Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...
Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ... Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...
2.2 Censorship and Politics In the first half decade of the Great Depression, Hollywood’s movie-makers perpetrated one of the most remarkable challenges to traditional values in the history of mass commercial entertainment. The movies called into question sexual property; social decorum and the institutions of law and order. (Sklar 1975:175) I think the whole system of Hays censorship, with its effort to establish a list of rules on how to be decent is nonsensical. A studio can obey every one and be salacious – violate them and be decent. (James M. Cain, Daily News, 1944) On inspecting the censorial mechanisms governing Hollywood’s wartime activities, it is essential to consider wartime production restrictions in order to understand the way the industrial environment of World War II advanced film noir style. While the informal codes of practice that governed the film industry had been operative ever since the appearance of cinema, always concerned to make sure that audiences would not be shocked or offended in any way, it was in the decade of the thirties that films started to be more carefully scrutinised and submitted to stronger external regulation. In fact, it was back in 1934 that the Production Code was created, and in order to enforce its guiding principles, Joseph Breen was appointed as Head of the Production Code Administration (PCA). Breen was a powerfully anti-Semitic conservative who thought he had to protect traditional morality and so came forward with a set of specific rules against miscegenation, the misrepresentation of law and religious officers in film, among other related issues. The Hays Code, after Will Hays, president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) first started to monitor scripts on the West Coast on a regular basis in 1929 and adopted the Production Code, founded by Father Daniel Lord and Motion Picture Herald publisher Martin Quigley as its moral blueprint for Hollywood films in 1930. When the National Catholic Legion of Decency threatened to proscribe indecent Hollywood films at the beginning of 1934, Hays established the above mentioned 138
Production Code Administration. This was to bring to an end the model of self-regulation that had existed in the “pre-Code” cinema of the late twenties and early thirties, 43 embodied in the Hays’s advice to filmmakers: Speaking to the directors, I appealed to their ingenuity and artistic pride, hinting that it takes vastly more to be interesting while observing decent limits than being risqué. I told them, for example, that instead of seeing how far they could get an actress to lift her skirt and still stay within the law they might try seeing how low she could leave her skirts and still maintain audience interest. (Will Hays) The Code was basically a set of film regulations governing Hollywood productions, with three General Principles which attempted to ensure that films would show “correct standards of life”, including the injunction that crime should always go punished, as shown in Principle 2 of the table below. The Code was therefore an effort to make films endorse family values and defend American legal, political and religious institutions and operated, as Maltby has noted, as a “determining force on the construction of narrative and the delineation of character in every studio-produced film after 1931” (Maltby 1993:37). General Principles 1 No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin. 2 Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented. 3 Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation. In this chapter, I intend to refer to the noir productions that were often a paper-thin edge away from the wrath of the censors or comment on those which were subjected to important changes or even banned in some parts of the US because they violated the strictures of the Code. I have also included the complete list of “particular applications” of the Code in Appendix II at the end of this work to make it easier to understand references 43 These films are normally characterised as raw, subversive, and precisely uncensored. 139
- Page 103 and 104: 1.3 The Gothic Romance 87 And trave
- Page 105 and 106: titlecard when the film opens alert
- Page 107 and 108: In Rebecca the beautiful, desirable
- Page 109 and 110: forties. Thematically, the represen
- Page 111 and 112: To complicate this matter further,
- Page 113 and 114: trampled under by war and revolutio
- Page 115 and 116: he says, when Expressionism ended,
- Page 117 and 118: These early Expressionist films, wi
- Page 119 and 120: student, Balduin (Paul Wegener hims
- Page 121 and 122: (Tragedy of the Street, 1927, aka W
- Page 123 and 124: plots with calculating precision. G
- Page 125 and 126: perverted and neurotic sex murderer
- Page 127 and 128: 1.5 French Poetic Realism Poetic Re
- Page 129 and 130: (Michèle Morgan), whose godfather
- Page 131 and 132: strikingly atmospheric view of the
- Page 133 and 134: Jean Paulhan, editor of La Nouvelle
- Page 135 and 136: Julien Duvivier’s Pépé Le Moko
- Page 137 and 138: the combination of lighting effects
- Page 139 and 140: peculiar expressionistic lighting a
- Page 141 and 142: Figure 28. Son of Frankenstein This
- Page 143 and 144: Figure 29. Murders in the Rue Morgu
- Page 145 and 146: alienation mixed with nuanced perfo
- Page 147 and 148: 2 Social and Political Influences o
- Page 149 and 150: Liberal reforms soon became a spuri
- Page 151 and 152: Polonsky, Jules Dassin, and Edward
- Page 153: which are themselves historical eve
- Page 157 and 158: In this particular case, one can se
- Page 159 and 160: Neff: Will you be here too? Phyllis
- Page 161 and 162: against any possible theft of groce
- Page 163 and 164: 2.3 Postwar Readjustment If the moo
- Page 165 and 166: In this group of films, the bleak a
- Page 167 and 168: explain, these noir heroes of the f
- Page 169 and 170: (Gilda, White Heat, Scarlet Street,
- Page 171 and 172: seething excitations” and adds th
- Page 173 and 174: Romanticism present at the very hea
- Page 175 and 176: to persist and overcome difficultie
- Page 177 and 178: III. Noir Thematics 1 Essential Ele
- Page 179 and 180: its modernist sensibility, enabled
- Page 181 and 182: Wyatt), cooks breakfast, domestic r
- Page 183 and 184: structures of constituted authority
- Page 185 and 186: 1.2 Space and the Noir City Film no
- Page 187 and 188: other people and developing a calcu
- Page 189 and 190: I am the city. Hub and heart of Ame
- Page 191 and 192: 1.3 Trouble With Girls: The Femme F
- Page 193 and 194: intelligent and powerful, if destru
- Page 195 and 196: significant discussion of film noir
- Page 197 and 198: Nevertheless, the message is quite
- Page 199 and 200: Another example of the evolution of
- Page 201 and 202: deceiving women. Like many of their
- Page 203 and 204: Either as a femme fatale or an homm
Production Code Administration. This was to bring to an end the model of self-regulation<br />
that had existed in the “pre-Code” cinema of the late twenties and early thirties, 43<br />
embodied in the Hays’s advice to filmmakers:<br />
Speaking to the directors, I appealed to their ingenuity and artistic pride, hinting<br />
that it takes vastly more to be interesting while observing decent limits than being<br />
risqué. I told them, for example, that instead of seeing how far they could get an<br />
actress to lift her skirt and still stay within the law they might try seeing how low<br />
she could leave her skirts and still maintain audience interest. (Will Hays)<br />
The Code was basically a set of film regulations governing Hollywood productions,<br />
with three General Principles which attempted to ensure that films would show “correct<br />
stan<strong>da</strong>rds of life”, including the injunction that crime should always go punished, as shown<br />
in Principle 2 of the table below. The Code was therefore an effort to make films en<strong>do</strong>rse<br />
family values and defend American legal, political and religious institutions and operated,<br />
as Maltby has <strong>no</strong>ted, as a “determining force on the construction of narrative and the<br />
delineation of character in every studio-produced film after 1931” (Maltby 1993:37).<br />
General Principles<br />
1 No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral stan<strong>da</strong>rds of<br />
those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be<br />
thrown to the side of crime, wrong<strong>do</strong>ing, evil or sin.<br />
2 Correct stan<strong>da</strong>rds of life, subject only to the requirements of drama<br />
and entertainment, shall be presented.<br />
3 Law, natural or human, shall <strong>no</strong>t be ridiculed, <strong>no</strong>r shall sympathy<br />
be created for its violation.<br />
In this chapter, I intend to refer to the <strong>no</strong>ir productions that were often a paper-thin<br />
edge away from the wrath of the censors or comment on those which were subjected to<br />
important changes or even banned in some parts of the US because they violated the<br />
strictures of the Code. I have also included the complete list of “particular applications” of<br />
the Code in Appendix II at the end of this work to make it easier to understand references<br />
43 These films are <strong>no</strong>rmally characterised as raw, subversive, and precisely uncensored.<br />
139