A cinematic medium that rules over its its own illicit world of voyeuristic abundance, the booming industry of pornographic films is one that has continued to flourish despite the notoriously illegal premises on which it stands. With a century old ‘lineage’ that which manifests substantially its established and continuing tradition, this visual display of content centred around the arousing nature of erotica came into being during the later part of the 1800s and took off rather prominently in the early 20th century, having continued since, only expanding its scope and methodology of operation to today span a worldwide business that commands huge viewership in the international market.
The production of pornographic films, much like all other films, was made possible after the invention of the motion picture technology in the closing decade of the 19th century. Immediately thereafter, a 7 minute French film, the 1899 Le Coucher de la Mariée already emerged as the first ever or at least the earliest surviving erotic film to have been made. Even in the face of distinctions that are sought to be drawn between erotic films and the supposedly more explicit pornographic ones, the two genres are by and large overlapping extensions of each other and dwells in their difference only as far as a subjective perception of them might allow. Whatever that might be, the first known such explicitly sexual film was directed as early as in 1896 by Lear, whose real name was Albert Kirchner, and who along with fellow French filmmaker Eugene Pirou are recognised as the pioneers of this wholly risque genre of filmography.
But beyond the almost lost entrails of the Le Coucher de la Mariée, that which survives just two minutes of its seven minute long duration during which time no explicit nudity was showcased, the most significant of the earliest pornographic motion pictures has to be the 1907 Argentine film El Satario alongside its French contemporary A L’Ecu d’Or ou la bonne auberge that was released in 1908. However, given the ambiguity that surrounds the production of El Satario that which has been also dated to Cuba of the 1930s by some, it is possible that the French identity manifests as more assertive a first reference to modern day pornographic films.
Despite the French prominence though, the pornographic film industry had been in existence in other countries as well, in some form or the other since at least the early 1900s. In Austria for instance, such sexually explicit films were screened at certain men-only theatre nights called Herrenabende, depicting fully nude young women in such productions that were churned out under the Saturn Film production company as a ‘competition’ to the French stuff that were the only ones available at that time. Interestingly though, the owner of the company Johann Schwarzer who turned to this quick way of making money by putting into use his knowledge as a photographer, insisted on ‘marketing’ the 52 films produced under the Saturn Film banner from 1906 to 1911 as erotica and not as pornography, since it alluded to only what is today understood as the softcore explorations of the genre. However, even as the most widely distributed and popular adult films made in the first decade of the 20th century, these finer quality productions by Schwarzer do not exist in the present day since all of them were destroyed by authorities when they dissolved the film company in 1911. There though have resurfaced some of the prints of these films, retrieved from private collections and that which today have been archived throughout Europe. In fact, four of Schwarzer’s works viz Das Sandbad (1906), Baden Verboten (1906), Das Eitle Stubenmädchen (1908) and Beim Fotografen (1908) has been included by Filmarchiv Austria in the Europa Film Treasures site.
Parallel to this growing universe of filmy expressions that lingered somewhere along the lines of the pornographic had been the emergence of a related such sub domain of cinematographic explorations. Referred to collectively as stag films, or more popularly blue films, these types of production continued unabated, albeit in secret, during the first two thirds of the 20th century as short, silent movies that featured explicitly sexual content. Often screened for all- male audiences, like at the brothels in Europe or at adult movie theaters, stag films were rampantly produced throughout the first half of the 1900s but bean experiencing a decline since the 1950s due to factors like the emergence of the sexual revolution as well as the introduction of newer technology into the world of film making, phasing out therefore what had been considered a ‘primitive form of cinema’. It was indeed during this period of popularity of stag films that films like El Satario as well as other early hardcore pornographic depictions including the 1910 German release Am Abend and the 1915 American production A Free Ride, also known as A Grass Sandwich were produced. The 1910s saw also the proliferation of a number of American films depicting female nudity asserting therefore the really global prevalence of pornography in cinema by that time. Beyond such evidence in concrete manifestation, there also perhaps had prevailed a similar such industry in the brothels of Buenos Aires and other South American cities by the turn of the 20th century, where it probably had first sprung up and spreading only thereon from to Europe, though real reels of such even earlier pornographic movies do not exist today at all in the world.
Through the intervening decades till at least the 1960s, the evolution of pornographic cinema remained more or less static, even as the introduction of new technology and the gradual development of a more open mindset of society meant that such sexually dominant films persisted and continued to assert their hold on the greater world populace. Among the prominent producers of that time had been Englishman Harrison Marks who started out as a glamour photographer before taking the filmmaking route. As a director of nudist and pornographic films, Marks went about producing soft core pornography under the ‘glamour’ euphemism that which referred to his ventures of nude photography, emerging first as part of his own magazine launches before going on to make in 1958 what were called ‘glamour home movies’, short films of his models undressing and posing nude. It indeed had been Marks who ushered in the trend of British nudist films of the 1960s which however were non sexual in nature and therefore did not count as pornography.
Another significant pornographer who emerged on the scene with the dawn of the 1960s was Italian filmmaker Lasse Braun, who sought ‘inspiration’ in the historical and mythical depiction of sexuality, even as a translation of his doctoral thesis into Danish paved the path for the legalisation of pornography in Denmark in 1969, the first country to do so. A pioneer in quality color productions, Braun however was unlike other makers of pornographic films who went about with the intention of arousing the sexual tendencies of men solely for financial gain. Even with the production of a number of hard core pornographic films under his name, Braun in fact got so disappointed with the commercial approach to the genre that he forfeited altogether his pursuit of the same. The first European director to have been inducted in the AVN Hall of Fame by Adult Video News, Braun also was stellar in his cinematic ventures with three of his films even shown at the Cannes Film Festival.
The 1960s saw also the setting in of more tolerance for even explicitly pornographic cinema in more countries around the world as in the Netherlands even as Sweden and America also allowed for the public screening of such films that were of adult nature. The Adult Film Association of America was formed in 1969, ushering in also a 15 year period referred to as the Golden Age of Porn in commercial American pornography but not restricted to the expanse of the United States. Blue Movie by Andy Warhold released in June 1969 kickstarted this ‘liberating’ time in pornography history, becoming the first adult erotic film depicting explicit sex to receive wide theatrical release in the country. But only a few years later, a Supreme Court decision largely closed America to the exhibition of adult erotic films, even going on as far as to banning them. Despite this development in 1973, the Golden Age of Porn went on to extend by more than a decade till 1984 when the rise of home video and the subsequent dawn of the internet age made public pursuit of pornography no longer the only means of accessing this genre of films. Nevertheless still, the year 1987 saw the legalization of hardcore pornography in the States as the de facto result of a certain legal case.
Ever since then, from the 1990s to be precise and continuing well into the 21st century, pornographic films have continued to grow in popularity, both in their mass acceptance and accessibility manifesting today as a billion dollar business, even as it continues to oscillate still between the perplexing, highly subjective notions of legality and illegality.
