Must-Read: The Best Nude Scenes In Cinema History

The great nude scene

The nude scene in big screen movies is in a strange place right now. Because of the proliferation of the Internet, and the fact that whoever is naked in a movie is going to have that scene and freeze-framed images plastered in front of every 15-year-old’s computer within minutes of the movie being released on Friday (and sometimes, even before that), the whole “an actress is naked in a movie” doesn’t have the same cinema appeal it once did. When certain actresses in the 80s took it off for the camera, word spread like wildfire to every red-blooded male of age to buy a ticket to see that movie, or underage to sneak into it. And when Halle Berry pulled up topless kind of out of nowhere for the movie Operation: Swordfish, that was basically the entire selling point about the movie.

This little bit of nostalgia is what I felt when reading Maxim’s quick-hitting list regarding the best 9 nude scenes in cinema history. Are there problems with the list? Of course there are. (For instance, yes Kathy Bates in About Schmidt could be considered “earth-shattering” by definition, but that doesn’t mean you really need to mention it, ever, again, for as long as you live.) But they kind of nail the number one spot, in our opinion: