A few days ago I finished watching 2 movies back to back - the first being The Ass Collector, the second the "classic" Downstairs, Upstairs. (They've been sitting in my cupboard for some time now and I finally got around to viewing them.)

It was certainly interesting, to say the least, to compare the two different styles. Although the former had more actual sex scenes (and was by no means unimpressive, even if I did have a few specific complaints), the latter seemed more "natural" (as with all classics I've seen). In particular, I'll note a few distinctions that, I think, set the so-called classics apart. None of these are new thoughts, but I'm just listing them all in one place.

1. The actors seem to have more fun. The scenes don't appear as posed / set up, and the dialogue is more natural. It seems more as if these are "real" people in "real" situations. I felt more "at ease" watching it, laughing at times, and not feeling the "strain" in the back of my mind of knowing that it was just a showcase for sex acts. I think that, perhaps, the natural acceptance of sexuality in such acted and scripted dialogue makes it seem less "underground".

2. I find that I enjoy seeing natural looking genitalia. While I certainly don't object to completely shaved, it can get repetitive and tedious for that to always be the case in modern movies. Variety's good. It was a pleasant suprise to, again, see some equipment that wasn't completely bare. It's too bad that things aren't mixed up more today.

3. As always, I was surprised by how explicit some of the scenes were. While they weren't all explicit, and many hid the action or didn't show it clearly, others were just as explicit as you'd expect today. But, as with 2. above, they mixed things up. Today, you can pretty much expect everything to be explicit. It somehow made it more exciting to have things mixed up, I guess there's more of a pay off when you aren't quite sure what to expect (and not every scene is predictable).

4. Perhaps from a combination of 2. and 3. above, there were some remarkably explicit close-up shots of spread female genitalia during masturbation and oral scenes. More close-ups, in fact, than I recall from modern movies. Or, perhaps, it was the contrast between the darkness of the pubic hair and the pinkness of the vagina - but, in any case, it seemed more startling and "revealing". (Was there more focus on female pleasure in the classics and the efforts of women to please themselves, as well as men and other women to please them? It certainly seems so, as if there's more emotional/sensual involvement and less "paint by the numbers" mechanics.)

5. There was a significant lack of male orgasm from the actor masturbating. (In fact, I can't actually recall a specific scene where this did happen when I think back.) Almost every ejaculation came about from the female partner during oral sex, or from intercourse without the man actually touching himself in any way. This, again, is far more in touch with the realities of every day life. What man, in the real world, actually ends up having an orgasm from self-masturbation during a sex session? As has already been mentioned in at least one other thread, the fact that this is so commonly seen these days is not a selling point of current production values or industry culture in my mind. (The argument that current scenes must go on much longer and, therefore, the male actor must be able to control himself much better is, I believe, spurious. Why must they go on so much longer? There was just as much heat in Downstairs, Upstairs (in its own fashion) as there was in The Ass Collector - despite the different lengths of each scene.)

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed both movies in their own respective ways, but I still lean more towards the older style productions in terms of eroticism vs. today's disturbingly mechanistic productions.

And to finish this post off - I'll actually get to the point of this post. I know that you can find good modern movies. (I've enjoyed several of them.) My question is, are there any movies made today that have been made in the old style "classic" sense? (In other words, name a modern movie that addresses at least the five points I list above.)