Oscar Wilde once famously said that “Life imitates art more than art imitates life.” It is fortunate indeed that this is not true of the dozens of movies about nuclear warfare produced by Hollywood during the decades of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.

When President Truman, hoping to force Japan’s rapid capitulation in the Pacific theater, ordered that atomic bombs be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, he changed, irreversibly and forever, the face of the world we live in. For the next four and a half decades, civilian populations around the globe would live beneath the shadowy specter of possible nuclear holocaust. And throughout the era of the Cold War, America’s movie industry was hard at work cranking out a continuous stream of films concerning every conceivable angle of the global ideological struggle.

Movies reflecting the harsh realities of the atomic age were hardly limited to a single genre, either: serious human dramas, tense suspense-thrillers, hilarious and bitingly-satirical comedies, low-budget science fiction; all of these made use of impending nuclear warfare as a plot device.

The early years of the Cold War were marked by a slowly evolving, though precarious, balance of nuclear power between the USA and the USSR, and by a very distinct period in American culture which was very much reflected by the cinema of the era. It was a time of almost paradoxical innocence, of strong anti-communist sentiment backing strong anti-communist policy, and of adjustment to the relatively new fear that mankind might have finally worked out a sure-fire method of self-annihilation.

In many ways, 1964 was the year that bridged the gap between those early years of the Cold War and everything that would come after. Two movies were released in 1964 which employ the same subject matter in very different ways. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, a dark and satirical comedy, was released early in the year and was followed several months later by the tense drama, Fail-Safe. Both movies addressed the question of what might transpire if a nuclear war were begun by mistake.

The enormous box-office success of, and critical response to, Dr. Strangelove shows how large a role such questions were playing in the minds of ordinary Americans at the time. Both films also present a fascinating picture of the nuclear systems that were in place at that time. An informed study of these movies reveals a great deal about America and its love-hate relationship with its own nuclear arsenal during the early years of the Cold War.

By 1964, nuclear weapons had long since become an integrated part of our armed forces. Truman had helped to establish the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) through the passage of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, which placed production, maintenance, and distribution of nuclear weapons in civilian hands. Transfer of these weapons to the military was possible only with presidential authorization.

At that time, the Soviet Union did not yet possess nuclear capabilities, and it was uncertain as to whether Truman would authorize the use of atomic weapons even in the event of another war. Although Truman vastly increased the production of nuclear material in 1949, and authorized the development of the hydrogen bomb shortly after the Soviets detonated their first successful nuclear device, control of the nuclear arsenal was kept out of military hands throughout his presidency.

President Eisenhower wasted little time in reversing Truman’s nuclear policies after he took office in 1953. The AEC was ordered almost immediately to transfer custody of nuclear stockpiles to the military, which then dispersed the weapons to its forces around the world. Additionally, a single sentence from NSC 162/1, a National Security Council document, made the new role of nuclear weapons in military conflicts very clear. It stated very simply that: “In the event of hostilities, the United States will consider nuclear weapons to be as available for use as other munitions.”

Furthermore, Eisenhower’s policy of “massive retaliation” (first outlined by his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, in early 1954) demonstrated his willingness to threaten a nuclear response to Soviet aggression, or as Dulles put it, “to blow [the] hell out of them in a hurry if they start anything.” This policy would remain essentially unmodified until the Kennedy administration began to formulate a policy of “flexible response” which left open the possibility of delaying the use of nuclear weapons should any conflict flash suddenly into existence.

Essentially, flexible response finally made nuclear devices a special, rather than regular, part of the American arsenal once again. However, this policy was still not formally implemented by NATO until sometime in 1968. In the meantime, the Kennedy team pushed for a state of “mutual deterrence” or “assured destruction” in the American nuclear arsenal. It would soon become known by the acronym “MAD,” for “mutually-assured destruction.” As outlined in a speech by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in 1962:

The point is that a potential aggressor must believe that our assured-destruction capability is in fact actual, and that our will to use it in retaliation to an attack is in fact unwavering. The conclusion, then, is clear: if the United States is to deter a nuclear attack in itself or its allies, it must possess an actual and a credible assured-destruction capability.

The first few years of the 1960s had seen tensions heightened by such events as the raising of the Berlin Wall, the escalation of the Space Race, and the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. In late 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis had brought the world closer to nuclear war than it had ever been before, or ever would be again. And the entire nation had been stunned by the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963.

Still, we had not yet committed fully to the quagmire of Vietnam, and so preserved a sterling track-record of successful anti-communist interventions in the Third World which included operations of various magnitudes in Iran, Guatemala, and Korea. The effort to promote a policy of d鴥nte had also not yet been fully realized. President Kennedy, in an address to the nation during the summer of 1963, had described the aftereffects of nuclear war in horrifying detail:

A war today or tomorrow, if it led to nuclear war, would not be like any war in history. A full-scale nuclear exchange, lasting less than 60 minutes, with the weapons now in existence, could wipe out more than 300 million Americans, Europeans, and Russians, as well as untold numbers elsewhere. And the survivors, as Chairman Khrushchev warned the Communist Chinese, “the survivors would envy the dead.” For they would inherit a world so devastated by explosions and poison and fire that today we cannot even conceive of its horrors.

It was in this atmosphere of extreme uncertainty, tension, and danger that two directors began to work independently to bring adaptations of two different works of fiction to the silver screen. Sidney Lumet was beginning work on Fail-Safe, a movie based on a 1962 novel of the same title by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler.

The story involved frantic and fruitless attempts to recall a squadron of B-58 bombers which had been ordered to drop their nuclear payloads on Moscow due to an electrical malfunction in the fault indicator of the Strategic Air Command. The movie is taut with suspense and deadly serious from the opening scene to the unthinkably shocking conclusion.

Meanwhile, Stanley Kubrick, along with screenwriter Terry Southern, had been collaborating with novelist Peter George on a screenplay version of his 1958 novel, Red Alert, aka Two Hours to Doom. The novel very seriously considered the implications of an unexpected failure in the chain of command which might result in a disastrous pre-emptive strike being launched by the US against Russia.

Kubrick, having been “struck by people’s virtually listless acquiescence in the possibility, in fact, in the increasing probability, of nuclear war, by either design or accident,” became increasingly aware that the script, which would become Dr. Strangelove, worked far better as black comedy than it did when played straight. And, much to George’s dismay and the public’s delight, this was how it was eventually translated onto film.

A rogue air force base commander, ironically named Jack D. Ripper, orders the bombers under his command to attack their military targets inside Russia, and then seals the base off from the outside world with himself and the secret bomber recall codes inside. The President and his top advisors must decide whether to cooperate with the Soviets in bringing the bombers down, or commit themselves to an all-out nuclear strike against the USSR. The characters are neurotic and quirky, and the situation is largely played for laughs. At the time of its release, the New York Times reviewer called it “beyond any question the most shattering sick joke I’ve ever come across.”

Both movies were distributed by Columbia Pictures, which required the films to be accompanied by disclaimers assuring movie-goers that nothing like this could ever conceivably happen. The government also immediately dismissed both scenarios as impossible upon the movies’ respective releases. However, interestingly enough, the scene in Dr. Strangelove where Captain Mandrake cannot reach the Pentagon because he lacks change for the pay phone was shown at a session of Congress. It was said to raise legitimate questions about whether such crucial communications would be possible in the midst of a nuclear crisis.

Banished to the realms of science fiction and fantasy by the United States government or not, Dr. Strangelove and Fail-Safe certainly appealed to audiences’ imaginations, although Fail-Safe was less successful financially. This was possibly due to its having been released in the shadow of Dr. Strangelove and to what many viewers might have regarded as an unacceptable outcome of the story. The film ends with Henry Fonda, as the President of the United States, ordering a nuclear strike on New York City in order to avert total nuclear war with the USSR after the combined efforts of both nations have failed to prevent the annihilation of Moscow.

Dr. Strangelove, in particular, was very relevant for American audiences at the time, in some ways eerily so. It was originally slated for release in late 1963, but the release was postponed for a number of months after Kennedy was assassinated. Additionally, Slim Pickens’ statement in the movie that “A fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff” originally read “Dallas,” not “Vegas.” It was redubbed before the film?s release, also because of the Kennedy assassination. Further, Kubrick had originally planned to end the film with a custard pie fight in the War Room. President Muffley was to have been hit, with General Turgidson loudly exclaiming that “Our gallant young president has been struck down in his prime!” If it had remained in the script, this too would almost certainly have been cut after Kennedy’s death.

As shown in both movies, American nuclear strategy for several years consisted of a force of nuclear-equipped bombers remaining airborne outside Russian airspace at all times. By late 1959, a full two years ahead of the Soviet Union, the United States arsenal had incorporated its first inter-continental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, and from that time the bomber strategy began to be phased out slowly. However, it is difficult to ascertain how much information about such a relatively new weapon would have been available to the general public, and it is to be expected that the movies? portrayals would feature nuclear strategies that were a few years out of date.

Other issues raised by the movies would have been pulled directly from contemporary events as well. Less than a year before the release of Dr. Strangelove, the US and the USSR signed an agreement to install a “hot line” between Moscow and Washington D. C., in order to facilitate communication between the nations’ leaders should any mishaps actually occur.

Charges that the fluoridation of water in the United States was part of a communist conspiracy to poison America had circulated since the days of McCarthy hysteria many years earlier. In fact, all of the trappings of paranoia regarding Soviets and communists which are present in Dr. Strangelove were certainly quite present in American culture.

“Red scares” had been occurring with some regularity in the United States since at least the time of the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. General Turgidson’s dismay at the Russian ambassador’s presence inside the War Room (“He’ll see the Big Board!”) and Colonel Bat Guano’s dark mutterings about communist “preversions” might have brought a chuckle from liberal members of the audience and a grimace from conservatives, but everyone would have recognized the accuracy of the images.

Both movies also show the potential consequences of relying too much on fallible automated systems and machines. Technology was moving ever more swiftly in the direction of automation, producing results which would have been both exciting and chilling at the same time. After all, if humans are fallible, how much more so are the machines they create?

Finally, one cannot discount the relevance of the important roles played by Walter Matthau as Prof. Groeteschele and Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove. Both men, portraying slightly deranged and coldly logical intellectuals who pull the strings as advisors at the highest levels of government, based their performances to some degree on existing public figures. Dr. Strangelove himself is generally agreed to be a rough composite of four such men:

-Werner Von Braun, a German pioneer of rocket technology and a Nazi scientist who was brought to the United States after World War II to head the development of American rockets.

-Herman Kahn, a nuclear strategist made famous by his 1960 book On Thermonuclear War. Kahn was also the man who half-jokingly put forward the idea of a “doomsday machine” (a concept that plays an important role in the plot of Dr. Strangelove) which would make America?s response to a nuclear strike fully automated.

-Henry Kissinger, another former citizen of Germany and strategist who would later become the Secretary of State. Kissinger was also the architect of Nixon’s efforts at d鴥nte.

-Edward Teller, a scientist born in Hungary who made his name as the father of the H-bomb and as a nuclear strategist who advised and opposed presidents. Teller walked with an obvious limp, the only one of the four who had a physical handicap, as Strangelove does. In fact, Teller for one was extremely sensitive regarding any comparison between himself and the Dr. Strangelove of Kubrick’s movie. Throughout his long life, interviewers who broached the subject might be asked curtly to leave.

The cold, machine-like thinking of Strangelove combined with his creepy foreign accent and habits, though played for laughs, would have struck a particular chord with American moviegoers who might have felt increasingly less in control of their fate and of the direction their country was taking.

Whether or not life imitates art with any regularity, as Wilde asserted, it is an absolute certainty that art often imitates life. This is especially true of the classics of American cinema. Hollywood and The Movies have been an important part of our culture and heritage almost since they were first introduced. They possess the incredible capability of freezing our lives, our hopes, our fears, and our dreams onto a strip of celluloid, of capturing one fascinating aspect of America at an exact (and, in the case of Dr. Strangelove and Fail-Safe, unique and defining) moment in history and preserving it for future generations to examine and participate in.

The great films of the Cold War, while they may not be the best source of historical fact, are an infallible source of cultural enlightenment, able to transport us temporarily back into that time of uncertainty and promise. America’s greatest movies are an important part of the cultural heritage we bring with us out of the 20th Century, and it is in this light that we should always attempt to view and enjoy them.

___________________________________

Selected Bibliography

Crowther, Bosley. “Kubrick Film Presents Sellers in 3 Roles.” The New York Times 30 Jan 1964. http://www.nytimes.com/1964/01/30/movies/013064strangelove.html.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Perf. Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, and Sterling Hayden. Columbia Pictures, 1964.

Eisenhower, Dwight. “‘Atoms for Peace’ Speech.” Atomic Archive. 8 Dec 1953.
http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Deterrence/Atomsforpeace.shtml.

Fail-Safe. Dir. Sidney Lumet. Perf. Henry Fonda, Walter Matthau, and Dan O?Herlihy. Columbia Pictures, 1964.

Glikman, Andrew Yale. “Herman Kahn’s Doomsday Machine.” http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/frame2/articles/borg/kahn.html.

Goodchild, Peter. Edward Teller: The Real Dr. Strangelove. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004.

Halperin, Morton H. Nuclear Fallacy: Dispelling the Myth of Nuclear Strategy. Cambridge: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1987.

Kennedy, John F. “Address to the American People on the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.” Atomic Archive. 26 Jul 1963. http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Deterrence/ JFK_LTBTreaty.shtml.

McNamara, Robert. “‘Mutual Deterrence’ Speech.” Atomic Archive. 1962
http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Deterrence/Deterrence.shtml.

“Memorandum of Understanding Between The United States of America and The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Regarding the Establishment of a Direct Communications Link.” U.S. Department of State. 20 Jun 1963. http://www.state.gov/t/ac/trt/4785.htm.

Powaski, Ronald E. The Cold War. 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

The Internet Movie Database. “Information on Fail-Safe.” 1990-2005. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058083/.

The Internet Movie Database. “Information on Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” 1990-2005. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057012/.

“Timeline of the Nuclear Age.” Atomic Archive. AJ Software & Multimedia. 24 Jul.
2005 http://www.atomicarchive.com/Timeline/Timeline.shtml.

Walker, Alexander, Sybil Taylor, and Ulrich Ruchti. Stanley Kubrick, Director: A Visual Analysis. Revised and Expanded ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999.

Posted in Scholarship

I really don’t like Westerns, as a movie genre. I think they’re hopelessly mired in cliche, all but a few are poorly made, and as for any semblance of historical accuracy . . . Don’t get me started. From a purely artistic standpoint, an overwhelming percentage of Westerns are useless things.

Now, before any Western lover out there get all up in arms, I’ll be the first to concede their immense cultural value. After the American frontier was declared to be effectively closed in the census of 1890, a historian named Frederick Jackson Turner presented a paper called “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. This paper stated the famous “Frontier Thesis:” that the frontier was what had given the American people their unique individuality and vitality . . . their very identity, really. The frontier was effectively the source of American freedom.

There can be no doubt that our country was largely shaped in its formative years by westward expansion, or that our cultural identity is closely tied to this same movement. Westerns are so important to the American spirit that they own their own genres in American literature, and (much to my frequent annoyance) American film. Westerns were dominant box office contenders for decades. With the passage of time, subgenres have even been spawned . . . and I’m not sure which is worse sometimes, the “classic” or “revisionist/enlightened” Western.

Tonight I watched The Searchers (a classic Western), which I had not seen for many years. This is not a terrible movie by any means . . . and yet by Western standards it is considered to be one of the genuine greats. I found it to be a quality grab bag. It made me want to love it and hate it at the same time.

John Wayne stars, John Ford directs, and the supporting cast includes names like Vera Miles, Natalie Wood, and Ford-regular Ward Bond. The story begins in Texas in 1868. Wayne’s character, Ethan Edwards, the Confederate who never surrendered, returns suddenly to his brother’s home with no real explanation of where he has been since the Civil War ended three years earlier. Some initial groundwork for the story is laid when Ethan produces a large quantity of Yankee money which may or may not have been stolen, and reveals a very strong prejudice against Indians when the adopted son of the house (Martin, a foundling rescued by Ethan many years earlier) enters and we discover that he is one-eighth Comanche.

The next day, a group of local men ride up and recruit Ethan and Martin to go out after cattle rustlers, but this proves to be a Comanche feint meant to draw the men away from their homesteads. The Indians attack the Edwards’ home, killing everyone but the two daughters, Lucy (probably 16) and Debbie (9). Thus begins an epic search to recover the two girls which will last five years and cover not only Texas, but parts of Oklahoma and New Mexico as well. (Incidentally, none of the movie was actually filmed in any of those places.) Within weeks of the beginning of the search, Lucy is found dead, and only Debbie remains to be saved. Martin and Ethan form an uneasy alliance (although Ethan’s authority is never really in question) in pursuit of their mutual goal.

I say mutual . . . Martin wants to rescue Debbie, but before many of the years have passed, Ethan’s mission is to kill her. To him she has ceased to be his niece, and has become only the “leavings of a Comanche buck.” Thus, even though the two men have the same destination, they have very contradictory ideas of what they will do when they finally get to it.

As the search drags from months into years, further random subplots wind their goofy ways into the main story. Martin has a sweetheart, Laurie, the sister of Brad, who was in love with Lucy and was killed in a mad, vengeful suicide charge at the Comanche camp after her body was discovered. Laurie is, incidentally, also the daughter of the man whose cattle were originally . . . errr, “rustled,” thereby spawning this whole thing. Laurie loves Marty, but he isn’t the only suitor. A triangle is formed when he just won’t stay put and ultra-hayseed Charlie comes a-courtin’.

Meanwhile, random happenings on the trail try to provide comic relief and advance the plot. Martin accidentally gets himself an Indian wife when he doesn’t understand what he’s trading for. Her name is “Wild Goose Flying in the Night Sky” (that’s “Look” for short), and she runs away when she finds out that they are searching for Chief Scar, the Comanche who perpetrated the raid and stole Debbie. (I have very strong feelings about the consequences to the screenwriter who perpetrated that name . . . is he a Texas Comanche, a Chicago crime boss or a Pirate of the Caribbean?) Anyway, Look leaves an obvious trail behind her which eventually leads them to an abandoned camp where Scar was attacked by the US Cavalry. Talk about a Wild Goose chase.

Get it? I didn’t until after the movie was over. Ow.

I’ll summarize the climax for you briefly now . . . sorry if I leave a few characters in the dust. Martin and Ethan, having failed to either rescue or kill Debbie once they find her, arrive back at “base” just in time to interfere with Laurie and Charlie’s wedding. The resulting brawl between Marty and Charlie is interfered with in turn by the arrival of a Yankee cavalryman who wants the local Texas Rangers and all other able-bodied men marshalled for an attack on the Comanche encampment where Debbie is being held. Ethan and Marty join the group as scouts . . . and, of course, with their own respective agendas.

They find the Indian camp at night, and decide to charge at dawn. Marty goes in alone to attempt a daring rescue (I should note that I was quite shocked to discover that this sequence was ripped off wholesale, visuals and all, by George Lucas for Episode II . . . just add lightsabers). The cavalry charges in, but Marty has already killed Scar. The American troops are victorious, Ethan spots Marty and Debbie running for it and chases them down on his horse. Marty tries unsuccessfully to stop him and he chases a panicked Debbie over a hill and down the other side where she collapses, cowering before him. He leaps from his horse to stand in front of her . . . then reaches down, scoops her up in his arms, and utters those touching and immortal words (which I’ve heard in at least 378 other movies) “Let’s go home.”

The Searchers, like all John Ford movies, makes fantastic use of Western scenery. The locations are gorgeous and shown to their full advantage. Ford does some really great things with cinematography. I love the way the movie is bookended by almost identical opening and closing shots. After the credits finish at the beginning, we see a view of the rugged frontier through the doorway of a humble homestead, and Ethan’s silhouette approaches from the distance before the woman of the house spots him as she appears in front of the open door. In the final shot of the movie, the various characters re-enter the house, again with the camera aimed out through the darkened doorway onto the bright Western terrain, before Ethan (left alone outside) moves slowly away.

But I hated some things, too. The addle-brained Mose Harper baffled me (which is probably why I haven’t really discussed him). Is he a half-wit because he is a half-breed? How can he be so shrewd and so scattered at the same time? Is he in the movie purely for comic relief, and if so, why? The scene that disturbed and annoyed me most, however, was when Ethan and Marty inspect a number of women captives that the cavalry has rescued from the Indians. All of them have been driven completely out of their minds . . . one begins to scream uncontrollably when the men enter before subsiding and returning to her crooning and rocking back and forth. Two fourteen-year old girls with red paint smeared across their foreheads simply stand and stare at the men with empty eyes opened unnaturally wide and immense, frozen smiles.

I have read quite a number of Indian captive stories, both fictional and nonfictional, and I know of no historical precedent for this madness produced by living with “savage” Indians. Yet the movie implies that every woman who was captured was either raped and killed or has gone totally insane. Whether from blacks or Indians, perceived threats to the “womenfolk” have always been the fastest way to get a red-blooded Southern white male up in arms . . . The movie plays off of this to manipulate its audience far more than I would like.

The main plot is tense and full of pathos . . . You are drawn into the struggles of the characters on the frontier, and you wonder how the tension between racial prejudice and familial love will finally play out.

Herein, however, lies the movie’s greatest problem: Ethan is totally unapologetic in his attitude about Indians, and the Indians themselves are stereotyped brutally in the movie. Strange, ultra-subtle half-hints are dropped here and there throughout the production to indicate that perhaps the movie does not hold the same beliefs as its characters, but when that final moment comes and Ethan takes Debbie in his arms instead of coldly plugging her between the eyes, can it hope to counterbalance nearly two hours of violent slanting? Can anyone really cite a John Wayne movie where he disappears into a character? I can’t think of one. For the viewer, this is not Ethan Edwards, a fictional character, who believes that all Indians are brutal savages, this is John Wayne himself.

The Searchers is a movie which captures fragments of the frontier spirit, culture, and strife, but its perspective is so completely one-sided that it cannot convey a historically-balanced view of the West. Nor, for that matter, should it be required to do so. I certainly wouldn’t plop, say, a Russian citizen down in front of this movie if I wanted him to know what life in the United States was like 150 years ago. But I would use it in an upper-level course about the history of the West in showing how the stories of our life on the frontier came to be told, particularly during the 1940s and 1950s.

Roger Ebert’s review of the movie, which I found to be very insightful, suggests that The Searchers was made at a time when Ford was struggling to pull his Westerns out of the “classical” mode and into a more holistic view of the various historical factors that made relations between settlers and Native Americans what they were. That his product is ultimately deeply-flawed does not mean it is not a valuable, influential piece of American culture and cinema, but I don’t necessarily have to like it.

Posted in Scholarship

Mae West deadpanned that line in her 1933 movie, I’m No Angel, and in many ways she spoke for the entire movie-making industry. This fact was never more clearly illustrated than during a nearly four-decade period of film history which moviegoers today might have a hard time believing ever happened. In a country where, unlike the America in which Cole Porter’s inaccurately-titled broadway musical became a smash-hit (in 1934, ironically enough), anything truly does seem to go, both on the silver screen and off, it is difficult to remember that there was a time when this wasn’t the case . . . and most people liked it that way.

75 years ago today, Hollywood imposed the Production Code on itself in order to avoid the looming threat of censorship by the federal government. Such a move by the government appeared more and more likely in the face of loud public outcry against the immoral content of motion pictures (thanks in part to scandals within Hollywood itself, sensationalized by the media, and in part to the advent of talking pictures that revolutionized the industry) and an ever-growing number of local censorship boards.

The Production Code of 1930 (linked above, also known as the Hays Code after Will Hays, former campaign manager to Warren G. Harding, hired by the major film studios in 1922 as the PR man in charge of the predecessor of the MPAA) consisted chiefly of a list of material deemed unsuitable for treatment by the motion picture industry. These forbidden subjects ranged from showing such things as crime and adultery in a positive light (crime doesn’t pay), to any portrayal of miscegenation or white slavery, to prostitution, profanity, disrespect for religion . . . Well, you get the idea.

The code was initially pitched to the studios by Hays as a money-saver. Many studios in 1930 were in deep financial trouble after the 1927-and-following costs of switching to “talkies” and the Stock Market Crash of ’29. Policing the content of their own movies while in production by the application of a universally-acceptable set of guidelines was much less expensive then sending reels back to the cutting room after government censors had taken a hack at them.

At first, (treating Hays Code as just that, a set of guidelines) the effort wasn’t particularly effective . . . in fact, violence and sex in the movies actually increased. Then, in 1933, sexual innuendo in She Done Him Wrong and I’m No Angel served as the catalyst which caused the powers that be to crack down hard on Hollywood, forcing it to set up a “Production Code Administration.” Brought in to run the PCA was a conservative Philadelphia Catholic named Joe Breen, and his regime was given the power to review every movie prior to release and demand whatever changes were deemed necessary before giving a movie the seal of approval. Any theater that ran a movie without this seal was fined $25,000.

Incidentally, both of the movies most immediately to blame for this were written and starred in by celebrity sex icon Mae West. West was already a notorious figure by this time, and she would go on to get herself banned from public radio in 1937 after a licentious appearance on the Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy Show.

In 1951 the Production Code was modified again . . . becoming more, rather than less, stringent. Some of the more humorous effects of the strictness of the code can be seen clearly in things like the separate twin beds slept in by Lucy and Ricky Ricardo on their popular television show (which ran during most of the 1950s), and the fact that the toilet which is shown in Psycho (1960) was the first one to appear on film. However, by the mid-50s self-censorship was beginning to be challenged by movie-makers.

In fact, one of my favorite movies (Anatomy of a Murder, 1959) was released with a number of direct violations of the code despite the lack of a certificate of approval. Thanks to the success of this and other unapproved movies, the code’s already crumbling foundation eroded still further. Money, after all, has always been the bottom line. The slow, subtle war on the Production Code wasn’t over yet, though. The movie was banned in Chicago, and Jimmy Stewart’s father was so offended by the “dirty picture” that he took out an ad in a local newspaper telling people to avoid going to see it, even though his son was the star.

By the mid-60’s, however, even MPAA member companies were beginning to release films which did not conform to the code (most notably the 1966 Cannes-winner Blow-Up), and in 1967 the Production Code finally came down forever (just in time for the release of another of my code-violating favorites: The Graduate). After 37 years of self-imposed censorship, Hollywood had finally bowed to the almighty dollar. Actually, it would probably be more accurate to say that the almighty dollar had served as the medium of communication chosen by Americans of the 1960s to prolaim that they no longer cared about the immoral content of movies nearly as much as their parents and grandparents in the 1920s.

In 1968, the MPAA film rating system went into effect with the ratings G (General), M (Mature), R (Restricted), and X (Children Under 17 Not Admitted). M was soon changed to GP, then to PG (Parental Guidance Suggested). In 1984, Steven Spielberg suggested the implementation of a new rating (PG-13, Parents Strongly Cautioned) in response to loud complaints concerning his latest PG-rated movie, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. In 1990, X was renamed NC-17 in order to escape the “adult entertainment” connotation which damaged the business of non-pornographic movies. In spite of this, no NC-17-rated movie has ever achieved commercial success.

So, the (admittedly a bit simplistic) question is, did 37 years of Hollywood restraint make us a more moral society? The equally simplistic answer is: Not really. You see, the Production Code was, in the first place, an oversimplified solution to a problem that was misunderstood, at best. Cinema is an art form, and art cannot be limited by hard and fast rules of what does or does not constitute acceptable subject matter.

Art is a way to communicate something, whether it be as profound as elucidating a life philosophy or as simple as sharing beauty. Sure it’s nice to have movies that are just entertaining that the kids can go see, but it is not the duty of the artist to blunt his message just so a six-year old can watch his movie. The Production Code made the all too-common mistake of viewing cinema as entertainment only and therefore subject to strict definitions of morality and immorality. After all, being entertained by violence or sex is clearly immoral . . . Unfortunately for all concerned, that’s not the whole story, and the consequences only entrenched this mistaken view of cinema deeper into the Christian psyche.

Now, I’m not saying there were no good movies produced between 1930 and 1967. That certainly isn’t true . . . Heck, you can’t swing a dead Communist during that period without hitting one of the great film classics. I would simply say that I trust the exceptionally talented, the the Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcocks, to get it right with or without a babysitter. And this is borne out by the fact that good movies didn’t suddenly stop coming out after 1967. Tomorrow’s film greats are coming out right now, and will continue to do so . . . Now, fortunately, without any watchdog agencies to clip the filmmakers’ wings.

And what about those movies which are vile and reprehensible and immoral and unconscionable? That’s where one exercises one’s own personal responsibility and discernment as an individual, of course. That was our job all along and it was a mistake to ever give it to a group of people who, if not primarily concerned with their art form, are simply worried about how much money you’ve given them this year.

Anyway, in view of the importance of this day in film history, my apartment mates and I decided that the viewing of a very special movie was in order. From our tentative, “immediate-availability” pool of six movies (including Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Pulp Fiction, A Clockwork Orange, and The Graduate) we settled on Lolita, directed by Stanley Kubrick and based on Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial 1955 novel of the same name. Nabokov himself penned the screenplay, and Kubrick moved to England to direct the movie that was destined to create a stir. His star power included James Mason as Humbert Humbert, Shelley Winters as Charlotte Haze, and Peter Sellers as Clare Quilty.

Although it was made to meet Production Code standards (still, of course, in effect in 1962), it was not exactly an overwhelming success, commercially (banned left and right, condemned by every “morality” group around, and restricted to audiences over the age of 18 in the United States), but the critics noticed and it was nominated for an Oscar and several Golden Globes (among other things). Kubrick went on the following year to make the enormously popular Dr. Strangelove, which Sellers also starred in, and . . . the sixties moved on, I guess.

Lolita, as you can probably tell from the 99% rating I gave it at right, was excellent. The movie was almost flawlessly made. The acting was perfect. The writing, as one would expect, was fantastic. Who would have thought that the story of a middle-aged British author’s obsession with a sexually active twelve-year old girl (changed to fourteen in the movie, and played by a sixteen-year old actress) would turn out to be well worth watching?

Aside from the extremely high production value, the movie has a fascinating take on the effects of an all-consuming obsession without the mediating influence of a moral compass. Take care when feeding your appetites, the movie tells us, or your appetites will begin to feed on you. I think the movie’s tagline from the original release sums it all up nicely (bizarre and disturbing subject matter, highly-complex source novel, Production Code difficulties and all): “How did they ever make a movie of Lolita?”

So, go exercise your freedom to watch an excellent, thought-provoking movie that hasn’t had the life sanitized out of it by some Hollywood pencil pusher. Find a movie with some really edgy content . . . one you can get something out of. If you need any help getting started . . . Here, gimme a sec to glance around the room at the Ice Cave’s DVD collection. Here are a few titles, with problematic content detailed by initials, which you might try (in addition to any of the movies already mentioned): Chicago (s, l), Garden State (s, l), The Godfather (n, l, v), Schindler’s List (s, n, l, v), Traffic (s, l, v), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (s, l), Road to Perdition (l, v). That should be enough to get you started.

After own my research on the subject and general watching of movies, if I had everything on hand, the ideal PC-themed movie marathon would look something like this: Intolerance (1916, pre-code), Ecstasy (1932, banned by code), I’m No Angel (1933, caused stricter code), The Outlaw (1943, release delayed by code), Anatomy of a Murder (1959, ignored and helped weaken code), Lolita (1962, amazingly followed code . . . technically), Blow-Up (1966, ended code), The Graduate (1967, followed code).

Now go watch the right thing.

Posted in Scholarship