The 1950’s marked many massive landmarks for film and one of the biggest transitions this decade provided was the termination of the Production Code. Seeing the code disappear was a big deal to American cinema as a whole, especially since this opened a floodgate that allowed films to show more and more taboo subject on the screen. the bug question though is why did the Production code become terminated? There are actually a large list of reasons why this happened, but perhaps the biggest factors include the Supreme Court’s ruling on the 1952 Miracle case, the pioneering directors that challenged the code and finally the box office results that allowed more taboo subjects to be shown on the screen. What really allowed the ball to start rolling toward the decline of the Production Code came in the year 1952, when an Italian film called The Miracle (1948) was being released in America. The problem arose when the state of New York attempted to bane the film from being shown on the grounds that the film was committing sacrilege. The distributer …show more content…
Director Otto Preminger started to challenge the code when he released tow movies, The Moon Is Blue (1953) and The Man with the Golden Arm (1955). Both of these films had content that the Production Code wouldn’t allow, including frank talk about sex and onscreen directions of herion use and addiction. Of course the films were not approved by the code and did not receive their seal of approval, but Preminger ignored this and United Artist released the film anyway. Major studios started to follow suit and decided to release more movies that ignored the seal of approval from the Production Code. Protesters were left powerless and very much lead to the end of the Production Code in the 1960’s and the introduction of the rating system we know
Hollywood is a master of revisionist history, especially when that history is its own. One of the defining moments in the histories of both Hollywood and America was the series of Congressional hearings held by the House Un-American Activities Committee, or HUAC, and led by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the late 1940′s and early 1950′s in order to ostensibly eliminate Communism from the United States. Hollywood was intimately involved in the HUAC hearings, and one of those targeted most viciously in the controversy was acclaimed film and theater director Elia Kazan.
In the 1930s and 1940s many Hollywood writers, actors, producers, and directors were suspected for communist affiliations. During this time, communism was a popular political movement in the United States, especially among young liberals. There was a growing fear of communism invading American society. By the end of World War Two an event known as the Red Scare resulted in communism become increasingly feared and hated by many in the United States. The Hollywood blacklist caused the Hollywood industry a lot of harm in its business and reputation.
The idea of Hollywood, before it was Hollywood as we know it seems foreign. However, it did exist and was known as "Pre-code." Pre-code Hollywood refers to the era in the American film industry between the introduction of sound in the late 1920's and the enforcement of the Hays Code censorship guidelines, which went into effect on June 13, 1934 (Association of Motion Picture Producers 1934). Durin...
PCA – the Production Code Administration, was encouraged by Catholics, and was created with the intention of enforcing the censorship code adopted by the ind...
Beginning the mid 1920s, Hollywood’s ostensibly all-powerful film studios controlled the American film industry, creating a period of film history now recognized as “Classical Hollywood”. Distinguished by a practical, workmanlike, “invisible” method of filmmaking- whose purpose was to demand as little attention to the camera as possible, Classical Hollywood cinema supported undeviating storylines (with the occasional flashback being an exception), an observance of a the three act structure, frontality, and visibly identified goals for the “hero” to work toward and well-defined conflict/story resolution, most commonly illustrated with the employment of the “happy ending”. Studios understood precisely what an audience desired, and accommodated their wants and needs, resulting in films that were generally all the same, starring similar (sometimes the same) actors, crafted in a similar manner. It became the principal style throughout the western world against which all other styles were judged. While there have been some deviations and experiments with the format in the past 50 plus ye...
Three tenets of the Production Code impact the film directly. The Hays Office states as follows:
In 1968 Jack Valenti, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), established the Classification and Ratings Administration (CARA) in an effort to reduce the amount of objectionable material in film. Before 1968, the MPAA required that all films follow the guidelines of the Production Code. The Production Code stipulated what was and was not appropriate to appear in films. In 1966, the MPAA elected Jack Valenti president and he changed the code to a rating system based on the amount of objectionable content in a film. The rating system went through several amendments until the current rating system. A controversy arose when The Weinstein Co. film Blue Valentine received an NC-17 rating for a sexually explicit scene involving the main characters in the film. The controversy over the rating of the film stirred up the question of the effectiveness of the MPAA rating system. Critics were already questioning the effectiveness of the MPAA, but the recent controversy helped to stimulate those questions. The rating system that the MPAA enforces on films is ineffective.
Jowett, Garth. "A Significant Medium", in Movie Censorship and American Culture. Couvares, Francis, ed. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996.
The fifties was a learning year and the 60's became the time to express everything that they learned. The 60's was a time for new and innovative ways to entertain the people. Since the blacklisting continued in Hollywood, the making or films became very difficult to express. The restrictions, such as the production codes, kept the big corporations to produce films that had no interesting subjects. These films also had to be films that show no signs of communistic values. The film industry was failing to bring in the audience to the theaters. With the TV making a big wave all over, the U.S. the film industry was losing it is money. Then in 1961 something big happened, 20th Century Fox took apart its lot. This act was one that led to a chain reaction. Studios were assuming the role of distributors. This would allow the independent companies to come in and add a new flavor to the silver screen. During this time films changed it's traditional film making ideas. Things started to get graphic, more violent, sexual and more expressive. Movies had found a new look and with the production codes now gone and the blacklisting ending, there was an explosion of ideas that would be presented to the United States.
In America during the era of the cold war there was a fear of the USSR and communism; Senator Mcarthy’s ideas grew in popularity and “McCarthyism” took hold across America. American people were taught to fear communism and how communism would affect American society. This growing fear led to a witch hunt for communists in America. Hollywood was victim to the bulk of communist accusations in an event called the “Hollywood Blacklist”. The Hollywood Blacklist was a significant event in the Cold War; it affected Hollywood and the victims in many ways.
...creased monitoring of censorship throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Hollywood experienced a major shift in the way pictures were made. Going from depictions of a carefree lifestyle, characteristic of the California dream, to a more monitored approach to filmmaking, Hollywood make the necessary transition in order to abide by the mass request of censorship to the filmmaking process. In this, the California dream was lost, as Americans were brought back to reality, but the action offered a stepping stone to enter a new age where films were praised for decades to come. Today, censorship is still a major issue in Hollywood, and has moved not only to include movies, but all forms of mass media. This shows that the ideals of morality in media will continue to encompass a majority of issues in society, and is one that should continually be addressed in order to find harmony.
But there are several varieties of liberalism. Joseph McCarthy and other conservatives believed that Hollywood had been infiltrated by Communism and the Soviet Union. Conservatives were in a position of power at this point and abused it relentlessly. Any movie could now be seen as secret propaganda in support of the USSR. The fear of a black-list in Hollywood caused a bit of liberal outcry. But this was mainly among actors and other employees in the film sector. The most famous case was the Hollywood 10; who were charged with contempt. The fear of being labelled a Communist caused American movies stagnate and become similar stories. These movies were generally happy-go-lucky, pro-government or apolitical. Other forms of press faced a similar amount of danger but the main targets of the HUAC were Hollywood’s employees and government
Wyatt, Justin. “The Stigma of X: Adult Cinema and the Institution of the MPAA Ratings System.” Controlling Hollywood: Censorship and Regulation in the Studio Era. Ed. Matthew Bernstein. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1999. (238-264).
Largely influenced by the French New Wave and other international film movements, many American filmmakers in the late 1960s to 1970s sought to revolutionize Hollywood cinema in a similar way. The New Hollywood movement, also referred to as the “American New Wave” and the “Hollywood Renaissance,” defied traditional Hollywood standards and practices in countless ways, creating a more innovative and artistic style of filmmaking. Due to the advent and popularity of television, significant decrease in movie theater attendance, rising production costs, and changing tastes of American audiences, particularly in the younger generation, Hollywood studios were in a state of financial disaster. Many studios thus hired a host of young filmmakers to revitalize the business, and let them experiment and have almost complete creative control over their films. In addition, the abandonment of the restrictive Motion Picture Production Code in 1967 and the subsequent adoption of the MPAA’s rating system in 1968 opened the door to an era of increased artistic freedom and expression.
Thompson, K 2003, ‘The struggle for the expanding american film industry’, in Film history : an introduction, 2nd ed, McGraw-Hill, Boston, pp. 37-54