Sissy...and that dress....
I wasn't into her in any other movie - but in this movie, when she get out of bed - and then puts on that dress? What a rack!!! A Prime Cut Rack Attack!!!
Yeah, she's smoking.
shareAnd 22 years old, having been born in December,1949.
shareThis is one of those things where, "modernly," pearl-clutchers can perhaps complain about the "exploitation" of Young Sissy Spacek in her two scenes of "undress" -- nude when first seen(as one of a drugged up group of naked women being sold in cattle pens), topless under the sheer dress here.
Spacek agreed to the nudity in both cases and we can debate whether any coercion was part of the deal but the point is: she looks damn sexy, movies with an "erotic dimension" are in short supply today and...what's wrong with it, anyway?
Related: Licorice Pizza is a 2021 film set in 1973. In this movie, the film's 25 year old heroine(played by musician Alana Haim) take a meeting with an older female movie agent. The following dialogue pops into their interview:
Agent: Are you willing to go topless?
Haim: Yes.
(Her platonic, younger boyfriend shakes his head "NO" in panic)
Haim: ...No.
Agent: (Sternly, almost mean): You will lose roles if you are unwilling to do nudity.
Then there is a cut to Haim and her "boy friend" arguing in the car.
Haim: I would be willing to do nudity to get a role.
Friend: No. I think there's entirely too much nudity in movies today.
That fictional scene was set in 1973, a year after Prime Cut, and an era in movies where both women and men were willing to do nude scenes now that the ratings code allowed them.
But note that the fictional Alana Haim character WOULD have done nudity.
On the basis of the movies from 1969 to 1989(oh, go further -- Basic Instinct was in 1992), I'd say that a LOT of actresses were willing to do some nudity to get roles and advance their careers -- and perhaps even for the "art" of the movie story itself.
It was also a given back then -- if not so much today -- that actresses "just starting out" would do nude scenes to get roles and make their names. But then, if they "made it" and became marquee stars...they stopped doing nudity.
CONT
Modernly, it would seem that men are more inclined to do nudity on the screen. I suppose it can be seen as "gallant" of the male actors and "PC" of movie producers. They simply aren't going to subject young actresses to do nudity as they did in the past. Male nudity -- or partial nudity -- is also seen as funny in the right context(Will Farrell's lumpy body, some SNL sketches with semi-nude men, but never with semi-nude women.)
To all of this I say: "Its too bad." Assuming that Sissy Spacek was willing to do the nude or semi-nude scenes in Prime Cut, they DID make for a somewhat titillating experience and that IS a part of the movie fantasy world.
And this: everyone ages. It didn't take too many years for Spacek to age into mother and grandmother roles and for her screen persona to be everything OTHER than sexy.
Hopefully she enjoys having Prime Cut out there to show her...in her prime.
PS. This year in 2022, 63-year old Emma Thompson has put herself up front and occasionally in the nude in a sex comedy-drama called "Good Luck to You, Leo Grande" opposite a much younger male actor playing a sex worker hired by Thompson. So perhaps the tide is turning...