The first time I saw this on HBO, I was quite surprised that the film had a PG rating with Elizabeth McGovern nude scene. Anybody know why/how it avoided an R rating?
shareWell, there was no PG-13 rating at the time and the nudity is non-sexual...so..PG.
Only love, pads the film
Probably because the nudity was in a more or less completely nonsexual context. While she was nude in the scene in an attempt to get together with Harry, she is talking about her divorce, not continuing the aborted romantic encounter for the balance of the scene.
shareA lot of PG movies had non-sexual nudity before the 1980s—and it was not considered to be a big deal. After the PG-13 rating was introduced due to the violence in PG-rated ''Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom", it also came to be used for films that had nudity but would not otherwise warrant an R rating.
America’s unhealthy association of simple nudity as somehow bad in-and-of itself is a rather recent development.
Yeah--it was non-sexual so... "Hair" from 1979 had lengthy female AND male nudity but also got by with a PG. Again--it was completely non-sexual in context so....
shareI KNNOOW the chick's boobs were totally exposed, I saw it with my grandmother on HBO one night in 1983, and she had the biggest frown on her face . . . poor Grandma.
good memory
All I really remember are the boobs and the piano player playing ragtie music as a score for a black and white silent.
My grandmother said it reminded her of her 20s (she was born in 1906)
I was 11 in early 1983
ahaha i have something worse. we're watching it in chorus because we're singing some ragtime songs. the scene came up and was on this huge projecter screen it was sooo funny. but really not that funny. as soon as the class was over my teacher got up and was like well. that wasnt the version i had seen before. it was majorly awkward.
shareIt must have been quite a shock for your grandmother to discover women have breasts, and do expose them every once in a while.
Michel Couzijn
HBO must've played a censored or re-edited version. I saw this movie on Christmas Eve in 1981 with my girlfriend at the Varsity Theater in Toronto. And I remember full frontal nudity. Boobs and bush. But we didn't find the scene to be the least bit arousing. I was however amazed at how much Elizabeth McGovern looked like the real Evelyn Nesbit and at the time thought that Brooke Shields would have made a more apropos choice... age-wise anyways.
shareAs another reply mentioned, non-sexual nudity was common in 1970s movies. When THX-1138 came out (George Lucas's first movie) in 1971 and Vanishing Point came out in the same year, both had nudity and were rated GP (the letters were reversed in 1975). In the 70s, once the gate had been opened for mainstream nudity onscreen, pretty much every movie that came out had its requisite nude scene whether it needed it or not. Most of those pictures were rated PG. In the 80s, as the country became more prudish and conservative, nudity pretty much disappeared and movies that did have it were rated R. But sometimes it works the other way. A Clockwork Orange was rated "X" when it first came out, and now it's raed "R". Roger Ebert's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls - same story. X in 1970, R now. I happen to believe movies with violence should always be rated R but movies with non-sexual nudity should always be PG. In fact, I don't think nudity in general should ever warrant an R rating. America just has too many hangups. Not surprising I guess, since the country is derived from Puritans and Quakers who settled here 400 years ago...
share...not an exploitation film. Maybe that should make no difference. But it does.
share You should see the 1978 "invasion of the Body Snatchers". Quite a bit of nudity in that, and yet it was PG also.
Quite common before PG-13, as someone else said.
Plus, I think people are actually more uptight now than they were when I was younger, in the 70s and 80s. Younger people tend to think society is less uptight now. I disagree.
The 70s and early 80s were infinitely more permissive. You could buy Penthouse and Playboy (and not sealed in a plastic bag, either!) off the magazine rack at a local grocery store back then. Right next to the visceral True Detective magazines that showed actual crime scene photos. Eerie/Creepy comics (for the kids) showed blood and gore. Teen sex comedies were all over the theatres, and the horror films were ALL rated R, and had gory violence, bygod! Porn theatres everywhere (that advertised in the regular newspapers), and Archie Bunker, Fred Sanford, and George Jefferson spouted thier hilariously un-PC rhetoric on prime time TV.
AND the music was cooler. It was a much more fun time, people weren't such tight butts, and yet there wasn't so much youth violence and so on. The soccer moms are so much more protective now, and yet the kids are crazier than ever. Go figure. I guess it was healthier after all to get to see a nude pair of boobs once in a while instead of people freaking over Janet's wardrobe malfunction.
Ya think?
i totally agree. boobies never hurt anyone. they feed the world, for crying out loud.
The scene was so hilarious I wonder how anyone even had the time to be freaked out by it in any way.
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan
The US wasn't the only country to give "Ragtime" a mild rating considering the violence and nudity in it.
The movie was rated NRC (Not Recommended For Children) in Australia when released in early 1982 and when it came out on vhs, it was rated PG -- it has never been released on dvd in this country to this day.
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it's a very sexual scene, she strips her bra, her stockings, seriously turned on.
most importantly, she seems to care little when the strange visitors see her naked.. at that time she looks perfectly a slut.
the movie should have been rated at least "R".. corrupt mpaa
Marccanois, women didn't wear bras in 1906.
They were still squeezed into corsets.
In the novel, there is a very funny scene where Emma Goldman (the famous anarchist) took Evelyn to her apartment and began peeling all the layers of clothing off her ("Such a beautiful body, and look what you do to it."), and then rubbing heated oil on her.
All of a sudden, the door of Emma's armoire flies open, and out pops Younger Brother (who had been stalking Evelyn), ejaculating all over the place.
This scene was not in the movie.
^^^They did shoot that scene. It's included in the DVD as a deleted scene--nudity censored.
shareI've only seen this movie once, in the theatre (never read book nor rented DVD) and I definitely remember that scene!
The car was pretty quiet on the way back home; I think my folks thought a movie about Ragtime would be apropos for a young Black girl taking piano lessons! :)
The nudity was totally non-sexual and beautiful. Plus, you couldn't see her full genitalia. (No clitoris, labia, or anus....only her boobs and a bit of bush, which is just body hair, NOT actual genitalia)
The PG rating was perfectly appropriate. If it had shown her actual genitalia (her labia, clitoris, or anus) then it would have been given an R-rating.
I remember going to see this with my mother. I was 28 and she was 57. Her comment about McGovern was " She doesn't have anything to be proud about. She's flat and skinny." I was rather taken aback by what she had said. Nowadays I just laugh at her comment. She passed away in 1993.
share[I think clit or anus >>> straight to X rating]
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