In the 1920s, censorship emerged as an issue linked directly to the medium of film. By 1922, The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), later to become the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) had formed, with Will H. Hays as president of the association. The MPPDA was looking for evidence to back up their claims that violent and promiscuous films promoted and encouraged violent and promiscuous behavior. In addition, this postwar period was trapped in fear towards the power of the media to influence the masses. This controversy in the film industry led to The Payne Fund Studies, a series of research studies to examine movies and their effects on children, as well as the emergence of the Motion Picture Production Code.
The Motion Picture Production Code was the set of moral guidelines applied to most motion pictures released by major production studios in the United States. This code dictated what acceptable content for films in the United States was, and for more than thirty years, most motion pictures produced in the United States abided by the code. Censorship in the film industry emerged globally. The Production Code—also known as the Hays Code—had three “General Principles”:
1) “No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral 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.”
2) “Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented.”
3) “Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed. Nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.”
This code meant that already established directors had to adapt and, not long after the emergence of this code, directors had learned to work around this code and many films produced in the 1930s flirted with the line of censorship with violent and suggestive scenes. One director that emerged as notorious for working around censorship was Alfred Hitchcock. His films oozed with sex and violence, yet managed to pass censorship inspection. Hitchcock’s ability to dance with the production code can be observed in his 1935 film The 39 Steps. Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps was passed for public exhibition to adult audiences by the British Board of Film Censors. The 39 Steps tells a story of espionage and follows the series of events of an ordinary man who gets caught up in the murder of a counter-espionage.
If we’re being frank, I did not enjoy Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps. It was painfully slow, and I was too focused on the fact that Robert Donat’s character was wearing a different coat in almost every scene to even try enjoy it more. I couldn’t, however, help noticing that Hitchcock very slyly avoided showing any actual vividly violent scenes, and rather insinuated the violence. An example of this can be observed when Pamela is seen with a knife in her back. Although the audience is not shown the stabbing, the violence associated with the stabbing is insinuated with the presence of the knife.
History of the Motion Picture 