Living By A Code

Over at Big Hollywood John Nolte gives a thumbs down to TCM's seven-part documentary Moguls & Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood.  I don't know, I thought it was pretty good.

He's against the political orientation (of course).  For instance, he didn't like their coverage of the Production Code.

...the dreaded Hollywood Production Code, a set of self-imposed guidelines created by industry moguls [...] spelled out what was and wasn’t acceptable content in motion pictures. According to TCM, any film ”brave” enough to buck up against the dreaded Code was to be celebrated as some sort of moral victory. If you didn’t know any better, you would think the arrival “Bonnie and Clyde” — the film that pretty much marked the end of the Production Code — was as important and liberating as the fall of the Berlin Wall. Hollywood has finally arrived, the documentary seems to say.

Really?

I hate censorship as much as anyone, but I’m not blind to the idea that maybe movies were better under those restrictions, that maybe forcing artists to find more creative ways to telegraph sex, violence, adultery and the like forced them to create better art. The fall of the Production Code did create a new Golden Era of filmmaking during the 1970s, but it was an awfully short-lived one, nothing like the decades between the late ’20s through the late ’50s.

Wow.

First, the Code was self-imposed only in that the moguls were being threatened with greater censorship by both government and private groups, so it was actually a move for self-preservation.

Second, not that many films tried to buck the Code (or at least, weren't allowed to) until it was pretty clearly outdated.  In the post-war era, European films were taking on more adult themes, more directly, while Hollywood was still infantilized by the absurd strictures of the Code.  By the late 60s, films like Bonnie And Clyde were needed, but they were also inevitable.

Third, saying movies were better under the Code (already questionable) is not the same as showing they were better because of the Code.  When the Code started being strictly enforced in 1934, Hollywood responded by avoiding certain themes, but it's ridiculous to claim the Code made films better in general.  Does Nolte thing they would have gone straight to hardcore porn?  They just kept making the same sort of films they'd always made, but avoided somewhat racier themes and language.  And when one reads about the absurd censorship that took place with every single film (bestselling books and Broadway hits were neutered, and films released pre-Code were edited for revivals, and sometimes disallowed entirely), it seems likely the Code made worse quite a few films.

Fourth, while Nolte at least admits the 70s was a golden age because the Code finally disappeared, he says it still doesn't compare to the era from the late 20s to the late 50s.  Huh?  That covers a lot of ground.  Nolte may believe that was a great time for Hollywood, but we're talking about at least three of four different eras of filmmaking.  First, what's wrong the silent era?  Is Nolte writing that off?  Then there's the pre-Code sound stuff, which, along with the silent era showed Hollywood did just fine without a strong Code.  Then there's the exciting 30s in general, probably my favorite decade for Hollywood film.  Then there's the war period, and the post-war period, and finally the period after the breaking up of the studio system.  While each period offered good films, not every period was of equal quality.  And while I wouldn't say the Code ever made films better (not even Screwball, which some claim was a response to the Code), by the 50s when so many films were trying to take on adult subjects, the Code had became a clear barrier preventing the openness necessary.  Then there's the 60s, which strike me as at least as good as the 50s.

Finally, Nolte prefers the Code years to the post-Code. Okay, that's his business, but even if he's right, perhaps it's because the movies were simply in a different place (and so was society).  Starting in the late 40s, TV started to take the place of what the movies used to be.  If you want to properly compare, you probably have to include all TV shows as well.

Nolte's other point about the documentary--a bigger one, though he spends less time on it--is that it was "uniformly awful" because it tried to cover too much (over seven decades) and so was all surface, never going deeper than "Film 101."

Even if true, I would think that since 99% of the American public doesn't know this history, that'd be a worthwhile project right there. Even film buffs know directors and stars, but don't think that much about the people who actually built the studios, and made Hollywood the entertainment capital of the world.  Furthermore, there were fine old photographs and archival footage, not to mention plenty of original interviews.  I agree the approach was occasionally scattershot and couldn't generally go into things too deeply, but that's what it was--a survey of American movies told from the moguls' point of view.  That's unusual in itself, and the show never pretended to be anything else.