The secularization of Cesare Borgia and the American Motion Picture Production Code

2019 ◽  
pp. 250-275
Author(s):  
Jennifer Mara DeSilva
Keyword(s):  
Motion Picture ◽  
Production Code

Enforcing Heterosexuality: Adapting Lillian Hellman’s ‘The Children’s Hour’ for the screen

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Glass
Keyword(s):  
Motion Picture ◽  
Single Female ◽  
Female Teachers ◽  
Queer People ◽  
Production Code ◽  
The 1960S

The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930 banned homosexuality from the screen. This paper uses two films as a case study of the Code's impact on Hollywood's depiction of homosexuality. Both These Three (1936) and The Children's Hour (1961) were adaptations of Lillian Hellman's play in which two single female teachers have their lives ruined by a lie that the women were lesbians. With the first the Code's impact was pervasive. The PCA dictated that the accusations of lesbianism be omitted. By the 1960s, the PCA was relaxing its ban so a film could be made that retained the play's lesbian content. This paper argues that the Production Code was Hollywood's means of enforcing heterosexuality and that, even in the era when the Code's influence was waning, the necessity of maintaining heterosexuality as society's norm still governed how movies (mis)represented the lives of queer people.

Origins of the Code

2019 ◽  
pp. 9-23
Author(s):  
John Billheimer
Keyword(s):  
Motion Picture ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Motion Picture Industry ◽  
Public Concern ◽  
Film Censorship ◽  
Production Code ◽  
The Us ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
Seal Of Approval

This chapter traces the origins of film censorship in the US from 1910 onward. It documents the rise of public concern over movie sex and violence and traces the manner in which pressures from religious and social groups led to the formation of individual censorship entities in various states and municipalities. The motion picture industry tried to counter these pressures by forming the Motion Picture Production and Distribution Association under Will Hays and promising to police itself, an effort that proved ineffectual until 1934, when government pressure, the Legion of Decency, and Catholic boycotts led to the requirement that any motion picture produced in the US had to earn the Seal of Approval of the Production Code Administration under Joe Breen.

Love Stories and General Principles: The Development of the Production Code

2020 ◽  
pp. 94-117
Author(s):  
Ana Salzberg
Keyword(s):  
Motion Picture ◽  
Code Of Ethics ◽  
Love Stories ◽  
Production Code ◽  
Entertainment Value ◽  
Anita Loos

This chapter examines Thalberg’s role in crafting the Motion Picture Production Code and its influence on cinematic sensuality in a post-talkie context. In 1929, Thalberg would write “General Principles to Cover the Preparation of a Revised Code of Ethics for Talking Pictures” on behalf of a three-person subcommittee, thus informing the industry’s adoption of a formal Production Code in 1930. These Principles outline Thalberg’s theorization of how studios could engage with the issue of regulation while still maintaining their commitment to “entertainment value.” The chapter takes these General Principles – and Thalberg’s extemporaneous defence of them at a 1930 meeting of the Association of Motion Picture Producers – as a lens through which to consider early-Code films such as Norma Shearer vehicle The Divorcée (Leonard, 1930) and Anita Loos-penned Red-Headed Woman (Conway, 1932), starring Jean Harlow.

The Big Caper

2020 ◽  
pp. 182-217
Author(s):  
Robert Miklitsch
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Motion Picture ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Motion Picture Industry ◽  
Available P ◽  
Niche Markets ◽  
Stanley Kubrick ◽  
Production Code

The Brooklyn armored car robbery, which occurred on August 21, 1934, not only represented the “nation’s biggest cash heist at the time” but also provided the source material for Richard Fleischer’s Armored Car Robbery (1950), a B picture that was released the very same day as the acknowledged prototypical heist film, The Asphalt Jungle. Although the heist picture could not, and did not, crystallize as a genre until 1950 because the Production Code expressly forbid filmmakers from showing the preparation and commission of heists, the competition represented by television and the 1948 “divorcement” decree forced the motion picture industry to find new ways to attract audiences. One strategy was to continue to produce B movies. If Armored Car Robbery demonstrates the vitality of B movies before the majors decided to cease production of them in 1951 and The Killing (1956) represents the appeal of “low” crime genres such as the “caper” movie for aspiring auteurs like Stanley Kubrick, Plunder Road (1957) testifies to the rise of independent production and the sort of niche markets favored by young adults hungry for more daring cinematic fare than previously had been available.

Sirk, the Family Melodrama, and the Production Code

2019 ◽  
pp. 158-189
Author(s):  
Tom Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Motion Picture ◽  
Production Code ◽  
The Family

For Sirk, all that the Motion Picture Production Code disallowed served as a stimulus to creativity, a challenge he didn’t exactly welcome but that turned out to be beneficial. His melodramas about families and would-be lovers become tales of ideological entrapment, of characters locked behind bars that they can’t see and so can’t escape.

Hitchcock and the Censors

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Billheimer
Keyword(s):  
Motion Picture ◽  
Stage Fright ◽  
No Production ◽  
Rear Window ◽  
Production Code ◽  
The Us

The Motion Picture Production Code controlled the content and final cut on all films made and distributed in the US from 1934 to 1968. Code officials protected sensitive ears from the standard four-letter words as well as a few five-letter words like tramp and six-letter words like cripes. They also scrubbed ‘excessively lustful’ kissing from the screen, and ensured that no criminal went unpunished. Censors demanded an average of twenty changes, ranging from trivial to mind-boggling, on each of Alfred Hitchcock’s films during his most productive years. No production escaped these changes, which rarely improved the finished film. Code reviewers dictated the ending of’ Rebecca, shortened the shower scene in’ Psycho, absolved Cary Grant of guilt in’ Suspicion, edited Cole Porter’s lyrics in’ Stage Fright, and decided which shades should be drawn in’ Rear Window. Nevertheless, Hitchcock still managed to push the boundaries of sex and violence permitted in films by charming (and occasionally tricking) the censors and by swapping off bits of dialogue, plot points, and individual shots (some of which had been deliberately inserted as trading chips) to protect cherished scenes and images. The director’s priorities in dealing with the censors highlight both his theories of suspense and the single-mindedness of Code officials. Hitchcock and the Censors’ traces the forces that led to the Production Code and describes Hitchcock’s interactions with Code officials on a film-by-film basis as he fought to protect his creations, bargaining with Code reviewers and sidestepping censorship to produce a lifetime of memorable films.

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