Freedom in Film

Some time ago, New York Daily News columnist David Hinckley discussed “The Top 13 Pop Culture Moments of 1968,” and wrote about “a year whose avalanche of events played a huge role in shaping life and culture over the 40 years that have followed.”

Part of that avalanche was the introduction of the Motion Picture Association of America’s ratings system, which came along after the old Hays Code – a prudish Hollywood dogma that sanitized films – finally died. “A code that did not permit the word ‘hell’ clearly had outlived its day,” Hinckley observed.

But change was, of course, inevitable. By the time Jack Valenti became president of the MPAA in 1966, the country was dramatically different from what it was when Will Hays ran the show. In his famous “How It All Began” essay, Valenti wrote that “the national scene was marked by insurrection on the campus, riots in the streets, rise in women’s liberation, protest of the young, doubts about the institution of marriage, abandonment of old guiding slogans and the crumbling of social traditions.” With the Hays Code still in effect, there were few opportunities for Hollywood to approach America’s struggles sincerely. Not surprisingly, box-office receipts faded all across the country.

When Valenti came along and relieved Hollywood of the old code, filmmakers became more frank in its depiction of sex and violence, and made movies involving heroes who were free to be rugged and uncouth. Even vulgar language could be used in a Hollywood script – lines became more natural and urgent.

It didn’t happen overnight. The Hays Code had, in fact, undergone various changes throughout its life: Some as early as 1939, when Clark Gable’s brutal words for Vivien Leigh at the end of “Gone With the Wind” became the most famous kiss off in the history of American film. The code even gave an odd kind of advantage to stars like Groucho Marx and Mae West, who were famous for dialogue driven by innuendo.

The loopholes weren’t limited to vulgarity, though. The code forbade “excessive and lustful kissing, lustful embraces, suggestive postures and gestures” from Hollywood films, producing content wholly devoid of sex. Hitchcock was crafty enough to work around the code when he made “Notorious”: The kiss between Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman was interwoven with dialogue, and therefore couldn’t technically be described as “excessive.”

Sex and vulgarity were two of the biggest targets of the Hays Code, which created a problem when a new play by Edward Albee was brought to the attention of Jack Warner at Warner Bros. Pictures in 1963. When they became interested in a film adaptation for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Warner held a conference with Geoffrey Shurlock, head of the Production Code Administration. They discussed the play’s use of profanity, resulting in a five-page memo that lists every troubling phrase – from “Jesus…H. Christ…” on page one to “Jesus Christ” (again) on page 236.

After reviewing the film, Valenti decided that “Virginia Woolf,” being based on a play that was praised by various critics, was an adaptation of respectable content. On top of that, Warner Bros. would distribute it to theaters under the condition that no one under 18 would be admitted without an adult. By the time the film ended its theatrical run, it had grossed $28,000,000, far more than the $7,500,000 it cost to make it. The following year, two of the film’s stars – Elizabeth Taylor and Sandy Dennis – won Academy Awards for their work.

But there was another film that gave the MPAA a different problem. “For the first time in its history,” announced Variety in December, “MGM may distribute a film through what amounts to a subsidiary company. Decision has been made – barring a change of heart from the Motion Picture Production Code Office – to release ‘Blow-Up,’ Michelangelo Antonioni’s first English language film, without a Code seal if necessary, under the banner ‘Carlo Ponti Presents.’”

When the film premiered that month, the Catholic Church, which had its own ratings system for moviegoers, gave Blowup a C rating: Condemned, in other words. Audiences didn’t mind, though. “The box-office results so far have been surprisingly strong,” wrote Gene Arneel from Film Daily.

Critical reception was no less enthusiastic. On top of being praised by various critics, “Blowup” went on to win the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival – the Palme d’Or.

Now that Hollywood had produced films that explored sex, Warner Bros. was about to make one that contained graphic violence. This time, though, audiences and various critics weren’t as eager to accept it. When “Bonnie and Clyde” premiered in August of 1967, Bosley Crowther of the New York Times gave it a venomously unfavorable review that described the film as “a cheap piece of bald-faced slapstick comedy that treats its hideous depredations of that sleazy, moronic pair as though they were as full of fun and frolic as the jazz-age cut-up in ‘Thoroughly Modern Millie.’” Audiences weren’t exactly coming out in bunches, either.

Eventually, things picked up: After the movie reopened in 1968, it became a big hit for Warner Bros. and eventually ended up with 10 Academy Award nominations.

While “Bonnie and Clyde” became a box-office success, Jack Valenti was working on a new system to replace the old one. The new ratings divided films into four categories: A G rating meant that audiences of any age would be admitted; an M rating suggested mature content that minors should see with parents; an R rating restricted anybody under 16 from seeing a film without an adult; and an X rating denied admission to anybody under 17. As time went by, M became PG, and in 1984, the MPAA introduced the PG-13 rating. In 1990, the X rating was changed to NC-17 to undo the stigma of pornography for X-rated films.

Because Valenti’s ratings system gave Hollywood a chance to deal with content it had never explored before, audiences began to take American cinema more seriously. Of course, there’s a negative side to all that freedom: It opened the door to all those infantile “Saw” films. Time for a new system?