A Sex Scene of Suggestion: SHAFT

We know Shaft looks good no matter what he’s doing, and getting laid is no exception.

After a seemingly incongruous “woman enters apartment with groceries establishing shot” we cut to Shaft: naked, lounging, holding a suggestive magazine (there’s a different fun prop magazine in the link above, too! props department were on it), and sexy music immediately cueing up underneath.

Ohhhh

Next thing we know that coat is OFF! that dress is WHOA! and the sex begins without ceremony.

Sure it’s hot, but it’s not explicit, driven by the score, suggestion, and our imagination. All hands and oohs and aahs and closeups of skin with specific body parts obscured; the better to let us fill in whether it’s back or shoulder, thigh or ass, as colours and music swirl, then hands clench and release.

We’re quite clear what’s happened, though we’ve seen . . . well, almost nothing.

Then the punch line: Shaft voraciously biting into a juicy burger.

Takeaways

We love sex in cinema! But sometimes the power of suggestion is the way to go. Just as (done judiciously and correctly) the thing you don’t see is more terrifying than the thing you do, sometimes letting your audience use their imagination can be as titillating as a more thoroughly shown makeout scene, or a closeup on nails digging into scene as hot as seeing someone’s whole naked body.

Though if you can get music as iconic as Isaac Hayes’s score, that’ll help quite a bit, too.