“Suspicious
of a flickering amusement that mesmerized the commonest of folk and the dullest
of immigrants…, reformers of all stripes viewed the motion picture as a gateway
to personal damnation and social deviance… the motion picture medium, if left
to its own devices, was more liable to pollute and degrade than refine and
uplift,” Thomas Doherty writes in Hollywood’s
Censor: Joseph I. Breen & the Production Code Administration
(32). These were the sentiments that led the film industry to adopt the Motion
Picture Production Code in the 1930s, a form of self-censorship that regulated
film content for over three decades. “Just as a single lustful spasm in a
brothel might sow the seeds of disease and dissipation,” the author continues,
“a brief session at a nickelodeon might undo years of educational guidance and
moral instruction” (32). But the reasons behind adopting and enforcing the Code
were varied, ranging from morality to economics, from religion to the need to
protect the industry from government censorship. The effects the Production
Code had on film content were as diverse as the reasons for adopting it. Although
the Code was never considered unconstitutional—because films were not protected
under the First Amendment until 1952—the document undoubtedly encroached on the
motion picture industry’s right to expression and free speech.
The
Motion Picture Production Code was a set of guidelines governing the treatment
of crime, violence, sex, profanity, and other questionable subject matter. The
Production Code Administration (PCA), founded in 1934, and before it the Studio
Relations Committee (SRC)—both branches of the Motion Picture Producers and
Distributors Association (MPPDA), which became the Motion Picture Association
of America (MPAA) in 1945—were developed as a response to the perceived decline
of moral standards in film.
New
considerations had been born with the coming of sound in the late twenties and
the realism it added to the cinema; now that movies could “talk,” sex and
violence drew closer to real life. “Sound called into question Hollywood’s
suitability for general consumption,” Ruth Vasey writes, “both vertically
across age groups and horizontally across ethnic and geographic boundaries”
(100). A series of scandals involving the film industry also put Hollywood in
the crosshairs of an angry army of moral crusaders. “Famous directors turned up
dead, matinée idols shot heroin (and each other), doe-eyed ingénues were
rousted from sordid love nests,” and comedian Fatty Arbuckle was accused of
rape and murder; these incidents “solidified Hollywood’s reputation as a
sun-drenched Sodom luring Midwest farm girls to a fate worse than waitressing”
(Doherty, Hollywood’s Censor 33).
In
response, in 1922 Hollywood enlisted the services of Will H. Hays, an Indiana
lawyer, Presbyterian elder and Republican who served as Postmaster General
under Warren G. Harding. The formerly semi-known ex-cabinet officer became a
household name, assuring the public that, “The old careless, helter skelter
days are over” (Doherty, Hollywood’s
Censor 35). The “Don’ts and Be
Carefuls,”a precursor to the Code, were developed by Hays in collaboration with
the studio heads from MGM, Fox, and Paramount between 1927 and 1929. Hays
created the SRC to see to its implementation, but these guidelines were not
successfully enforced.
Hays
was concerned with cinema’s effect on the “impressionable classes” of children
and immigrants, as well as the conservative rural population, “the vast
majority of Americans, who do not fling defiance at customs and conventions,
but who cling with fine faith and devotion to the things that are wholesome and
healthy” (Vasey 103). Although the PCA was a secular organization,
religion—more specifically Roman Catholicism—strongly influenced the
conception, application, and enforcement of the Code. “A deeply Catholic text,
the Code was no mere list of Thou-Shalt-Nots but a homily that sought to yoke
Catholic doctrine to Hollywood formula: The guilty are punished, the virtuous
are rewarded, the authority of church and state is legitimate, and the bonds of
matrimony are sacred” (Doherty, “Church’s Reach Diminished”). The organization
had strong ties with the Legion of Decency, whose belief was that “the pest
hole [Hollywood] that infects the entire country with its obscene and
lascivious moving picture must be cleaned and disinfected” (Tropiano 53).
 |
| Will Hays and the second most famous set of ears in Hollywood after Mickey Mouse's |
The
Production Code had no one author; it was a collaborative effort between Hays,
Joseph I. Breen, a number of studio heads, and its official creators, Lay
Catholic Martin Quigley and Jesuit priest Father Daniel A. Lord. The document
is known inaccurately as the Hays Code after Will Hays, who was only in charge
of the SRC until 1934. Breen, the keeper of the Code and director of the PCA
form 1934 to 1941 and from 1942 to 1954, was a conservative Irish Catholic
active in church affairs. The Code’s ties to religion prompt Doherty to compare
it to the bible: “Conceived in faith and invested with a sacred aura, the Code
would be likened to another text, the Bible, and metaphors of print-based
religiosity would waft around it like incense: the commandments, the tablets,
the gospel. Like different translations of scripture, the verses of the Code
might be refined and rephrased but the fundamentals were eternal and
unalterable” (Hollywood’s Censor 41).
Authors
of the Code might seem naïve to think moviegoers’ minds were so easily malleable
and influenced, but there was ample reasons for adopting it that had nothing to
do with morality and Catholicism. The Code was developed originally as a public
relations gesture designed to placate the Legion of Decency and curtail the
agitation for state censorship. Economics, not morality, was and is the primary
motivation for self-regulating; since the 1920s, the threat of government interference has
loomed over the industry and continues to serve as the motion picture
industry’s primary incentive for keeping a close eye on its own backyard. As
commercial speech, movies were not granted protection under the First Amendment
until the 1952 Supreme Court “Miracle Decision,” so Hollywood sought a way to
regulate itself that would minimize state interference.
Fed
up with censors asking for costly cuts, in 1915 one company had sued a state
censor board, taking the argument all the way to the Supreme Court (Doherty, Hollywood’s Censor 32). The case, Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial
Commission of Ohio 236 U.S. 230 (1915) backfired. The
majority opinion reads, “It cannot be put out of view [that film exhibition] is
a business pure and simple, originated and conducted for profit, like other
spectacles, not to be regarded… as part of the press of the country or as
organs of public opinion. They are mere representation of events, of ideas and
sentiments published and known, vivid, useful, and entertaining no doubt, but…
capable of evil, having power for it, greater because of their attractiveness
and manner of exhibition.” The consequences of denying motion pictures First
Amendment protection were immediate and far-reaching. New York was the first
state to institute a censorship board in 1921, followed shortly after by
Virginia and six other states by the advent of sound in 1927. “Backed by the
highest court in the land and freed from pesky First Amendment considerations,
state and municipal censor boards proliferated” (Doherty, Hollywood’s Censor 33).
The
Production Code was officially adopted and ratified by the MPPDA in 1930 but
not enforced until 1934, when Breen took over form Hays, and an amendment to
the Code was passed, stating that every film needed the PCA official “Seal of
Approval” in order to be released. What we have come to call the Pre-Code
era—its name slightly misleading—dated from roughly 1930 to precisely July 15,
1934; it was a period of almost unprecedented freedom in motion pictures. “The phrase
evokes a time when trigger-happy gangsters, wisecracking dames, and subversive
rebels, male and female, ran wild through the lawless territory of American
cinema” (Doherty, Hollywood’s Censor
52). Threatened by the Depression, Hollywood flouted the Code, making adult
movies that formed a “complex, diverse, socially responsive” cinema (LaSalle,
qtd. in Vieira). Apart from making films more realistic, sound also changed
dramatically the content of motion pictures. Now hit-stage productions,
best-selling novels, and short stories could be adapted, and oftentimes their
themes clashed with the Code’s standards (Vasey 102).
The
titles of films made during this period are enough to support this view: Red-Headed Woman (1932) and Baby Face
(1933), in which predatory trollops went horizontal for upward mobility; Little Caesar, Public Enemy (both 1931), and Scarface
(1932) dealing with the mob, murder, bootlegging, and charismatic criminals; I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932)
and Heroes for Sale (1933), both
contemptuous of legal authority, Howard Hughes’ Hell’s Angels (1930), DeMille’s Madam
Satan (1930), and many, many
others.
And
then there were the love goddesses: Dietrich, Garbo, Harlow, and, of course,
Mae West. In films like The Blue Angel,
Trouble in Paradise, Dinner at Eight,
Blonde Venus, She Done Him Wrong, Morocco,
Shanghai Express, and Queen Christina (all made between 1930
and 1933), these women played “sensualists without guilt”; they pursued men
without becoming freaks, villains, or even being European, and they weren’t
seen as unfeminine or predatory (Haskell 91).
“Striding
through every scene with the rhythmic tread of a transvestite dinosaur,
bursting out of a wardrobe so tight she never sits,” West was a composite of
sexual types, an object of sex turned subject who flipped the male gaze on its
head (Vieira 116). “The poster girl for pre-Code bawdiness,” she parodied the
Production Code through her very being (her size, voice, humor, aggressiveness,
and swagger), along with our conceptions of masculinity and femininity
(Doherty, Hollywood’s Censor 67,
Haskell 115-117).
During
this period, The Hays office had no authority to ban or censor film content or
order the studios to remove material, instead reasoning, negotiating, and
sometimes pleading with producers, oftentimes ineffectively. In 1930, there was
still no standardized procedure for the pre-approval of movies; the SRC
depended on the studios’ willing cooperation. Furthermore, appealing a decision
by the SRC meant appearing in front of a board of three producers. “The jury
pool was tainted… the men who sat in judgment of each other knew when to nod
and when to wink. Mutual back-scratching, not impartial enforcement, was the
rule” (Doherty, Hollywood’s Censor
46-47).
The
process changed dramatically after Breen took over in 1934. Before production,
studios were required to submit a plot synopsis, treatment, and all drafts of
the screenplay so PCA could decide whether the material was acceptable under
the provisions of the Code; sometimes the novel or play the film was based on
had to be pre-approved, and then all script revisions, songs, and costumes had
to be passed. In post-production, a final print would be submitted to see if
additional cuts were required.
“This
Code is a moral Code,” Breen wrote in
1934. “Its principles, for the most part, are built upon the basic concepts of
Natural Law. No other industry, so far as I know, has undertaken to pattern its
products in conformity with the basic tenets of decency and morality”
(Tropiano 58). The document had two parts, the first made up of “General
Principles” and “Particular Applications,” the second describing the underlying
rationale for the guidelines. The reasoning was that the cinema, as a form of
artistic expression and mass entertainment, can be “helpful or harmful to the
human race,” “morally good” or “morally evil,” and that its very nature and its
capacity to reach a large audience necessitated for a strict regulation.
(Tropiano 57) “In general, the mobility, popularity, accessibility, emotional
appeal, vividness, straightforward presentation of fact in film make for
intimate contact with a larger audience… Hence the larger moral
responsibilities of the motion pictures” (Tropiano 57).
Drug
use was a no-no; drinking could only be presented when central to the character
development or plot; white slavery, miscegenation, “sex perversion”
(homosexuality), sex hygiene or venereal diseases, nudity, child birth, suggestive
dancing, profanity, obscenity, vulgarity, the selling of women, hanging or
electrocutions as punishment for crimes, cruelty towards animals or children,
and surgical operations were off limits; religious officials and law
enforcement agents could never be ridiculed; crime and sex were to be treated
with the utmost care. The effects on film content were monumental.
These
strict, impassable guidelines and their enforcement encouraged filmmakers to
introduce levels of suggestion and ambiguity into their work, and characterize
adult themes through ellipsis and innuendo, so as not to be accused of
educating innocent viewers in methods of sexual or criminal behavior (Vasey
101). The implementation of the Code resulted in a predictable cinematic world
of certainties in which crime had to be punished under all circumstances, and
never shown in a positive or sympathetic light. Methods of crime, including
theft, robbery, safecracking, dynamiting of trains, mines, and buildings,
murder, arson, and the use of firearms, should never be explicit, “having in
mind the effect which a too-detailed description of these may have on the
moron” (Vasey 113).
As
an example, The Roaring Twenties
(1939) focuses on gangster Nick Brown (played by Paul Kelly), yet the mob or
bootlegging are never mentioned. Instead, Mr. Brown, member of “a syndicate
that’s running all the high-class merchandise that’s being sold in this
country,” is introduced in a Chicago café eating a large plate of spaghetti; he
does not have an Italian name, speak with an Italian accent, or look noticeably
Italian, but it is implied he is a part of the Mafia (Sova 143). It was exceedingly
difficult to portray a criminal in a bad light while at the same time removing
violence and murder from the screen. The result was a very different kind of
crime movie, in which gangsters were replaced with G-men , undercover policemen
becoming the main characters and heroes.
In
terms of sex, rape and seduction should never be more than suggested; adultery
and scenes of passion could only be included when essential to the plot and,
when illicit or unconventional, sexual behavior should only be shown in order
to be condemned; and sexual transgression for women often resulted in misery
and/or death (Sova 133). The predictability and saccharine moralizing platitudes
of crime films translated into other genres as well.
Dr. Monica (1934), for
example, contained adultery, a pregnant, unmarried woman, attempted abortion,
and several clinical discussions about infertility, but passed the PCA revision
with flying colors. However, pregnancy is only hinted at through a fainting
spell, attempts to lose the baby merely involve heavy drinking and reckless
horse riding (before the character even knows she is pregnant), the unmarried
woman commits suicide, and her illegitimate baby is adopted by the unfaithful
father and his wife, now reconciled (Sova 134-35).
Some
filmmakers found ways around the Code. As early as the 1940, there were
directors who refused to comply. The infamous dispute over one film spanned the
entire decade of the forties; “like an incubus in a recurring nightmare, Howard
Hughes’ mangy western The Outlaw
reared up again and again to taunt and haunt Joseph I. Breen” (Doherty, Hollywood’s Censor 251). The movie is a
“corny, overdrawn, melodramatic,” more-talk-than-action western whose fame
derives more form the fact that it introduced Jane Russell—and her 36Ds—to the
world and its behind-the-scenes controversies than its onscreen story (Tropiano
65).
“To
recycle the inevitable joke,” Thomas Doherty writes, “the objectionable parts
of The Outlaw were twofold: Jane
Russell” (Hollywood’s Censor 252).While
original director Howard Hawks shared the plotline of the movie with the PCA,
shooting began before having the script approved. When the film premiered in
1943 in a single San Francisco theater, the reaction was less than encouraging.
The Legion of Decency gave it a rating of “C” (for Condemned), and Breen found
that, “Through almost half the picture [Russell’s] breasts, which are quite
large and prominent, are shockingly emphasized and, in almost every instance,
are very substantially uncovered. So far as we know there is no possible way to
bring this picture within the provisions of the Production Code…” (Sova 235).
In
1946, Hughes decided to go ahead and release the movie without any cuts, and
the advertising turned to exploitative,
sexually charged images and slogans ranging from “How would you like to tussle
with Russell” and “What are the two great reasons for Jane Russell’s rise to
stardom?” to “That Picture Not for Faint Heart” and, perhaps the lowest point
of the campaign, a skywriting plane that flew over Los Angeles drawing two
circles with dots in the middle (Tropiano 67-68).
Breen
promptly revoked the film’s Seal of Approval. The state censors picked up where
the PCA left off, soon banning the film in state after state. Hughes sued the
MPPDA in the U.S. District Court of New York City, charging that the
association was in violation of antitrust laws and for restraint of trade. The
Court reached its decision in Hughes Tool
Co. v. Motion picture Assn. of America, 66 F. Supp. 1006 (S.D.N.Y. 1946)
on June 27, 1946, upholding the right of
the MPAA to revoke the Code Seal for Hughes’ defiance of the Advertising Code.
Judge D. J. Bright wrote, “Experience has shown that the industry can suffer as
much from indecent advertising as from indecent pictures” (Sova 236).
Although
the director conceded to the re-edits by 1949, the original version of the film
earned $5 million at the box office, becoming the highest grossing film for
Universal of the decade. Hollywood filmmakers who had begun their fight against
the PCA now had an indisputable financial incentive, and it was clear the Breen
Office was not representing the viewing public’s values.
The
box office success of films released without a seal, however, was only one of
the factors threatening the Code. The shifting social and moral climate and
changing values towards issues such as adultery, prostitution, and
miscegenation took their toll by the mid-fifites. Television and a decline in
film attendance prompted Hollywood to try to offer the theater audiences
something they could not get in their own living rooms, which often meant sex
and violence.
More
important perhaps in breaking the Code was the burgeoning influx of foreign
films not bound by the guidelines of the PCA. During the studio era, the major
studios (MGM, Paramount, RKO, Twentieth Century Fox, and Warner Brothers)
produced, distributed, as well as owned the first-run theaters where their
films were exhibited, while the minors (Columbia, United Artists, and
Universal) had an agreement with the majors to exhibit their films. In United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc
334 US 131 (1948), the Supreme Court ruled in an 8-0
decision that studios could not own theaters, finding vertical integration in
violation of anti-trust laws. This meant that movie theaters were free to show
the more morally lenient foreign works.
Roberto
Rossellini’s Italian import Il Miracolo,
starring Anna Magnani, was one of the most controversial films of the fifties,
and one that prompted a landmark Supreme Court Decision in1952, four years
after its release. Paired with the director’s The Human Voice under the title
L’Amore, the movie premiered at
the Venice Film Festival in 1948. It received mixed reactions in Italy. In
October 1948, the Catholique Cinematographic Center, the Vatican’s censorship
agency, determined The Miracle “constitutes
in effect an abominable profanation from religious and moral viewpoints,” but
the Italian censors cleared the film, which was praised by The Christian
Democratic Party, in essence the Catholic party in Italy, as “a beautiful
thing, humanly felt, alive, true, and without religious profanation as someone
has said, because in our opinion the meaning of the characters is clear and
there is no possibility of misunderstanding” (Sova 198).
Joseph
Burstyn and his partner Arthur Mayer secured the U.S. distribution rights and
packaged The Miracle with two French
shorts under the title Ways of Love
(1950) (Tropiano 85). The film was exempt from the PCA seal of approval, but
passed the Customs Bureau, the National Board of Review, and the New York Censor
Board without difficulty.
Its
plot centers on a poor, confused peasant woman named Nanna (Magnani), who
encounters a handsome stranger (Frederico Fellini) while herding her goats on a
mountainside and is convinced he is St. Joseph. The man shares his wine with
her; she falls asleep, and when she wakes he is gone. Discovering she is
pregnant, Nanna believes it is by the grace of God, but no one in the village
believes her; the younger villagers follow her in the streets and mock her
pitilessly. While Rossellini’s intention was to represent the “miracle” in her
redemption and regaining of sanity through birth and maternal love, Catholic
communities in New York, led by the Legion of Decency, started to boycott the
film as sacrilegious, and its exhibition license was soon revoked.
Burstyn
sued, arguing that this violated his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights, and
the term sacrilegious “provided no guidelines for the scope of administrative
authority,” and took his case to the Supreme Court. (Sova 199-200). The lengthy
decision in Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v.
Wilson, 343 U.S. 495 (1952) supported that the term is, indeed
“constitutionally vague… It is not necessary for us to decide, for example,
whether a state may censor motion pictures under a clearly drawn statute
designed and applied to prevent the showing of obscene films… We hold only that
under the First and Fourteenth Amendments a state may not ban a film on the
basis of a censor’s conclusion that it is ‘sacrilegious.’” The “Miracle
Decision,” as it’s come to be known, overruled Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohio 236 U.S. 230 (1915), concluding on May 26, 1952 that, “Expression
by means of motion pictures is included within the free speech and free press
guarantees of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.”
The
decision struck down all criteria for censorship other than obscenity, and had
a direct impact on five other cases involving movies: La Ronde (1950: banned in New York), M (1951; banned in Ohio), Pinky
(1949; banned in Marshall, Texas), The
Moon Is Blue (1953; banned in Kansas, Maryland, Ohio, Jersey City, and
Milwaukee) and Native Son (1951;
banned in Ohio) (Tropiano 85). Terms such as indecent, immoral, cruel, corrupt,
or conducive to crime were determined too broad to function as significant
criteria for banning or censoring films (Sova 201). This marked the beginning
of the end, although it would take more than a decade before all state and
local censorship boards would be completely dismantled and the Production Code
would be replaced by the current rating system.
Even
before the landmark “Miracle Decision”, however, some films, like Jean
Negulesco’s Johnny Belinda (1948) and
Elia Kazan’s Pinky (1949) were
flouting the Code by depicting rape and miscegenation, respectively. Kazan’s Pinky tells the story of a young black
girl from Mississippi who moves to Boston after high school to earn her nursing
degree and work, where she “passes” for white and gets engaged to a white
doctor. The film, initially titled Quality,
was meant to expose the ugly realities of racism in America, but the version
which got released toned down the interracial romance. Banned in Marshall,
Texas, the producers took the case to the Supreme Court, which found the ban on
exhibition unconstitutional (Sova 239-240). In the concurring opinion, Justice
William O. Douglas wrote, “the evil of prior restraint, condemned by Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697, in the
case of newspapers and by Burstyn v.
Wilson, 343, U.S. 495, in the case of motion pictures, is present here in
flagrant form. If a board of censors can tell the American people what is in
their best interests to see or to read or to hear… then thought is regimented,
authority substituted for liberty, and the great purpose of the First Amendment
to keep uncontrolled the freedom of expression defeated” (Zenith International Film Corp. v. City of Chicago, ILL., 183 F. Supp.
623 (1960)).
In
1954, Kazan’s masterpiece of social realism On the Waterfront, starring Marlon Brando, used the previously unblurtable
word “hell” in an incendiary context—spat in the face of a Catholic priest
(played by Karl Malden) not once, but twice. Breen pleaded with the MPAA
himself to keep the word in: On the Waterfront, he wrote, was “an
astounding motion picture which deals, powerfully, with the problem of
corruption among the waterfront unions in New York City, and the solution to
these problems, largely through the leadership of a courageous priest… Although
the letter of the law is violated, the intent of that section of the Code which
deals with the use of the word “Hell” is not… [The word] is not used in a
casual manner, as a vulgarism or as a flippant profanity. It is used seriously
and with intrinsic validity” (Doherty, Hollywood’s
Censor 320-321). It was clear that the Code was beginning to crack.
But
it was Otto Preminger, not Kazan, who gave the PCA one of its biggest headaches
of the decade with the triple threat of The
Moon Is Blue (1953), The Man with the
Golden Arm (1955), and Anatomy of a
Murder (1959). The Man with the
Golden Arm presents a stark and unglamorous look at the world of heroin
addiction, although the Code clearly forbade any film to deal with illegal drug
use. Preminger decided to release it without a seal of approval, and the film
was critically and financially successful. His decision signaled a new trend in
the film industry of directors and producers refusing to compromise on their
work, instead opting to take the risk of releasing it without approval.
As
a result of this stand, and in conjunction with changing social mores, the PCA
agreed to make changes to the Code (Sova 193-194). The first major revision of
the Code was approved in December 1956. MPAA president Eric Johnston emphasized
his belief that the Code is “a flexible, living document—not a dead hand laid
on artistic and creative endeavors” (Tropiano 75). Certain subjects and themes
(like drug addiction, kidnapping, abortion, and nudity) were now permitted, if
still regulated. The Man with the Golden
Arm was quietly granted the seal in 1962 (Sova 194).
The
story of Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder,
set mostly in a courtroom, revolves around the killing of a bar owner by an
army lieutenant who claims the man raped his wife. Because of its subject
matter, it’s not difficult to see why the film ran into the PCA censors. The
movie was deemed obscene by the Chicago board of censors for the use of the
terms “rape,” “sperm,” “penetration,” and “contraception” in the description of
the forced act in the trial testimony; it was subsequently banned in Chicago.
Preminger brought suit against the city. Applying the measure established in Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476
(1957), requiring that a work must “be judged as a whole in terms of its effect
on the average, normal reader or viewer,” Judge Julius H. Miner determined that
the Illinois board had “exceeded its constitutional bounds” (Sova 18). The
courtroom scene describing the rape, the judge argued, “has the effect of
arousing pity and revulsion rather than desire or sexual impure thoughts,” and
its explicit nature does not “outweigh its artistic and expert presentation”
(Sova 18).
Other
films of the period, like Billy Wilder’s Some
Like It Hot (1959) and Sidney Lumet’s The
Pawnbroker (1964), were released without a seal, or appealed its denial and
finally got approved without any cuts, respectively.
In
1966, newly appointed MPAA president Jack Valenti introduced “The Motion
Picture Code of Self-Regulation,” which was “designed to keep in closer harmony
with the mores, the culture, the moral sense and the expectations of our
society”. A precursor to the rating system, it saw censorship as “an odious
enterprise,” but stated that certain subjects (evil, sin, crime, nudity,
illicit sex, obscenity, profanity, religious and racial slurs, cruelty to
animals) should be handled with care (Tropiano 90).
At
the same time, the language of this new Code was vague and unassuming, not
unlike the list of “Don’ts and Be Carefuls” from 1927. The MPAA unofficially
began to classify films at this time instead of leveling the moral playing
field for the entire viewing audience (Tropiano 91).The “Suggested for Mature
Audiences” label (SMA) was added to
films like A Funny Thing Happened on the
Way to the Forum (1966), Two for the
Road (1966), and Reflections in a
Golden Eye (1967), while Who’s Afraid
of Virginia Woolf? (1966) carried an even higher age limit, admitting no
one under 18 without parent or guardian supervision.
The
Classifications and Rating Administration (called The Code and Rating
Administration until 1977) founded in 1968 does not technically censor film
content, but assigns rating informing viewers of the suitability of its content
for children and teenagers in regards to profanity, nudity, sex, violence,
subject matter, and themes (Tropiano 53).
As
a form of self-censorship, the Motion Picture Production Code limited the film
industry’s constitutional right to free speech. Overseen by Hays’ Studio
Relations Committee until 1934 and then by Breen as head of the Production Code
Administration, these self-imposed, religiously fashioned moral guidelines,
adopted for a multitude of different reasons, had far-reaching, wide-ranging
effects on American cinema content. Even with the document in place, however, there
were filmmakers who found ways around it. Hughes’ The Outlaw, Kazan’s Pinky and
On the Waterfront, Preminger’s The Moon Is Blue, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Anatomy of a Murder, and, of course, Rossellini’s The Miracle were some of the films that
prompted the dissolution of the Code and its replacement with the MPAA rating
system. By the fifties and early sixties the shifting social and moral climate,
the threat of television, the box office success of films released without
approval, and the influx of foreign films had started to wear down the Code,
and its demise was sealed by the decision in Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, 343 U.S. 495 (1952).
_____________________________
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