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Film Adaptation and the Censors: 1940s Hollywood and Raymond Chandler

2003; University of North Texas Press; Volume: 35; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

1934-1512

John Paul Athanasourelis,

Digital Games and Media

Although their author would not necessarily agree that film versions of his work were in any way successful, Raymond Chandler's novels have been thoroughly and interestingly adapted for screen. From gritty chiaroscuro of Murder, My Sweet (1944) through sardonically updated Marlowe (1969) to sun-drenched anti-heroics of The Long Goodbye (1973), sheer number of film adaptations and eccentric variety of interpretation attest to inherently cinematic quality of Chandler's fiction--not a surprising fact, considering Chandler's own career as a Hollywood screenwriter. Aside from their intrinsic merits, these books and films can be viewed in tandem. An adaptation can highlight aspects of written narrative that might otherwise be overlooked, and concerns of filmmakers, answering as they do to producers and producers' conceptions of/he taste of mass audience, are most fully appreciated inasmuch as they contrast with written narrative. One important factor in adaptation is that of length: if followed point for point, an adaptation of a novel would result in a film far longer than Hollywood standard of ninety minutes. Often, however, changes cannot be traced to a need for brevity. More significantly, ideological censorship, dictated by studio owners and managers, regulated transition of book-to-film projects for most of period in American cinema when major studios had a stranglehold on production (roughly 1930-1960). The most obvious manifestation of rigid control of narrative is insistence on a happy ending by means of establishing a monogamous, heterosexual, seemingly lasting relationship between protagonists by fade-out, a sure indication that problems have been overcome and all is well. Such narrow restrictions have not always obtained: American film has always appealed to a perceived sensationalism on part of its audience, but films of late 1920s and early 1930s aroused vigilance of religious and civic groups such as Legion of Decency, affiliated with Catholic Church. For these concerned citizens, Hollywood too often depicted joie de vivre of loose-living flappers and charismatic, Tommy-gun toting gangsters, products of high-spirited Jazz Age. The industry's response was a self-regulating mechanism, Motion Picture Producers and Directors Association, whose strictures, commonly referred to as Production Code, were first instituted in 1927 and subsequently made more and more restrictive. In 1940s, when first Chandler adaptations were produced, Code was still a stringently enforced censoring mechanism that shaped narratives according to perceived mainstream moral values. Although it encompassed a multitude of sins, Code was particularly sensitive to gangster films of early sound era, whose charismatic, blatantly violent, and ambitious heroes parodied optimistic Horatio-Alger model of democratic self-reliance and upward mobility. The Code demanded that the treatment of crimes against law must not ... make criminals seem heroic or justified (qtd. in Schumach 290) and even in cases where criminal is captured or killed, MPPDA was perceptive enough to recognize allure of such criminal protagonists. A milestone in film history, Howard Hawks's Scarface (1932) exploited public fascination with success of Prohibition gangsters, and it is easy to see how Paul Muni's electrifying performance could have made censors nervous. Hawks compounded perceived problem by suggesting an incestuous relationship between his Capone-like gangster, Tony Camonte, and his sister, Cesca, played with equal elan by Ann Dvorak. In this area Code was yet more sententious, preaching that the sanctity of institution of marriage and home shall be upheld. No film shall infer [sic] that casual or promiscuous sex relationships are accepted or common thing (qtd. …