APPROACHES TO FILM Main Page / Course Syllabus / Discussion Forum / Film Pages / Exams & Grades
from Katz's Film Encyclopedia
A self-regulatory code of ethics created in 1930 by the Motion Picture Producers and
Distributors of America (M.P.P.D.A.), under Will H. Hays, and put into strict effect on
July 1, 1934, with Joseph I. Breen as director of the Code Administration.
The code set forth general standards of "good taste" and specific do's and
don't's concerning what could and could not be shown in American movies. Among the general
principles of the code was the requirement that "no picture shall be produced which
will lower the standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should
never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin."
The specific regulations included the following typical examples: "Revenge in modern
times shall not be justified"; "Methods of crime shall not be explicitly
presented"; "Illegal drug traffic must never be presented"; "The
sanctity of the institution of marriage and the home shall be upheld. Pictures shall not
infer that low forms of sex relationships are the accepted or common thing";
"Scenes of passion should not be introduced when not essential to the plot";
"Excessive and lustful kissing, lustful embracing, suggestive postures and gestures,
are not to be shown"; "Seduction or rape should be never more than suggested. .
. . They are never the proper subject for comedy"; "Sex perversion or any
inference to it is forbidden"; "Miscegenation (sex relationships between the
white and black races) is forbidden"; "Sex hygiene and venereal diseases are not
subjects for motion pictures"; "Children's sex organs are never to be
exposed"; "Pointed profanity (this includes the words God, Lord, Jesus,
Christ—unless used reverently—Hell, S.O.B., damn, Gawd), or other profane or
vulgar expressions, however used, is forbidden"; "Indecent or undue exposure is
forbidden"; "Ministers of religion . . . should not be used as comic characters
or as villains."
As compared with its strict language regarding the treatment of sex, the code was lenient
on the presentation of violence, requiring only that "actual hangings or
electrocutions . . . brutality and possibly gruesomeness . . . be treated within the
careful limits of good taste." In any case, the Production Code, modified only
slightly over the years, had a profound and far-reaching effect on American cinema. Its
seal of approval was denied any film that did not meet its morality standards, a risk few
producers dared take. Only occasionally would the effectiveness of the Production Code
Seal be tested by such producers as Howard Hughes (The Outlaw) and Otto Preminger
(The Moon Is Blue). But the pressure of social change, Supreme Court decisions
concerning obscenity, and civil liberties groups, brought a sweeping revision in the code
in 1966. The new code still paid tribute to virtue and condemned sin but suggested
restraint in treating sexual themes on the screen, rather than forbidding them outright,
and corrected the balance by forbidding explicit detail of violence and brutality. In 1968
a Rating system was put into effect, classifying films according to their suitability for
viewing by the young.