This Nude World
Cast & Crew
Michael Mindlin
Andre D'melier
Leo Donnelly
Jan Gay
Michael Mindlin
George O'messerly
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Using some stock footage and voice-over narration, this film examines the phenomenon of nudism throughout the world. Beginning in ancient Greece, the film tells of the origins of the nudist movement in the 4th and 5th centuries. Moving to modern day New York City, the film tells of two types of nudist camps in the United States: private clubs and open resorts. Traveling to Camp Olympia, a resort seventy-five miles up the Hudson River in the Catskill Mountains, we see American nudists exercising and are told that there are now 300 nudists groups in the United States. Traveling across the ocean to France, the filmmakers take in the night life of Paris, looking for nudity. Finding none at such night spots as Folies Bergere or Club Lido, topless women are finally found at an Artists' Ball. Moving the next day to the ile des Naturistes at Villenes sur Seine, a naturalists camp founded by Doctors Gaston and Andre Durville on an island just outside of Paris, we see Parisians exercising not in the nude, but in abbreviated clothing. Seeking true French nudists, the film travels to Normandy, to the Sparta Club, whose leader M. Kienne de Mongeot, shows the activities of the club, where nudism is only permitted inside certain areas. After pointing out that the American nudists are adventurers and French nudists are intellectuals, the film travels to Germany where the current nudist movement began and is accepted fully by the general population. At the largest nudists camp in Germany, we see middle-class families living in a minimal naturalist setting, which emphasizes exercise and healthy nutrition. The film ends by stating that it hopes it has brought the organized nudists movement out into the open, making it no longer a mystery in practice.
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
This film was known by various titles. According to Variety, the original title, This Naked Age, ran into censorship problems in Chicago. A July 1933 Motion Picture Daily news item refers to the film as The Nudist World. The title was changed again to This Nude World, under which it was reviewed by both Box Office and Variety. Motion Picture Daily reported in June 1933 that Monogram was to distribute the film under the alternate title Back to Nature. The viewed print was titled This Naked World. While the film is classified by many as a nudist film, it does not contain any full frontal nudity. Story writer January Gay was billed onscreen as the author of On Going Naked. While Monogram held national distribution rights, C. E. Beck controlled the rights for Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. In January 1933, Film Daily reported that Vision Pictures, Inc. attempted to distribute the film in New York, appealing a decision by the New York State Censor Board to ban the film by holding test screenings in Stamford, CT and Perth Amboy, NJ. In February 1933, Vision ran an advertisement in Film Daily saying that the film had tested well in an attempt to market the film on a states rights level. While Variety states that the film was originally imported by Mike Mindlin, Motion Picture Daily credits George Dembow with that position. Variety reports that as the film was under a censorship ban in the state of New York, its American debut was at the Castle Theatre in in Chicago, where it was given a pink rating (no children) by the Chicago Censor Board. However, due to protests that led to police interference, the film opened two weeks late and the theater accepted "an arrest slip daily pending the formal trial of the case." Variety further states that the theater owners would be fined $200 each day the film was shown if the court case was lost. Motion Picture Daily reported that the film opened to the Castle's biggest business in four years and that the film's permit had been revoked two weeks earlier but the picture was opened in defiance of that ruling on the theory that the censors could not legally revoke that permit once it had been granted. According to publicity material printed in Box Office, the film was sold as "the first Nudist picture ever made." The viewed print was missing a portion of the opening credits.
