Another rare shot of a famous woman naked in the fifties
As I recall there was always an exception for Sweden. I can remember sitting through an early Bergman film called Summer With Monika just to see a brief glimpse of forbidden flesh from Harriet Andersson. I was a freshman in college at the time, and the screening was co-ed, so I had to pretend that I appreciated the depth and artistry of the film. By that time (1966), Bergman’s genius was fully established, so nobody was dumb enough to say they came for the tits, at least not when the females were in the room. The truth was that the film is utterly boring, and when the guys discussed it in the dorms later, we all admitted (1) we only watched it because we heard about the nudity, and (2) we hated the movie itself. And we were right to hate it. I like, even love, many later Bergman films, but Summer With Monika is utterly soporific, and has almost nothing to recommend it other than its rare 1953 nudity.
Anyone remember I Am Curious, Yellow and I Am Curious, Blue from the mid to late 60s? Those Swedish films were notorious not only for their uninhibited flesh by contemporary standards (a woman kissing an unaroused penis, e.g.), but also for the fact that such luminaries as Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Martin Luther King, Jr. were incorporated into the plot. (Neither knew he would appear in a controversial film which many considered to be porn at the time. IACY was famously “banned in Boston,” a fact which became a marketing tool when applied to us perverts in New York!) The film was important and successful enough that it inspired articles in the news magazines, and even a Roger Ebert review. He hilariously took a total dump on it and its pretensions
That’s Swedish cinema. As for Sweden itself …
One summer when I was living in Norway, my son and I found ourselves at a beach in Sweden. We started playing an impromptu baseball game on the beach with a whiffle ball and plastic bat from my car, just to pass the time, and soon were joined by several topless teenage girls who asked us to teach them about baseball. We soon had a complicated 7-on-7 game going with about a dozen curious girls wearing only their bikini bottoms. My son’s eyes were as big as saucers. He had seen some women sunbathing in Norway, but had never seen so many topless young women just romping around in a sporting activity.
To tell the truth, neither had I. I would have been delighted if they had been in their twenties, by my own sense of societal taboos really kept me from enjoying the experience with girls who were in the 14-15 age range. I spent most of my time feeling guilty and trying not to look, even though they obviously didn’t care. I kept thinking about the fact that if somebody filmed us, I would be considered a pervert for watching the movie in The USA, let alone for starring in it!
So it goes.
Lesson for today: the guilt deeply instilled by your own upbringing is difficult, almost impossible, to overcome.
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