The best thing about the production code was that it forced filmmakers to be creative and subtle if they wanted to communicate something in their movie that they weren't allowed to actually show (whether it be sex or violence or something else.) A perfect example was the 1934 film The Black Cat. In the film Bela Lugosi's character brutally skins Boris Karloff's character alive. We don't see the actual act. We know what is happening but it's all in silhouette. The ending result is far more terrifying than if it had been shown, like we would get in any movie done by Eli Roth.
Sometimes it is needed for the story. Can you imagine Schindler's List without the violence? You would not see the same brutality of the villains and you would not care if Schindler saved so many Jews if you didn't believe that their life was in danger and you may not have gotten to have the cathartic ending. How about if the love scenes in The English Patient had been restricted to the morning after? Would you have felt the passion between Katherine and Almasy? When Geoffrey loses it near the end there is a sympathy that you feel for him and so what he does is understandable to the audience. Without those scenes you wouldn't have felt that.
I guess what I am saying is that the Production Code had it's good and bad things but sometimes I wish it was still around.
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