man there is a cool look in 70s movies of girls without bras walking around with cool 1970s boobs. this movie has some great 70s tits in it
shareAmerican women were a lot less uptight in the 1970s.
shareThat's the impression I always got and why I would have loved to have been a teen or a 20-something in that decade. As it stands, I was around for the last three years of the '70's, so, naturally, I can barely remember anything from those years.
shareI was around for all of it. And a young man "of age."
It was great. THEY were great.
In fact, I took one of them on a date to see Network. THAT was great. Afterwards.
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You should believe it. In the wake of the 1960s, the women of the 1970s - even with the rising and often hostile women's movements - were far less materialistic. They didn't size up a guy by his potential income nearly as much as they do today. Why exactly? I can't say, but history works in these cycles. The far more conservative post-WWII 1950s gave way to the 1960s, the 1960s and 1970s eventually gave way to a vile combination of Reagan conservatives and money grubbing yuppies calling themselves democrats, etc. The "libertine" days of restoration-era England, in which sexual conquests elevated a man's reputation, changed in the early 18th century to a period where property owned measured a man's worth. So yeah, having been conscious enough to experience the last gasp of the 70s vibe in the early 1980s, I'd say women were much less uptight. The proliferation of Internet porn doesn't correlate with people being more or less prone to having a stick up their ass, except literally.
shareI suppose it is Boomer bait to speak to a "less uptight 70s" (as I was there and experienced it), given that , at a minimum, generations continued to get laid in the 80s, 90s, 00s, and on to today.
But some things DID happen since then:
The 80s: AIDS. Suddenly the deal became "if you have sex, you can die from it." This had more to do with the male gay community, but the fear was flung towards ALL sex and both religious puritans and political puritans could take comfort in knowing that sex was real dangerous again. (Recall that the 60's had brought the pill and the 70s abortion so THAT danger had been reduced/eliminated.)
The 2010s: METOO. A socio/political emphasis on "MeToo" -- sexual harrassment and the risk of job loss or incarceration from accusations -- has created(evidently) an atmosphere where males are reticent to "hit on," or "court" or "flirt with, " females. Painting with a wide brush -- MOST relationships begin with the male flirting with the female and taking it from there(she responds...keep going; she rejects...stop.)
The 2010s: DESEXUALIZED MOVIES. Its hard to pinpoint when movies lost the sexuality of the 70's crop -- which came in the wake of the R and X rating being introduced in 1968. Modernly, all the sex has drifted straight to porn on the internet, or onlyfans, or "dating' apps. The movies simply cannot compete, and they rarely try anymore (50 Shades of Gray," a bit.) The movies were accused of "going infantile" or at least shifting to younger audiences in the Lucas/Spielberg era, and most of today's dominating Marvel movies may have fit men and women in skintight outfits, but sex is generally not in the equation.
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And yet, for all of the above, actual, real, non-uptight sex is still part of the real world. Women WILL accept flirting and courtship when/if they are interested. I know of one attractive younger woman in my circle who told me that she made her man keep having to win her... TO win her. He had to try hard she said, he had to prove his interest. And he did. And now they are married.
"Good riddance" to one aspect of the sex scenes of the 70s: there were a lot of rapes of women by men in that decade on screen, and one historic rape of a man by a man(Deliverance.) We seem to have moved away from "bad sex," but its too bad we lost the movies with "good sex.'
Sidebar: (and Network is an example.) The movies of the 70's with their sex scenes could be EXCELLENT date night fodder to get everybody in the mood. Network had that funny/sexy bit where Faye Dunaway practically bulldozes the older William Holden into sex at a rural motel and -- sure to her character's verbal promise -- she climaxes way too early and is ready to move on to work talk.
See that scene with a date -- or a longtime lover -- and it IS funny and worth thinking about and worth discussing....what's so great about wham bam thank you m'am sex where that's the WOMAN's prerogative?
Other 70s movies had "tasteful but erotic" sex scenes -- ranging from PG to R. Carnal Knowledge. The Way We Were(yep.) Don't Look Now. Rancho Deluxe. Three Days of the Condor. Marathon Man. North Dallas Forty. Great date films. Stretch it to the "romantic sex scene" in 1982's An Officer and a Gentleman and you've got a good picture of hot date night moviemaking.
I was in my twenties in the '70s. No doubt whatsoever, that time was far, far less uptight than today. As far as women's boobs were concerned, bras were sexier, made of sheerer material, and optional. Win, win, win.
shareFirst of all, roger1, I totally envy you! Not Boomer bait at all to speak to a "less uptight 70's." You experienced them and the decades that followed, so you are in a position to make the comparisons.
I would, however, like to clarify one point you made. You said "generations continued to get laid in the 80's, 90's, 00's, and on to today." You then CORRECTLY raise the AIDS crisis of the '80's and '90's. I submit - as a teenager of the '90's, that in the '90's, it wasn't quite as easy or common to "get laid." The school system in response to AIDS (and I'm sure the Religious Right) made me and my peers absolutely fear getting AIDS through heterosexual sex if we dared do it without a condom. This made it more arduous for young people to have sex because if you and/or your partner insisted on using condoms, it wasn't always so easy to use those damned things. So many of us opted for alternative sexual outlets (i.e., oral) where in decades past, we would have been having intercourse. (I have never heard of any accounts of either a man or woman getting HIV/AIDS from giving or receiving oral sex.) Of course, it was different if you were in a committed relationship. We could get tested and have sex all the time with or without a condom in a long term relationship.
But if you were single going on a random date to a movie (and they did have some sexy films back in the '90's - 2000's), you weren't necessarily going to get laid. 69-ing sure. But a lot of females drew the line when it came to sex. The exception was 1999's The Virgin Suicides. I took a first date to that flick and got laid afterwards.
First of all, roger1, I totally envy you! Not Boomer bait at all to speak to a "less uptight 70's." You experienced them and the decades that followed, so you are in a position to make the comparisons.
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Yes, I am. I am an older person contributing to these boards(I've never denied it, and I try to stick TO older movies with less youth traffic), but it there is one thing I have now learned from a life lived thus far it is this -- I may be old(er) right NOW, but I was YOUNGer back then. So I lived it as a younger person and watched things happen.
An amusing matter in my life right now is learning(quietly via gossip, etc) that certain younger people in my life have been "sneaking off and doing it" in various ways which, yeah, I did back then, and don't/can't do now and yeah -- my time is over on that, its their turn now. (Moreover, some of them are involved in a sexualized instagram system for which I have no use at all -- I've been told about "photo sharing.")
To see how the movies RADICALLY changed in the 70s, simply watch some of the "sexy" movies of the FIFTIES(like From Here to Eternity and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) and the SIXTIES(like Kurbrick's Lolita and "Tom Jones") -- how naughty then, but with much cut out for the screen.
One thing I witnessed in the 70s, and it was kind of sad -- husbands and wives at the parental level above my friends and I divoricing and "swinging." One the men actually said to some of us younger guys: "I almost missed that sexual revolution you guys got." He was ENVIOUS. He did something about it.
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The school system in response to AIDS (and I'm sure the Religious Right) made me and my peers absolutely fear getting AIDS through heterosexual sex if we dared do it without a condom. This made it more arduous for young people to have sex because if you and/or your partner insisted on using condoms, it wasn't always so easy to use those damned things. So many of us opted for alternative sexual outlets (i.e., oral) where in decades past, we would have been having intercourse
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Yeah, it was "going backwards." When the pill came along, condoms kind of got a bad rap as from "WWII and the fifties." And then we went back to condoms.
The exception was 1999's The Virgin Suicides. I took a first date to that flick and got laid afterwards.
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Heh. Well I rest my case. It didn't all stop in the 70s...
And I bolster my case: with the right date a sexy "regular studio movie" can work out real good for afterwards.
Basic Instinct was a hit in 1992. I didn't think the mystery plot was all that good, really. So why was it a hit? Well, we KNOW why, don't we?
Its director Paul Verhoeven said he believed that fearful people had stopped having sex and were watching sexy movies instead. Uh, if you say so...Paul!
Haha. Yes, my buddies and I had to sneak into Basic Instinct in 1992. If only that movie came out 5-7 years later I could have used it as a springboard on a date. I was too young and unsophisticated when that flick came out. But it did turn me on to Sharon Stone (as I'm sure it did my entire generation).
To your point about condoms going out of style after the pill, this is illustrated brilliantly in the movie Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977). William Atherton attempts to have intercourse with Diane Keaton with a condom. She laughs hysterically - she is so habituated to unprotected sex - and proceeds to blow up the condom like a balloon. Yes, she treated it as a '50's joke.
shareVery interesting about the dad you knew swinging in the '70's. I always wondered if that was more of a movie phenomenon or if it was really happening in everyday life. Or if it was limited to a certain narrow demographic (like artists in Marin County, CA, or dentists in New Jersey).
One of the most interesting lines I ever heard in a movie about this subject was from a real cheapie from 1974, Swinger Massacre (a.k.a. Inside Amy). In it, an extra who I think may have been Helene Terrie (the writer of Taboo (1980) and wife of Taboo director, Kirdy Stevens) said, "She liked it, so he didn't." She was referring to the notion that husbands dragged their wives to swinger's parties in the '70's, and it was all fun and games for the dudes until their wives 'got into it.' The idea was that these guys were so selfish and ignorant that the only way they could enjoy it was if their wives did not. Turnabout was NOT fair play and when the men saw their wives shagging all the other guys at the party they considered their spouse the 'slut of the orgy,' and were repulsed. A similar theme is explored in the adult film featuring Marilyn Chambers, Resurrection of Eve (1973).
The thing is - from what I've been able to research - most of the swing parties required couples. It was much harder - if not impossible - for a single guy to attend an orgy. So you had to be willing to share your partner if you were going to have any fun yourself. I can see how being willing to do that renders this a 'lifestyle' choice. I suppose you can go with a girlfriend, but it always struck me that a woman looking for a boyfriend in the '70's would not be the same type of person who would be interested in going to orgies. Perhaps it was a more organic thing what with the weed and other drugs rampant at the time coupled with the hippie, free love scene of the early '70's and disco of the mid-late '70's, maybe couples kind of 'fell into' orgies with the help of drugs and alcohol?
To your point about condoms going out of style after the pill, this is illustrated brilliantly in the movie Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977). William Atherton attempts to have intercourse with Diane Keaton with a condom. She laughs hysterically - she is so habituated to unprotected sex - and proceeds to blow up the condom like a balloon. Yes, she treated it as a '50's joke.
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I remember that scene. And that movie. Diane Keaton won the Best Actress Oscar in 1977 for Annie Hall -- where she's kind of a flibbergibbet noodge for a lot of the movie, quite funny and endearing, but she also "shocked the world" with Mr. Goodbar. Nudity, sex scenes, rough nasty atmosphere. I think she won for two movies. So did Best Actor Richard Dreyfuss that year -- officially for The Goodbye Girl, but he made Close Encounters the same year.
A joke line about using condoms I remember from that era was: "Its like taking a shower with a raincoat on."
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Haha. Yes, my buddies and I had to sneak into Basic Instinct in 1992. If only that movie came out 5-7 years later I could have used it as a springboard on a date. I was too young and unsophisticated when that flick came out. But it did turn me on to Sharon Stone (as I'm sure it did my entire generation).
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Yep. Ms. Stone got a certain type of stardom from that movie, but proceeded to "cover up" in most of her later roles. She said "I did it. I won't do it again. Buy the VHS." Actually she DID return to sex a few times, Sliver for one. And she turned in an Oscar perf for Scorsese in Casino.
The OTHER woman in that movie had a pretty hot sex scene with Michael Douglas, too. (And Douglas was commended -- and paid very well -- for willing to play a graphically sexual male character in a mainstream movie. Not all major male stars would agree to such scenes.)
This was a date night classic for couples "in the mood."
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Very interesting about the dad you knew swinging in the '70's. I always wondered if that was more of a movie phenomenon or if it was really happening in everyday life. Or if it was limited to a certain narrow demographic (like artists in Marin County, CA, or dentists in New Jersey).
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I think it was happening in everyday life...not widespread(a lot of couples stayed married, at least "for the kids") but I remember that dad figure saying that about his divorce and the sexual revolution. Movies had gone "R" and "X," Playboy was selling strongly(no VHS yet), it was "in the air." I also remember parents talking together with other couples about current sexual films -to flirt and be sexy with each other "for fun." No major affairs, necessarily. Who knows? I didn't really.
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The thing is - from what I've been able to research - most of the swing parties required couples. It was much harder - if not impossible - for a single guy to attend an orgy.
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My...this thread is going certain places. I guess I'll play it out.
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Perhaps it was a more organic thing what with the weed and other drugs rampant at the time coupled with the hippie, free love scene of the early '70's and disco of the mid-late '70's, maybe couples kind of 'fell into' orgies with the help of drugs and alcohol?
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I can't say I know from orgies and swinging. It was as I recall, simply a time when sex was considered loving, fun, and relatively guilt free. But of course, for everyone, emotion got in the way.
Back to Network: I read a book on the making of that movie, and Faye Dunaway was evidently a very tough and self-protective actress. She had her nude sex scene with Holden staged carefully so that "no nipples would show." Then she went to rushes and threw a temper tantrum: "There! I saw it! My nipple!" As I recall director Sidney Lumet countered that it was just part of the bedsheet. I can't remember if the scene was re-shot or not, but Dunaway was VERY protective of the shot. She had the power to be that way.
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One more point to make in this very private discussion -- heh. Which I offer to offer hope about the future.
I'm of a generation that has gotten "old," but it does not mean we are not sexual. As Arnold Schwarzenegger said, "its just different when you are older." But actually what has been more amazing to me is that the EMOTION of young love is still there when you are older -- if you are dating again, for instance. Infatuation, jealousy, all of it -- in one's mind, one is 15 again. Its a great feeling.
Of course, it is less athletic...
You totally see Faye Dunaway's nipples in that scene. They were very pointy in 1976. Faye Dunaway was the first actress I ever had a crush on. I had seen her before in things (i.e., Supergirl, Mommie Dearest), but the role that tipped the balance was a decidedly obscure one: Jane Wilkninson in Agatha Christie's Thirteen at Dinner (1985). It was a British made-for-TV movie that I saw in 1990. I then watched every film I could get my hands on that featured Faye Dunaway - and that wasn't easy before the internet. From what I recall, I never saw any Faye Dunaway nudity before or after Network. That was the one flick where we saw any of her charms. And I thought she looked great both in and out of clothes playing Diana Christiansen.
shareWell, she was "nude but not nude" in Bonnie and Clyde, but...technically, not there.
I'll leave to the experts how much Ms. Dunaway shows in Network.
Reminds me of a famous story about Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho:
Some censors watching the shower scene of Janet Leigh being attacked saw "nudity" in the flash-cut scene. Hitchcock said he would take the nudity out and re-submit the footage to the censors.
He resubmitted but took nothing out. The censors passed it this time.
And there IS nudity in the shower scene...forbidden in 1960 when Psycho was released, but Hitch got it in there: in a close up on the dying Janet Leigh's hand reaching out to grip the shower curtain-- two nipples in the slightly out of focus background.
Perhaps Faye Dunway, too was told "we took out the nudity and also it was just a sheet edge."