True. But films post the Hays Code weren't all unartistic and not worthy of praise. What grew in the mid-to-late 30s? Comedies— amazingly racy if they wanted to be. If anything, verbal sparring continued and flourished, and I'm pretty sure they relied on the audience to get the dirty jokes. What influencial genre/style came out of the 40s? Film noir, the grandaddy of influences. Full of amoral characters and anti-heroes worth rooting for. Unartistic and pandering to audiences? Sometimes, but not always.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is that, yeah, it was a nuisance and ruined some creativity and outcomes of films. But under constraint, some great things can be made and were made.
edited 6th Mar '16 12:15:51 PM by LongTallShorty64
"It's true that we had a gentleman's agreement, but unfortunately, I am no gentleman."Yeah, I have to reject the notion that the Code "killed the cinema in North America" or that nothing good was ever made between 1934 and 1968. Lots of great art was made under the Code. Most of what we're talking about in this thread. Capra, Hitchcock, Ford. Psycho was made under the Code, for cripes' sake. I think we can all agree that the Code was by and large a Bad Thing, and sadly we live in a world where Rita Hayworth never got naked. But it's silly to say that no one made anything good under the Code.
I don't think Psycho was submitted to the MPAA, though.
You don't actually have to submit a movie to the MPAA - you didn't then, and I don't think you have to now. In the late 50s, early 60s, a lot of films that had content that wouldn't pass the Code weren't submitted to the MPAA and released anyway. This is what indirectly led to the ratings system we have today.
"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."Watched the double feature of The Lady Vanishes, and The 39 Steps. I enjoyed both immensely, much more than I thought I would. Hitchcock's British films have a quaint feel to them —I don't know how to describe it in any other way. I've also come to the realization that any movie would improve with the presence of the Caldicott and Charters characters at least by ten percent. Also, Robert Donat was a dreamboat.
Anybody know about the regulations of British films during this time? We were talking about the Hays Code recently: was there a British equivalent? The garter and bra scene in The 39 Steps felt like something that would be included in a Pre-Code film.
"It's true that we had a gentleman's agreement, but unfortunately, I am no gentleman."They had movie ratings long before we did. The censor board, however, was even worse. Horror films particularly suffered. Even stuff like The Horror Of Party Beach had to be cut before it could be released.
On another note, anyone ever seen the 1930 All Quiet On The Western Front? I saw it back in high school after having read the book. What a film that was... Pretty damn good.
"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."All Quiet On The Western Front is a really great film. I've watched the silent version with some synchronized sound effects added to the soundtrack. Incomparable war film.
"It's true that we had a gentleman's agreement, but unfortunately, I am no gentleman."I don't really know enough about British censorship to say, but they did have censorship. Look at what happened to Peeping Tom, which is a fantastic movie. Cut to ribbons. I've seen several of the Hitchcock films from before he came to Hollywood and most of them could have been made in Hollywood with little difference.
Just watched How Green Was My Valley. I don't have anything original to add—it should not have won the Oscar that year but it was a legitimately great film. Movies in 1941 were pretty loaded. I last saw it many years ago. Had forgotten that the film had that much of a Downer Ending.
Re: Peeping Tom. That's another one I'm going to have to find now.
The main actor, Karl Böhm, was also in some other film I recorded of TCM - something about the Brothers Grimm. Does he have an obvious accent in this too?
"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."If he actually sounded British in that - I'll have to find it and see how the hell that could be.
In the aforementioned film I recorded off TCM with him in it, he was very obviously German, talking in the same clipped way a lot of Germans who speak English do. (His co-star was Laurence Harvey, obviously British-accented. Most everybody else in the film either talked American or comic-opera fake German accents.)
"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."Huh? I know this actor mostly from a number of so called Heimatfilme...and naturally from his role in the Sissi-movies. I didn't realize that he did anything else...*looking it up*...oh, that explains it, apparently the German audience was not pleased that he dared to step out of his usual roles.
He used to have a really distinctive Austrian accent.
Having looked up some clips of Peeping Tom, Karl Böhm is using a British accent but there's still some German inflection in his speech.
Also, here's the trailer for the thing. It's so goddamn sensationalistic that I can't help but love it:
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Heimatfilme? Is there something I don't know about?...
edited 14th Mar '16 5:41:21 AM by Aldo930
"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."Just watched Black Narcissus. I was not prepared for that kind of overt sexuality and heavily implied Naughty Nuns in a film made in 1947. Of course it was by the guy that went on to make Peeping Tom. And I guess it's a good example of the shades of difference between British and American film in the Hays Code era that we were discussing above. There's nothing in the movie that overtly violates the Hays Code rules, Deborah Kerr doesn't get topless or anything (more's the pity), but the themes of the movie, sexual awakening and female lust and such, are the kind of thing that American films of the day didn't deal with. And The Other Wiki tells me that Black Narcissus only received limited release in the United States thanks to the Moral Guardians.
edited 16th Mar '16 9:04:42 AM by jamespolk
Michael Powell also directed The Red Shoes, a film I have not seen but is apparently considered good.
Peeping Tom actually killed his career, believe it or not. He did live to see it Vindicated by History, though. Funnily enough, playing a psychotic serial killer didn't hurt Karl Böhm's career, because he actually made some Hollywood films in the early 60s, including one Disney film where he played Beethoven (and a plot point is that Beethoven gets the inspiration for his fifth symphony when his landlord knocks on the door to get the rent).
"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."Recently watched another Powell film, A Matter of Life and Death, which is also great. I have a DVD of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp which has been sitting on my desk for months unwatched.
I saw the intro that TCM did for Black Narcissus under the "Condemed" series. Now, I just have to watch it and probably enjoy it; the Archers rarely disappoint.
"It's true that we had a gentleman's agreement, but unfortunately, I am no gentleman."

Money is not the same as artistic merit or treating the audience of the films as functional adults.
And both of those things undeniably took a kicking from the jackbooted idiots in the Hays Code offices.