The Motion Picture Production Code

The Motion Picture Production Code, or MPCC, was the set of industry guidelines that governed the vast majority of American films released by major studios from 1938-1960. Basically it was a way to monitor the content in films and make sure that they were appropriate for all audiences. Under the code filmmakers could not show certain things...In 1968 the code was officially dropped in favor of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) code that we have today, where a film is rated based on it's content...In some ways I miss the MPPC.  I am conflicted on it because I hate the idea of censorship, which was exactly what it was, and yet I dislike the basic carelessness that is used by filmmakers today. They show the violence and sex because they can but it's not to drive the story or advance the importance of the character's struggles. It's to sell more tickets. Filmmaking should be about the art. Not the grosses. That's why the studio system fell apart because all they cared about was making the money. 


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.