Pre-Code Hollywood - Crime Films

Crime Films

In the early 1900s, America was still primarily a rural country, especially in self-identity. D. W. Griffith's The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) is one of the earliest American films to feature urban organized crime. Prohibition's arrival in 1920 created an environment where anyone who wanted to drink had to consort with criminals, especially in urban areas. Nonetheless, the urban crime genre was mostly ignored until 1927 when the film Underworld, which is recognized as the first gangster movie, became a surprise hit. According to the Encyclopedia of Hollywood's entry on Underworld, "The film established the fundamental elements of the gangster movie: a hoodlum hero; ominous, night-shrouded city streets; floozies; and a blazing finale in which the cops cut down the protagonist." Gangster films such as Thunderbolt (1929), and Doorway to Hell were released to capitalize on Underworld's popularity, with Thunderbolt being described as "a virtual remake" of the film. Other late 1920s crime films investigated the connection between mobsters and Broadway productions in movies such as Lights of New York (1928), Tenderloin (1928) and Broadway (1929).

The Hays Office had never officially recommended banning violence in any form in the 1920s — unlike profanity, the drug trade or prostitution — but advised that it be handled carefully. New York's censor board was more thorough than that of any other state, missing only around 50 of the country's 1,000 to 1,300 annual releases. In 1927–28 the violent scenes removed were all of those in which a gun was pointed at the camera, some instances in which guns were pointed "at or into the body of another character", many shots where machine guns were featured, scenes where criminals shot at law enforcement officers, some scenes involving stabbing or knife brandishing (audiences considered stabbings more disturbing than shootings), most whippings, several involving choking, torture, or electrocution, and any scenes which could be considered educational in their depiction of crime methods. Sadistic violence and reaction shots showing the faces of individuals on the receiving end of violence were considered especially sensitive areas. The Code later recommended against scenes showing robbery, theft, safe-cracking, arson, "the use of firearms", "dynamiting of trains, machines, and buildings", and "brutal killings", on the basis that they would be rejected by local censors.