Thou Shalt Not: Sex, Sin and Censorship in Pre-Code Hollywood Film Review

Even though the Motion Picture Code was put in place over 85 years ago and ended over 50 years ago it still pissed me off to hear about it in this documentary. A group of moralistic religious prigs telling America what they could see on the screen and what was not allowed. What is considered Pre-Code films are those made between 1929 when sound came in and 1934 when the Motion Picture Production Code was enforced. It was the Depression and ticket sales took a nose dive and Hollywood countered this with films full of sin, sex, adultery and violence and audiences loved it - at least some of them. Cities more than rural areas where all that sin on the screen didn't play so well.

The Motion Picture Code was actually written up in 1930 as to what could not be in a film - it is a fairly long list - and it was headed by Will Hays. But Hays was being paid by Hollywood and never really interfered much. MGM tested the new code with The Divorcee in 1930 in which Norma Shearer pays back her cheating husband with some cheating of her own. Warner Brothers followed up with Illicit with Barbara Stanwyck living with a man out of wedlock. The Hays Office did nothing. Violence was also notched up with Public Enemy which led to a series of tough crime films from Warners. Though never identified as such, gay characters also proliferated on the screen in films like Wonder Bar and Dipsomaniacs. Hollywood kept pushing the envelope of sleaze and women of disrepute in films like Midnight Mary, Night, Baby Face, Red Headed Woman and Employees Entrance where the women handed out sexual favors for free or sometimes for money.

Hays brought in Joseph Breen a staunch Catholic to enforce the Code but initially Hollywood basically ignored him. So he allied himself with the Catholic League of Decency to determine which films were wholesome and which were not. The League coded each film and if it got a rating of Condemned it was considered a sin to go see it. They had the Church at sermons proclaim which films were sinful to see. They also protested films. Hollywood gave in and the rules of the Code were enforced. And now the bad guys had to pay for their crimes, no profanity was allowed, no perversion, no drugs, no making fun of the clergy and so on. These Pre-Code films have their fan base today in on-line film communities. Even though today pretty much every movie goes further in sex and violence than these films did, these Pre-Code films have a real personality of their own and had great actors in them, For me, Barbara Stanwyck is the Pre-Code Queen.