was it somehow ok to show women being slapped as long as they were bad girls who had swopped their respected position as women in exchange for the rewards of being a gangster's moll?
In general, it was more something like: It's OK to show criminal behavior (including assault, regardless of the gender of the victim) as long as the criminal's overall pattern of law breaking will eventually lead to them being imprisoned or killed (even if not for every single crime that they commit).
However, it is worth noting that a certain amount of "manhandling", and sometimes slapping, could be considered completely justified under the Production Code ..... depending on the details of the circumstances.
For example, in the Western
El Dorado there's a scene where James Caan makes a comment to woman (I think about her hair looking unkept, which it does at that moment), she slaps him, and he slaps her back. That one seems to have been considered all fair and even, and no-harm-no-foul. The tit-for-tat, even retribution, no-harm-no-foul line of reasoning also seems to apply to Cary Grant's shoving of Katherine Hepburn after she purposely breaks his golf club(s) at the very beginning of
The Philadelphia Story.
(I'm not coming up with any specific examples off the top of my head, but you may also find examples when a cop or someone similar slapping down a "gangster's moll" who is coming after him is considered to come under the heading of "justifiable self defense".)
Toward the end of
The Quiet Man, Maureen O'Hara is about to get on a train to leave her husband, and he (played by John Wayne) comes and takes her by the arm and basically forcibly drags her back to town so that she can see him do something else. I think that "manhandles" is a fair description. The censors seem to have considered that to have been appropriate to the circumstances at the time, but it certainly wouldn't be considered "correct" or "appropriate" today.
In
The Thin Man there is a point when Nick full-out punches Nora in the jaw. Somebody else was drawing a gun, and he felt that was the only way to be completely certain of getting her down and out of the line of fire quickly enough. I've seen people debate whether that was true or not, but there is no doubt that that was the character's intent. The censors of the time seem to have been fine with that rationale.
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ib011f9545i
12 years ago
Good reply,thank you,I just started to watch a lot of film noir and noticed all the slapping,I suppose it reflects real life as well with on edge criminals hitting out at those nearest to them.
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