Flashback: "Under the Skin"

   I read an interview with Burt Lancaster years ago, and he said something in it that stuck with me. I couldn't quote it exactly now, but it was something to the effect that he was 65 years old and he could still be turned on by the charms of a 19-year-old girl. He added that if that made him a dirty old man, so be it. 
    I'm a couple years older than Burt was then, and in the interest of full disclosure, I can relate, at least when I go to the movies. And I suspect that what Burt said is true of more men than will ever admit it. 
    It's something I thought about last year, after watching the Scarlett Johansson movie "Under the Skin". In the movie, Scarlett plays a mysterious alien who comes on to a series of men and seduces them. One of the things that's interesting about the way the movie plays out is that as she goes from one encounter to the next, the scenes become incrementally more graphic, revealing a little more of Scarlett each time. And I've got to admit that watching Scarlett Johansson get naked on the installment plan didn't bother me a bit. Does that make me a dirty old man? Sure. I guess. Maybe. Am I the only one out there? Not a chance.
    I haven't seen every movie Scarlett Johansson's been in, but I think this might be the first time she's appeared completely nude on screen. It's all very discreet - "artistic," some would say - but, still, there she is, no body double, or anything. And countering the trend toward anorexic actresses who look like skeletons with skin stretched over them, Scarlett has real curves. They look good on her, too. I think there's something reassuring about that. 
    I couldn't say whether women respond the same way to naked men. The pornography industry, which is huge, certainly  caters a lot more to men looking at women. It always has. And if there was a buck to be made going the other way, you can bet more X-rated auteurs would be cashing in. On the other hand, there's a reason for Matthew McConaughey's periodic shirt removals, as there was for Clint Eastwood and Paul Newman and Clark Gable before him. And I know a few women (of a certain age) who probably wouldn't look away from an "artistically" lit nude scene, if the featured player in it was Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp. 
    The point, I guess, is that we're all sexual (at least most of us are), and movies are a voyeuristic medium. We're all out there watching, and every time the lights go down, or the DVD kicks in, or we hit "play" on the remote or the keyboard, we're looking in some way - emotional, intellectual, visceral - to be stimulated, to be turned on. 
    Scarlett Johansson in "Under the Skin" works for me, but face it. We're all voyeurs, and only some of us are dirty old men.