FILM HISTORY RIFE WITH PROOF THAT NOTHING SUCCEEDS LIKE ... CINEMATIC SEX-CESS.

Byline: Marla Matzer Staff Writer

Most of the movies hyped as ``must-sees'' in recent years have been of the sci-fi, special effects genre: movies like ``Godzilla'' and ``Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.'' Despite a general sense among viewers that we're seeing more sex on screen than ever, such movies feature virtually no sex. Those big movies that do feature sex today tend to turn it into a raunchy joke (``There's Something About Mary'') or an act of violence (``The General's Daughter'').

Now, with the late Stanley Kubrick's ``Eyes Wide Shut'' on the horizon, we once again have a film that is creating enormous pre-release ``buzz'' for its reported exploration of the psychology of sexual desire, rather than its violence or fancy visual tricks. Though the movie doesn't open until Friday, the trailer - featuring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, nude and fondling each other - has been causing a stir for months.

More recently, a TV ad for the movie has debuted, showing Kidman in her underwear and hinting at some kinky goings-on. And last week, Time magazine devoted its cover and eight pages inside to ``Stanley Kubrick's haunting final masterpiece,'' calling it a ``Freudian interpretation of jealousy and sexual obsession.''

Of course, there has always been sex on celluloid, from the earliest, silent short subjects that depicted scandalously long kisses and love triangles. By the early sound era, movies were routinely trading on racy subject matter to lure viewers. Illicit sexual affairs and scantily clad starlets were staples of a number of movies in the early '30s.

Then, as more recently, the industry was pressured to clean up its act. To stave off government regulation, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) set forth a strict, voluntary set of standards. Often referred to as the Hays Code (after MPPDA head Will H. Hays), the production code went into effect in July 1934. It read like a Ten Commandments of ``thou shalt nots.''

``No picture shall be produced which will lower the standards of those who see it,'' read one of the document's general principles. ``Indecent or undue exposure is forbidden .... Scenes of passion should not be introduced when not essential to the plot .... Excessive and lustful kissing, lustful embracing, suggestive postures and gestures, are not to be shown,'' read some of the code's other mandates.

Goodbye ``It Girl'' Clara Bow and the lustful Mae West; hello Donna Reed and Doris Day. According to ``Becoming Mae West'' by Emily Wortis Leider (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997) West's first post-code picture, ``Goin' to Town,'' ``was put through the wringer'' to clean up any possibly objectionable scenes, dialogue and song lyrics.

The following year, in 1936, William Randolph Hearst's papers launched an all-out attack on the ``lewdness'' of West's ``Klondike Annie.'' Soon after, Mae West parted ways with her studio. Paramount couldn't stand the heat anymore, and Mae West without sex just wasn't Mae West.

There were occasional challenges to the absolute authority of the production code during the next several decades (the code remained in force until 1966). Movies such as Howard Hughes' 1943 film ``The Outlaw'' went right up to the edge of what was acceptable. ``The Outlaw,'' remembered for the enduring image of a ripe-and-ready Jane Russell reclining in hay, pushed code boundaries with its very apparent obsession with Russell's ample chest.

Also, there remained a thriving industry that pumped out low-budget, non-studio exploitation pictures, which were outside the MPPDA's jurisdiction. This helps explain, for example, such staples of the drive-in as women-in-prison movies.

It wasn't until the 1960s that vivid portrayals of sex resurfaced in mainstream films. This was largely thanks to an influx of young filmmakers who worshipped sexual liberation and European cinema, which had always been much more open to sexual content.

Craig Hosoda, who has made it his life's mission to catalog ``where to find your favorite actresses and actors nude on videotape'' through his self-published ``Bare Facts Video Guide,'' pegs the wave of nudity and sex that began to hit American cinema in the '60s to such European films as ``I Am Curious (Yellow),'' a 1967 Swedish picture about the sexual adventures of a female sociologist.

``Europeans are much more blase about sex and nudity ... . We're kind of a puritanical country,'' said Hosoda, who is based in the Silicon Valley area. ``These European films definitely influenced American films ... (major actors such as) Jane Fonda and Jon Voight started doing nudity.''

Indeed, Hollywood suddenly moved beyond the mild nudity and double entendres of the previous couple of decades to frank depictions of sexual perversity and fantasy: Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) seducing Ben Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) in ``The Graduate.'' Jane Fonda romping in next to nothing in ``Barbarella.'' Jon Voight playing a hustler in ``Midnight Cowboy.'' European director Bernardo Bertolucci pushing the envelope with ``Last Tango in Paris,'' starring Marlon Brando.

This trend continued into the early '80s, when such pictures as ``American Gigolo'' were released. Richard Gere, the star of that film, recently recalled, ``Everyone that was making that movie (which came out in 1980) loved European films. It was perfectly natural to us (to depict sex in a frank way). We thought it was more aberrant to be like Doris Day and Rock Hudson. I mean, that was weird.''

Despite the body-baring work of such actors as Gere, Voight and Brando, Hosoda notes that most male nudity in American movies has been for humor. ``Male nudity tends to be done for laughs: Almost every comedian, starting wtih Gene Wilder and Marty Feldman, did some nudity,'' Hosoda said.

If male nudity from the beginning was kept a joke due to Americans' discomfort with anything that could be construed as homoerotic, most nudity and depictions of sex were soon to follow into the ``for laughs'' vein. In its time, ``Tango'' wasn't just explicit and kinky; according to its champions, it shattered social conventions in its portrayal of two strangers who seek an understanding of themselves through rather anonymous sex with one another. Some cineastes even heralded such movies as ``Tango'' as part of a new wave of pictures that would liberate American cinema.

Instead, in search of the broad and predominantly young audience that fueled the astounding box office for such pictures as ``Star Wars,'' American films took a turn back in the other direction. While nudity and sex stayed, it was played in a totally different way. It was sex from an adolescent boy's perspective: naughty and funny.

Meanwhile, the multibillion-dollar porn film industry proves that there is a big audience for pure, raw sex - disproving any notion that the more conservative tack in many of today's movies is due to any such change in public taste. If anything, porn, especially its easy availability in the home through video, may have drained off some of the audience that attended sexy movies a couple of decades ago just to ogle.

More recent attempts to sell sex in mainstream movies such as ``Striptease'' and ``Showgirls'' have fared poorly at theaters, though they've often made back their money on video.

If it's box office the studios are after, it's doubtful we'll see any significant return to '70s-style movies following the opening of ``Eyes Wide Shut.'' Kubrick's films have not generally been top-grossing hits, and ``Eyes'' will surely not outperform such puerile summer films as ``Big Daddy.'' Will it be, as one publication asked, ``the sexiest movie ever''? Maybe not. But it may prove an interesting gauge for Americans' level of comfort with real sexual issues, circa 1999.

CAPTION(S):

4 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) SEX IN THE CINEMA

HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH?

David Sprague/Daily News

(2) Though the late Stanley Kubrick's ``Eyes Wide Shut'' doesn't open until Friday, the trailer, featuring Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise nude, has been causing a stir for months.

(3) In the 1960s, Hollywood suddenly moved beyond mild nudity and double entendres to such depictions as Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) seducing Ben Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) in ``The Graduate.''

(4) In 1973, European director Bernardo Bertolucci pushed the envelope with ``Last Tango in Paris,'' starring Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider.