Women in Love (1969) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski) and Tuna

Scoop's comments in white:

In England, circa WW1, an artist named Gudrun (Glenda Jackson), and her schoolteacher sister Ursula (Jennie Linden) fall in love with a couple of fine gentlemen from the wealthy class (Alan Bates and Oliver Reed). The two relationships take very different directions. One couple learns to love each other in a traditional marriage. The other couple comes into conflict, struggling for domination. The foursome takes a Swiss honeymoon, during which Gudrun engages in an affair with a bisexual sculptor, causing her enraged husband (Reed) to flee into the mountains and  wander about until he freezes to death. The other man (Bates) then philosophizes about the mystery of relations between men and women.

Women in Love was groundbreaking twice: once as a novel, once as the eponymous film.

• The book, written in the WW1 era, presented the independence of women in the brightest light then possible in literature. Because the novel was filled with doubts about the sanctity and necessity of marriage, and because D.H. Lawrence treated women as highly sexual beings, D.H. Lawrence shocked his own time and led the way toward the sexual revolution of the 1920s.
• The movie version played a similar role in the sexual revolution of the late 60s. It was daring in three respects:
  • There was an extended nude wrestling match between Alan Bates and Oliver Reed, complete with extensive frontal nudity from both of them. (This is the primary reason why the film is remembered today, if at all. Mention this film to someone from my era, and you'll see that glimmer of recognition when you say, "you know, it's the one where the two guys wrestle stark naked for five minutes".)
  • There were explicit sexual encounters on several occasions.
  • There was a bisexual man in make-up

Many of those once-powerful elements are no longer shocking by today's standards. The psychological and sexual aggressiveness of women is well accepted today, and the male/female scenes that shocked in 1969 are completely tame by our standards, so there's not much of erotic stimulation for you heterosexual men. On the other hand, for those of you who like to look at naked men, Women in Love is the Holy Grail of male cinema nudity. The nude wrestling match between Bates and Reed still stands today as the zenith of male homoerotica in mainstream cinema. Although female nudity in mainstream films has gone far beyond what you see in this film, male nudity has not. Imagine, if you will, a five minute nude wrestling match between Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, in which every inch of their bodies is exposed to the camera in loving detail. Hard to picture that ever happening? Well, that would be the equivalent of what you see in this film!

Apart from the nude male wrestling match, you probably can't get a sense of how revolutionary this film was if you are younger than 45. Things have changed too much for you to be able to "feel" the context that existed then. The middle 60s were a time when film nudity was infrequent, seen most likely in foreign language films or softcore films, neither of which were shown in mainstream suburban theaters. Unlike today, when even the biggest stars (Kidman, e.g.) strip down, you never saw major actors and actresses naked. This film broke the mold. Glenda Jackson, Alan Bates, and Oliver Reed were considered top-notch, Oscar-worthy stars, and this was considered an intellectual movie. D.H. Lawrence's work was considered serious literature. In fact, the pretentious, stuffy intellectualism of the characters' conversations is what made the nudity possible. After all, it was difficult for anyone but the most rigid moralist to condemn a movie which was praised by the Movie Academy and The New York Times. In the context of the times, the boring philosophical bits in the movie made the film acceptable for "good boys" to see. Even my mom thought it was OK for me to see this movie. My mom, for heaven's sake! For suburban dweebs like me, the artiness and lofty literary pedigree of the film meant that we could see some sex and breasts, assuming we were willing to endure boring speeches and naked guys.

In those days, it was a small price to pay.

It's a different story today, when you can see mainstream actresses naked without having to listen to windbags or look at their nutsacks.

Oh, yeah ... the movie ....

• Looks great. Beautiful, highly-saturated photography evoking the period, especially as it looked in the English countryside. There is one visually dazzling scene in which Oliver Reed comes upon drowned lovers entwined on the bed of a drained lake. Although the new DVD transfer is letterboxed, the colors are beautiful and the transfer is nearly pristine.
• Boring as hell. Lawrence's ideas seem to have been totally revolutionary when the novel was written, and were still fresh and topical in the late sixties, when the movie was made. Unfortunately most of the film is filled with philosophizing and pontificating about those very ideas, which now seem trite and sophomoric.