When Philip Kaufman's Henry & June opened in 1990 it carried more cultural freight than most erotic period dramas: it became the very first film to be assigned the Motion Picture Association of America's new NC-17 rating. The movie — adapted from the posthumously published 1986 Anaïs Nin book and starring Fred Ward, Uma Thurman and Maria de Medeiros — was singled out not only for its frank sexuality but because the MPAA was in the middle of trying to replace the discredited X rating with a label that could differentiate serious adult drama from pornography. Specific elements cited by the ratings board included a postcard reproducing Hokusai's explicit woodblock The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife and several sequences staged at le Bal des Beaux Arts. Those choices, coupled with the film's eroticized period imagery, made it the test case for the new category.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1990s
Henry & June: The 1990 Flashpoint That Debuted the MPAA's NC-17 Rating
Henry & June (1990) / 1990s
When Philip Kaufman's Henry & June opened in 1990 it carried more cultural freight than most erotic period dramas: it became the very first film to be assigned the Motion Picture Association of America's new NC-17 rating. The movie — adapted from the posthumously published 1986 Anaïs Nin book and starring Fred Ward, Uma Thurman and Maria de Medeiros — was singled out not only for its frank sexuality but because the MPAA was in the middle of trying to replace the discredited X rating with a label that could differentiate serious adult drama from pornography. Specific elements cited by the ratings board included a postcard reproducing Hokusai's explicit woodblock The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife and several sequences staged at le Bal des Beaux Arts. Those choices, coupled with the film's eroticized period imagery, made it the test case for the new category.
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