1960s Sex Education: Masturbation & Penis size

A Kiss in the Tunnel (1899)

By 1899, early films were developing simple narratives. One of the first tells the story of a stolen kiss. It seems impossible that the filmmakers and audiences of the time were conscious of the sexual symbolism of the train and the tunnel, but that doesn't mean it's not an issue in the film.
This may be one of the very first instances of the use of the basic language of cinema--cuts and editing--to reinforce the sexual inflection of the narrative.

Sandow

Like many other early films, this one records a vaudeville performance. Eugen Sandow introduced the US to body-building; he was the first man to entertain simply by displaying his body. It's interesting to consider how contemporary audiences reacted to this show.

Men Dancing - Dickson Experimental Sound Film (1894)

You wanna talk about homosociality?
Many of the early American films show only men because they were made in Edison's studio as demonstrations of the capacity to display motion, and the staffs were almost all male.

The May-Irwin Kiss (Edison, 1896)

One of the very first images circulated in American motion pictures recreates a celebrated and shocking moment in a contemporary comedy: a kiss.

Lady from Shanghai

The celebrated hall of mirrors sequence at the end of The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947) is one of the great visual emblems of film noir. The duplicity becomes so intense that it calls into question the stability of identity; passion leads to death because it disintegrates personality, leading the lover to project and introject the beloved to the point of annihilation. Killing you is killing myself . . .

Touch of Evil (1958) - Opening Scene

Orson Welles' Touch of Evil opens with a famous 3-minute tracking shot, illustrating the power of a long, continuous take. The fluid camera movement here inspired many imitations. It's also an unusually dark film noir, with suggestions of sexual torture.