censorship in movies

[moviefan]

the stupiest stuff ive read bout censorship is silly now.
no knees,feet or belly buttons could be shown in old movies and pics thats the dumbest stuff ive read.yet you could see women topless.

[FrankFay]

You could see women topless RARELY. In American films, aside from the odd classical sculpture or painting, I can think of only a few instances of nudity from the rear and no frontal nudity except perhaps a flash- you can find plenty of draped artist's models and scantily clothed eastern dancing girls, but real topless shots?. I am not counting "The Naked Truth" in Lois Weber's HYPOCRITES because I'm convinced that is a double exposure of a woman wearing theatrical tights.

If you can find uncut versions of European silents, or versions edited for overseas showing, there you can find some nudity. A good instance is in THE MAN WHO LAUGHS- the American version of the bath scene is framed and edited until it's only suggestive. The European cut has some real nudity.

[Ray Faiola]

There's a long shot of Jane Wyatt's character nude in LOST HORIZON.

[Richard P. May]

And the ladies throwing flowers in front of BEN-HUR on his return to Antionch, in Technicolor, no less.
I believe this was restored from a European version print found in the Czech archives by Kevin Brownlow.

[Einar the Lonely]

Pardon, moviefan, but you are really hurting my aesthetical sense here with never using capital letters in your subject titles. P L E A S E.

[JFK]

I'm slowly poking through the Joe McDoakes canon,
and
1. Have spotted the married McDoakes sharing a bed in So You Think You're Allergic (1945)
and
two sex gags in So You Want to Be on the Radio (1948) :
2. Joe correctly identifies a melody for a radio call-in quiz as his
alma mater's song, "Sweetheart of Felta Thi" (if I heard him correctly)
3. Apearing on stage on another radio quiz show, Joe-
when asked who wrote "‎The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper" -gives, as one of his wrong answers, "Dr. Kinsey."

[Marr&Colton]

I'm sure most of us know the story, but for the sake of this thread, here is the story, as I understand it, of the production code:

Long, long ago there was a majority in America who had morals based on the Ten Commandments. Hollywood gave lip service to early attempts to keep their productions free of things which glorified violence, crime and sexual sin. The
Code Office, run by Messrs Breen and Hays finally bowed to pressure from the morality-based groups in American society and strictly enforced the code, effective in mid-1934.

This enforcement indirectly resulted in "screwball comedies" that eliminated overtly suggestive content that endure as great cinema many decades later.

In the late 1950s, early 1960s, the Code was diminished and eventually scrapped. The result of this in the last 55 years are movies that glorified immorality, guns and violence that has given us the violent society we live in today, despite ridiculous claims by sociologists that movies have NO effect over the years on the viewer.

I've done a lot of research on the Production Code and can see that it was intended to protect morality, home and family and a decent society. The story is fascinating:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Pi ... ction_Code" target="_blank

We are light years removed from the America of the early 20th century---now basic right and wrong is ridiculed and no longer the rule in the home and schools and we are paying a terrible price.