This week in puzzling online discourse, a subset of Gen Z is looking wistfully back on the era of the Motion Picture Production Code, also known as the Hays Code, a voluntary (well, technically) set of censorship standards Hollywood rigorously adhered to from 1934 through the late 1960s.
It all began with a plea for a return to the halcyon days of yore, when nice people made nice movies without a single exposed ass:
But smutty movies aren’t a modern invention. From its earliest days, the movies have been sex obsessed (obviously). The production code just required Hollywood to be more subtle about it—but before the Hays Code was in place, the movies were plenty dirty. When people talk about the “pre-Code” era, they’re generally referring to the “talkie” years, before the Code was formalized and enforced by studios…so roughly 1929 to 1934, with 1933 being a peak year. It’s not that these movies contained a lot of nudity or graphic sex—society in generally still shedding the prudishness of the Victorians—but there was a definitely greater freedom for films to explore adult sexuality. Even nearly 100 years ago, these movies acknowledged, for instance, that women might have and even enjoy sex, and grappled with sexual power dynamics between straight men and women.
Insisted upon by vocal Christian organizations, the Code didn’t enforce an existing status quo, but a new one based on a particularly narrow view of acceptable behavior. And it wasn’t just sex: The movies couldn’t show authority figures in general, and religious leaders in particular, as flawed unless the filmmakers were extremely careful to make clear that such individuals were outliers. Among other authoritarian impulses, that lead to decades of popular mass entertainment that told Americans that the police were never wrong and that the clergy would never harm you. Crime couldn’t ever be seen to pay, so even the most unjust laws were to be venerated. Homosexuality was strictly out, as was any romantic or sexual race-mixing. The “virtue” that fans of the Code profess to miss also entirely erased female sexual power, queerness, or the idea that a relationship could be made up of anything other than exactly two straight people of the same race.
Films of the Code era eventually found subtle ways to defy the strictures of the Hays office—directors like Hitchcock knew how to amp up sexual tension (and innuendo) to craft scenes that feel at least as sexy as actual sex scenes while also misdirecting the censors—and some of the greatest movies ever made were indeed made by either scrupulously following the rules of the Code, or by bending them in just the right ways. But romanticizing censorship that was mostly designed to keep women in their places and to value authority over the problems of the less privileged is pretty misguided. Instead, let’s honor the freewheeling spirit of these pre-Code films, which prove the movies have always had vice on the brain.
Night Nurse, featuring pre-Code queen Barbara Stanwyck alongside Joan Blondell, is one of my favorite movies full-stop, a brazen blend of silliness and seriousness that offers up a variety of excuses to get its leads to undress (down to their underwear, anyway), and then ups the drama with a story about the two young nurses battling wealthy trust fund heirs (sometimes physically) to save a kid in danger. There’s not a ton of sex here, but a much stronger class-consciousness in the central conflict than films would later portray, and Stanwyck’s character’s strength would have almost certainly been softened with a romance had the movie been made a few years later. Instead, she helps to cover up a murder (he had it coming) with her bootlegger boyfriend, and the two ride off all smiles. We’d have never seen a woman get away with any of that under the Code, and even the unrepentant bootlegger boyfriend would have been forbidden.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Pull up any list of great American gangster movies, and it will be overwhelmingly either pre-Code or post-Code…movies in between were subject to strict rules about punishment, but almost more general strictures about crime being portrayed in anything resembling a positive light. Things don’t end particularly well for James Cagney’s Tom Powers, but he has a bit of fun along the way, and there’s also a far more nuanced picture of crime and punishment (particularly during the prohibition/depression era) than we’d see later.
Where to stream: Showtime, or digital rental
A New Orleans sex worker, Gilda, is accused of murdering the guy who forced her into the business to begin with, and shuffled off to a small island with no other women (well, white women, anyway, making her a prized commodity among the island’s population of male criminals) and no extradition treaty. It could be the setup for a screwball comedy, but this is definitely not that, instead a strikingly feminist story about the endless ways in which some men will manipulate women in the interest of sexual power. There’s no great catharsis nor a happy ending, but the climax at least sees Gilda charting her own unhappy destiny on her own terms.
Where to stream: It’s on the Internet Archive.
The Hays Code forbade negative depictions of religion, which is why Frankenstein needed to be edited for rereleases in the years after its blockbuster 1931 opening. The sketchy science business here would probably OK, but once Dr. Frankenstein compares himself to God, all bets are off. The word itself was banned in anything other than a reverent context, as was blasphemy, generally. The Code was less specific about cruelty to children, but expected “special care” be taken in such matters; later censors didn’t love the monster drowning a kid in a lake, even if he did feel pretty bad about it later.
Where to stream: Digital rental
The Hays Codes restrictions on positive portrayals of anything resembling crime made it extremely complicated to discuss issues of social justice. It might’ve surprised filmgoers to learn that not everything legal is just, and that not all things against the law are wrong. Here, an innocent veteran (Paul Muni) is sentenced to hard labor involving the titular (and barbaric) chain gang from which he escapes. He is then forced to steal to survive. Based on the memoir of the vet who lived it, the film was instrumental in launching penal reform in Georgia, though in later years Hollywood would never have been able to so starkly or opening criticize the American criminal justice system, and sympathetic portrayals of criminals were expressly forbidden—a great example of what was lost in the rush to a “morality” that mostly only benefitted the status quo.
Where to stream: HBO Max
Barbara Stanwyck plays Lily Powers, an abused teenage prostitute who breaks away from her father to find an entry-level job at a huge Manhattan bank. One of the film’s sauciest motifs involves a camera pan up the face of the Gotham Trust building, as when Stanwyck begins an affair with Jimmy (a very young John Wayne), her superior in the filing department. When he recommends her for a promotion to his boss, she quickly seduces that guy; each increase in status and salary is represented by a move up to a higher floor. Later, a rising young executive finds her having sex in a broom closet, at which point he begins seeing her on the side; he’s engaged to the daughter of the bank’s VP, who himself falls for Lily. A murder-suicide between the two nearly derails all of Lily’s plans, until the bank’s young new president decides that it’d be better to keep her happy than have her reveal the sordid details.
So yeah, Lily’s character has plenty of sex, shamelessly manipulating her way to the top. That’s not nearly the most striking bit, though. What’s most shocking is that the movie has a happy ending, even as she almost singlehandedly destroys a bank. The Hays code would’ve never allowed Lily’s sexuality to be so openly displayed, and regardless, would have mandated that her outcome be tragic. Seeing Lily walk away happy, and with our sympathies intact, is the biggest shock of all.
Where to stream: The Roku Channel
This early George Cukor effort has much the same zip as the later films for which he’s better known, but this one’s a bit more explicit. Constance Bennett plays Pearl, who, after quickly finding out about her husband’s mistress, begins an affair first with wealthy Arthur, and then with unashamed gigolo Pepi, who she’s rather stolen from her friend, Minnie. Pearl’s entire circle becomes involved in the various romantic complications, none of which involve her husband, and she’s even joined by her tango instructor, a pansy in the parlance of the time, who serves as a source of helpful advice and comic relief, delightedly commenting Minnie and Pearl’s literal kiss-and-make-up in the final moments. Our takeaway here has absolutely nothing to do with Pearl’s adultery; the lesson she learns is about not being jerk to her friends, and never putting misters before sisters.
Where to stream: It’s on the Internet Archive.
Ernst Lubitsch directs Fredric March, Gary Cooper, and Miriam Hopkins as one of cinema’s first throuples. Hopkins can’t decide between her two male costars, and so they all move in together…platonically, at first (Three’s Company-style), before breaking that rule and throwing the whole arrangement into chaos. Hopkins marries another man, and this is where we might expect the movie to turn into a plea for couple-based monogamy…except she quickly leaves her husband, and the three main characters decide that they all belong together after all.
Where to stream: Redbox, and it’s also on YouTube.
The yellow-face casting is a bit hard to look past—the title’s General Yen is played by Swedish actor Nils Asther, though two other key roles are played by a Japanese actress and a Japanese-American actor. Still, this Frank Capra film feels ahead of its time in significant ways: Barbara Stanwyck plays a missionary in Shanghai who’s saved by a Chinese warlord—though he seems cruel to her at first, the two develop an attraction that plays out as a sort of romantic tragedy. Anti-miscegenation rules under the Hays specifically applied to any “sexual relationship between the white and black races,” but studios avoided depicting almost any type of interracial relationship until that particular stricture was dropped in the late 1950s. If that didn’t stop it getting made later, the film’s simultaneous critique of American imperialism (religious and capitalist) certainly would have.
Where to stream: Digital rental (it’s also on YouTube)
Greta Garbo stars as the real-life Swedish monarch, portrayed here as a bisexual, cross-dressing ruler in the Queen Elizabeth I mode, but with more sex (in one scene, she compares a particularly passionate night to what God must’ve felt creating the world). It’s one of Garbo’s best roles; her Christina is a fully formed human, and, even when she gives it all up for love, she does it on her own terms. Female authority on the screen wouldn’t be this powerful, and certainly not as bisexual positive, for decades (possibly we’re still waiting).
Where to stream: Digital rental
A bit on the nose, title-wise, but still a brisk, fun film about a hard-charging auto executive who just happens to be (gasp) female! (No one’s suggesting that the 1930s were entirely enlightened.) Ruth Chatterton keeps up her boss-girl energy by sleeping her way through her employees (not a good look, maybe, but certainly no worse than what the male factory heads were getting up to). Even when she softens her image to appeal to a guy she’s genuinely interested in, it’s all an act—at least until the slightly disappointing final act. Until then, it’s a brazen exploration of a woman’s sexual and business acumen.
Where to stream: It’s on YouTube
Even in the closing days of the pre-Code era, there were still some surprises to be had. Case in point: The Black Cat, a wildly atmospheric film set in a castle, of sorts, crafted in an ominous, but starkly modernist style (at least as seen from the 1930s). Bela Lugosi plays a doctor who meets a sickly sweet couple on a train trip—he seems OK at first, but there’s something sinister going on. He’s out for revenge, you see, and the definitely deserving Boris Karloff is his target (this was their first on-screen pairing). The result includes bits of necrophilia, satanism, drug use, and incest, along with a truly squirm-inducing human flaying scene involving shadows, sound, and writhing hands. It’s a masterpiece of suggestion, and even still depicts far more violence than would have been allowed just a few years later.
Where to stream: Digital rental