Morality and the Code: A How-to Manual for Hollywood (2006 Video) User Reviews

Very Informative

[gavin6942 · 7/10 · 8 September 2014]

What do we learn in these brief twenty minutes? Joseph Breen and the Catholic Church started the censorship business by going to Bank of America and telling them their bank was funding improper movies. From then on, homosexuality, Asian racism, drugs and disparagement of marriage were shunned.

Breen almost single-handedly killed the gangster film, if the movie industry had not found ways around it. Breen feared kids would be inspired by the movies. But one of the biggest changes with Breen was the end of the single, unwed mother. Maybe it was not realistic, but now it was moral.

This short documentary has many great interviews. There could always be more Martin Scorsese, but Rick Jewell does alright, and some unusual faces (Michael Madsen, Theresa Russell) show up and offer personal insight.

"Art blooms when restraints are put on it . . . "

[oscaralbert · 6/10 · 1 March 2015]

. . . intones USC "film professor" Rick Jewell in summing up MORALITY AND THE CODE: A HOW-TO MANUAL FOR H0LLYW00D. Among the opposition to Jewell in the "those who can" crowd, COTTON CLUB and CHINATOWN producer Robert Evans states, "The restrictions (of the code) were ludicrous; it was censorship at its worst." Film director Lili Fini Zanuck confesses that with the Pope's minions in charge of what she could see on the movie screen while she was growing up, she got the impression that babies came from slow-dancing, hand-holding, and quick pecks on the cheek. Actress Theresa Russell adds that Americans of the 1920s learned about solving Real Life problems in U.S. movie theaters prior to July 1, 1934, when the Pope's henchmen were put in charge of everything available to Jews, Methodists, Atheists, Lutherans, Agnostics, Unitarians, and Rational People. The fact that Papal Apologist Jewell is allowed to expose his students to his brand of Puritanical American Sharia Law at an institution in our Football Bowl Championship Division portends that there is little hope for Freedom or Rationality in America's future.

Good Look at the Code

[Michael_Elliott · 10 April 2012]

Morality and the Code: A How-To Manual for Hollywood (2006)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Lincoln Hurst, Frank Miller, Martin Scorsese, Michael Madsen, Anthony Slide, Rick Jewell, Eric Lax, Talia Shire, Haden Guest, Robert Evans, Theresa Russell and Irwin Winkler are just a few of the names who are interviewed in this 20-minute featurette that takes a look at the production code in Hollywood during the 1930s. This documentary does a pretty good job at explaining what stuff was going on before and after Will Hays took office and decided to lay the hammer down on Hollywood. We get several examples of pre-code material from films like THE PUBLIC ENEMY and then we see how things were turned down in movies like DUST BE MY DESTINY. The film historians do a very nice job at explaining why this code was put into place and why Bank of America had a major part to do with it. If you're already familiar with the code then it's doubtful you're going to learn anything new here and especially if you've seen earlier documentaries on the code. If you're new to the entire pre-code thing then this here will give you a good idea of what was expected in order to have a "clean" movie. With so many people being interviewed in such a short time, many of them just get one or two clips at the most and this includes Scorsese.