STACK #151 May 2017

FEATURE EXTRAS

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

Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty as Bonnie & Clyde (1967)

The brutal final scene from Bonnie & Clyde

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.

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

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 The banned "panties scene" from Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft in The Graduate (1967)

To be continued...

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