Posted on 04/16/2016 7:06:08 AM PDT by NYer
There was a time in the early years of motion pictures when a kiss was the ultimate expression of love. Anything beyond a brush of the lips was left to the imagination, and love scenes were actually more potent because of it.
In the 1930s a strict code dictated to directors and writers the lines of demarcation between what was permissible, not only for lovemaking, but also for vulgarity and other delicate themes. Though marked in part by what was considered backward in the era [i.e., miscegenation – ed], there is something to be said for some elements of the Hays Code. Its strictness forced producers to use their imaginations.
No one was better at the use of imagination than the Catholic director Alfred Hitchcock. In Notorious Hitchcock wanted to film an extended kissing scene between Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. According to the code, kisses could only last three seconds. Hitchcock came up with an ingenious idea: have the lovers kiss, stop, say a few words, kiss again, walk a little bit and then kiss again until they get on the other side of the room. It was one of the sexiest scenes that Hitchcock ever directed.
In Hitchcock’s masterpiece Rear Window there is a breathtaking scene where James Stewart is lying down on his balcony seemingly alone, and we see a shadow, and then we see the glorious face of Grace Kelly twice. Then in slow motion Grace Kelly’s face appears in the frame and gently kisses him on the mouth. I saw this film in rerelease 15 years ago, and I can remember it as if I saw it yesterday.
Ten years later Hitchcock made another masterpiece called Marnie. This film has one of the most sensual kisses ever recorded. In her boss’ office, Marni (Tippi Hedren) is typing a document. Suddenly a thunderstorm erupts. She is deathly afraid of thunderstorms. She gets up from her desk and cowers in a corner, saying, “Stop the colors.” Sean Connery playing her boss comes to her and says, “What colors?” Already deeply in love with her and seeing her fear, he goes to her and holds her, and a tree crashes through the window on the other side of the room. She runs to the wall, and as the camera crops to just their faces, he kisses her tenderly. Hedren later remarked the camera was literally a foot and a half away.
The greatest tribute to the beauty of the kiss is undoubtedly Giuseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso, released in 1988 and the Academy Award-winner for best foreign language feature. It is a touching story taking place in a small town in Italy about a movie projectionist in the town’s only theater who takes a liking to a small boy who is enchanted with the magic of movies. He teaches the boy all the ins and outs of how to be a projectionist, and as he gets older grooms him for a career in the movies.
The town priest had made a rule that all the kissing scenes in the movies had to be excised. Years later, when the boy is a famous movie director living in Rome, he gets word that their projectionist has died. Not having been in his hometown for many years he goes back and is told that the projectionist had left him a can of film. When he gets back to Rome he runs the film and to his astonishment, his mentor had edited all the excised kissing scenes together into one gloriously beautiful montage. As he watches this film unfold he begins slowly to get tears in his eyes he is so moved. And I have to admit so was I.
[Editor’s Note: Cinema Paradiso MPAA rating: R, PG]
Unforgettable - Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (Scena Finale, 1988) HD
“Complete Nudity Is Never Permitted”: The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930
Ping!
I still find it fascinating, just how many great movies were made during the “Hays Code” era as opposed to the great movies made in a similar period since the code was cast aside.
Of course, todays moves have a much stricter code to follow.
The Political Correct Code.
Boy is that true. Every question asked in film today has an utterly predictable political correct answer.
My guess is that it has something to do with boundaries and restrictions, which innately forces a kind of discipline on artists to be more creative. Artists loathe boundaries, but without them, they more often than not flail and wind up pleasing no one but themselves.
It’s not lost on me that most of America’s cultural heights coincided with the years the Hays Code was in effect.
I thought the first kiss was from an old short film “The Kiss” from the early silent days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kiss_%281896_film%29
“The film contained the very first kiss on film, with a close-up of a nuzzling couple followed by a short peck on the lips (”the mysteries of the kiss revealed”). The kissing scene was denounced as shocking and obscene to early moviegoers and caused the Roman Catholic Church to call for censorship and moral reform - because kissing in public at the time could lead to prosecution.[1]
The film caused a scandalized uproar and occasioned disapproving newspaper editorials and calls for police action in many places where it was shown. One contemporary critic wrote: “The spectacle of the prolonged pasturing on each other’s lips was beastly enough in life size on the stage but magnified to gargantuan proportions and repeated three times over it is absolutely disgusting.” [2]
The Edison catalogue advertised it thus: “They get ready to kiss, begin to kiss, and kiss and kiss and kiss in a way that brings down the house every time.”
Perhaps in defiance and “to spice up a film”, this was followed by many kiss imitators, including The Kiss in the Tunnel (1899) and The Kiss (1900).”
Section II, Paragraph 16: "All dramatic films must include at least one homosexual and portray said character as heroic, noble, and above all, normal."
Section II, Paragraph 103: "Comedic films must have one wise-cracking black person, preferably a heavy-set female who is loud and brassy. Where possible, an equally caustic black male should also be introduced, plot integrity notwithstanding."
And this (Section III, Paragraph 7:) "Christians of any denomination must be portrayed as either superstitious bumpkins, powerless hypocrites, or sexual deviants. In no instance are they to be positive characters nor is their faith to be anything but the object of ridicule."
See? Rules are still rules.
I couldn’t agree more! Hitchcock is one of my favourite directors, too.
“Hitchcock directed more than fifty feature films in a career spanning six decades and is often regarded as the greatest British filmmaker.[13] He came first in a 2007 poll of film critics in Britain’s Daily Telegraph, which said: “Unquestionably the greatest filmmaker to emerge from these islands, Hitchcock did more than any director to shape modern cinema, which would be utterly different without him. His flair was for narrative, cruelly withholding crucial information (from his characters and from viewers) and engaging the emotions of the audience like no one else.”[14][15]
Prior to 1980, there had long been talk of Hitchcock being knighted for his contribution to film, with film critic Roger Ebert writing: “Other British directors like Sir Carol Reed and Sir Charlie Chaplin were knighted years ago, while Hitchcock, universally considered by film students to be one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, was passed over”, before he received his knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II in the 1980 New Year Honours.[12] In 2002, the magazine MovieMaker named Hitchcock the most influential filmmaker of all time.”
Source: Wikipedia
The final death of the Hays Code came with the murder of Bobby Kennedy and the anti-violence hysteria that followed.
TV shows dumbed down to kiddie shows.
Pulp Fiction changed to less lurid covers.
Toy Guns disappeared from the stores.
The 1968 Gun Control Act was passed.
A more effete American male became the rage.
Only the movie makers escaped as they said they would “police themselves” with a joke of a “ratings” system.
They then proceeded to turn out the most blood and guts sex filled movies they could make, reshooting scenes to add more sex and violence.
The Hays Code was dead.
Speaking of film history...today we celebrate the birthday of Charlie Chaplin.
One needs only look at contemporary painting, poetry, etc to see the truth in that.
I seem to recall some Ronald Reagan discussion of sex in movies. He said something to the effect that a shot of a “Do Not Disturb” sign on a hotel room door can make for a great movie shot because it allows the viewer to use his imagination as to what is happening.
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“Practically all the Hollywood film-making of today is stooping to cheap salacious pornography in a crazy bastardization of a great art to compete for the ‘patronage’ of deviates and masturbators.”
-Frank Capra
96-Minute 'Masterclass' Interview with Alfred Hitchcock on Filmmaking
In this fantastic interview with Alfred Hitchcock from a 1976 press conference for his last film 'The Family Plot'. During this interview (1.5hr) Hitchcock responds to a range of serious and comical questions about his career, his filmmaking style, story, and directing.
Here is a selection of the wonderful soundtrack:
Today’s kiss is 2 people slamming their open mouth together.
Section IV, Paragraph 3: Every action movie must have one woman who can whup six guys at once.
Not really. You’re right about the cultural ideals shifting, but the Hays Code had more to do with sex than violence. Contrary to the article, the Code was not implemented in the “early days” of cinema but decades later in 1934.
The force behind it was the Legion of Decency, a group of Catholic matrons who generally did reflect real middle class societal values. Despite attitude changes in the ‘60’s, the Code lingered in a half-hearted way, with movies flirting on the boundaries.
The Code’s coup de grace was a movie of which I forget the name. David Niven was in it and a young, perky brunette. The girl bluntly asks the question about an unmarried woman, “Is she pregnant?” and the floodgates were opened. When women did not march in the streets or start a letter-writing campaign in protest, Hollywood knew they could now finally get back to the risque scenes and dialogue that were not uncommon in the teens and twenties.
Any males in the movie, especially those with an interest in the above female, must be depicted as dolts, curs, or feeble children incapable of caring for themselves.
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