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
Personally I love pre code films they were best in genre in Hollyweird I got majority of TCM Pre code films from Warner and MGM
The one film really started the shocking Hayes office was Divorce with Norma Shearer here funny story Iriving Thaldberg the Boy genius at MGM author the rules but his wife Norma broke it
Yes, interesting. Another thing that rose almost to an art form under the code was the double entendre. The old frothy romantic comedies are full of some very clever sexual analogies and hints that can be quite risque. Sometimes so subtle it takes 2 viewings of a film for contemporary minds to get it!
*** David Niven was in it and a young, perky brunette.***
Prudence and the Pill.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063467/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_23
While these pushed the boundaries it was not until 1969 that the filth was unleashed with the new joke of a ratings system.ratings system. G, M,R,X. Then G,GP,R,X. Then G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17.
T&A, full frontal, vile language and worse became the norm. Some movies rated “R” in 1969 are now re-rated as PG-13.
I saw a Glen Ford movie at the theater in 1969, rated “M” due to mild violence. Kids were in the audience.
I saw the same movie a few weeks ago on TV, with extremely nude scenes re-shot which would have rated it a hard “R” rating in 1969.
Oh, here you go! “The Moon is Blue,” 1953. Darling, if you like this type of film.
There was a loosening of the Hays Code in 1956. But the resulting effect wasn’t nearly as severe as the immediate post-1968 changes.
“The Moon is Blue” actually did cause a bit of a stir. It’s also a pretty crummy film. Static and tiresome. I don’t find it so much akin to joyful pre-code risqueness as much as just having a sort of smutty-minded undercurrent.
By the way, in the very first year of talkies, around 1929-1930, you can catch a few instances of mild profanity. I’m always taken aback, seeing cute Marjorie White suddenly blurting out “then, why the hell are crying?” to Janet Gaynor in “Sunnyside Up.” There’s also that fascinating poverty-row item “The Sin of Lena Rivers” (1933) which has about four or five “hells” and “damns.”
I wonder if that was a “European” release print, of that 1969 movie. The studios were more apt in the 1960s to toss in some brief bits of raunch for their foreign-release versions, which weren’t in the domestic release prints.
Annoyingly, it’s those seedier versions that now seem to be accepted as the prime, ‘complete’ versions by dvd-collectors and videophiles.
A correction to my above post. The film with the profanity is “The Sin of Nora Moran” (1933). Not “The Sin of Lena Rivers” (1932), that’s a separate film. Both are poverty-row items with similar titles. Invariably, I mix them up.
***I wonder if that was a “European” release print,***
That is what I thought after seeing it was first released in Austria. The title was HEAVEN WITH A GUN.
I figured that was the film you were referencing. I recall seeing it on tv in the late-1970s, but when I caught a few glimpses of it on cable in recent years, I was taken aback by its somewhat icky, unsavory aura and attitude.
It’s probably why, when it comes to westerns, which I love, I tend to retrench back to the genre’s most pure roots, before the spaghetti-era nihilism and even before some of the post-war introduction of psychological drama. Indeed, I think my all-time favorite western in probably “When a Man’s a Man” (1935) with George O’Brien. Which almost seems like it came from a different planet than “Heaven With a Gun.”
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