Voyeur nation

'We don't normally allow scenes of non-simulated sex in an 18-certificate film, unless they can be justified by the context of the film.' That's the official line from the British Board of Film Classification on the latest film to ignite the debate on celluloid sex - 9 Songs (on general release from Friday). A tale of a loving relationship it may be, but it's also rude, putting real sex and ejaculation on to the screen.

All right, the porn industry's being doing it for the best part of a century. But the boundaries of good taste in the world of regular movies have moved inexorably, if in a somewhat stuttered way, towards 9 Songs.

It started slowly. In 1895's The Kiss, audiences were appalled to witness the first screen smooch between May Irwin and John C Rice - and the Catholic church denounced it as pornographic. By 1953, the Church was objecting to Otto Preminger's racy farce, The Moon Is Blue, and its use of the banned words virgin, seduce, pregnant and mistress.

This film was released without complying with the Hays Code. Introduced in 1934, it stipulated that US movies be approved by the Motion Picture Producers And Distributors Of America before release. Before the code, filmmakers promised - but never delivered - sex. From the original Cleopatra, Theda Bara, to Marlene Dietrich and Mae West, stars knew that sex sold and they flirted with the boundaries of acceptability. Hedy Lamarr went a step further with her nude scene in Czech picture Ecstasy (1933), which became the first film to be denied entry at American customs.

Filmmakers were forced to become more inventive and filled the screens with innuendo from the mid to late 1930s. This was the age when 'social club' was code for brothel, 'nightclub hostess' meant prostitute and 'psychological consultants' dealt with unwanted pregnancies.

The social sea change of the 1960s was mirrored in cinema. In the early part of the decade, daft British naturist docudramas such as Take Off Your Clothes And Live (1963) gave way to more explicit films such as If... and Blow Up (1966, see box).

Nevertheless, erections and actual intercourse in Western films were still some way off. Not so in the Far East, however. Japan's Nagisa Oshima's Ai No Corrida (In The Realm Of The Senses, 1976), the true tale of a couple's self-destructive relationship, culminates in the dismembering of a penis.

The floodgates opened when America's Hays Code was scrapped in 1967. X-rated films such as Midnight Cowboy won Oscars and graphic female and male rape scenes made their debuts in Straw Dogs and Deliverance (1971 and 1972).

By this stage, the lesser-spotted male member had appeared in Pasolini's Theorem and the DH Lawrence adaptation, Women In Love, wherein Alan Bates and Oliver Reed wrestle naked by a roaring fire. Lawrence wasn't the only author to ruffle feathers after his death. The 1967 adaptation of James Joyce's Ulysses included the first film use of the word 'f***'.

Since then, audiences have seen a list of 'firsts', although the debate rages over every one. Each new risquè film comes trumpeted as the most sexually explicit... in the world... ever. After all, nothing guarantees bums on seats like column inches. And unlike the act itself, it's all about coming first.