Cinema’s “ultimate sexual scene”, according to Alfred Hitchcock: “I’ve done that”
In more ways than one, nobody would call Alfred Hitchcock the sexiest director in cinema history. The central pairings in his films frequently created plenty of sparks, sure, but as a filmmaker, he wasn’t the most salacious, suggestive, or titillating.
There’s a reason for that; he hated sex scenes. Whenever his characters were required to get down to the nitty-gritty, the ‘Master of Suspense’ would find a way around it. He found movies that incorporated fictional fornication for the sake of it to be distasteful, and even when it was part of his pictures, it was always suggestive as opposed to explicit.
That’s ironic in itself, since he was known for being a bit of a lecherous creep. Hitchcock openly viewed women as being inferior to men, not just in the movie business, and he had no issues sabotaging careers when his leading ladies didn’t bend to his every whim, never mind his borderline obsession with Grace Kelly.
With that in mind, an auteur who openly abhorred graphic acts of copulation on the silver screen, who was also an oxymoronic combination of prude and prying and wouldn’t dream of capturing the beast with two backs on camera, calling himself the architect of cinema’s definitive sex scene doesn’t appear to make a great deal of sense.
He was adamant, though, explaining to The New York Times in 1969 that he was the randiest megaphone-wielding bugger of them all. “I’ve never had much nudity in my films,” he accurately observed. “Even in Topaz, when the Frenchman goes to bed with his mistress, I merely suggest that they are nude, because you have to leave something to the audience’s imagination.”
At the time, the ‘New Hollywood’ movement was waiting to burst into life, kicking down countless boundaries, shattering taboos, and pushing cinema in bold, brave, and uncharted new directions. As far as Hitchcock was concerned, they could release a porn movie in cinemas, which they did eventually, and it still wouldn’t be as knee-trembling as his own work.
“As for all the sex these days, all the ‘stag films’ I call them, parading about as feature films, what are we all waiting for?” he asked. “Everyone’s waiting for the one great scene on a super-sized Cinerama screen of the ultimate sexual scene where a man’s instrument enters a woman’s vagina.” Were they, Alfred? Were they really? Even if they were, he said he’d already beaten them to the punch.
“Well, I’ve done that,” he declared. “I did it long ago. In North by Northwest, at the end, I have Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in the same train berth, and then, in the very next scene, which is also the last scene of the film, I have the long train entering a dark tunnel.” Everyone understood the visual gag, but calling it the “ultimate sexual scene” that’s ever been shot feels like a stretch.
Then again, the suggestion is often more powerful than getting up close and personal, but Hitchcock may have changed his mind a few years later, when the so-called ‘Golden Age of Porn’ saw unfiltered skin flicks being granted wide releases in multiplexes across the country.
