncommon Belgian movie (made for television) about the neglected
latchkey children of affluent career parents. A 12-year-old boy
and girl find each other—and the first real affection in their
lives. At that age, she is the taller, but has no breasts
yet. Way too young for anything sexual, they do engage in some
hugging and kissing while nude or partially so. It seems to be
just an innocent desire for some physical closeness with anybody.
While adults are bewildered, her younger brother understands and helps
them.
Be aware that the movie also contains a female
documentary photographer of unclear motives, and examples of frustrated
self-mutilation. It raises questions of what is normal behavior,
and what is not. Answers don't come easily. Some family
discussion may be needed afterward.
The characters speak Dutch and French—with
English subtitles.
Let me give only
passing mention to Boy Takes Girl
(1982), sometimes called Boy Meets
Girl. When an Israeli husband-and-wife doctor team go to
help refugees, they leave their 10-year-old daughter to stay in a
kibbutz. She is told that young boys and girls are expected to
shower together, but we never actually see it.
The title refers to choosing partners for a folk
dance. All of the children worry too much about boyfriends and
girlfriends. At one point, they act out a scene from
Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's
Dream. Dubbed into English, it's a pleasant family movie,
but not nude.
For teens and older:
I Love You Rosa (1972) wrestles
with an old Jewish law (Deuteronomy 25: 5-10) that if a man dies
childless, his brother should marry the widow and raise up
children. But what if the widow is 20 and the brother is only
12? Obviously, some years will have to pass if this is going to
work out.
To complicate things, the boy's family doesn't want
him, so the kindly widow, Rosa, ends up raising him as the child she
never had. He naively believes that someday they will
marry. The more realistic widow does not see how parental love
can turn to romantic love. Moreover, she wants to choose freely,
and not be compelled by custom.
We are spared the awkwardness of gradual transition
by some years of separation, during which they can each get their heads
around a changed relationship. And we know from the beginning
that Rosa will eventually become widowed a second time, and outlive her
younger husband by many years.
There is not much nudity in this film. At one
point, she bathes the boy, but he covers his genitals. We see
breasts on a couple of occasions. The men wear towels in the
steam room. Still, it is a great and beautiful movie exploring
different kinds of love.
I suppose I should mention Confetti (2006). They
gathered the most famous British comedians and turned them loose for an
improv session that is supposed to be funny. Except it's
not. Three couples are selected for a most outlandish wedding
contest. One pair wants a nude wedding. Unlike the others,
their ceremony is quiet and dignified—while spectators watch with
their mouths gaping open.
We see some ordinary life at a nudist park, and that
is supposed to pass for humor. (There's more in the lengthy
out-takes that they decided not to use. And, surprisingly, we see
more male nudity than female.) At the end, the newlywed couple
decide they are "over" nudism, and will from now on be nude only in
front of a spouse. What a horrible message.
Actually, that happens in three of four possible
endings. If you pre-set it to the "Michael & Joanna" ending,
they remain nudists, and the bride's originally shocked mother becomes
a nudist too. That helps, and almost saves this goofy film.
And finally a movie of
interest mainly to parents. Snap
Decision (2001) documents the horror that can unfold when
photographs of innocent family nudity are taken to be developed.
Though digital photography has eliminated the need for outside
surveillance at that point, the threat from overzealous officials has
not gone away.
We see small children without shirts. The
youngest girl appears nude only from the back. But that doesn't
stop policemen with dirty minds. A loving mother tries
frantically to keep such warped people from robbing her children's
innocence. It's a cautionary tale.
In all of these movies, love binds people
together. And where there is love, we find family.
Northern Childhood (May 2020)
This time, we consider four wondrous Scandinavian
family movies, and a Canadian film that spans a whole lifetime.
For the whole family:
Svampe (1990) is a Norwegian movie
about a nine-year-old boy, nicknamed Svampe—which means
mushroom. I don't know why. It's summer vacation, and his
busy parents have no time for him. So he lives much of his days
in a fantasy land where he drives a train, goes on an adventure with a
timid wizard, and rescues a lady in distress.
In real life, we twice see him get out of bed
nude—once in front of his mother. It's a charming film
intended for children. You can watch it free—with English
subtitles—on the Internet.
Also from Norway, Sommerjubel (1986) is sometimes
translated as Joy of Summer or Summer Rejoice. This short
43-minute film shows two brothers (age 8 and 10) and two neighbor girls
at the beginning of their summer vacation. They begin by
skinny-dipping a couple of times. A romance develops between the
boys' father and their teacher. Otherwise, not a lot happens.
The producers of this movie had fun playing around
with sound effects. It is available on the Internet in the
original Norwegian; you can find it with English subtitles at
CVMC. It is a pleasant enough family movie without deep
significance.
Similar
in tone and filmed the same year, The
Children of Noisy Village is an autobiographical movie about the
Swedish childhood of Astrid Lindgren, the author behind such wonderful
children's books and movies as Ronja
Rovardottar and You're Out of
Your Mind, Maggie. Yet this one is hardly known. You
can find it on tape, though it has never been put on disc.
It's also summer vacation, and we see daily life in
rural Sweden early in the twentieth century—including a too-brief
skinny-dip. One of the little girls narrates. Originally
filmed in Swedish, the movie has been dubbed into English. (That
term is too often misused. It means that other actors redid the
speaking parts in another language—so the lips occasionally move
out of synch.) That explains why some of the boys seem to have
voices too deep for their age.
There's not a lot of plot here either. The
atmosphere is sort of a Swedish Little
House on the Prairie. (That American book includes a visit
to an Indian reservation, where the native children skinny-dip and ride
their ponies bareback and bare-butt. Bet you didn't see that in
the television version.) A sequel follows the same Swedish
children into fall and winter, but without any more nudity.
The Brothers Lionheart (1977),
based on another book by Astrid Lindgren, is a serious family movie
that comes to grips with children facing death. We see a boy
dying of tuberculosis before his tenth birthday. His loving
brother (aged about 18) comforts him with assurances of a fairy-tale
afterlife, where he will be healthy enough to swim, enjoy campfires,
and even fight dragons.
Surprisingly, they both end up in that magical land,
where everybody wears medieval clothes (which the brothers briefly take
off to dry while fishing). That's all of the nudity—though
posed to reveal nothing.
But all is not well in that pleasant land. A
band of evil soldiers has taken over part of it, and the young brothers
join the underground resistance. Yet when the time for war comes,
the elder brother has the courage to declare himself a pacifist and
refuses to participate. He does, however, fight the
artificial-looking dragon.
The movie does not quite explain why people who have
already died need to fear death again. But the inseparable
brothers overcome that fear a second time.
For teens and older:
Map of the Human Heart (1992) is a
fine Canadian film. It follows a half-Eskimo boy from about age
10 through late middle-age, and his enduring love of a French-Cree
girl. They meet again in England during World War II.
Frankly, the war violence in this movie is pretty intense.
We see the boy being bathed, and there is a discreet
and beautiful love scene atop a blimp. When he shows her x-ray to
his benefactor, the man quips, "She's got no clothes on." This is
a case of an impossible love triangle, and yet we like all three.
Originally running more than four hours, the film
was cut down to less than half that length, leaving some gaps.
Still, it is a sweeping, heartfelt movie with moments of joy. It
has been issued with many different cover pictures.
Though a few of these movies get into serious
topics, all five are enjoyable to watch.
Lovable Rapscallions (June 2020)
Not all movies have heroes. Here are some that
star mischievous and daring young people who make you smile.
For the whole family:
In Gotcha (1991), a charming
12-year-old boy from an Italian family plays way too many practical
jokes on other people. You should see him wreck havoc in a
supermarket—all without being discovered. He finally
receives his comeuppance when he gets locked outside, wearing only a
towel—then loses the towel. At one point, he escapes
discovery by imitating a nude statue. (Cameras avoided anything
frontal.)
Of course, this is all based on the assumption that
people should find nudity embarrassing. Still, the short
25-minute movie is a delight.
This rare Australian film can be seen for free in
two parts on YouTube. It should not be confused with an earlier
spy movie of the same name.
And how can we fail
to mention America's favorite dysfunctional family? The Simpsons Movie (2007) has a
famous nude scene (scene 5) that lasts only a couple of minutes.
Naked Bart glides by on his skateboard, with the visual devices for
hiding his genitals becoming more and more contrived. Finally, we
see only what had been hidden before. Such in-your-face humor
delights children and adults alike. In fact, some of the humor
and cultural references will pass right over the heads of children, so
I recommend this silly cartoon for the whole family. It has been
issued under a variety of covers.
For teens and older:
On a more serious level, The Reivers (1969) dramatizes
William Faulkner's last novel, finished just before his death.
(Reivers is an old Scottish word meaning robbers.) This is a
gentle tale of childhood, and one wild weekend during which the
11-year-old boy learns more of the adult world than his parents would
have preferred. These adventures include "borrowing" the family
car, horse racing, a nasty southern sheriff, racial injustice, a house
of ill repute, and the power of loving forgiveness—quite an
education. The best part comes at the end, when the boy has a
heart-to-heart talk with his wise grandfather.
As in the original Tom
Sawyer and Pollyanna,
the boys' skinny-dip scene comes during the opening credits to set the
mood of wholesome small-town America at the beginning of the twentieth
century. This time, black and white boys splash together.
Swimming has nothing to do with the plot, though on a later
occasion, the main characters do bathe in a stream to clean up.
Scout Toujours (1985) or Scout Always is not a warm and
fuzzy French version of Follow Me
Boys. Rather, we have another poor inexperienced sap
trying to lead the Boy Scout troop from Hell. They crippled their
last leader. But, after many mishaps, our unlikely hero wins
their respect by his actions in an emergency.
We see the assistant scoutmaster showering, and
catch a brief glimpse of a young woman sunbathing. But the boys
always wear swimsuits, or jump in the water fully uniformed. It's
an odd combination.
This movie is hard to find with English subtitles;
CVMC and dvd.com have it.
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
(1982) is an edgy teen movie that wrestles with tough topics like teen
pregnancy, abortion, and marijuana. Yet the characters
delight. The author of the book disguised himself as a high
school senior, and went back to school to listen to how teenagers
talk. He caught it dead-on. That part is not in the movie.
We see a bit of female nudity, and bare breasts on a
couple of occasions. But movie raters made them remove the one
male nude scene. Men and boys still go into raptures over the
glimpse of actress Phebe Cates' breasts—not realizing she had
just finished filming a more natural movie, Paradise, where she was
fully nude much of the time.
It was one of the first high school movies from a
teen viewpoint. Lots of others followed, but this one remains a
cult classic.
On a different topic, Anarchy TV (1998) is the nuttiest
movie I ever hope to see. With psychedelic visual effects, it
stars the children of Frank Zappa (who do not get nude). A
minister manages to buy a struggling public access TV station, and he
fires all of the young people there (including his daughter).
Striking a blow for public access to information, the fired workers
take over the station by force, and appeal for public support.
Nobody cares—until they take off their clothes and start doing
nude aerobics on television.
The nudity is purely non-sexual. This film is
worth seeing once. Don't miss the great quotations spliced into
the end credits.
The daring young people in most of these movies will
capture your heart.
Journeys of Discovery (July 2020)
Journeys of discovery can happen anywhere. In
two of today's three movies, they happen in Australia.
For the whole family:
I was misled. I
watched Standing Up (2013)
after reading a plot outline that a bunch of American campers stripped
an insecure twelve-year-old boy and girl and left them stranded on an
island. The outline then claimed that they made the best of the
situation, surviving nude and confident for a few days, becoming the
envy of all the other campers. Now that would have been a movie
worth gathering the children around to watch. Unfortunately, it
was never made.
Instead, the two campers are nude for a couple of
minutes at the beginning, while the camera never, ever dips below his
waist or her shoulders. He swims a mile, towing a girl who can't
swim, and without even losing the towel wrapped around his waist.
She drags her blanket through all that water, and it mysteriously dries
enough to keep her warm the rest of the night. They steal a few
changes of clothing, and survive by petty thievery and deception.
They do grow confident in their abilities, but never in their own
bodies.
Based on a popular book called The Goats, it's an entertaining
movie, but a wasted opportunity—an example of how scared
21st-century American film makers are running. Yet it may be
worth watching just to discuss what could have been.
For teens and older:
Let us instead look to a
real classic that also began as a children's book: Walkabout (1971). Basically,
an Australian aboriginal boy guides two lost white children across the
desert. But director Nicholas Roeg added new depth, juxtaposing
contrasts between simple natural living, and the frenzied pointlessness
of civilization.
In the book, the 13-year-old girl and her 7-year-old
brother come from South Carolina, and go down in a plane crash.
They bring with them all the racial prejudices of the late-1950s
American South The 13-or-14-year-old black boy is on his
walkabout, a coming-of-age test of his abilities in wilderness
survival. The girl is too young to wear a bra; sexual thoughts
never cross anyone's mind. The tensions are instead about the
girl losing her hang-ups concerning race and clothing.
In the movie, the lost children are Australians
whose father cracked under the strains of his job, leaving them in the
outback. The two teenagers have advanced in age to about
16—awkwardly aware of their own sexuality, though the girl is
certainly not ready to marry.
The aborigine boy is totally nude throughout the
book. The little white boy discards the last of his clothes after
the third day. The girl strips only for brief bathing—until
her dress falls apart on the eleventh day, and she also feels confident
going nude after that. The film instead conforms to cinema-goers'
expectations by reversing those proportionate times: the black guide
wears a loincloth, except for brief swimming. Yet we see long
lingering shots of the girl swimming nude. (Those scenes were
eliminated for showing in American theatres, but restored in the home
version.) All clothes remain intact to the end, with only one
button detatched but carefully saved.
In the book, the aborigine dies on first exposure to
the common cold. In the movie, he completes his test of manhood,
and is now ready to settle down. To the girl, his mating dance
seems like weird new behavior, and this misunderstanding leads to a
tragic end. (She was perhaps right to hesitate; the handsome
young actor grew into an ugly-looking man. You can see him years
later as the tracker in Rabbit-Proof
Fence.)
But there's more. We catch a glimpse, a few
years after these events, of the young married woman settled into the
same boring apartment where her parents lived—thinking back
wistfully to those youthful days of free skinny-dipping in desert oasis
pools.
If you want lots more nude
aboriginal men on a journey, you could try Ten Canoes (2006). It's a
story within a story. On the surface level, we have the unseen
narrator, who tells of a time in the past when several men went on a
goose-hunting expedition. This level is filmed in black and
white, with hard-to-read English captions. To make a point about
brothers and their wives, one of those hunters tells an even earlier
story that is filmed in color. We keep shifting back and forth
between these stories.
This all happens in a swampy part of Australia, very
different from the deserts of Walkabout.
It's a good film, but moves along too slowly for the impatience of most
teenagers.
So, what do people discover during these
journeys? A little geography, but mostly they discover their own
inner resources.
Futuristic Movies (August 2020)
Today, we consider movies set in the future.
Unfortunately, all four of these movie-makers envisioned a future
bleaker than the world we enjoy today.
For the whole family:
Unexpected Encounters (1995) is a
piece of science fiction from the Czech Republic. Space travelers
from Earth are exploring a supposedly uninhabited planet, when they
meet a nude seven-year-old boy (sole survivor of a spaceship crash six
years earlier). He has been raised by invisible intelligent
beings—so smart that they teach him to speak Czech within a few
hours.
Though this was a movie made for television, the boy
is nude through much of the film, with no attempt to hide body
parts. It was based on a Russian novel called Space Mowgli, also known as The Kid. The novel clearly
states the boy was nude—but uglier than the cute kid in the
movie. There was a now-lost Russian television version in
1987—no mention of how they handled the nudity in that one.
This is a low-budget film without special
effects. It emphasizes the human story. Some of the crew
would like to adopt the boy and give him a family, but he has been
programed to become ill if around humans for very long. The disc
comes with English subtitles.
For teens and older:
Dark Enemy (1984) is a British
post-apocalyptic film. In an isolated valley, accumulated
radiation has killed off most of the adults. Children must do the
farming (as well as taking time out for skinny-dipping). They are
warned to never venture into the dangerous zones outside the valley.
During a leadership contest, three boys do travel
outside, and discover thriving farms. One boy also learns that
the outside world was and is infected with greed—which brought on
the destruction of nuclear war. So should they be content to stay
in their peaceful valley, or should they go out to explore the
greed-infested world?
There is nothing in this movie that small children
could not watch, but I think teenagers would better understand it.
"Never trust anyone over
30." That Hippie slogan takes a sinister turn in Logan's Run (1976). In a
23nd-century world, people live lives of mindless pleasures until age
30. (It's filmed in a shopping mall.) Then they are killed
off to make room for others. The official propaganda is that the
better ones will be reborn. People who don't fall for that want
to believe in a paradise called Sanctuary. Both stories prove
false.
One couple escape to an abandoned Washington DC, and
discover the possibility of growing old together.
We catch a few brief glimpses of naked people, but
never anything male and frontal. They cut one long scene of a
couple posing nude for an ice sculpture, so they could get a PG rating
(though the movie still has way too much violence and sanitized
killing.) As usually happens, the TV series that followed avoided
any nudity.
Even more
extreme, Nine meals from Chaos
(2018) gets its title from a famous saying that, after three days
without food, civilization would break down. This is yet another
post-apocalyptic film where, ten years after disaster has wiped out
most people and animals, wandering bands of children scavenge for worms
and frogs. They are hunted by adults who have turned cannibal and
want them for food. This is definitely not a movie for little
kids. Teenagers can handle it, though they may lose patience with
the slow pace.
We see frequent brutality. What saves this
film is the thoughtful voice-over commentary, reminding us that, "The
wearing of clothes in humans had, in fact, little to do with shame and
nakedness, which humans don't naturally have—but rather with
practicality and comfort. Vanity sometimes has a part in
it. But with none to speak of, these children wear what was left
in abandoned houses—for comfort's sake." You will probably
find yourself disagreeing with some of the narrator's other conclusions.
Twice, the children go skinny-dipping. But
afterward, the boys put on shorts, and the girls wear dresses.
The boys also have shorter hair and the girls wear their hair long, so
they have not completely abandoned the conventions. I should
clarify that one boy finds a native guinea pig, and, in a last vestige
of civilized behavior, tries to keep it as a pet while other children
are starving.
Filmed largely after dark and with only a hint of
color, a somber mood prevails. This movie from Argentina is
multi-lingual. The narrator speaks English; the children speak
Spanish (with English subtitles available). On my disc, the menu
and cover notes are in German.
Perhaps the moral of all these movies is to treasure
the world we have, and enjoy it naturally.
Two Short Topics: Japan and East Africa (Sept. 2020)
This time we consider, not one, but two topics:
movies from Japan and movies about eastern Africa. The only thing
these two topics have in common is that they are both short enough to
fit on the same page.
JAPAN
Sexual nudity has long been a part of Japanese
films. Non-sexual nudity is harder to find. All three of
these movies are in Japanese with English subtitles.
For the whole family:
The Tale of Princess Kaguya (2013)
is a cartoon version of a Japanese folk tale. A woodcutter and
his wife discover an extraterrestrial girl and raise her. She
would be happy as an ordinary little girl, but her foster-parents
recognize her as a princess, so she is besieged by suitors.
We see nude and semi-nude babies, plus
breast-feeding--including a nipple. These ordinary scenes of
everyday life would never appear in an American cartoon. And
unlike American cartoons, this one does not have a happy ending.
If you know Japanese art, you will recognize styles
from the Heian period (early 1100s), and that raises this cartoon into
a work of art.
For teens and older:
Tree Without Leaves (1986) is a
classic Japanese black-and-white movie. A selfish old man
reminisces about the indulgent mother who spoiled him. We watch a
family fall into financial ruin, eventually losing their house.
And we see several eastern customs: the father never
showing emotion in adversity, nude family bathing, bare breasts on a
couple of occasions, and the surprising custom of a mother kissing a
little boy's penis. (Actually, that was once common throughout
southeast Asia.) There is nothing here that small children could
not watch, but few will have the patience for this slow-moving
psychological drama.
In contrast, teenagers
are old enough to understand mild sex scenes. But because too
many outsiders confuse nudity with sex, I have generally avoided
mentioning movies where sex is important in the plot. In The Pillow Book (1996), nudity and
sex cannot easily be separated.
A Japanese pillow book is a diary; the most famous
one was written by Lady Sei Shonagon around 1000 C.E. But in
China, where parents feel too embarrassed to discuss such matters with
their children, a pillow book is an illustrated sex manual handed to
brides and grooms on their wedding day. Be clear that the movie
follows the cleaner Japanese definition.
A young woman feels a passion for writing, but only
gets inspired when painting the words on men's bodies. She falls
in love with one of them, who happens to be bisexual. Over time,
we see several nude men, and occasionally the woman. Don't expect
to understand all of this beautiful movie the first time through.
EAST AFRICA
At other times, we have discussed movies from South
Africa, west Africa, and north Africa. Now we look at movies set
in the eastern part of the continent.
For the whole family:
Visit to a Chief's Son (1974) is a
good family movie about the 13-year-old son of an anthropologist
visiting a Masai tribe in Kenya. He makes friends with a slightly
older native boy, and they take a several-day hike through the
wilderness. We see lots of animal footage spliced in. At
one point, the boys skinny-dip with hippopotami.
The cameramen were careful not to film anything
frontal or the tribal women's breasts. (I passed through the
Masai area just four years before this, so I know how overdressed these
movie women are.)
Long out of print, this movie can now be watched on
Amazon or bought at CVMC.
For teens and older:
Nowhere in Africa (2001) follows a
German Jewish girl from age 5 through 14, as the family flees to Kenya
during the Nazi years. The marriage is a fragile one; only the
daughter adjusts easily to African life.
We see the girl bathing as a child, and later when
she tries a little top-freedom in her early teens. Her mother
also briefly tries it, and a few native women are bare-breasted (but
not very noticeable). A short mother-daughter bathtub scene was
edited out. Be aware that husband and wife engage in a couple of
passionate bedroom scenes.
The movie is in German, Swahili, and English, with
easy-to-read English subtitles where necessary.
Two topics: five good movies.
American 1950s/French Classic Films (Oct. 2020)
Again we have two short topics: American life in the
1950s, and some classic French films. They have nothing in
common, except they can both fit on the same page.
THE AMERICAN 1950s
For the whole family:
Three Wishes (1995) is a movie
about magical happenings. Or maybe not. We never know for
sure. The year is 1955 in the American suburbs, where everybody
tries to be the same. But that is not easy for a young widow with
two sons. Enter a bearded Beatnik hitchhiker who brews sun tea,
teaches the Little League team to meditate, and sunbathes nude in the
back yard. A decade or more before his time, he definitely does
not fit in.
Yet he helps each of the main characters to look
into themselves and find their own strengths. This is a
heart-warming movie. My disc comes with an informative commentary
by the director; that is worth watching too.
For teens and older:
The Last Picture Show (1971) takes
us back to 1952 in a windswept empty town in Texas, where people lead
empty lives. Now the movie theatre is closing. To keep the
period look, the movie was shot in black-and-white.
The memorable part of this movie is teenage
skinny-dipping in a private pool. You want the Director's Cut
(also known as Special Edition) because it includes 7 minutes missing
from the theatrical release.
We grow to care about these people. You can
find out whatever happened to them 32 years later in Texasville (1991);
they didn't all turn out as expected. But that sequel was done
without nudity.
CLASSIC FRENCH FILMS
Now, we consider two French movies based on books by
Marcel Pagnol.
For the whole family:
My Father's Glory (1990) dramatizes
the first volume of Pagnol's autobiography. He wrote of
vacationing in the mountains with his family. The title refers to
his schoolmaster father's hunting expedition. You will need to
explain that people used to hunt and eat small birds (four-and-twenty
blackbirds baked in a pie).
Among the joys of childhood, we see the hero (about
12) and his younger brother showering with a garden hose. On
another occasion, he and a mountain boy come in drenched from the
rain. His mother and aunt strip the two boys so they can dry by
the fire, then they scamper up the stairs. It's all very natural.
This is a delightful movie for the whole family, but
it's in French, so viewers must read the English subtitles.
Children who do not understand where babies come from will miss part of
the humor.
The sequel, My
Mother's Castle, was done without nudity.
For teens and older:
Manon of the Spring (1987) started
out as a 1952 movie, directed by Pagnol, himself. (The critics
have not mentioned nudity in that early version.) When the film
flopped, the author expanded the story into two novels about small
farmers. Jean de Florette
tells of the girl's hard-working, but victimized father. The
lovable scoundrels who cause all the trouble reap a terrible vengeance
in the second novel, Manon of the Spring.
After the author's death, another director filmed
the two books. Though the first enjoyable movie contains no
nudity, you must watch it to understand the girl's motivation in the
second.
At one point, we glimpse the eighteen-year-old
shepherdess bathing in a pool and dancing nude in the mountains.
This film also is in French, with English subtitles.
The movie ends with the awful majesty of a Greek
tragedy, where people's own ignorant actions bring about their downfall.
Finally, we turn to a movie
that takes place in England and France. St. Ives (1998), sometimes called All for Love and set in the last
year of the Napoleonic wars, is a rollicking adventure studded with
witty comments. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote the unfinished
novel. We follow a young French soldier and a Scottish soldier in
their pursuit of two remarkable women, aunt and niece.
There are two brief nude scenes—the first one
romantic. The second gives us full-frontal male nudity, as
imprisoned soldiers bathe.
Despite the use of famous music composed half a
century after Napoleon's time, the movie is a delight. It should
not be confused with an ugly crime film of the same name. Also be
aware that there was a 1949 version of this movie—with none of
the charm or wit, or nudity.
And so we have two topics, and five delightful
movies.
If I Knew Then What I Know Now (Nov. 2020)
The Bulletin chose
not to print the first half of this article.
I know about a lot more movies than I did when I
started this column. Once in a while, I discovered a gem after I
had already written on that topic. The plan now is to reissue all
of the movie reviews in book form. When I do, I can put these
late discoveries where I wish they had gone:
For the whole family:
Years after writing about
beach boy movies, I finally got to see the rare Sandy Hill (c.1968) by Lyric Films
International. Azov Films had reissued it on disc around
2010. But that company got into trouble for also offering
European movies that authorities considered child pornography.
They shut down the company, and then went after their customer
list. Some customers committed suicide. No one dared admit
to owning even the most innocent movie that had once been touched by
Azov.
Yet this home video shows the older boys from The Genesis Children splashing in a
shallow river (near Sandy Hill, Texas) back when they were about age
12. Some teenage boys gradually join them, and it's a regular
naked day at the old swimming hole. We hear splashing, laughter,
and synthesizer music, though no one speaks a word. It's just
like hundreds of amateurish movies filmed at nudist resorts. And
like most of the others, it has no plot whatever. But there is
enough action and horseplay to raise it above the average.
Only someone who thinks human bodies are evil
(especially male bodies of any age) could find anything immoral in this
film. So gather the kindergartners, bring on the
babes-in-arms. This half-hour movie is completely harmless for
people of all ages. The problem is finding a copy. What on
earth was the fuss about?
There were other rare films in this series: Boat and Beach Trip, Boyhood Scrapbook,
Danish Boys' Camp, European Trip, The Explorers, How to Make Friends,
Peter and the Desert Riders, Spring Break, Summer Freedom, Swim Party.
There were also nudist magazines: Coq
d'Or, Lyric's American Boys, Naked Boyhood, Naked Teens, Sun Children.
None of our nudist libraries have any of these things. If you
have one, a copy would make a much-appreciated donation to the American
Nudist Research Library.
Mondo (1995) follows a homeless
boy, about age 10, who is looking for someone to adopt him. The
boy—perhaps a Gypsy—suddenly appears on the streets of
Nice, France. (His name, Mondo, means "world"). The boy's
big smile wins him lots of adult friends. Yet he instinctively
avoids police and other authorities. Ironically, the young actor
playing this role was deported for not having the proper papers.
At one point, the boy strips down to gather oranges
that have drifted near shore. There's not much talking in this
movie, and that's in French with English subtitles. But it is a
charming film for the whole family, and can be seen in two parts on the
Internet.
For teens and older:
By now, the majority of people
have come to agree that the Vietnam War and the Iraq War were bad
ideas. If you are still holding out, you probably won't like 1969 (which was made in
1988). One brother goes off to war. The other brother and
the girl next door become increasingly involved in the peace
movement. In a sad and moving way, the events in this film bring
all sides together. It's a little time capsule of what life was
like during that contentious year.
Halfway through, a couple of college guys meet a
group of naked hippies eating dinner together. It's all very
dignified. While this contributes one step in liberating the
boys' minds, it happens too early in their experience for them to try
nudity. That topic never comes up again.
Years after writing
about Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet,
I saw the Communist East German film, Sieben
Sommersprossen (1978), which translates as Seven Freckles. It is
reassuring to know that teenagers are pretty much the same, regardless
of their government. We see a sixteen-year-old couple who had
been close friends as children, now meeting again and falling in love
at a summer camp. For a glorious five minutes, they swim and
relax nude. As usual in the movies, someone steals their clothes.
Among other activities, the young people are
rehearsing a performance of Romeo
and Juliet. The movements of the actors closely follow
those of the Zeffirelli film. It's a charming little movie.
Just be sure you get a copy with English subtitles. There are
several on the Internet.
Here are four great movies that should not be missed
(though I did miss them the first time through.) There are
more. To be continued.
Foreign Movies Too Good to Miss (Dec. 2020)
I discovered these movies late. When I reprint
these columns in book form, I will put them where I wish they had gone.
For the whole family:
When I wrote about South
American jungle tribes, I could find no movies with full nudity
suitable for children. Now I have—sort of. In Taina 2 (2004), all of the native
children wear loincloths—even when swimming. It's the boy
from the city who gets nude while drying his clothes, though we don't
see much.
This is the sequel to a popular children's film with
boys and girls shirtless in loincloths. The directors re-used
their successful plot about a jungle girl stopping animal
poachers. But they had a problem: their famous young actress was
starting to grow breasts, so they put her in a dress this time and
brought in a younger girl to be her assistant. Then they tried to
spice it up with a moment of mild nudity.
The result is an amusing kids' movie—though
adults will have a hard time believing a village of children and their
pets, with never a parent in sight. There's lots of cute animal
photography.
The movie comes in Portugese, with captions
available. Be aware that there is now a cartoon series that shows
the girl younger, traditionally bare-chested, but wearing a mini-skirt.
El Rey de los Gorilas (1977) is a
Mexican attempt at the Tarzan story (without actually using his
name). The nude baby walks around for a few minutes. We
next see him at age 12, when he for some odd reason wraps leaves around
his middle before he has ever seen another human. Then he steals
the loincloth of a native boy, and for several minutes we watch the
nude black boy and clothed white boy. (That is another odd movie
convention.) Jane never appears nude. A whole generation
passes, then we see their son skinny-dipping at about age 12, but he
too wears a loincloth on land. This lesser movie is available
online with English subtitles. Don't spend money on it.
"Chillar" is Hindi slang
for insignificant small coins. Chillar
Party (2011) shows us a modern gang of middle-class little boys
who befriend a poor boy and his dog. When a politician threatens
to take away the dog, they lead a protest march that swells to hundreds
of boys stripped down to their underpants for dramatic effect.
One boy does not normally wear underwear. When
asked why, he tells his father, "Because it's cool.... You should
try it out too." We briefly see him dancing nude, but the picture
is so heavily pixilated that you cannot tell his front side from his
backside. For the protest march, he makes the ultimate sacrifice
of wearing his father's too-large underpants.
This is more than a feel-good film for kids.
It is also a solemn reminder to parents to live the fine principles
they have forgotten.
This charming movie runs a bit long, with a
beginning school scene and end-credit dancing that don't seem to be
part of the story. Filmed in Hindi, the English subtitles are
tricky to turn on. It is now available on YouTube.
For teens and older:
Scream of the Ants (2006) follows a
young Iranian couple on their honeymoon through India. For her,
it is a spiritual journey; he has many doubts.
The movie touches on Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic,
Protestant, and Islamic beliefs. Its title comes from the Jain
teaching that we should be careful to not harm even insects.
Because of the nudity, this film would never be
shown in Iran. Besides occasional toddlers in the streets, we see
a nursing baby, two nude young women, lots of holy men bathing in the
Ganges, and a group of young schoolboys diving in after them--all
normal scenes in India. The naked holy men even made it to the
cover.
More for adults than teens, this slow movie was
filmed in English and Persian. Make sure your copy has subtitles;
you can follow the plot without them, but will miss much of the
philosophical discussion. Iranmovies.com has it.
And here is a foreign
treatment of an American story: Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn on two
levels. Far more than just a children's book, it follows a boy
with unschooled eyes as he drifts through the middle of America,
observing its foibles and contradictions. The 1973 Russian Sovsem Propashchij translates as Hopelessly Lost. It is
propaganda, emphasizing the dark underbelly of 19th-century American
society. The actor is too young, and appears more as victim than
plucky hero.
We do see him briefly skinny-dipping at a
distance. But we get close nude views of the two old scoundrels
who hitch a ride on his raft. Besides skipping much of the plot,
Twain's humor has been drained out. This joyless film is probably
worth watching once.
Still More Late Discoveries (Jan. 2021)
Here is a third batch of movies I discovered only
after I had written about their topics.
For the whole family:
When writing about
Greek mythology, I wish I had given passing mention to a West German
curiosity called The Golden Thing
(1972). A group of boys age 12-14 star in Jason's search for the
Golden Fleece. (They left out Atalanta, the only female among the
Argonauts.) The problem is that the film moves too slowly to hold
the attention of children. And some things are not explained; it
helps to know the plot beforehand.
There is disappointingly little nudity for ancient
Greece—a breast here, a butt there—men and boys wear
wrap-around skirts that would have puzzled any ancient Greek. The
boys keep their weird skirts on even when diving into the sea.
Not one of the great movies, and in German with English subtitles, it
probably is worth seeing once.
Strange Holiday (1969)—also
called Boys of Lost Island—is
a hokey B-grade Australian film about a group of schoolboys surviving
on a tropical island. It should not be confused with a similarly
named 1945 American anti-Nazi film. Science fiction writer Jules
Verne wrote this story way back in 1888. The producers modernized
it with search planes and lanterns that inexplicably last for
months. They got rid of the racism, but kept the guns.
Because the boys do everything right and set up an orderly community,
the producers thought of this as an upbeat response to the recent dark
movie, Lord of the Flies.
There are ten boys aged about 10 to 14.
Surprisingly, they elect one of the shorter squeaky-voiced boys as
their leader. When a second shipwreck occurs, they have to fight
off a bunch of pirates. Stereotypes abound—such as a female
shipwreck survivor whose only concern is fixing her makeup and hairdo.
The skinny-dip scene lasts less than 20 seconds, and
we see only butts and shoulders. Otherwise, the boys keep all of
their clothes on during the day, and sleep in their trousers for
months. Only children might believe this nonsense.
For Teens and Older:
The idea of kids run amok
without the structure of rules shows up in other movies. Demi-Tarif (2003) is
boring--nothing but three abandoned kids playing--once in a while nude
from the back or side (nothing frontal). They steal a lot.
It is available on the Internet in its original French.
I have found two mystery
movies that I didn't know about before. The Prize (1963), contains a chase
through a lecture hall full of nudists. All we see is bare
shoulders. The action-packed movie about the kidnaping of a Nobel
Prize winner is quite good, but has little appeal for young people.
Let me also briefly
mention the film, MovieVoyeur.com
(2000), though I can't find copies for sale. A female detective
comes from California to small-town Florida to claim the body of her
murdered brother. She understands why he was a window-peeper who
filmed his neighbors' unclothed moments. So she doesn't believe
the sheriff's explanation of what happened. The sheriff's office
(where nearly half of the action takes place) is actually the American
Nudist Research Library. If you have been there, you will
recognize the room and the Nudist Hall of Fame plaques on the
wall. The library has a copy of the film to watch there.
Library members can borrow it.
And I wrote an
article about how the movies handle invisibility. The Invisible
Boy (2014) should not be confused with a 1957 movie of the same
name. This one is about a 13-year old Italian boy who gets
severely bullied in school. After trying on a rented Halloween
costume, he turns invisible--but only when naked. He uses his new
power to get back at the bullies. He also visits the girls'
locker room, only to have the invisibility wear off, so he gets caught
there without clothes.
Then the adopted boy meets his biological father,
who explains that his invisibility has nothing to do with the
costume, but the inherited abilities of his maturing body.
He must now learn how to turn his invisible powers on and off. To
avoid any more embarrassing accidents, his father gives him a black
super-hero outfit that turns invisible with him. There goes all
the fun out of the movie. From then on, it's just another spy
thriller.
The movie is in Italian. Long hard to find
with English subtitles, it is now available for free on the
Internet. Be sure to sit through the end credits for a few
production shots showing how they reversed green screen technology to
make the hero invisible. But, having gotten rid of any continuing
reason for nudity, the more brutal sequel fared poorly in 2018.
When this series of movie reviews is reprinted in
book form, these movies will be moved to where their topics are covered.
Miscellaneous Movies
(Feb. 2021)
I have run out of paired movies on related
themes. Today's examples have nothing in common except nudity.
For the whole family:
What happens when a cute but
mischievous five-year-old boy sprouts wings? This delightful
fantasy plays out in Tobi
(1978). Conventional people want to think of him as an
angel. His worried mother realizes he is becoming attuned to the
birds.
The boy is nude through much of the film.
There is one funny scene when he hides among all the little girl
mannequins in a store. In the end, the boy flies out of his
clothes to join the freedom of his feathered friends. This witty
and thoughtful Spanish movie is available with English subtitles.
Mrkacek Ciko (1982) is a Czech
children's adventure. A pampered boy raised in Mexico returns
with his diplomat parents to Czechoslovakia (still one country under
Russian control). When he finds himself behind in school, he
develops a nervous tic. Other kids call him Chico the Blinker.
But he makes friends with a daredevil neighbor
boy. They tag along when other children go to a Young Pioneers
wilderness survival camp. We briefly see backsides of boys and
girls skinny-dipping separately. Hiding in the woods, our two
young heroes catch enough food to feed both the boys' and the girls'
camps, and they capture a wild bird poacher. The other kids
welcome them to the group.
This movie is OK—but nothing special.
You can see it free on the Internet in Czech (and understand most of
it), or you can buy it with English subtitles.
For teens and older:
Could We Maybe (1976) shows us a
15-year-old boy from the years when boys wore long hair. He leads
a pointless life until he and a girl he never met before get taken as
hostages during a bank robbery. For the first time in his life,
he sees some fatherly guidance and a sensible girl. After
escaping, they decide to prolong their vacation from bad home life.
Despite the suggestive title, some crude banter, a
boy's locker room scene, and female breasts on a couple of occasions,
this is a movie without visible sex or violence. Not great but
OK, it is in Danish; make sure your copy has English subtitles.
Beautiful Dreamers (1990) has
nothing to do with the Stephen Foster song (except that the music box
plays it). Rather, this movie is about the poet Walt Whitman and
his lesser-known contribution to kindly treatment of the mentally
ill. We also see him singing music from Italian opera.
As he proclaims in his poems, Whitman does go
skinny-dipping—to be joined by the doctor and his wife. But
while the cameras show female nudity, they keep male genitals
hidden. Whitman would have scoffed at such squeamishness.
Still, it's a good portrait of this rough-and-tumble poet whom students
will have studied in school.
Probably of more interest to adults:
For another movie about low
mental development, try Patrick
(2019), a Belgian mystery set in a run-down nudist campground.
The story focuses on a slow-witted man with a single purpose: to find
his missing hammer. This is more about how to accept a person
with disabilities—and the developing understanding is beautiful.
Realistically, we see lots of overweight and aging
campers--male and female--but no families with children. In fact,
no one under 35 ever gets nude. Here we have a slow-moving film
with a an actual plot, that accepts nudity as a natural part of
life.
There is one sex scene. Partly in English, the
film also has English subtitles. You can rent it on the Internet.
Despite its sensational
title, Hot Hot Hot (2011) is
tame enough and silly enough that the whole family could
watch—though why anyone under 40 would want to, I don't
know. It's about a 40-year-old man who has never had a
girlfriend. Then he gets transferred to working in a mostly nude
Belgian spa. The approach is definitely sexist, with lots of
female breasts on display, but never ever any male genitals. In a
gentle way, our unlikely hero does discover his own humanity. I
watched it free on the Internet, but it doesn't seem to be there now.
So here we have a smorgasbord of pretty good movies
on a variety of subjects. Enjoy.
Rare Movies Suddenly Available (Mar. 2021)
About a year ago, a nudist friend told me he was
finding rare movies at a new web site called DVDBay. I looked and
saw mostly recent gay stuff—nothing of interest to me. I
did check to see if they had about a dozen rare titles I had long been
seeking. Nope.
A couple of months ago, while cleaning out old
e-mails, I ran across my friend's note and checked the site
again. Four of the 12 titles are there now—plus a few other
promising movies I had never heard of. Such a rapidly growing
source deserves to be checked from time to time. So here are some
fine movies that were not available a year ago:
For the whole family:
I knew that The Littlest Viking contained two
nude scenes, each lasting a second or two. Big deal. I
didn't realize those scenes had been shortened from the already brief
episodes in the Norwegian original Sigurd
Drakedreper (1989). The title means Sigurd the
Dragonslayer. The 12-year-old son of a Viking chief was named
after a legendary hero, but the boy believes in peace. So does
the slightly older chief's son from the rival band. The Norwegian
version is now also available free online.
When producers dubbed the film into English, they
substituted deeper teenage voices for both boys. That often
happens in dubbing, but in this case, it works. It makes the
boys' decisions look like mature thought, instead of childish
weakness. In both versions, the boy sleeps in a
nightgown—600 years before they were invented. So which
version is better? I have mixed feelings.
Little Red Flowers (2006) is a most
unusual Chinese film about a four-year-old boy who gets dumped in a
highly regimented state kindergarten. He does not conform
easily. That is the whole plot, and frankly I found it boring
after a while. Other people love this movie because the cameras
show everything from a child's angle.
At that age, there is much emphasis on toilet
training, with absolutely no privacy. So we see a surprising
amount of nudity and semi-nudity. (Though the Chinese never
developed a nude art tradition, paintings from many centuries show that
small children often went without pants.)
For teens and older:
Alla Alskar Alice (2002) translates
as Everybody Loves Alice.
we meet a Swedish girl whose parents are splitting apart. There
is a lot of loud arguing. She teams up with the son of the other
woman in trying to keep their families intact. The situation,
parental love, and humor remind me of The
Parent Game.
Early on, we see three mischievous girls peeping
into the boys' shower room. At their age, the girls are starting
to develop breasts, but the boys show no signs of maturing yet.
Unfortunately, that brief scene has nothing to do with the rest of the
movie.
My disc had subtitle problems; the company has been
very slow to respond.
[The Bulletin refused
to print the next paragraph.]
Bible! (1974) might more accurately
be called Sex Scenes from the Bible.
It begins with the most beautiful Adam and Eve story I have ever
seen. Unfortunately, the movie then switches to a silly David and
Bathsheba episode, a seductive Samson and Delilah (slightly out of
order), then a too-brief Mary and the angel Gabriel. Magnificent
classical music plays, with rarely a word ever spoken. I
recommend shutting it off after the first 19 minutes, and you won't
miss much.
Senza Buccia (1979) is a rare
B-grade Italian flick, now available with dubbing into English.
The title is rarely translated as Skin Deep, to avoid confusion with
another film of that name.
A late-teen brother and sister are staying at their
mother's empty villa on the sea with his girlfriend and a helper
boy. They meet a young Norwegian nudist couple, and decide to all
try nudism through most of the movie. The arrival of a clothed
32-year-old female house guest does not dampen their enthusiasm.
Most are seeking love, and not finding it. Yet the movie brims
over with the joy of active living.
So all of these rare films are suddenly
available. Because several Internet distributors of movies with
nudity have disappeared without warning in recent years, I suggest that
you grab them quickly.
A Visit to a Nudist Resort--Apr. 2021
Over the years, several movies have attempted to
capture this experience—few with any success. Earlier, we
assessed the old classics made for nudists; here we bring that
discussion up to date.
For the whole family:
La Fonte des Neiges (France, 2009)
translates as Thawing Out.
A twelve-year-old boy is dragged by his mother to a nudist park.
He reacts by bundling in layers of winter clothes—until he meets
a girl who gradually gets him out of his shell. (At that age, she
is maturing physically much earlier than he is.) But even more
humiliating than nudity, he realizes that he has fallen for a
girl. What could be worse for a twelve-year-old?
This delightful movie lasts only 28 minutes.
Unfortunately, about the only place to see it with English subtitles is
on a disc (for rent or purchase) from CVMC that includes a dozen short
films from European children's television. Refreshingly, three of
them contain much nudity. Others deal with such heavy topics as
suicide, that I personally would not show to children. Strong
parental guidance is needed here. Most (but not all) of the films
have English subtitles.
The other films in the
collection are mediocre by comparison. In Naakt (or Naked, Netherlands 2006), a mother
takes her younger son to a sauna. If you've never seen naked
people before, this might be exciting.
A separate
short film, Little Peter's Big
Adventure (2014) is the poorest excuse for a nude beach movie I
have ever seen. Though cameras try to stay above the waists or
below the knees, we frequently see that the three boys never actually
get out of their shorts, and everyone in the background is fully
clothed. The discussion turns mildly interesting when one boy has
to wait at a bus stop, supposedly with only a backpack on his lap
(though we can't really tell). The movie demonstrates how
cowardly even European movie-makers have become, when it comes to
innocent child nudity. The original German title is Peterchen auf Rügen.
Don't waste your time or money on it.
For teens and older:
The Spy Who Caught a Cold (1995) is
a 10-minute film of slight interest. A mother takes her
10-year-old daughter to an English nude beach with cabins. The
girl spies on her mother and the new boyfriend her mother has picked
up. This begins to awaken her own curiosity. That's all of
the plot.
I have already reviewed Nudist Beach (2011), another short
British production that is supposed to be funny, but isn't.
Nor can I recommend the
Serbian Lepota Poroka (1986),
where a traditional young couple go to work in a nudist resort.
Though we don't actually see it, the producers assumed that any nudist
resort is a place of sexual hanky-panky. (English subtitles are
hard to find.)
On the other hand, Analog Roam (2002) is an 11-minute
black-and-white delight. On a split screen, we follow a young man
and a young woman as they each strip down for a solitary walk in the
woods—and then get lost. We see some wilderness areas
within the grounds of nudist clubs in the American northwest.
Act Naturally (2013) is a
full-length movie with a real plot and interesting characters. We
have not seen the likes of this since Educating Julie
(1984)—nearly 30 years of waiting for another great naturist
movie. Unfortunately, copies are hard to find, but you can watch
it on Amazon.
Two half-sisters of very different personalities
learn that they have inherited a place in Arizona, not realizing it is
a nudist resort. (It was actualy filmed at Olive Dell Ranch in
California.) The film has a ring of authenticity, dealing
honestly with such issues as scars and staring. It is a delight.
And now a movie I
have not yet seen, but I am looking forward to its release later this
summer: the sequel, Act Super
Naturally. (It has already been shown to two trial
audiences, and one suspicious web site is supposedly offering it for
free.)
J. P. Riley, the director, tells me that this second
movie is about the older sister, Charlie, struggling to find her
leadership style during the resort's first major event since she took
the reins. It's the Memorial Day Weekend Nude Olympic
Bash—which happens to coincide with gay staff member,
Corey’s Vegas wedding—and all hell breaks lose. Watch
for it.
So no, great nudist movies are not a thing of the
past; a glorious few are still being produced.
That's All, Folks--May 2021
This is the final column in my movie review series
in The Bulletin. But
have no fear; the plan is to republish all of these columns—along
with my other naturist essays—as a book. It will probably
appear a year or so from now.
Seven years ago, AANR Executive Director Jim Smock
put out a call for serious writers on topics of lasting interest.
I suggested a series on movies that nudists could watch with their
children or grandchildren. I knew of enough to fill maybe a dozen
articles. Well, I have learned some things since then. 269
movies and 70 columns later, I have run out of good movies to recommend.
For more than 20 years, I wrote the nude art column
in Naturally magazine.
As planned, those columns were republished in book form: Art Follows Nature: A Worldwide History of
the Nude. I later agreed to write the movie review
column—not realizing it would take me another 7 years. The
difference between the two series is that, with art, I knew what I was
talking about. With movies, about all I have to offer is the
enthusiasm of fresh discovery.
I am an unlikely movie critic. I came to film
late in life. I don't know one movie star from another, and have
no interest in Hollywood gossip. But I am interested in cultural
activities nudists can do together with their children or grandchildren.
Several people have made lists of movies with nude
children in them. That is very different from movies with nudity
(of any age) that are fit for children to watch. I have rejected
many for violence, or people undressing only for sex.
The last third of the twentieth century was a golden
age of naturist-friendly family-friendly movies. There were three
reasons for that. First, the 1960s liberated society and
abolished old movie censorship rules. Film-makers, especially in
Europe, began to show skinny-dipping as a normal part of any kid's life.
Second, after losing audience to television for a
few decades, movie producers in the 1980s discovered the teen
market. Teen movies differed from family movies in that they
could include an awareness of mild sexuality. Suddenly, there was
an explosion of teen movies—about two for every one
nudist-friendly family movie.
The third reason was the invention of home videos
(cassette tapes during that time). Instead of sitting in a dark
crowded room fretting over what their neighbors thought, viewers could
relax with their families in the privacy of their homes. This
column has been about home viewing. Since movie income no longer
depended solely on blockbuster attendance during a one-week run at the
local theatre, film-makers could write for a smaller audience spread
over a long time.
But by 2000, a raging paranoia about child
pornography began in the United States, then swept the globe.
People confused any innocent nudity with pornography.
Movie-makers got scared. Self-censorship has proven as effective
as the old Hays Code. Numbers of new family films with
appropriate nudity have abruptly regressed back to about where we were
in the 1950s.
At the same time, DVD discs replaced
videotapes. Some of the classics got censored during conversion;
others still have not been converted at all.
Now comes a third technological development: some
people predict that home movie collections will quickly grow obsolete,
as more and more choices become watchable on the Internet. So
far, that works only if you want to see what everybody else wants to
see (and are willing to accept somebody else's ideas about censorship).
Some people don't like black-and-white films.
That's too bad; I chose movies because they were good. They came
at a time when most were filmed in color, but a few good ones were not.
Some people don't like movies with subtitles.
That's really too bad, because Europeans made far more family-friendly
naturist-friendly films than Americans did.
Some people may have wondered why I kept writing
about old movies instead of offering news about current ones. The
great age of naturist-friendly family-friendly movies has been over for
a couple of decades. There are not likely to be many more until
society changes again. So this is a good time to write down what
exists now. There is hope, though, that more of the foreign
classics from the golden era will become available in English
translation and universal formats.
My thanks to the many people who have told me they
enjoy reading these columns. And thanks to those who recommended
movies I had never heard of. If you would like to be notified
when the book version is ready, drop a note to
paullevalley@peoplepc.com.
Learning about and sharing these films has been
great fun. But as Porky Pig famously said, "That's all, folks."
A few more columns 3 years later:
Even More Movies About Boys--April 2024
There have always been more non-sexual movies about
nude boys than about nude girls. Here are some that I have
discovered only recently:
For the whole family:
Adventures with a Naked Boy
(1964) is a humorous 20-minute Czechoslovakian film that comes without
subtitles. Nor does it need them. A young boy has lost his
clothes while swimming, and does not have money for the streetcar fare
back home. A kind man pays it for him. At first, passengers
are amused, but some people can't keep their mouths shut. When
the kind man, in exasperation, takes off his shirt to cover the boy,
the same people also complain about that. Eventually a huge
fistfight breaks out, but other men and women feel attracted to the
nude idea, and line up to board the streetcar in a minimum of underwear.
This black-and-white film comes in a collection called Mr. Bunny and Other Comedy Shorts. The even better No Bikini is included on the same disc.
Premier Amour
(2013) translates as First Love and lasts only eight minutes, so there
is not much of a story. It shows a boy, about 12 and shorter than
his classmates, whose friends jokingly pull off his swim suit and shove
him naked into the girls' locker room. (He keeps one hand cupped
over his genitals so nobody actually sees anything.) He tries to
hide in the pool. The girl who sits next to him in class
recognizes the problem and brings him his swimsuit. That's
it. This charming little film is in French with English subtitles.
A word of warning: Don't waste time or money on a 9-minute Canadian film called Changing Rooms
(2005). It spreads fake paranoia about boys using men's locker
rooms. The message is that the only thing worse than naked men is
old fat naked men. Actually, everybody wears underwear, even in
the shower, and the boy goes swimming in an outfit that reaches down to
his knees. Maybe it's supposed to be a spoof, but to me, this
film is pushing too many bad ideas.
For teens and older:
Simon Says Goodbye to His Foreskin
(2015) wrestles with the Jewish tradition of circumcision—and
does it in a humorous way. Twelve-year-old Simon's fanatically
religious father and free-thinking mother argue over whether he should
undergo the surgery before his bar mitzva. Meanwhile, the boy
falls in puppy love with his new female rabbi.
We see long hairstyles of the seventies, along with
modern computers. We don't see much actual nudity—some
ancient art and a few tribal boys—but it is a movie well worth
watching. Everyone speaks German, with hard-to-read English
subtitles.
I'm with the Band
(1979) was episode 6 of the one-season television series, Freaks and
Geeks. With an hour to fill, each episode had two plots, and kept
switching between them. Though filmed in California, it was
supposed to portray a high school in the Detroit suburbs in 1980.
The part that interests us focuses on a late-maturing freshman boy who
was afraid to take a shower after gym class. This is particularly
odd because boys in most suburban Detroit schools were still swimming
nude during their gym classes just a year or two before this. The
announcement of a "new" policy of showering after gym is
chronologically inaccurate.
Because this is American television, we never do see
anyone nude below the waist. When our unlikely hero goes
scrambling supposedly naked through the school, a big blue dot hides
the fact that he actually wore a swimsuit during filming. But all
ends well, and he gains confidence when the cheerleaders consider him a
brave hero for streaking the school.
On a similar theme, Stikk
(2007) is a little 19-minute Norwegian film. The least developed
boy in the eighth grade showers at school, when a girl sneaks in and
films him. She humiliates him by sharing the footage with all of
their classmates. A tough new boy shows him how to get
revenge. Eventually, they all learn how to be merciful, but the
boy never learns to be proud of his body—which is a
disappointment. The final chapter is missing.
In the shower scenes, all have their backs turned to
the camera, and we only catch a brief glimpse of a penis. This
movie, in Norwegian with English subtitles, can be found online, or is
available with other fine naturist movies in a collection called La Fonte des Neiges and Other Shorts.
Confessions of a Late Bloomer (2005, currently unavailable) contains not even implied nudity, but is a much better little film on delayed male puberty.
I have often had to explain to boys that puberty is
a passing phase; in a couple of years, all will be equally masculine,
and nobody will be able to tell who arrived early and who arrived
late. It will never matter again. Furthermore, some
men mature before others; some men go bald before others; some men die
before others. We each have our own body clock. Being first
is not always a good thing.
More Movies from Africa--May 2024
I'm still learning. Since I closed out the
movie review column in 2021, I have found a few more gems. Some
of these made it into the book version, Naturist Writings of Paul LeValley, Including Movie Reviews. Other discoveries came later. Today's selections are from Africa.
For the whole family:
I began these reviews with Kirikou and the Sorceress
from French west Africa. Now a third cartoon in this series has
become available with English subtitles on Kanopy, accessible through
many public libraries. Kirikou and the Men and Women
(2012) consists of five short tales about a baby boy. The
third tale is especially interesting, as the nude children meet a
Muslim Taureg boy, and the bare-breasted mother has to explain why
desert people would do anything so unnatural as wear clothes. She
also has to explain that pale skin is OK too. The fourth tale
recounts the famous legend of Sundiata, king of Mali and great-uncle of
Mansa Musa. In French with English subtitles, this movie is a
delight for the whole family.
e' Lollipop (1976) comes from Lesotho in southern Africa, and is also inappropriately known as Forever Young, Forever Free.
A white orphan boy is raised in a Catholic mission among the black
children. He, another boy, and a little dog form an inseparable
trio, and get into their share of mischief. Then tragedy strikes,
and he is flown to New York for emergency surgery. Later, his
friend is sent for to bring him out of a coma. Eventually, they
get back to Lesotho—only to have the boy's real grandmother show
up.
His black friend wears a short robe, usually without
underwear. Four times in the first half-hour, we see him nude or
semi-nude—but the white boy swims in all his clothes.
Bare-breasted black women also appear in the distance. It's the
old National Geographic syndrome, where black nudity is considered natural but white nudity doesn't happen.
This is an emotional movie full of laughter, love,
and sadness—definitely worth watching. Young children will
not understand a failed lecture on birth control, but they can
appreciate the rest.
The Spots on My Leopard
(1974) is about white people in South Africa. The movie begins
with a long skinny-dip of an 11-year-old boy and his pet leopard.
(The only frontal view is mostly covered up with titles. And
that's all of the nudity.)
The leopard is trapped and sold to a circus; the boy
sent off to a co-educational boarding school—where he feels as
caged as the animal. There he meets a misfit girl who claims to
have an imaginary dolphin in a jar. Together, they find the
leopard and take it a thousand miles back to its homeland.
There are stunning scenes of walking among the
wildlife. For theme music, we keep hearing snippets of the old
Negro spritual, Going Home (the same tune Dvorak used in his New World Symphony). The movie is in Afrikaans (originally titled Vang Vir My 'n Droom), with English subtitles available.
For teens and older:
Fiela's Child
(1988), also from South Africa, reveals the love of a mixed-race mother
for the white boy she found on her doorstep. When he is 12,
government officials take him away to live with a crude white
family. One of the few movies filmed in Afrikaans, it has been
dubbed into English. (They put only white faces on the cover.)
But there is a serious flaw to this movie: We are
asked to believe that a mature teenage actor with chiseled face and
deep voice is only 12. When he bathes, he covers his genitals so
we can't see how developed he really is. We also see him bathing
at a younger age, but only from the back. When they remade the
film in 2019, they overcompensated by choosing an actor too young for
the role. But they kept the nude bathing scene.
Bouka
(1988) comes from the Ivory Coast, and is a difficult movie to
understand on first viewing. There are a whole village full of
people, with too many sub-plots that never come together. Much
centers around a 14-year-old boy whose beloved father dies. He is
not happy when tradition demands that his mother marry her late
husband's nephew. The boy suspects that a curse killed his father
in a culture that mixes witchcraft with Islam and Catholicism—all
equally superstitious. In his alienation, he joins a jungle
gang. We see brief male nudity for casting spells, bathing a
baby, and swimming. The movie is in French, with English
subtitles.
Africa is a huge and diverse continent. What
do these movies have in common? All happen to be about boys
growing up in race-conscious societies—an effect of European
colonialism that lingers in these movies of the 1970s into the
twenty-first century. Muslim conquerers in the north and
Christian missionaries in the south have done their worst to stamp out
the traditional nudity. Aside from a few bare-breasted women,
children (especially boys) seem to be about the only unconstrained
people still occasionally living free and natural.
More Movies from Latin America--July 2024
For the whole family:
South American children's movies with nude scenes are hard to find. In Journey to an Unknown World
(1971) the Amazon jungle meets space aliens. This unusual
Brazilian movie includes some cartoon sequences. The thin plot
has three boys and their hare-brained uncle stumbling around in the
jungle to stop invading robots from stealing a rare flower grown by the
natives.
In three very brief scenes, we see
nude young boys. Bare-butt Indian men wear codpieces, and the few
native women show up in something like bikinis. Definitely not
authentic.
The three boys were also brothers
in real life. In the movie. they had to rely on the middle one to
do most of the thinking. Known originally in Portugese as Adventuras com Tio Maneco, this silly film has been dubbed into English.
For teens and older:
In contrast, here are some serious thought-provoking movies:
Oficio de Tinieblas
(1980) is a Mexican film based on the novel of Rosario
Castellanos. She was known for presenting history from a woman's
viewpoint. This is about the attempted land reforms of the
1930s—resisted by both the white landowners and the suspicious
Indian peasants. First, we see the abuses of land
owners—including the very real danger of rape. To show the
Indians' superstition, the author included an incident that actually
happened 60 years earlier: the nude crucifixion of a boy so the native
people could have their own powerful religious symbol.
The movie is not always easy to follow. It conforms to
traditional movie standards with a fully nude woman and teenage girl,
but no male nudity beyond the age of 7. It is available with
English subtitles.
Machuca
(2004) is a heavy and powerful movie from Chile about the violent
overthrow of the Allende government—seen through the lives of an
11-year-old rich boy, a poor boy, and the poor boy's female
cousin. It all begins when an exclusive religious school decides
to admit some of the neighbor children. As it turns out, a few of
the young people can bridge difficult social and political divides
better than the adults around them.
The nude
scene is disappointing. Boys shower behind a low wall; all we see
is the top halves of a few butts. There is some rough street
language—especially from the girl. The movie proceeds
mostly in Spanish with English subtitles available.
Los Rechazados translates as The Rejected, and was released in 2018--the same year the Argentine director released Nine Meals from Chaos.
This is another view of a dystopian future—though a little more
colorful and hopeful. Children are eating a mind-expanding red
flower, and are rejected as sinful by the village, and sent to forage
for themselves on the mountain.
They spend a
lot of time floating nude in the river, for "water is love." The
rest of the time, the girls wear dresses, and the boys wear
shorts. The villagers dress in medieval peasant robes. This
and a lot of other things are never explained. Everyone speaks
Spanish, with English subtitles.
When the
villagers become too nasty, the children perform an incantation, and
because water is love, the river reverses course until the hateful
people die of thirst. As the children return to the corpse-strewn
streets, one boy observes, "They saw us. They judged us.
They were dogs barking rabidly at free and solitary wolves who passed
in front of their cages."
So is this a
pro-drug movie? An anti-hate and intolerance movie? Fairly
early, one boy observes, "From the apple didn't come the first sin, but
rather the first stupid and pointless prohibition." This film
operates on several levels; answers do not come easily.
Y Adan Y
(1971) is a puzzling 28-minute black-and-white film from Chile about
Adam, who first appears as a nude boy. His search for
understanding leads him up the side and across the top of the
screen. The very few words are spoken in Spanish.
Inexplicably, he meets another nude boy, and learns friendship.
Only as a clothed adult, does he meet a woman and learn love. He
also meets a bunch of people dressed in clown suits, and decides that
society can be pretty crazy. He has a harder time learning the
wisdom of age.
Because none of this is very clear, Y Adan Y (An Interpretation)
of 2018 plays much of the movie again with explanatory
commentary. That helps, but there are still many deep questions
to think about.