BACKSTORIES: FILM'S FIRST BARE BUM

The honor of being the first feature film to show a nude bum on screen goes to Ecstasy, a 1933 Czech erotic romantic drama film directed by Gustav Machatý and starring Hedy Lamarr. 

Before this, a few documentary films and artsy shorts had shown (or implied) bare cheeks, but Ecstasy was the first non-pornographic film to show nudity, and not just in sex scenes. 

The plot: a young woman marries a wealthy, boring older man. While frolicking in nature one day, swimming in the buff, she meets a young, dashing engineer who fulfills her needs for passion and romance. 

While the nude swimming scene was considered plenty scandalous at the time, it was perhaps even more controversial to portray a female orgasm. The camera didn’t show the intercourse, instead focusing on the pleasure through close-up shots of her facial expressions. Machatý won the Best Director award for this film at the 1934 Venice Film Festival.

Speaking of the Venice Film Festival, a Vatican journalist happened to attend that screening, and Pope Pius XI was not pleased when he heard what went down. The Pope denounced the film, which meant zero play in Italian cinemas. Germany banned it, though it was eventually released 20 years later (with edited scenes). In the US, the Catholic Legion of Decency formally condemned the film, relegating it to a few independent art houses rather than a major release for several years.

Although mired in controversy at the start, the bold and progressive depictions of female independence and feminine pleasure give Ecstasy a timeless appeal that keeps it circulating in arthouse screenings today. Not to mention a beautiful representation of the bare bum as an empowered visual that doesn’t have to relate to sex.