Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Unacceptable Matters: The Hays Code, Family, Film Noir and RKO Radio Pictures

2022; Routledge; Volume: 43; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01439685.2022.2116858

1465-3451

Gonzalo Moisés Pavés Borges,

Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism

The emergence of film noir was a real challenge for Joseph Breen the Hays Office. Since the final implementation of the Production Code in 1934, the censors had succeeded in softening the moral edges that had caused so much scandal among the most conservative sectors of American society. But after the end of World War II, certain post-war Hollywood productions, many of them inspired by crime novels, began to question the rules that established thematic limits in American cinema. Suddenly controversial matters such adultery, premarital relations, illegitimate children, prostitution and the whole spectrum of sexual attitudes deemed non sanctas began to reappear in the scripts submitted to the PCA for approval. For the censors, such movies constituted a direct challenge that contravened the strict precepts established in the Hays Code. This work tries to analyse, based on the prolific documentation generated by the Production Code Office and today preserved in the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Hollywood, the extent to which the strict regulations regarding the representation of family, love and sex outlined in the Hays Code affected the scripts and the shooting of the films noirs produced by RKO Radio Pictures during the 1940s and 50 s.