Motion Picture Code Essay Research Paper The

Motion Picture Code Essay, Research Paper

The economic downturns of the Great Depression contributed to the county.s fascination

with gangster genres. As Americans lost their jobs or saw their farms foreclosed on by

the once admired establishment or banking system; with public endorsement gangsters

descended in spirit from America.s frontier outlaws such as the James Gang, and led by

desperadoes like Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, and Machine Gun Kelly–rose up

to assault the system. Because of Prohibition, the Great Depression and World War II,

gangsters became the modern gunslingers and outlaws. The gangster saga replaced the

Western as the American myth. It told the story of modern America.

Young Americans enjoyed watching gangster films during the 1930s. Before

President Roosevelt.s New Deal, gangsters were without doubt the American cinema.s

most striking heroes. The film industry.s love affair with members of criminal gangs was

only natural, they were colorful, violent, and charismatic men and women whose

law-breaking activities were followed by millions of law abiding Americans. But when

brought to the screen, gangster films more than any other Hollywood genre created

problems not only for the usual censorship lobbies but also for judges, lawyers, teachers,

policemen, mayors, newspapers, and local councilors. Many respectable citizens believed

that gangster films based on the lives and activities of Prohibition-era criminals, led to an

increase in juvenile delinquency and accused Hollywood of delivering impressionable

youth into a career of crime. The harmful effects of fast-moving and exciting gangster

films on young cinema patrons thus became a prominent concern of those eager to

control and censor this pervasive new mass medium.

After a series of sex scandals rocked the American film industry, in 1922

Hollywood.s Jewish moguls hired a midwestern Presbyterian gentleman and influential

Republican William Harrison Hays, former Postmaster General in President

Warren Harding.s cabinet, as their front man to clean up the image of the movies. The

industry.s self-monitoring Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America Inc.

(MPPDA) or Hays office in Los Angeles tried a variety of ways to regulate films before

adopting a formal code. Written in 1930 by two mid-western Catholics, a Jesuit professor

of drama in St. Louis and a lay publisher of trade magazines; the new Motion Picture

Code stipulated partly in reaction to the increasing popularity of gangster films, that

movies stress proper behavior, respect for government, and Christian values. The Hays

Code was made mandatory in 1934, and began with an attack on what was seen as a

general tone of lawlessness and on depicting specific criminal methods in recent gangster

movies. Criminal acts were .never to be presented in such a way as to throw sympathy

with the crime as against law and justice or to inspire others with a desire for imitation..

Murder must be presented in a manner that .will not inspire imitation. and .revenge in

modern times shall not be justified.. Methods of crime such as theft, robbery, arson,

safecraking, smuggling, and dynamiting of trains should not be explicitly presented. If

these strictures were not met, a film project would no longer receive the code.s seal of

MPPDA approval (Springhall 137-138).

Organized protest against gangster movies reached its height with the publicity

surrounding director Howard Hawks. Scarface (1932); in which the versatile Paul Muni

overacted as Tony Camonte, another disguised Al Capone figure. This violent and fast

paced film produced by millionaire Howard Hughes and scripted by former Chicago

newspaperman Ben Hecht, reached the screen a year after Public Enemy but was actually

made at the same time. The delay of Scarface occurred because in an effort to appease

the movie censors. A subtitle .Shame of the Nation. was added to Scarface, along with a

scene in which civic reformers preached (.You can end it. Fight!.) directly to the

camera (McCarty 68). In another new scene, the city.s chief of detectives denounces the

glorification of gangsters, echoing the very cries of the censors who ordered the changes.

A different ending was also filmed using a double in which Camonte is brought to trial

and sentenced to be hanged by the state, rather than being shot down by the police on the

sidewalk outside his hideout (McCarty 68). New York and Chicago censorship boards

rejected Scarface outright until Warner Brothers agreed to make these changes but Jason

Joy, who enforce the Hays Code, still had to convince them to show it cut. Each state in

America had its own board of censors, so the original ending could still be seen in some

theaters when the film was finally released in the spring of 1932 (McCarty 69).

Hay.s damage-limitation exercise did little to silence criticism of crime or

gangster movies and there wa

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