I'm watching "Summertime" from 1955 right now, and it was also used in the 1955 film "To Catch A Thief", but surely there are older instances?
The big fireworks companies, of course.
shareI'm not sure about fireworks, but I'm pretty sure it was Hitch that invented a train going into a tunnel as a stand in for sex.
I know that doesn't answer your question but I felt compelled to post it anyways.
You are probably correct. I know the scene, and I also know that Hitch liked his sly little cinematic jokes.
After the films you mentioned but they liked using fireworks in The Brady Bunch series when a character was kissed.
I tried googling fireworks as a metaphor for sex in old films and I am amazed there aren't many hits.
I did. I invented it when my public copulation one Fourth of July went unnoticed by the surrounding crowds who were enrapt at the sight of the ongoing fireworks aloft.
Inspired, I proceeded to run home bare-assed naked, wrote down my idea and, within a couple of days, I was the toast of Hollywood.
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I was going to say Love American Style but that wasn’t until the late 60s.
shareI don't think that applies in To Catch a Thief because they were actually watching a fireworks display.
shareI disagree, I just think that was an unusually well-edited use of the cliche. Instead of fireworks being cut into the film out of nowhere, as has been done in less sophisticated films, the fireworks were carefully edited into the scene, and grew in intensity as the characters' feelings for each other grew, until both reached a, uh, climax...
shareShowing a blazing fireplace was used a lot, nicely spoofed in the movie Top Secret.
share