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

the noir cycle, with films like Jules Dassin’s Night and the City (1950) or Robert Aldrich’s
Kiss Me Deadly (1955).
For more than three decades the Catholic Church through its Legion of Decency
retained the means and the power to control the content of Hollywood films. I here
document the way Hollywood studios submitted their films for approval (or outright
disapproval) and consequent rating, and I interpret the way these censorial bodies dictated
to executive producers the amount of sex and violence that was allowable on the screen.
Two distinct moments in Hollywood filmmaking will then be considered: the period which
is often termed “Pre-Code” (1930-1934) and the years that followed it, when the
Production Code was adopted with all its guidelines and principles. I describe its
mechanisms and the three “General Principles” that first appeared in order to understand
why European Cinema could address themes, topics and problems in a much less restricted
way than classical Hollywood Cinema. Appendix II, at the end of this dissertation, contains
those general principles and the particular applications prescribed by “The Motion Picture
Production Code”. This appendix should therefore help to explain the many scenes in noir
films, especially those related with sexual liaisons and their consequences, which had to be
properly “adjusted” to render them more suitable by the rules of the Code. 5 As I address
the Code itself, I will emphasise how much it was imposed on noir directors and producers
in an attempt to play themes such as villainy in a “poetic” manner, or depict sexual content
(for example, a persistent but somewhat innocent kiss as a metonymy for lovemaking, or,
from a semiotic point of view, in Out of the Past (1947) where symbols like the fishing
nets and the rain or even more pragmatically the double-entendres between a door flying
open and fireworks going off are suggestive of a powerful sexual magnetism).
The objective is to understand the reasons why some noir films, arresting in their
sophisticated visual style and thematic duplicity, were initially banned by the Hollywood
Production Code censors, as was for example Double Indemnity. 6 The complexity of this
wartime censorship may have restricted the range of themes and issues introduced by
5
Paragraph II. Sex.“Scenes of Passion – a) They should not be introduced when not essential to the plot; b)
Excessive and lustful kissing, lustful embraces, suggestive postures and gestures, are not to be shown; c) In
general passion should so be treated that these scenes do not stimulate the lower and baser element.” See
Code on p. 465.
6
Double Indemnity is also said to have been blacked out by wartime restrictions on lights. This will also be
further explained in this chapter.
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