Nudity and the Foreign Film

The movie Censors of America have considered the human body and concluded that it is immoral. They've decided that the female anatomy is particularly offensive, leading to all sorts of carnal, lecherous, lascivious, and otherwise objectionable thoughts and, we suppose, deeds in members of the opposite gender.

But don't get panicky. Fortunately for all us innocent, popcorn-munching moviegoers, our good friends, the censors, are in there snipping whenever too much celluloid epidermis comes into view.

Of course, the greatest artists of all time have always contended that the human body is a thing of beauty. But our protectors of public purity are too busy to be bothered with that sort of nonsense. They're creating a new, ideal species: a spayed, denavelled, breast-free, unbuttocked creature who cannot possibly offend anyone, except maybe Mother Nature.

Hollywood has accepted this synthetic species gracefully, since its whole world is a pre-fabricated, star-dusted illusion, but some problems exist for European movie makers. Most foreign film producers are interested in realism, and if a story requires a nude or two, they're apt to go right ahead and film a nude or two. In a period picture, a European director may attempt to use authentic costumes, whether they completely cover all his actors and actresses or not. And poor, unenlightened European audiences, never having been told that nudeness and lewdness are one and the same, sit through it all without apparent ill effects.

It is when the foreign films try to penetrate America's Cellophane Curtain that the fun begins. The scissors of the U. S. Customs inspectors get the first snip, then all the assorted cutlery of the local censors, purity leagues, and police departments come into play.

Gina Lollobrigida's famous nude harem scene in Beauties of the Night was seen by nearly everyone in Europe, including the Queen of England, but it was wisely deleted when the picture was shown to us innocent, impressionable Americans. Nude bathing scenes were cut from Sweden's prize winning One Summer of Happiness, even though they were an essential part of the story. And at the film's premiere, newsmen asked its young star, Ulla Jacobsson, so many embarrassing questions that she broke down and cried. No one remembered that public nude bathing is common in Sweden.

Hedy Lamarr's Ecstasy is probably the most famous censored picture of all time. So many scenes were cut that what remained wasn't much longer than a short subject. What remained was also thoroughly confusing, since the plot was cut out right along with the nudity. The resulting publicity took Hedy to Hollywood.

Censors defend their existence with the argument that the scenes they delete from movies would adversely effect the morals of the nation. This is an extremely shaky premise at best. It has never been successfully proven. Nor have the censors taken any notice of one recent Supreme Court decision that makes most of their activities illegal. They're too busy cutting up film "in the public interest."

A French Information Ministry official says: "We think it does less harm for children to see a nude woman than to see an efficiently performed crime." This, of course, is a rather sophisticated point of view and no one would ever accuse our censors of being sophisticated. Their ideals are as simple, naive, and narrow as the Puritan fathers they got them from.

Playboy has a strong aversion to any minority (or majority, for that matter) forcing its opinions, tastes, and attitudes on the rest of us. We make a habit of thumbing our nose at censors, because we feel they have no place in a democracy. So, just for the hell of it, you'll find a number of scenes on these pages that were censored out of various foreign films during their American runs.

Acclaimed as an artistic triumph in Europe, "Lucrezia Borgia" was badly mutilated by U. S. censors. Listed among the missing were startling scenes like this realistic orgy with tyrant Cesare Borgia and friends.

These Roman off-the-chest fashions are authentic but the censors cut them from "Messaline."

Harry Baur's "Rasputin" was praised but the censored U. S. version was difficult to follow.

Left: Ulla Jacobsson in a scene cut from "One Summer of Happiness."

Above-below: Hedy in film "Ecstasy."

Above-below: Hedy in film "Ecstasy."

This scene is from an American movie, but American audiences never saw it. Hollywood filmed it for the European showing of "Ben Hur." The adding of sexy scenes for foreign versions of movies is almost as common as the deletion of such scenes from U. S. runs.