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movies. Otto Preminger’s
The Moon is
Blue
(1953) was refused a production seal
of approval by the US censors because
he refused to excise the word “virgin”
from the dialogue. Six years later he made
Anatomy of a Murder
(1959), which created
controversy and was banned in a number
of US cities because the dialogue contained
the words panties, rape and penetration.
Both of Preminger’s films – and his
The
Man with the Golden Arm,
which dealt with
another Hollywood taboo: drug addiction
– were direct assaults on the Production
Code. The media picked up on this and
the Motion Picture Association of America
began to be ridiculed in the press as the
last will and testament of a bygone age and
consequently, completely out of touch with
modern society.
This adverse publicity and subsequent
public curiosity made Preminger’s movies big
hits at the box-office; in fact, bigger hits than
they deserved to be. But then in 1960, Alfred
Hitchcock, who had also been impressed with
the French style of filmmaking, especially the
1955 production
Les Diaboliques,
imitated
the style and similar plot line for his movie
Psycho
. Paramount gave Hitchcock a very
small budget to work with, because of their
distaste with the source material. They also
deferred most of the net profits to Hitchcock,
believing the film would fail by being refused
the production code’s seal of approval.
Psycho
didn’t fail – it made Hitchcock a fortune.
The huge success of
Psycho –
with its
violence and provocative sexual content,
combined with it being the first American
film ever to show a toilet being flushed
onscreen – fatally weakened the authority of
the MPAA Production Code and paved the
way for the eventual introduction of the film
rating system, still in use today.
The following years saw a marked
increase in the production of relatively low
budget films that would appeal to a younger
audience, by essentially featuring characters
rebelling against any form of authority.
Actor Warren Beatty – turned producer
– persuaded Warner Bros. to finance his
1967 film
Bonnie & Clyde
with a mere $2.5
million budget. The story treatment of
the Depression-era gangster couple, Clyde
Barrow and Bonnie Parker – who went on a
killing spree, holding up banks in the Midwest
– was given an effectively glamorised and
extremely violent treatment, very much in the
style of the French
Nouvelle Vague
. Warner
Bros. had so little faith in the film that initially,
they gave
Bonnie & Clyde
a limited B-movie-
type release, sending it to drive-ins and lesser
theatres. When critics began raving about the
film and thousands of young people showed
up at cinemas clamouring for tickets, it was
better promoted, given a nationwide release,
and went on to gross over $22 million in
domestic rentals.
A similar reception was given to the
release of the independent Embassy
Pictures production
The Graduate
(1967), starring newcomer Dustin Hoffman.
The film presented a candid look at sex in the
American suburbs, where a nervous young
graduate (Hoffman) is seduced by the older
and rapacious Mrs. Robinson – brilliantly
played by Anne Bancroft. When these two
movies received a combined 17 Academy
Award nominations on top of their huge box-
office returns, the Hollywood establishment
finally came out of its ten-year coma.
Bonnie & Clyde
and
The
Graduate,
having shrewdly tapped into
the American counterculture of the
late 1960s, conjointly heralded what
would become known as the Hollywood
Renaissance of the 1970s.
To be continued...
FEATURE
EXTRAS
The banned "panties scene" from Preminger’s
Anatomy of a Murder
(1959)
Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty as
Bonnie & Clyde
(1967)
The brutal final scene from
Bonnie & Clyde
Dustin Hoffman and Anne
Bancroft in
The Graduate
(1967)