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Pre-Code Hollywood

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For those who are interested in watching some of these films, I highly recommend checking out the Criterion Channel's "Pre-code Paramount" collection[0] that was released as part of the March lineup[1]. The intro film essay by Imogen Sara Smith is fantastic. The collection includes Mae West's brazenly frank dialogue about sex, a movie with a ménage à trois, a movie with a musical number about marijuana, and Marlena Dietrich's iconic crossdressing in Morocco. There's more too, but really too much to cover here!

[0] https://www.criterionchannel.com/pre-code-paramount

[1] https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/7707-the-criterion-c...

Seconded. The Code also ruins a bunch of noir type collections from the 40s and 50s because the bad guys have to die and the cops are infallible.

I love the Preston Sturges films.

MoMA retrospective of Mae West from 4 years ago was a real re-appraisal for me!

Dames, Janes, Dolls, and Canaries Women Stars of the Pre-Code Era

https://www.moma.org/calendar/film/5434

It is interesting that Catholicism is deemed to have had such a big role in the drafting of the Hays code; I didn't know that. To me, as a European, the Hays code seems like the prototypical WASP thing - in the 30s US had prohibition, after all, and to this day it is stereotypically considered a "prude" country compared to the EU, where Catholicism is more widespread.

The catholics stepped in when the protestants lost their nerve. The catholic church at that time had institutional power, projected from the concentrated ethnic neighborhoods in cities like Philadelphia. Cardinal Krol could tell his diocese not to go watch movies, and they'd do it, and it would really hurt the studios, who were deeply in debt. Additionally, Bank of America was, at that time, in Catholic hands.

This institutional power was lost when the catholics moved to suburbia post WW2.

Is there a good book on the history of Catholics in the US? It's always been so odd to me that despite Catholics being such a large group globally and historically, they've never seemed to me to be very significant in US history. In fact, one of the most memorable mentions of them I remember from growing up was in some movie or textbook, in which the KKK was described as being opposed to Jewish and Catholic people in addition to black people.

They have influence in the areas where Catholic diaspora settled. A lot of Catholic people that came to the US were lower class in terms of social, economic and racial classes. Irish and Italian people, for example, didn't exactly have the same economic or social power, or racial caste, as Anglo-Protestants. These days you'll see Catholics in power in some areas, like multiple New York governors and so on.

There are many books, but one thing to consider is that when catholics were gaining political power... they all got shot.

The Kennedy's is who I assume you are talking about, but anyone else?

As far as I can tell, the Kennedy brothers being shot had little to do with their religion

yep, just random, lone gunmen

There’s a huge middle ground of analysis you’re not addressing, and this comment is unhelpful at best I fear

Who were these slew of catholic politicans who were shot? We currently have a catholic president btw

if you think the current president is catholic i don't think we can have a very productive conversation

If you think he isn’t, despite officially being so and attending mass weekly, you’re pulling a no-true Scotsman fallacy and I have no desire to engage with such bad faith logic.

I was taught by a great Historian that the United States of America was the loss that the Catholic Church suffered, the primary loss, due to the sale of indulgences and antagonizations leading up to Protestantism.

They forfeited America by not carrying out the Reformation in due time.

That is a strange take on history. The US isn't Catholic because England was the primary colonizer, and England's road to Protestantism is a bizarre one that has far less to do with indulgences than someplace like Germany.

And despite the slow Reformation, Catholics still colonized most of America. If Napoleon hadn't needed money it's very possible most of what is now the US would still be Catholic.

Anglicanism is part of the same historical process, and it led to Puritans--that's Puritans, proudly WASPs, which I am not, given that I was baptized Catholic--colonized America first, maintained power for the most part, and set the tone for religious freedom, with religious restrictions as well.

So in the Supreme Court of former eras you see them discussing for instance the Common Book of Prayer, as a book that was an instrument of dominance through religion in England. That specifically led to the notion that public schools could flat out not ever teach religion, for a great many good reasons. Including classroom suasion--the teacher, the authority, subtexting he would favor those who did worship as he/she did--to getting children to worship as they would not without that suasion. A subtle form of requiring adhesion, and very insidious, it allows telling that child about the place called Hell. And how to avoid it, what he must do, and must never do.

And the religious restrictions the Puritans imposed? No polygamy. That was where they drew the line, at that point religious freedom within one group stepped on the toes of religious freedom of another group. And it came into play with the Latter Day Saints, who were many imprisoned (there's famous pictures), and who some of them then migrated away from America, into Mexico. Like the Puritans emigrated in their day, to practice polygamy, in accordance to their religion.[1]

[1] Polygamy is a neutral term, it's not pejorative per se, just means plural wives.

> Puritans [...] colonized America first

Hi, Jamestown would like to have a word with you.

The Puritans set up shop in New England, but in the rest of the colonies wasn't focused on the religious extremism that the early Puritans were: Maryland was originally a Catholic refuge colony, and the rest of the colonies were largely driven by economic migration (e.g., second sons of wealthy landowners who couldn't inherit any land in England).

Fitting in with the period of Pre-Code Hollywood, Al Smith's 1928 campaign for US President saw considerable public displays of anti-Catholic prejudice.[0]

It is remarkable to see that, not even 100 years later, the US has an openly practicing Catholic president[1] without it being much of an issue.

In a longer-term and probably more far-reaching sense, it is worth noting that since 2006, a majority of the US Supreme Court Justices have been Catholic. [2]

[0] https://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/10/when-a-ca...

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20130601093036/http://pqasb.pqar...

[2]https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/politics/if-barrett-joins-su...

USA is foundational a 'protestant' nation which would come along with all of the skeptical catholic prejudices and there just were not that many of them early on.

The influx of Irish and Italians would be the significant factor, and later, large Latino population but that would have happened when being 'Catholic' wouldn't have been as clearly relevant.

JFK's Catholicism was a bit of a big deal, Joe Biden ... not at all.

But if you want a mind bender, have a look:

John Roberts (Chief Justice) Catholicism G.W. Bush 2005 Clarence Thomas Catholicism G.H.W. Bush 1991 Stephen Breyer Judaism Clinton 1994 Samuel Alito Catholicism G.W. Bush 2006 Sonia Sotomayor Catholicism Obama 2009 Elena Kagan Judaism Obama 2010 Neil Gorsuch Anglicanism / Catholicism[83][84] Trump 2017 Brett Kavanaugh Catholicism Trump 2018 Amy Coney Barrett Catholicism Trump 2020

While the commentor above is correct to point out that Catholicism would have lost 'institutional' power after thew war, in that, it couldn't just 'direct people to do stuff' ... cabals obviously exist within the system to create such disproportionately favorable outcomes. I mean that seems all 'conspiratorial' and what not, but I think it would be naive to contemplate otherwise and of course such groups and systems are all over the place, for every 'interest', I'm not singling out any group.

I'm of the opinion that with the modern usage of WASP in the US, the P could be replaced with most sects of Christianity, including Anglo-Catholicism, or just straight Catholicism.

American Catholicism is very, very strongly influenced by Protestantism.

And, oddly, Catholic theology has a very outsized role in public policy - even more so in the 1930s to 1980:

Natural law played a big role American attitudes and policies on human rights, Catholic Worker movement had a very large role in unionization and left wing through, opposition to Communism, etc.

Even now phrases like “social justice” and “just war” are phrases taken from Catholic theology.

I’ve even heard the phrase “Jewish x using Catholic theology for Protests y” in a number of different situations: “Jewish professors teaching Catholic theology to Protestant students” or “Jewish judges interpreting Catholic theology for Protestant claimants.”

Reading this, and then reviewing the Code's specifics, I realized that the Code and Hollywood film noir's heyday come in tandem: "No sympathy for crimes and criminals; all crimes must be punished" is a specification that naturally produces the majority of noir plots, which in aiming to depict crime and violence must push the characters into tragic no-win situations.

I often think about the earlier days of the internet as a parallel to the pre-code Hollywood era

This gives me some hope in the face of the seemingly endless proposed bills to censor the Web. Information seeks the light. A free Internet will prove more useful to society than marginal gains to business and security guaranteed by mandatory moderation.

Well… I don’t think the web will ever, ever again be like the web of 1993.

Kevin Wentink has compiled excerpts from pre-code movies into a series of short thematic videos[1]. Most of his videos contain clips from a dozen or more movies. They have inspired me to track down many of the source films.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/c/PreCodeHollywoodClassicClipsbyKevi...

The wikipedia page on the code has a photo illustrating the code. It would make a fantastic movie poster, but no such movie could be made then:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thou_Shalt_Not_-_Whi...

'The Code' is there now and just as strong.

Netflix sends scripts back and tells them what to include, and what not to, and everyone knows the vast scope of things that cannot be said or represented.

Someone ought to write an article explaining the 'de facto' code for every decade.

It blows my mind that Netflix, Hulut have so, many, titles - so much more content - and almost none of it is boundary pushing or exotic. Surely a few great series, but they were 'within safe range'.

Netflix’s Cuties was a bit boundary pushing.

But to your point, the real “code” these days is “don’t offend China.”

The code is: "earn money/eyeballs". Like fashion, it is confined to variations on a theme which only shifts ever so gradually that you need to zoom out to a generation or two to witness any significant change. I couldn't tell you what changed in fashion in the last decade, but I can show you a 90ies look, an 80ies outfit, one from the seventies, something from the 1770s, etc. People want the same but different, and this imposes exactly such invisible 'codes' as you point out.

It's a fascinating era. The stories my grandmother told me of the parties she would attend in the '20s and '30s were unreal. Granny was a wild one. The amount of booze and drugs everyone would do, the debauchery, girls getting stuff slipped in their drinks and getting raped. I think pre-code films are just a reflection of the reality of the times.

Ah, thanks for posting! It's relevant for hackers because all early stage media tech has the same "wild west" early days property. You can catch a few like Design for Living and Rain on youtube, and indeed the subject matter is quite shocking at times. But always with the "moral" ending. The quality is not great. Backlog at LoC digital preservation unit is like 100k+ works. Not to mention lack of funding for storage, serving, etc ;)

Some of the Pre-Code films are very interesting, like Red-Headed Woman. While I am not a fan of the Hays Code, the restrictions did give rise to some interesting artistic circumlocutions, such as "gunsel."

Slavoj Zizek frequently claims that Hays Code censorship was more restrictive than political censorship in the Soviet Union. Soviet filmmakers could do practically anything as long as it didn't implicate the Communist Party. If Hays Code films were the only evidence of humanity aliens would think that babies were made by sharp glances in the presence of bedroom doors.

Watching pre-code hollywood you can see how the movies from the US from that era were not far away from the european movies in terms of brightness.

Once i knew about this i understood why most of the hollywood movies turned out into the brain damages in comparison to the european cinema.. this together with plot based movies + capitalistic objectives being considered above artistic values and originality, turned things worse.

The only reason some US movies have artistic values is or because the film-makers are defiant of the system, rule-breakers, managing to bend the system into their favor or the money-making machine captivated some talented foreign film-makers.. But of course giving the system keep draining and eating itself, its never enough, and there are no roots nor a organic and sustainable growth.

But the system works in a sort of vampiresque form, so once there are no more talent to suck, or the talents are not "selling out" anymore, all the system goes down with time..

I love to watch the cultural and cinema areas because there are a lot of lessons to learn from the perspective of technology, because our fields are not that much different once you see the patterns..

I always tough that the US capitalism need some sort of balance to not always become imbalanced because its giving too much focus on profits.

Technology companies that were once inventive turn into to "give more profits to the shareholder" machines and eventually lose what actually gave them the edge anyway. Apple for instance didn't learn its lesson and its repeating the same errors of the past unfortunately..

I know it was about "pre-code" and "what it have to do with it?" right? But i focus on this to learn about how technology can blossom and other controversial things like "what the nazis did right" (*) in terms of technology to understand more about this..

(*) - My current answer to this is that the nazi were there just in time to collect all the science that have been promoted since the XIX century. So basically the nazis were there to collect and use all that scientific prowess to forge their war machine (of course they were also masters at giving people meaning and big goals/dream big).

I'm curious why you think "capitalistic objectives" mean bad films.

After all, capitalistic objectives means making movies that people are willing to pay to see. Wouldn't that mean better movies?

One of the reasons films are popular is by reinforcing a pavlovian behavior, where the movie industry learn what people like to see and give them that in return in a formulaic manner.

It works like a self-fulfilling prophecy, so once the formula of the popular of a given period is found, movies are made repeating those patterns to attract paying costumers (movies are one of the only industries who can mold their customers to become their customers).

Particularly i don't think popular convey into best, sometimes i'ts not even good, its just a Pavlov dog expecting to be entertained. So answering your question if people watch movies to be entertained, yes that industry works, as the profits show. But i disagree this industry create good movies as in the form movies were meant to be.

I don't mind formulaic movies, i don't judge people that want to be entertained as i was one of them and i still am from time to time, but once you dig down in the the cinema rabbit hole your sense of good changes quite a lot.. its like once you learn to taste more fancy food, with a myriad of tastes and colors a macdonald's does not taste the same. Or getting back to program in C after learn to program in D :)

Best as in movies for entertainment purposes, yes. Best as in sophisticated movies, i dont think it's the best system. I don't know what would that be.. and i bet it probably would need to be a "capitalism 2.0" that mixed with other things, but the system is kind of broken and until we really fix this we will need to live with economical crisis from 10 to 10 years..

France’s film industry is a counterpoint. While there are some good films, they are the exception. A lot of real crap gets made in France because they don’t answer to the box office. (I really love the French New Wave, so I’m not a French film hater — but there is a lot of garbage that gets made because of how films get funded and exhibited — i.e. nationalistic film quotas.) The UK on the other hand has some pretty cool films — it seems to be a hybrid of the American privately funded system with some non-profit support.

The Korean film industry is “capitalistic” and they are putting out some really great stuff; though Korean “dramas” are the East-Asian version of novellas — I can live without that. But the people seem to like it.

I like your comment because it really make the root point here more evident..

Different strategies with different outcomes, it's hard to compare anything against the US which is an outlier, but there are some connections between tech and the cultural industry (especially movies).

And also as your point make more evident, of course that making the movie industry more sustainable and able to attract attention somehow is wanted. But giving there are people that like to eat more sushi than pizza, and giving the movie industry can shape itself while shaping its customers at the same time, i wonder if there's not a good way to mixing both (i mean hollywood could have been more bold in that regards instead of focusing too much in shaping its "milking cow")..

Anyway art is against "useful" or at least should have such a freedom that it doesn't even need to abide to useful.. Movies are a wonderful medium exactly because it's on this thin line between be art and something "useful" somehow.. making it a very sophisticated art form. (James Cameron comes to mind in mixing well both worlds, but guys like Denis Villeneuve are the ones that mix it really well in my point of view, bringing more sophistication to the table of popularity)

Somehow technology in general falls into those same traps. It must be sustainable, but to keep moving forward it also needs not to kill creativity. That's why i've mixed "maximizing the shareholder profit" into the equation to show how despite the fact that capital was paramount for the success of the endeavor in the first place, it can also be the source of its ruin when it makes the endeavors to lost what made them successful in the first place because they are focusing too much in just one vector (it actually kind of works great for industrial endeavors, but its not hard to see that more sophisticated industries like software and cinema, it doesn't live to it's full potential).

TCM has run a bunch of pre-Code movies. "Gold Diggers of 1933" is a fun example.

Yikes, that first image is definitely NSFW.

I'll save you some time:

> What is pre-Code Hollywood? The quickest definition is this: “pre-Code” refers to an era in motion pictures from the arrival of sound (aka ‘talkies’) in 1927 to the mandatory enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code in July 1934. This era is notable for while being censored, it is not as severely censored as the films that follow that July 1934 date.

It’s also commonly referred to as the Hays code. More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code

I actually meant to link to this page:

https://pre-code.com/what-is-pre-code-hollywood/

Which besides answering the literal question, explains what motivated the code and why pre-code movies are worth watching.

The site in general contains a lot of valuable content about these movies.

Ok, we changed to that above from https://pre-code.com/. Thanks!

It's not really saving time, this was an enjoyable article worth reading. That's a bit like telling us the ending of a movie as a way of saving us time.

> That's a bit like telling us the ending of a movie as a way of saving us time

The answer is not on the page linked and the topic is obscure. The "ending" to an "enjoyable article" is not the answer to the title question. It's obvious why "Pre-Code" is contextually confusing.

You're right, I did have to find the "what is pre-code Hollywood" myself. The original link was not a good submission

Plus, it's a post to Hacker News.

Based on that context my first thought was "Pre-Code? Like, before CGI really took off, right? So like late 90's and earlier" :)

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