Breasts in Film and beyond

Now, it would seem that filming breasts so they look good wouldn't be hard. Heck, guys love to look at 'em, so just put 'em on the screen and let 'em be ogled. But like so much in cinema, it's not just a matter of point and shoot. There are good techniques and bad techniques for showing off breasts in film, and I'd like to take a moment to talk about what I think works . . . and what doesn't.

1. Bigger isn't necessarily better. I like big breasts. Of course. Who doesn't. But should they all really be Easy Money huge? I don't think so. Recently, I was writing about facial plastic surgery for a web site, and in doing my research the temptation to look at before and after pictures of breast augmentations was too strong. So sue me. Oddly enough, it wasn't really an erotic experience. But it was an aesthetic one. It really gave me a chance to look at breasts in a detached, formal way. I mostly paid attention to shape, trying to grasp what exactly it is about it that so entrances me. Skin and gravity warring over the distribution of lipids reduces and sometimes inverts the convexity of the top and accentuates it on the bottom, producing a shape not unlike an ocean swell. It's so easy to imagine bobbing up and down there, a thought accentuated by the fluid movement of them when a woman walks. Having looked at possibly hundreds of photos, I've decided that C-cups are best. Purely from a perspective of balance, this is the point at which the weight of the lipids pulls the breasts down to give them a full appearance, but not so much that they appear to sag.

2. Cleavage is always good in movies. And who doesn't like it in real life? Let's get real: what's better than cleavage? But in the movies, it's especially good. Something about the lighting or the camera angle or just the fact that you can stare without feeling like too much of a creep: it pretty much always works.

3. Let them be free. Shout it from the mountain on out to the sea, peace in the valley, breasts got to be free. Just as you wouldn't gag a full-voiced actor like James Earl Jones or Morgan Freeman, you can't keep breasts so tightly bound that they can't wash like hypnotic waves over the viewer. Let 'em move. Naturally.

With those three rules understood, let's look at some noteworthy moviemakers and/or films.

Russ Meyer--of course we've got to talk about the man who's known for his fetish with breasts, but unfortunately he often violates all three of my rules. Because he's interested in big breasts, which require lots of support, they are rarely allowed to move freely, nor does he shoot them to properly show off their movement.

Andy Sidaris, on the other hand, while generally dismissed, is a man who really knows how to make a movie that's pretty much about breasts. Although his films are often labeled 3B: Bullets, bombs, and breasts it's really the latter that makes his movies worthwhile. If anything, because they're pretty poor movies altogether. Hard Ticket to Hawaii, for example, has piss-poor plot, character development, and special effects. Most of the action sequences are lame and boring. But there's something satisfying in watching our heroine battle it out with a mutant snake and an evil assassin when every move she makes shivers through her breasts. And he knows how dumb his movies are, making them only eye candy.

Pedro Almodovar really doesn't belong on this list, since he's a real filmaker who makes really good films. But he merits mention because of what he did with Penelope Cruz in Volver. Bravo, my good man.

And let's not forget David Lynch, whose metafilm strategies manage to strangely de-eroticize the lesbian love scene in Mulholland Drive, despite the presence of breasts.

A few other notes:

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad is worth watching for Caroline Munro's cleavage alone.

Megan Fox was a great distraction in Transformers, but not enough to save that movie.

Marilyn Monroe's breasts look great in Some Like it Hot, but it's so hard to decide who's better in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: her or Jane Russell.

It was so sad to lose Lake Bell from the cast of Boston Legal.

Scarlett Johansson's breasts aren't too big because she's beautiful and well-proportioned and sometimes she can act.