Lady Gaga and Adam Driver give us animal grunting in House of Gucci and Agathe Rousselle mates with a car in Titane – but that’s tame compared with some of the sexual themes cinema has found to explore
In 1933, the Austrian star Hedy Lamarr (who also had a remarkable parallel career as an inventor) appeared in the Czech erotic drama Ecstasy playing Eva, who gave us the first female orgasm in movie history. This is simply an extended closeup on her face, after her lover’s head has disappeared from the bottom of the frame, as she abandons herself to pleasure and rapture. There were some telling cutaways – to her hand, fondling some material, and also one of her pearl necklace dropping to the floor. Afterwards, Eva languorously smokes a cigarette, doing her bit to establish one of cinema’s great post-coital tropes.
