The day when 42 seconds was enough for Sharon Stone to create the scandal in Basic Instinct

In one film, Sharon Stone, Basic Instinct (1992), a 34-year-old half chilling half incendiary blonde American actress still unknown to the general public, became a star. But it’s not just thanks to the accuracy of his portrayal of the brilliant, fatal and mysterious novelist Catherine Tramell, accused of the murder of a rocker killed in San Francisco with an ice pick during a sex act. Everything depends on a specific moment. During a cul(te) scene of the erotic thriller starring Michael Douglas, this rich woman, sure of herself, powerful and dangerous, will make a lasting impression. All it took was a gesture and only a few seconds: 42 in all. During an interrogation in a police station, the intimidating blonde heroine lights a cigarette, dares to wit (“Are you going to arrest me because smoking is illegal?“, she slips to the police investigators), but above all crosses and uncrosses her legs.

Despite its almost subliminal nature and the actress’ pristine outfit (a white turtleneck dress), this moment remains one of the most commented moments. and the most sulphurous of cinema. Indeed, during this short period of time, the heroine of Total Recall (1990) does not wear panties. Which at the time was far from commonplace in “mainstream” films. Once the film was released on VHS and then on DVD, the scene continued to be talked about. Indeed, thousands of spectators could now press the “pause” button on their remote control to better appreciate the audacity. What contribute more fully to erect the Hitchcockian actress as a sex symbol of the 90s.

If the film turns out to be exciting at first glance, ranking with Emmanuelle (1974) and 9 ½ weeks (1986) as one of cinema’s sexiest, the underside of the famous plan would in fact be much less rosy. The feature film would indeed pose the same problems of consent as The last Tango in Paris (1972) which traumatized the young Maria Schneider. As early as 2014, Sharon Stone revealed in interviews that she had not been informed of the projects of the director, Paul Verhoeven, while the latter maintains that she was fully aware of her artistic choices. He even said later in an interview that the actress had offered him the panties. The star says that the filmmaker (and the cinematographer) asked her to remove her white panties because she was seen too much on camera, the white reflected the light. But the director would then have sworn to him that we would not see his crotch during the editing. It was only later that the filmmaker showed her the finished film before going to the Cannes Film Festival and that, shocked, Sharon Stone discovered the daring sequence.

In his memoirs published in March 2021 (entitled The beauty of living twice), the femme fatale again points the finger at the abusive attitude of the director and the producers of the film who did not respect her consent. When she realized during the viewing that no censorship had been carried out to erase her privacy from the film, she would have struck the director of Showgirls (1995) before wanting to initiate legal proceedings (which she eventually abandoned). In revelations that are fully in line with the #MeToo movement, she writes: “After shooting Basic Instinct, I was called to see it. But not just in the presence of the director, as one would expect (…) but in a room full of lawyers, most of whom had nothing to do with the project. That’s how I saw my vagina up close for the first time, long after I was told, ‘We won’t see anything, I just need you to remove your panties because the white color makes the light reflect. I went to the projection booth, I slapped Paul [Verhoeven]I left and I called my lawyer.”

Sharon Stone takes the opportunity to recall why the scene shocked so much at the time. She states in her book:Remember, this was 1992, not today when everyone can see erect penises on Netflix.” It should also be noted that if the director ofShe (2016) did not respect the wishes of its rising actress (who received 500,000 dollars for this film), it did not do the same for its male star, already well established in Hollywood and paid 14 million dollars, who refused that his intimacy appears on the screen. Since then, the invention of the profession of intimacy coordinator, and the opening of a real public discussion around consent, initiated thanks to new generations of feminists very present on social networks, makes it possible to see things from a another angle. Whether Basic Instinct (which was re-released in theaters last year in a restored version) had been released in 2022, it is a safe bet that it would not have escaped the “cancel culture” as well as violent criticism on Twitter . The fact remains that Sharon Stone embodies in this film the role of a powerful, intelligent and complex woman, and not a simple object of desire subject to the will of men.

Basic Instinct (1992) by Paul Verhoeven, available on DVD.