On the rise and ultimate exile of the Hollywood X rating

Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Dreamers” hits theaters today with an NC-17 rating. NC-17 stigma is more like it, if you consider the contortions studios go through to avoid it. Adult-themed movies that deal frankly with sexual issues -- which might have carried an X rating from 1968 through 1990 -- have become a rarity.

Once upon a time studios were more likely to nip and tuck scenes to get an R. These days, studios even balk at that, preferring to release films with a PG-13 so they can safely court the vast teen audience.

Although the Motion Picture Assn. of America created the NC-17 rating and did away with X because it had been appropriated by the pornography industry, the stigma remains.

This wasn’t always the case. Flash back to the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, the era of the last renaissance in Hollywood. Thirty years ago, Bertolucci was nominated for an Oscar for best director for his controversial X-rated drama “Last Tango in Paris,” and its star, Marlon Brando, received a best actor nomination.

“Being X-rated at that time,” says film historian Leonard Maltin, “didn’t have the economic repercussions that we have today largely because home video hadn’t come on the scene.”

MPAA President Jack Valenti initiated the voluntary rating system on Nov. 1, 1968.

Prior to the ratings system, Valenti predecessor Will Hays’ strict regulations on language, violence and subject matter -- the Hays Code -- had ruled the major studios with an iron fist, even under the two men who followed Hays. With the collapse of the Hays Code in the mid-1960s, filmmakers were no longer shackled.

Directors such as John Schlesinger, Stanley Kubrick, Lindsay Anderson, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Sidney Lumet, Robert Aldrich and Jack Cardiff made X-rated movies, and actors such as Brando, Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Richard Dreyfuss, James Earl Jones, Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave, Malcolm McDowell, James Coburn and Rip Torn all starred in X-rated fare distributed by the major studios.

The legitimacy of X-rated fare was solidified when Schlesinger’s 1969 drama “Midnight Cowboy” won the Academy Award for best film.

“Midnight Cowboy” is the only X-rated film to have won the best picture Oscar, but it was not the only one to receive Oscar nominations for that year.

Frank Perry’s startling drama about four teenagers, “Last Summer,” garnered a supporting actress nomination for Catherine Burns, and Luchino Visconti’s Italian-language drama “The Damned” picked up a nomination for story and screenplay.

Two years later, Kubrick’s violent “A Clockwork Orange” received several nominations, including best film and director.

But X-rated cinema’s respectability was short-lived.

By the ‘80s American society had changed. “It was the coming of the Reagan era,” Maltin says. “There was a growing conservatism, a backlash to the unabashed freedom of the let-it-all-hang era and also simultaneously the homogenization of the studio system.”

Perhaps the death knell to these films, says Maltin, came with Blockbuster’s edict that it would not carry adult movies.

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An X-rated sampler

“If ... “ (1968): Released in the U.S. in 1969, Lindsay Anderson’s hard-hitting drama looked at the archaic, often violent world of Britain’s public school system..

“The Killing of Sister George” (1968): Based on Frank Marcus’ hit play, the Robert Aldrich-directed drama stars Beryl Reid as an aging soap opera star having an affair with a young woman (Susannah York).

“Medium Cool” (1969): Cinematographer Haskell Wexler directed this political drama about a TV newsman (Robert Forster) covering the Chicago Democratic convention.

“Last of the Mobile Hot-Shots” (1970): Sidney Lumet directed this dreadful adaptation of one of Tennessee Williams’ worst plays, “The Seven Descents of Myrtle,” starring Lynn Redgrave, James Coburn and Robert Hooks.

“Performance” (1970): Mick Jagger went the X-rated route in this bizarre film, directed by Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell, about a criminal (James Fox) hiding out at a rock star’s house.

“Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” (1970) : Film critic Roger Ebert wrote the script to Russ Meyers’ sequel and spoof of the 1967 film “Valley of the Dolls,” about a female rock trio.

“What Do You Say to a Naked Lady?” (1970): Even Allen Funt of “Candid Camera” fame got into the X-rated act with this bawdy hidden camera movie.

“Myra Breckinridge” (1970): Raquel Welch, Rex Reed, Mae West, John Huston and a very young Tom Selleck and Farrah Fawcett starred in this atrocious film about a man who gets a sex change operation.

“Drive, He Said” (1971): Jack Nicholson made his directorial debut with this critically lambasted film set in the world of college football. Bruce Dern starred.

“The Devils” (1971): Ken Russell directed Vanessa Redgrave and Oliver Reed in this lurid, violent film about witchcraft and politics in 17th century France.

“Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” (1971): Melvin Van Peebles starred in, wrote and directed this independent film, one of the pivotal films of the “blaxploitaton” period, about a ladies’ man on the run from the cops.

“Fritz the Cat” (1972): Ralph Bakshi’s irreverent adaptation of Robert Crumb’s underground comic pushed the boundaries of animation.

“La Grande Bouffe” (1973): Several major foreign film stars -- including Marcello Mastroianni -- headlined this gross French-Italian black comedy about four bored middle-aged men who decide to eat themselves to death.

“Inserts” (1975): Richard Dreyfuss starred in this erotic drama about a once famous silent-movie director who turns to making sex films.