Conference Program

The implementation of the Production Code in 1934 established a pre- and post-classic  Hollywood era. From 1934 onward, the studios submitted their productions to some internal  control to ensure the conformity of contents and guarantee their commercial viability at a time  when ideological and religious elites were actively trying to enforce the respect of moral  principles.  

After focusing on the studio “system” in the 1980s, Hollywood studies rediscovered the  power and freedom of early talkies in the 1990s. This movement was initiated by cinephiles at  a retrospective that Bruce Goldstein entitled “Pre-Code Hollywood” at the New York Film  Forum in 1988. American scholars in this movement circumscribed the periodization of the  Code’s implementation to the talking years alone and focused on the idea of “Forbidden  Hollywood” (M. Vieira, 1999, 2019; G. Black, 1994) taken up by the Majors on the occasion  of the re-release of the catalogues of the Warner Archive Collection, Sony, Universal and Fox.  The Warner retrospective and the Lumière Festival in 2019 at the Paris cinema Le Louxor  entitled “Forbidden Hollywood”, or the release of the DVD box set Universal Pre-Code  Hollywood Collection (2009) with the evocative subtitle “6 Shocking Films From the Era  Before Rules!”, and a second one in 2020, have contributed to fixing in the collective  imagination the existence of an era during which everything would have been allowed in  Hollywood between the advent of talking pictures in 1927 and the rigorous enforcement of the  Production Code (the “Hays Code”) in July 1934. In the Spring of 2022, the Criterion channel  proposed a cycle dedicated to the “Pre-Code Paramount” by applying the same definition. A  collective representation started emerging according to which the implementation of the Code  took place in two periods: one transgressive and provocative from 1929 to 1934 (“Pre-Code  Hollywood”), the other conservative and strictly regulated from this pivotal year on.  

This international conference aims at re-examining the notion of “Pre-Code Hollywood” and its periodization as they are now commonly adopted by scholars, critics, and film  enthusiasts. Indeed, the establishment of the Code did not occur abruptly with the publication  of a first text in 1930, followed by the application of a reworked version in 1934, but developed  over the years from the adoption of the Thirteen Points in 1921. 

Recent historiography (L. Leff and Simmons; F. Bordat) has thus demonstrated that, far  from wishing for censorship, Will Hays sought above all to avoid federal censorship and to  protect the vertical integration of the studios. Hollywood met with several attempts to prevent  federal censorship as well as untimely cuts by local censorship boards (Studio Relations  Committee in 1922, “The Formula” in 1924, the “Don’ts and Be Carefuls” of 1927, the first  version of the Code in 1930 and the “final” version of the Code in 1934). These steps confirm  that Will Hays’ action was part of a logic of permanent negotiation between producers, religious  lobbies, the federal government, local censorship boards and women’s clubs (General  Federation of Women’s Clubs, Woman’s Christian Temperance Union…). 

We propose to bring together scholars interested in the first decades of Hollywood’s production to examine the socio-political, ideological, and aesthetic negotiations conducted by  the studios before July 1934, to go beyond the approach that consists in reducing “Pre-Code  cinema” to the early days of the talkies, generally approached through the prism of scandal,  provocation, and the expression of the forbidden. The aim is to take a fresh look at the impact  of this rise in censorship from 1921 onwards, on the evolution of genres (and even the  emergence of new ones), and on the intensification of the public conversation on the need for censorship. This conference will therefore focus on how films were made prior to 1934, despite  or because of these tough negotiations, and on how the studios and the Hays administration  were able, at the same time, to use the power of public opinion and respond to its pressures to  protect the Hollywood industry.