The most famous movies about prostitutes in history

Is there any theme of human nature that has escaped the gaze of the cinema? If any have done it, it is not that of prostitution. And it is that, if we take a look at the history of the seventh art, we will soon find a good bunch of movies about prostitutes .

In this article we want to review them and the most famous characters of prostitutes in the cinema .

Without a doubt, one of the most popular films starring the character of a prostitute is Pretty Woman . Sweetened as only a made in Hollywood production can be, this film tells us the story of Vivian, a Los Angeles prostitute who is hired by Edward Lewis, a businessman who stays in a luxurious LA hotel suite.

Lewis ( Richard Gere ) pays Vivian (unforgettable Julia Roberts ) $3,000 (from the year 1990) for her to provide him with erotic services for a week.

Who else, who least, has ever seen this film whose soundtrack made a fortune and in which love, that syrupy and slightly sappy love of Hollywood movies, triumphs over class differences.

Another of the great characters of famous prostitutes in cinema is the one played by Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour , one of the masterpieces of the Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel .

The character played by Deneuve (Severine), fed up with his boring and bland married life, decides to take advantage of his free time to rent his body in a brothel. In that brothel, Severine lends herself to carrying out all kinds of practices of a paraphilic nature.

Severine/Deneuve plays dead in a coffin or participates in scenes of coprophilia, opening up a debate in the viewer about the way in which concepts such as desire, satisfaction or sacrifice are articulated in our minds, or how they fit into our imagination reality and fantasy and how we live each of them.

Irma la dulce is another of those whore movies that cannot be missing from any list of these characteristics. Played by Shirley McLaine , Sweet Irma is a prostitute who practices her profession in the Parisian neighborhood of Les Halles, next to the central Paris market.

In this film, shot in 1963 and directed by Billy Wilder , we are told the love story between Irma and Néstor Patou, a policeman expelled from the force for having discovered a plot of police corruption and whose role is played by Jack Lemmon .

The fact that Néstor acts for some time as Irma's pimp does not prevent him, in love with her as he is, from trying to become, in disguise, her only client. Do we make spoilers if we say that this film about prostitution ends in a wedding?

The character of Irma la Dulce is not the only one of a prostitute who, in some film production, tries to be redeemed by the male protagonist of the same. The character of Iris, from the mythical film Taxi Driver (1976) would also belong to this type of character.

Played by a very young Jodie Foster , Iris tries to make a living as a prostitute in seedy and violent New York in the 1970s. Her knight-errant/advocate is Travis Bickle, a veteran taxi driver who makes getting Iris out of prostitution the central goal of his life.

That of Travis Bickle, a character played by an immeasurable Robert de Niro , is one of those imperishable characters in the history of cinema and the film, directed by Martin Scorsese , is a classic in the history of cinema.

Another of the great directors in the history of cinema, the Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini, signed an unforgettable film about prostitution when shooting The Nights of Cabiria .

Released in 1957, this film tells the story of Cabiria, a prostitute from the Ostia area of Rome. In Las noches de Cabiria , the main character of the prostitute that gives the film its name is played by the one who was Fellini's wife at the time, Giulietta Masina .

Cabiria, a kind and naive character, is mistreated and successively used by various freeloaders who take advantage of her goodness and put it to the test.

other hooker movies

Along with these five films about prostitutes , we could cite many others. Among all of them, we will highlight the following:

• Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961). The leading prostitute, Holly Golightly, a character created by Truman Capote in his novel Breakfast at Tifanny's , was played by Audrey Hepburn .
• Monster (2003). An unrecognizable Charlize Theron played the role of Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute who was executed in the state of Florida in 2002 after confessing to six murders. According to what Aileen declared at the trial, she became a murderer after having suffered multiple abuses and rapes while practicing her profession as a prostitute.
• The Girlfriend Experience . Presented in January 2009 and shot in New York, this film about prostitution tells us five days in the life of Chelsea (Sasha Grey), a high-class prostitute who charges $10,000 a night.
• Young and pretty (2013). The sensual and disturbing Marine Vacth plays the role of Isabelle, a young and beautiful 17-year-old Parisian student who, after losing her virginity one summer and experiencing the loss as something disappointing, decides to live a double life becoming, behind the backs of her relatives and friends, in luxury prostitute.

Finally, and to end this list, we are going to cite a Spanish film shot by Fernando León de Aranoa and entitled Princesas . In this film, the Madrid filmmaker tells us the friendship story of two prostitutes, Caye and Zulema (roles played respectively by actresses Candela Peña and Micaela Nevárez).

The first of the protagonists is Spanish; the second, Dominican. The film tries to capture the reluctance of Spanish prostitutes before the arrival of foreign sex workers. Caye and Zulema, after facing each other, end up understanding that, beyond the apparent rivalries that may separate them, they are, deep down, travelers on the same ship.

Released in 2005, this film about the lives of sex workers received three Goya Awards in that year's edition of the famous Spanish film awards.