Top 10 Cinematic Seductions

By James Oliver

Cinema has always had trouble depicting s-e-x. Until very recently, filmmakers were tyrannised by the blue pencil of the censors, which compelled them to find more oblique ways of illustrating the pleasures of the flesh. The old codes of restraint obliged them to find more imaginative ways of depicting desire.

These days, of course, anything goes. But funnily enough, the new freedom has paradoxically made films less enticing. Let's be honest: the erotic tension of something like The Scarlet Empress remains beguiling in its eighth decade while the full-frontal bumping and grinding of the thoroughly explicit 9 Songs already looks rather dull.

This list, then, is a celebration of cinematic seduction, suggestion and sensuality; rest assured, all the clips are safe for work (as if anyone would sully the internet with mucky videos. The very idea!). Enjoy...

10. The Scarlet Empress
No list such as this would be complete without an entry from Josef Von Sternberg, cinema's greatest voluptuary; this sequence from The Scarlet Empress illustrates his genius. On the surface, there's nothing to trouble the newly inaugurated censors behind Hollywood's Production Code but gosh! Read between the lines and it's absolutely filthy.

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9. Mississippi Mermaid
You'd expect the French to be good at seduction and so it proves. Here are two of the greatest art-house sex symbols – that's Jean-Paul Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve – getting it on in François Truffaut's intriguing neo-noir masterpiece.

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8. The Piano
This list is shamefully light on female perspectives but it's impossible to ignore Jane Campion's work. The Piano is seen by many as the most erotic film of recent times, a tale of repression and forbidden passion that stands as a much-needed counterweight to the depressingly adolescent vision of sexuality peddled by most movies of the past twenty years.

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7. Un Chant d'Amour
Jean Genet was a jailbird turned writer who only dabbled in filmmaking. Still, Chant d'Amour is widely regarded a masterpiece, a movie too good just to be ghettoised as a 'gay' film. This sequence stands as one of the most potent on-screen expressions of desire, of any stripe.

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6. Madeleine (Restored)
David Lean was one of cinema's greatest romantics; we might have picked from Brief Encounter, The Passionate Friends, Doctor Zhivago or the underrated Ryan's Daughter. But this Highland fling from his least known film is too good to pass up: Lean somehow manages to make Scottish country dancing seem as sexually charged as the tango.

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5. Belle de Jour (40th Anniversary Edition)
No director did more than Luis Bunuel to map the unconscious and investigate our (barely) hidden desires. Belle De Jour find Catherine Deneuve (yup, her again) as a bored bourgeois housewife exploring her fantasies. This is only the beginning...

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4. Mulholland Drive
There are saucier scenes in Mulholland Drive but nothing so startling; until now, Betty (Naomi Watts) has been a perky, midwest Girl Scout. Then, at her first acting audition, she turns into... well, see for yourself.

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3. Barry Lyndon
Stanley Kubrick was often accused of being a cold filmmaker, a remote clinician with no interest in human passions. He made a glorious exception with Barry Lyndon, surely his masterpiece. This slow, stately seduction is the centrepiece of this remarkable film, and seethes with barely concealed desire.

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2. Rear Window
She walks in beauty, like the night... Hitchcock spent much of his fifty year career crafting exquisitely erotic moments; the dreamlike introduction of Princess Grace in Rear Window might be the most perfect.

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1. The Lady Eve
What is it they say about laughter being the best aphrodisiac...? The Lady Eve is one of the sexiest comedies ever to slink out of the studios, with woman-of-the-world Barbara Stanwyck (at her most irresistible) in pursuit of innocent Henry Fonda. As this clip shows, the poor fella doesn't stand a chance.

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NB. We've limited ourselves to choosing from titles currently available in the UK

What did you think of the selection? Let us know below

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