The Hays Code and censorship before today’s Politically Correct
William Harrison Hays (1879-1954) was a politician, belonging to the Republican party. His influence on the film business began in 1922, when he was named president of the Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA). The cinema – as it was called at the time – represented a means capable of ensuring a hitherto unknown freedom of expression. In the name of the Art (cinema would soon be known as the ‘seventh art’, in addition to the six already represented by the Muses on Mount Parnassus) and with the help of images, the authors seemed to be able to represent anything to a mass audience judged more and more impressionable.
In the ’30s the landscape was varied: uninhibited women, endowed with an exotic and aggressive charm (Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo) ready to mislead the average American, good family man and next to them ruthless and violent gangsters (Scarface – the scarred onemasterpiece by Howard Hawks, released in 1932), terrifying-looking monsters (Frankenstein of 1931, the freak show of Freaks1932), not to mention the depraved European productions (The blue angel, Metropolis, M the monster of Düsseldorf).
To put a stop to the spread of immorality, William Hays, with the support of the most prestigious Studios, launched a series of guidelines in 1934, which must be followed so as not to upset the public, known as Production Codea fancy way of calling censorship.
The Hays Code: some of the norms
Public sympathy shall never be directed towards crime, deviant behavior, evil or sin.”
– “The Law, natural, divine or human, will never be ridiculed, nor will the spectator’s sympathy be solicited for its violation”.
-“The ridicule of religion was forbidden; the ministers of the cult could not be represented as comic or evil characters”.
-“Murder scenes had to be filmed in such a way as to discourage real-life emulation, and brutal killings could not be shown in detail”.
Another very specific passage concerned the family and in particular were aimed at preserving the sacredness of the marriage union:
“Films should not conclude that the lowest forms of sexual intercourse are accepted or commonplace.” Adultery and prostitution, while admittedly necessary to the plot, was not to be presented as an attractive option. Passion scenes were not to be introduced unless necessary for the plot. “Excessive and lustful kisses should be avoided”, along with other attitudes that “might stimulate the basest and grossest elements”.
The allusions to the ‘sexual perversions‘ (especially homosexuality) and venereal diseases. Men and women could not be filmed in bed together, even if married: forced to sleep in twin (single) beds, or in any case one of the two always had to have at least one foot on the floor.
The cases
Not even cartoons escaped the watchful eye of the Hays Code, rigidly enforced by Joseph Breen, put in charge of the censorship commission, which had the power to rewrite and edit entire pages of the script. In 1933 the image of Betty Boopborn from the pen of Max Fleischer, was radically changed: the skirt was lengthened and the figure ‘deflated’, showing too generous curves.
Even Gone With the Wind had problems, due to Clark Gable’s memorable last line (“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn”, translated into Italian with the least reprehensible “Frankly I do not care”). Producer David O. Selznick, obsessed with fidelity to Margaret Mitchell’s novel, bypassed Breen, addressing Hays directly to demonstrate that in the Oxford dictionary, the word ‘damn‘ did not appear as an expletive but as simple vulgarity. Selznick was fined, but the joke went untouched.
Sometimes the fear of censorship has instead benefited a film: the impossibility of a happy ending for the adulterous relationship between Humphrey Bogart And Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca it has in fact created a poignant and ironic epilogue that has remained in the history of cinema.
Another exemplary case is that of Howard Hughes’ western My body will warm you (1943) in which the female lead Jane Russell was felt to show her charms a little too much in some decidedly torrid scenes. It was Hughes himself who defended himself before the commission, managing to prevail, as shown by Martin Scorsese in the film The Aviator (the video of the scene above).
It could not be missing among the anecdotes concerning the Hays Code Marilyn Monroe, the most overpoweringly erotic actress to ever appear on the big screen. She was asked by the commission about a scene, shot with the actors filmed horizontally. When she was challenged that the scene could suggest a sexual act, she replied candidly: “Oh that? Look, it can also be done standing up, you know?”. For the record, the scene was not touched.
The censor’s gaze prompted many directors and screenwriters to sharpen their wits so as not to ruin their works: the long kiss (4 minutes long) between Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman in Notorius – the lost lover by Alfred Hitchcock, for example, was filmed thanks to numerous cuts from different angles, interspersed with a few whispered words: it is the director himself who tells the expedient to François Truffaut, in the memorable Book-interview Cinema according to Hitchcock.
Censorship, yesterday and today
After the abolition of the Hays Code, in 1967, the cinema made a decisive leap forward: the directors of the New Hollywood had the opportunity to revolutionize the world of cinema. From 1967 are the two films that most would have aroused the ire of the censors: The bachelor, focused on sex and in particular on the relationship between a young recent graduate and the mature mother of the girl he is in love with and Gangster Story by Arthur Penn. Especially the latter was not understood at the time: it is not an apology for crime, but a melancholy story that intertwines love and death of two young people, towards a tragic ending.
Today that of the Hays code we only keep the memory, iThe constant recourse to forcing in the name of ‘politically correct’ has the flavor of a reverse censorship which is missing a fundamental point: the more these forcings and modifications (for example ne The beauty and the Beast shot with Emma Watson the town of Belle is inhabited by numerous dark-skinned individuals, who certainly would hardly have been free citizens in 17th century France) appear evident, the more the perception of diversity increases. Are you sure it’s a good thing?