Sexual Freedom In Denmark/Sexual Liberty Now!

It’s not often that we review hardcore movies here at Softcore Reviews. We’ll make an exception for this one on the basis of historical relevance. With this double disc set of Sexual Freedom in Denmark and Sexual Liberty Now!, Retro-Seduction shines a light on a pivotal moment in the acceptance of hardcore pornography in America. If you think Deep Throat was the first big hardcore success at the box office, you’re wrong.

We’ve reviewed a bunch of these historical features, from Doris Wishman’s Hideout in the Sun to Joe Sarno’s Inga or 42nd Street Pete’s Busty Stag Collection of little 8mm naughties that your grandpa stored in his attic. As long as movies have existed, porn has existed. The problem was how to get it into the theaters in order to make money from it.

One way to break down the barrier was to pretend your movie was educational. These movies were often called “white-coaters” due to the frequent appearance of “scientists” in their white lab coats speaking with the voice of authority about how natural sex is, and how people shouldn’t have a moral objection to it. Other pseudo-documentaries may have pipped it to the post (Dusan Makavejev’s WR: Mysteries of the Organism comes to mind), but nothing was more successful during this time period than Sexual Freedom in Denmark. As the DVD booklet demonstrates, the movie was one of the top 50 movies at the box office for 1970, and even made the top 10 in New York and Los Angeles. Of all movies. When was the last time a softcore or hardcore film did that? And how did it do it?

Sexual Freedom in Denmark didn’t break down the door so much as talk its way into the room. “Today, the people of Denmark are trying a bold experiment in sexual freedom,” intones the booming voice of a narrator at the outset of the movie. “They have exchanged fear and superstition for acceptance and rational knowledge.” This sort of voice would’ve been comfortable and familiar for people who had seen “hygene” films since the 1930s. And hey, look! There’s nude volleyball going on behind the booming voice. That’s another tired-out cliché – ‘hey, we’re so cool about being nude that we don’t even care if you’re watching us frolicking and jiggling!’

Then, a Danish interviewer with an impossibly bulbous microphone interviews men and women on the street in Denmark, who all talk very calmly and with typical Norse erudition about how natural sex is, how all the teenagers are doing it, and nobody is really bothered by it. The narrator describes how Denmark has chosen to legalize all pornography as part of this liberal experiment. Pornography is non-harmful, he says. Pornography is helpful. Sex crimes have declined in Denmark ever since legalization. What follows is pretty typical stuff… ancient art, Pompeii mosaics, Phallic temples, old black and white photos… and then—hey ho! Pictures of people DOING IT, from unabashed Danish magazines seemingly strewn haphazardly in front of the camera where people can actually see them! Mon dieu!

So now we’ve seen penetration in the magazines and we’ve already seen naked people cavorting on the beach—what’s the logical objection to combining the two?  At this point, the only answer could be none!  But if you still are holding out, the producers bring in their trump card: Nazi atrocities and atom bomb footage.  “Surely these are the obscenities of our time?” argues the narrator; what could be more beautiful in comparison than the love-making act?  And so at last appears an attractive couple making love in an almost clinical white-walled studio, mouth on vagina, penis in mouth, penis in vagina, all the usual stuff.   “For satisfactory results,” notes the narrator dryly, “sperm must be deposited by the penis well into the vagina.”

Just imagine for how many people in the United States (and elsewhere) this was the first time they saw someone actually having sex. Even if the moviegoers already had had sex themselves, do you think they ever bothered to look down? The movie demonstrates all the naughty positions drawn in the margins of the Joy of Sex. Further segments display the “variations” sections of the late 1960s sex manuals: masturbation, foreplay techniques, sex during pregnancy, and sex with hirsute men with enourmous mustaches.

Further still are segments on genitalia which bring to life the black and white drawings from Our Bodies, Ourselves including a close-up of a vagina being held wide open for your perusal, along with an example of the erect male penis, and how it fits inside said vagina. Voila! This is hardcore pornography. We suckered you in, now you have to let us do it. A lot. Lather, rinse, repeat!

For all the noble posturing of the narration, the truth here is that the filmmakers were justifying their right to make money satisfying your curiosity and your prurient interest in sex. That’s not so shocking. What’s shocking is how successfully and how rapidly the notion caught on. There are two films on this disc, and probably the most amazing thing is the difference between them. Sexual Freedom in Denmark appeared in 1970; Sexual Liberty Now! came just one year later.

They were both produced by the same folks, and shown in the same theaters. But Sexual Liberty Now! is pretty much wall-to-wall hardcore pornography, mostly consisting of recycled stag loops. Once the dam broke, the floodwaters rushed out and everything got very moist indeed. There’s the usual voice-over about how pornography is beneficial, and there’s a vignette demonstrating how a young wife overcomes her frigidity by watching porn. But the visuals are no longer logical or demonstrative. It’s just fucking.

Just one year later, the entirely fictional and entirely hardcore Deep Throat breaks box office records across the country. An industry is born.