Best villain to best sex scene: Eight classic movies
7 July 2022
Director Sam Taylor-Johnson selects her favourite films in categories including Movie Villain, Sex Scene, Production Design and Film Score. The film director's 'best ever' list includes One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Don't Look Now, The Piano, Beau Travail, The Talented Mr Ripley and Grand Budapest Hotel.
Life Cinematic on 成人快手 Four explores the art of film-making in a completely new way, featuring an interview with a renowned film-maker alongside a mix of classic clips that have influenced them. Sam Taylor-Johnson's fascinating discussion with Edith Bowman is available to watch now on iPlayer.
In categories including Screenplay, Sex Scene, Production Design and Dancing Scene, Taylor-Johnson's choices range from classics such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Don't Look Now to modern blockbusters, including The Talented Mr Ripley and Brokeback Mountain, to unconventional French masterpiece Beau Travail.
It鈥檚 a beautiful love story of two people surviving the most traumatic tragedy.
Read on to find out which performances Sam picked in the Sex Scene category... watch the episode to explore the individual films further, through breakdowns of classic scenes and in-depth insights into the art of movie-making.
Category - THE SCORE
The Piano (1993)
Director Jane Campion’s haunting gothic romance is the story of a widow sold into marriage in mid-1800s New Zealand, accompanied only by her daughter and her piano.
The mute Ada’s beloved instrument is a vital outlet for her inner thoughts and feelings, so composer Michael Nyman felt an understandable pressure writing the music for her to play:
“I had to work out how she, a mid-19th-century woman, would do this. For a male composer with a history of minimalist writing at the end of the 20th century, finding that voice didn't come easily.”
His celebrated soundtrack would sell over three million copies - including one bought by a 26-year-old Sam Taylor-Wood.
We鈥檙e hearing her voice through his score... Understanding everything that she wants to say through the piano.Sam Taylor-Johnson, Life Cinematic
Category - THE VILLAIN
The Talented Mr Ripley (1999)
Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley novels have been adapted for the screen multiple times, with actors from Alain Delon to John Malkovich playing the psychotic career criminal.
The late Anthony Minghella was determined to find the perfect lead for his version of the first Ripley book - particularly as the character appears in every frame. He chose to cast against type, giving the role to Matt Damon, then best known for the heartwarming Good Will Hunting. Minghella later observed:
"Someone cool would have distanced the audience. But Matt has a credibility and warmth and generosity... that make you want to go on that journey with him, inch by inch.”
Matt Damon has crafted this so perfectly.Sam Taylor-Johnson, Life Cinematic
Category - THE SCREENPLAY
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
Counterculture hero and Merry Prankster Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel was a powerful study of a psychiatric ward and its inmates, narrated by seemingly deaf/mute patient Chief Bromden, and told in the form of vivid hallucinations.
In bringing the book to screen, director Miloš Forman abandoned this dreamlike narration in favour of a simple, objectively presented world - with Oscar-winning results.
Kesey was initially involved with the film but left after just two weeks, taking out a lawsuit against its creators. According to producer Michael Douglas, “Like a lot of novelists trying to adapt their own material, it didn’t work out.”
Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 48th Academy Awards in 1975.
When you鈥檙e translating a book to the screen, you have to leave a lot of what鈥檚 in the book behind.Sam Taylor-Johnson, Life Cinematic
-
Jack Nicholson's Life in pictures
Classic images featuring the scene-stealing star of Easy Rider, Chinatown, Five Easy Pieces, The Shining and Batman.
Category - THE PROTAGONIST
A Woman Under The Influence (1974)
Written by indie visionary John Cassavetes for his actress wife Gena Rowlands, A Woman Under The Influence is the hyper-real tale of a working class housewife’s breakdown, institutionalisation and subsequent return home.
Cassavetes remortgaged his house to fund the low budget production, with financial assistance from lead actor and Columbo star Peter Falk. Told by distributors, “No one wants to see a crazy, middle-aged dame”, he distributed the film himself.
It became a critical and commercial success, with Rowlands earning an Oscar nomination for her incendiary performance.
Everything else up until then felt very staged, scripted and acted, and this felt very free.Sam Taylor-Johnson, Life Cinematic
Category - THE ON-SCREEN RELATIONSHIP
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Adapted from Annie Proulx’s 1997 short story of the same name, Ang Lee’s romantic epic depicts a tortured, decades-long affair between farmhands Ennis (Heath Ledger) and Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal).
The pair’s sexual and emotional relationship develops when they are hired to watch sheep over a summer in the Wyoming mountains, and Ang Lee felt the location was crucial:
“It has everything to do with the culture. With the landscape. With nature. Everything they feel is private."
The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, but lost out to Crash, Paul Haggis's race drama, for Best Picture - a snub seen as one of the greatest injustices in Oscar history.
Ang Lee filmed that vast landscape as their private space - for them to feel free enough to be who they want to be.Sam Taylor-Johnson, Life Cinematic
Category - THE SEX SCENE
Don’t Look Now (1973)
Widely considered one of the most terrifying movies of all time, Nicolas Roeg’s horror stars Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie as a couple deep in grief over their daughter’s death.
The Venice-set story is adapted from Daphne du Maurier's novel. Central to the film is a five-minute sex scene so naturalistic and unglamorous that it sparked false speculation that on- and ofscreen couple Christie and Sutherland had actually done it for real.
Roeg and editor Graeme Clifford chose to interweave shots of the pair in bed with them getting dressed for dinner. Donald Sutherland's opinion was:
“You don’t see that scene as a voyeur. You watch it and it reminds you of yourself, of you being loving and you being loved.“
It鈥檚 a beautiful love story of two people surviving the most traumatic tragedy.Sam Taylor-Johnson, Life Cinematic
-
The Film Programme: Don't Look Now on 成人快手 Sounds
Cinematographer Tony Richmond talks about Don't Look Now and reveals the truth behind one of cinema's most famous sex scenes.
Category - THE PRODUCTION DESIGN
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
The distinctive visual style of director Wes Anderson is showcased in his most successful film to date, the story of a shabby European hotel between the wars.
Stanley Kubrick’s iconic hotel movie The Shining was an acknowledged influence on Anderson’s use of highly symmetrical framing and tracking shots. A handmade miniature model was built for fantastical exterior shots of the building, with real world locations like a former German department store providing interiors.
The result garnered a well-deserved Academy Award for production designer Adam Stockhausen and set decorator Anna Pinnock.
He鈥檚 constructed something so elegant and it creates such an alternate universe, that within that universe, anything can happen.Sam Taylor-Johnson, Life Cinematic
Category - THE DANCING SCENE
Beau Travail (1999)
Directed by Claire Denis and based on a Herman Melville novella, Beau Travail is the unforgettable account of a French Foreign Legion officer posted in the Horn of Africa, and his subsequent struggle to find meaning in civilian life.
The film appears to end on a downward note, before an entirely unexpected coda set back in a Djibouti nightclub - as acrobatic lead actor Denis Lavant dances like nobody’s watching to Eurodance hit The Rhythm of the Night.
It’s a complete change of both tone and aesthetic, and leaves the audience questioning everything that has gone before.
I love seeing someone鈥檚 masculinity shift into something else... absolute liberation.Sam Taylor-Johnson, Life Cinematic
Life Cinematic: Filmmakers select their greatest movie moments
-
Sam Mendes
Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes selects his 10 best film moments including the perfect shot.
-
Edgar Wright
Edgar Wright champions his favourite films in categories ranging from the Needle Drop to the Perfect Tension Build.
-
Sam Taylor-Johnson
Film-maker Sam Taylor-Johnson, director of Nowhere Boy and A Million Little Pieces, selects her favourite film moments.
-
Sophia Coppola
Contemporary cult classics and vintage Hollywood greats picked by the Lost in Translation director.
Inside Cinema on 成人快手 iPlayer: Short Films For Movie Fans
-
Roll Credits
This is the end, or is it? Celebrating the teasers, outtakes and other treats found in a film's credits.
-
Lord of the Rings
How Peter Jackson used both classic and cutting-edge techniques to craft his adaptation of Tolkien's epic fantasy trilogy.
-
Cary Grant
How a working class boy from Bristol became one of the brightest stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood.
-
Akira Kurosawa
From Seven Samurai and Rashomon to Yojimbo and Ran, the world-conquering films of master Japanese director Akira Kurosawa.
-
The Wilhelm Scream
How a sound effect conquered cinema, appearing in hundreds of films from the '50s to now.
-
Busby Berkeley-Land
How three films revolutionised musicals and brought sex and spectacle to the big screen.
-
The B Word
Just because cinema doesn鈥檛 feature loads of out and proud bisexuals in lead roles, doesn鈥檛 mean bisexuality doesn鈥檛 exist!
-
Boss Ladies
What does it take to shatter the glass ceiling and rule the boardroom on the big screen?
More from 成人快手 Arts
-
Picasso鈥檚 ex-factor
Who are the six women who shaped his life and work?
-
Quiz: Picasso or pixel?
Can you separate the AI fakes from genuine paintings by Pablo Picasso?
-
Frida: Fiery, fierce and passionate
The extraordinary life of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, in her own words
-
Proms 2023: The best bits
From Yuja Wang to Northern Soul, handpicked stand-out moments from this year's Proms