Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

have to be reinforced. It did not take too long for the Hays code to be applied once the
PCA (see p. 138) assumed the control of censorship and enforced the Motion Picture
Production Code in 1934. And so, while in the early thirties the gangster films accounted
for a great share of Hollywood’s studio contributions, the genre started to lose its
popularity and the studios cut back considerably on the production of such films. Finally,
on this, it is worth citing Susan Hayward at length:
The classic age of the gangster movie (1930-4) was brought to a swift halt in an
ambience of moral panic. Pressure was put on the Hays Office to do more than ask
the film industry to apply self-censorship. In 1934 the Production Code, which
condemned among other things films glorifying gangsters, became mandatory.
Given the popularity of the genre, film companies were not going to give up such a
lucrative scenario. Forced to water down the violence, they produced a set of
subgenres: private-eye films and detective thrillers. [ 19 ] That is, without dropping
much of the violence, they now foregrounded the side of the law and order (...).
Told to put a stop to the heroization of gangsters and violence, they simply shifted
the role of hero from gangster to cop or private eye. Thanks to the Hays code
intervention, the seeds for film noir were sown (Hayward 2006:154).
19 Also, J. Edgar Hoover – a bureaucrat risen to fame and glory on the bullet-riddled back of John Dillinger –
suggested to the studios that instead of producing gangster movies they make films about the F.B.I. as an
attempt to counteract what many conservative political leaders claimed was a disturbing trend of glorifying
criminals in the gangster films. The first would be called G-Men (1935), again starring James Cagney, this
time in the role of James “Brick” Davis, a New York city lawyer who decides to be a “G-Man”.
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