Pornographic films (colloquially porn films, pornos, porn), sex films, erotic films, adult films, blue films, sexually explicit films, or 18+ films are films that represent sexually explicit subject matter in order to arouse, fascinate, or satisfy the viewer. Pornographic films represent sexual fantasies and usually include erotically stimulating material such as nudity or fetishes (softcore) and sexual intercourse (hardcore). A distinction is sometimes made between "erotic" and "pornographic" films on the basis that the latter category contains more explicit sexuality, and focuses more on arousal than storytelling; the distinction is highly subjective.
Pornographic films are produced and distributed on a variety of media, depending on the demand and technology available, including traditional film stock footage in various formats, home video, DVDs, mobile devices, Internet pornography, Internet download, or cable TV, in addition to other media. Pornography is often sold or rented on DVD; shown through Internet streaming, specialty channels and pay-per-view on cable and satellite; and viewed in rapidly disappearing adult movie theater. Often due to broadcast or print censorship commissions, general public opinion, public decency laws, or religious pressure groups, overly sexualized content is generally not permitted in mainstream media or on free-to-air television.
Films with risqué content have been produced since the invention of motion pictures in the 1880s. Production of such films was profitable, and a number of producers specialized in their production. Various groups within society considered such depictions immoral, labeled them "pornographic", and attempted to have them suppressed under other obscenity laws, with varying degrees of success. Such films continued to be produced, and could initially only be distributed by underground channels. Because the viewing of such films carried a social stigma, they were viewed at brothels, adult movie theaters, bachelor parties, home, private clubs, and night cinemas.
In the 1970s, during the Golden Age of Porn, pornographic films were semi-legitimized, to the point where actors not known for appearances in such productions would be cast members (though rarely participating in the explicit scenes);Two examples are Cameron Mitchell in Dixie Ray, Hollywood Star and comedian Richard Belzer in Cafe Flesh. by the 1980s, pornography on home video achieved wider distribution. The rise of the Internet in the late 1990s and early 2000s changed the way pornographic films were distributed, complicating censorship regimes around the world and legal prosecutions of "obscenity".
Classification Pornographic films are typically categorized as either softcore or hardcore pornography. In general, softcore pornography is pornography that does not depict explicit sexual activity, sexual penetration or extreme fetishism. It generally contains nudity or partial nudity in sexually suggestive situations. Hardcore pornography is pornography that depicts penetration or extreme fetish acts, or both. It contains graphic sexual activity and visible penetration. A pornographic work is characterized as hardcore if it has any hardcore content.
Pornographic films are generally classified into subgenres which describe the underlying theme or sexual fantasy which the film and actors attempt to create. Subgenres can also be classified into the characteristics of the performers or the type of sexual activity on which it concentrates and not necessarily on the market to which each subgenre appeals. The subgenres usually conform to certain conventions, and each may appeal to a particular audience.
History
Early years: before 1920
Production of erotic films commenced almost immediately after the invention of the motion picture. Two of the earliest pioneers were Frenchmen Eugène Pirou and Albert Kirchner. Kirchner, under the name "Léar", directed the earliest surviving risqué film for Pirou. The 3-minute 1896 film had performing a bedroom striptease.Richard Abel, Encyclopedia of early cinema , Taylor & Francis, 2005, , p.518 Other French filmmakers also considered that profits could be made from this type of risqué films, showing women disrobing.
In the year 1896, The May Irwin Kiss contained the first kiss on film. It was a 47-second film loop, with a close-up of a nuzzling couple followed by a short peck on the lips ("the mysteries of the kiss revealed"). The kissing scene was denounced as shocking and obscene to early moviegoers and caused the Roman Catholic Church to call for censorship and moral reform, because kissing in public at the time could lead to prosecution. Perhaps in defiance and "to spice up a film", this was followed by many kiss imitators, including The Kiss in the Tunnel (1899) and The Kiss (1900). A tableau vivant style was used in short film (1901)Produced by Frederick S. Armitage for the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company. featuring an unnamed long-haired young model wearing a flesh-colored body stocking in a direct frontal pose that provides a provocative view of the female body. The pose is in the style of Botticelli's The Birth of Venus.
In Austria, cinemas organised men-only nights (called ) at which adult films were shown. Johann Schwarzer formed his Saturn-Film production company which between 1906 and 1911 produced 52 erotic productions, each of which contained young local women fully nude, to be shown at those screenings. Before Schwarzer's productions, erotic films were provided by the Pathé brothers from French produced sources. In 1911, Saturn was dissolved by the censorship authorities, which destroyed all the films they could find,Michael Achenbach, Paolo Caneppele, Ernst Kieninger: Projektionen der Sehnsucht: Saturn, die erotischen Anfänge der österreichischen Kinematografie. Filmarchiv Austria, Wien 2000, . though some have since resurfaced from private collections. There were a number of American films in the 1910s which featured female nudity.https://www.imdb.com/list/ls045401746
At the beginning of the 20th century, Argentina may have been the first center of pornographic film production in the world. It is considered that the porn film was born in France practically at the same time as the cinematographic medium, but it was in Buenos Aires where the clandestine production of these films, known as stag films or smokers, was capitalized. Around 1905, Pathé and Gaumont moved the production of porn to Argentina to avoid censorship by the French government. These films were not intended for local or popular consumption, but were "sophisticated entertainment for the enjoyment of the well-to-do class of [Europe]." Writing about the origins of underground cinema, Arthur Knight and Hollis Alpert explain that hardcore films were shipped by boat from Argentina to private buyers, mostly in France and England, but also in more distant places such as Russia and the Balkans. In Black and White and Blue (2008), one of the most scholarly attempts to document the origins of the clandestine 'stag film' trade, Dave Thompson recounts ample evidence that such an industry first had sprung up in the brothels of Buenos Aires and other South American cities by the turn of the 20th century, and then quickly spread through Central Europe over the following few years. In his biography of Eugene O'Neill, Louis Sheaffer recounts that the playwright traveled to Buenos Aires in the 1900s and was a frequent visitor to the pornographic cinemas in the Barracas neighborhood. The Argentine film El Sartorio (also known as El Satario) is perhaps the oldest known pornographic film, a theory held by several authors. Filmed between 1907 and 1912 on the riverside of Quilmes or Rosario, the film depicts six nude nymphs who are surprised by a satyr or faun, who captures one of them and then has sex in a variety of positions, including the 69. El Sartorio is held currently in the Kinsey Institute's film archive, the largest collection of stag films in the world.
Because Pirou is nearly unknown as a pornographic filmmaker, credit is often given to other films for being the first. According to Patrick Robertson's Film Facts, "the earliest pornographic motion picture which can definitely be dated is " made in France in 1908. The plot depicts a weary soldier who has a tryst with a servant girl at an inn. He also notes that "the oldest surviving pornographic films are contained in America's Kinsey Collection. One film demonstrates how early pornographic conventions were established. The German film (1910) is a ten-minute film which begins with a woman masturbating alone in her bedroom, and progresses to scenes of her with a man in the missionary position, fellatio, and penile anal penetration."
1920s–1940s suppression
Pornographic movies were widespread in the silent movie era of the 1920s, and were often shown in brothels. Soon illegal, stag films, or blue films, as they were called, were produced underground by amateurs for many years starting in the 1940s. Processing the film took considerable time and resources, with people using their bathtubs to wash the film when processing facilities (often tied to organized crime) were unavailable. The films were then circulated privately or by traveling salesmen, but anyone caught viewing or possessing them risked a prison sentence.
1950s: home movies The post-war era saw technological developments that further stimulated the growth of a mass market and amateur film-making, particularly the introduction of the 8 mm and super-8 film gauges, popular for the home movie market.
Entrepreneurs emerged to meet the demand. In Britain, in the 1950s, Harrison Marks produced films which were considered risqué, and which today would be described as "soft core". In 1958, as an offshoot of his magazines, Marks began making short films for the 8mm market of his models undressing and posing topless, popularly known as "glamour home movies". To Marks, the term "glamour" was a euphemism for nude modeling/photography.
1960s: Europe and United States
Starting in 1961, Lasse Braun was a pioneer in quality colour productions that were, in the early days, distributed by making use of his father's diplomatic privileges. Braun was able to accumulate funds for his lavish productions from the profit gained with so-called loops, ten-minute hardcore movies which he sold to Reuben Sturman, who distributed them to 60,000 American peep show booths.Eric Schlosser, Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market (Houghton Mifflin Books, 2004), p. 143. Braun was always on the move, and made his hardcore movies in a number of countries, including Spain, France, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands.
In December 1960, American female director Doris Wishman began producing a series of eight pornographic films, or nudist films without sex scenes, including Hideout in the Sun (1960), Nude on the Moon (1961) and Diary of a Nudist (1961). She also produced a series of sexploitation films.
In the 1960s, social and judicial attitudes towards the explicit depiction of sexuality began to change. For example, Swedish film I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967) included numerous frank nude scenes and simulated sexual intercourse. In one particularly controversial scene, Lena kisses her lover's flaccid penis. The film was exhibited in mainstream cinemas, but in 1969 it was banned in Massachusetts allegedly for being pornographic. The ban was challenged in the courts, with the Supreme Court of the United States ultimately declaring that the film was not obscene,Byrne v. Karalexis, 396 U.S. 976 (1969) and 401 U.S. 216 (1971) paving the way for other sexually explicit films. Another Swedish film Language of Love (1969) was also sexually explicit, but was framed as a quasi-documentary sex educational film, which made its legal status uncertain though controversial.