So far, 2015’s been all about “American Sniper,” but expect the conversation to shift from the complications of war to, ahem, complicated varieties of love in the next few days, as we inch closer to the release of “Fifty Shades Of Grey,” director Sam Taylor-Johnson’s hotly-anticipated adaptation of the biggest literary phenomenon (that description is applied generously) of the last few years.
If you’ve only just emerged from an asphyxi-wank induced coma, E.L. James’ book details the relationship between virginal naif Anastasia Steele (played by Dakota Johnson in the film) and pervy-but-handsome billionaire Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan), who introduces her to the eye-opening world of bondage, submissive/dominant relationships and much more.
However, it’s far from the first film break out the handcuffs, so we’ve decided to delve into cinema history to look at eleven movies that have focused on kink and BDSM. Take a look below, and let us know your own favorites in the comments.
“Last Tango In Paris” (1972)
Once filmmakers were free to portray sexuality more openly from the 1960s onwards, it took a little while for kink to appear in cinemas frequented by audiences other than the raincoat crowd, though films like Mario Bava‘s “The Whip & The Body” and Luis Bunuel‘s “Belle De Jour” included some elements as such. But it was Bernardo Bertolucci‘s “Last Tango In Paris,” a film that in its time was talked about easily as much as “Fifty Shades Of Grey” and which had a seismic impact on mainstream culture, that truly brought BDSM culture to the big screen. Basd on the Italian director’s own sexual fantasies, it focuses on the tumultous union between American widower Paul (Marlon Brando) and young Parisian Jeanne (Maria Schneider), in a deliberately anonymous sexual relationship with few limits in an empty apartment. The film became most famous for the scene in which Paul sodomizes Jeanne with a stick of butter, but it’s Bertolucci’s investigation of a relationship driven by degradation that feels groundbreaking now: Paul iss wallowing in grief after the suicide of his wife, and inflicts his pain on Jeanne, and yet somehow she can’t keep away. The film was banned in some countries, edited severely in others, a U.S. theater showing the film was threatened with bombing, and Bertolucci was convincted of obscenity charges in Italy, but it was also critically lauded, and received Oscar nominations for Best Director and Actor. The film’s raw pain lingers over forty years on.
“The Bitter Tears Of Petra Von Kant” (1972)
Some of the films listed here are obvious precursors to “Fifty Shades Of Grey,” but “The Bitter Tears Of Petra Von Kant” obviously shares DNA with the recently released “The Duke Of Burgundy” (which is discussed down the list). Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and based on his own heavily autobiographical play (a veiled version of the triangular relationship between the director, his lover Günther Kaufmann and his assistant/composer Peer Raben), ‘Bitter Tears’ follows the titular fashion designer (Margit Cartensen) as she falls deeply in love with the beautiful Karin (Hanna Schygulla) while tormenting her devoted assistant Marlene (Irm Hermann). A unashamedly melodramatic nod to Fassbinder’s beloved Douglas Sirk and “All About Eve” (that film’s director Joseph Mankiewicz gets a name check at one point), the film doesn’t have that much in the way of whips and chains but is more effective than most at depicting the raw, brutal power dynamics of a sub/dom relationship, thanks in part to claustrophobic staging from the director and future Scorsese DP Michael Ballhaus. Not to mention Cartensen’s fearless turn and Hermann show-stealing, virtually silent performance.
“The Night Porter” (1974)
If the amount of controversy a BDSM movie attracts after release is a litmus test determining how transgressive it is, Liliana Cavani’s 1974 psychosexual fascist noir drama “The Night Porter” passes without a hitch but with plenty of bruises. The first in a trilogy looking back into a contentious German past so as to better understand its human effects on the present (“Beyond Good and Evil” and “The Berlin Affair” would follow), “The Night Porter” is the film Cavani will forever be remembered for. The story is set in 1950s Vienna and rekindles the flames of a sadomasochistic passion that developed between an SS Nazi officer (Dirk Bogarde) and a concentration camp survivor (Charlotte Rampling) during World War II. Banned in Italy, the film infuriated Roger Ebert (he gave it one star and called it “despicable”) and posed a kind of cultural threat in the ’70s, re-opening wounds that barely begun to heal. Whether Cavani veils fascism in a twisted romantic light or is merely dabbling in allegory is neither here nor there when talking about how downright disturbing and ceaselessly cinematic her scenes of mental and physical torture are. Bogarde and Rampling turn in fantastic performances that are equal parts subtle and hysterical, and their complex hate/love for one another is masked by an omnipresent atmosphere of European high culture (operas, lavish hotels, high-end amenities, etc.), widening the possibilities of interpretation. With sinister flashbacks, painstakingly involved composition and claustrophobic scenes of the present, Cavani utilizes BDSM in provocative ways, smearing the psychological makeup of people stuck in the past with tremendous results.