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Film History and Criticism: 1890 – 1945, Gender & Sexuality,…

- - - - Shanghai Express (1932)
        Josef von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express, released on the verge of the Hays Code takeover, exemplifies the pre-Code willingness to portray sexuality without punishment or moral condemnation. The character of Shanghai Lily is a self-possessed woman whose sexual history is acknowledged openly, yet the film treats her overall with sympathy and respect rather than judgment. Her sensuality enables her independence and even becomes a source of emotional strength, directly contradicting the Hays Code’s demand that sexually “fallen” women be depicted as tragic or morally diminished. Lily uses her sexuality as power to save Doc Hayward, agreeing to go away with Chang to spare his life (above, left), a fact she never reveals, leaving him to believe she did it out of love. But despite this, and her sexual history, she still ends up with him in the end, rewarded, not punished (above, right).
        
        Shanghai Express and Dance, Girl, Dance
        Both feature women judged for their sexuality, but Shanghai Express treats sexual independence sympathetically, while Dance, Girl, Dance enforces a moral hierarchy between “good” and “bad” femininity.
      - Taming a Husband (D.W. Griffith, 1910)
        This early Griffith comedy undermines the strict behavioral expectations that would later be codified by the Hays Code. Rather than valorizing the obedient, domestic wife archetype, the film presents marital conflict as farcical and driven by mutual stubbornness. The wife resists conforming to submissive feminine norms, and the film humorously validates her assertiveness rather than punishing it. Its comic irreverence toward marriage and gender roles would be incompatible with the later Code, which required women to embody modest domestic virtue. This alongside the wife's friend character, who successfully masquerades as a man (above), reducing manhood and masculinity so something that can, as seen here, easily be matched or emulated by a woman.
        
        Taming a Husband and Mildred Pierce
        Both critique or destabilize patriarchal control, but Mildred Pierce ultimately restores patriarchal order, with her divorce (the indirect catalyst for all of the misfortune to follow) being reversed by the end.
    - - Dance, Girl, Dance (Dorothy Arzner, 1940)
        Dorothy Arzner’s film operates under strict Code-era constraints by clearly differentiating between “good” and “bad” female sexuality. Judy represents virtuous womanhood: disciplined, romantic, and modest, while Bubbles embodies the commercialized, morally dubious realm of burlesque. Although Arzner, a queer, female director critiques the male gaze and exploitation, the film’s structure still forces a moral hierarchy, rewarding Judy for her chasteness and punishing Bubbles with romantic disappointment (above). This exemplifies how the Code, and in general, the rising American traditionalism and nationalism that came with the war, shaped narratives around women’s sexuality. Desire could be shown, but only if contained within conservative moral frameworks.
      - Imitation of Life (John M. Stahl, 1934)
        Imitation of Life, released just after enforcement began, emphasizes moral virtue through maternal sacrifice and adherence to respectable domestic roles. The white protagonist, Bea, is rewarded for entrepreneurial ambition only because it is framed as wholesome, chaste, and maternal: a restaurant venture, keeping her in a domestic kitchen setting (above). Meanwhile, the film treats Peola’s attempt to pass as white—seeking autonomy within a racist society—as morally suspect, echoing the time’s anxieties about identity and racial hierarchy. The narrative ultimately endorses traditional morality, rewarding conformity while punishing self-determination that challenges social norms.
        
        Imitation of Life and Mildred Pierce
        Women or daughters who defy social/racial hierarchies face narrative punishment or moral framing.
    - - Meanwhile, the film presents an idealized, morally sanitized vision of Inuit life that reflects the filmmaker’s, and white Western society’s expectations of “proper” Indigenous behavior. Though posed as documentary, many sequences were staged to portray the Inuit as innocent, simple, and morally pure, fitting into a romanticized noble-savage archetype. Practices Flaherty considered “too modern” or “not wholesome” (such as the Inuit use of rifles) were removed in favor of portraying Nanook as a pre-industrial hero whose family structure, labor roles, and cheerful hardship aligned with Western notions of moral virtue. The film thus becomes a pre-Code artifact in which morality is not enforced through censorship but constructed ethnographically: shaping marginalized subjects to fit a comforting narrative of natural goodness, purity, and traditional family hierarchy—mirroring the moralistic framework the Hays Code would later impose on fiction films.
  - - - The Last Laugh (F.W. Marnau, (1924)
        Murnau’s film rejects the Haysian worldview in which social hierarchy and “correct standards of life” are stable moral truths. The doorman’s humiliation after losing his job reveals the fragility of status and the cruelty of bourgeois respectability (above, left). Its bleak, expressionist critique of authority would be incompatible with Code-era norms, which mandated respect for institutions and demanded that the social order be treated as fundamentally just. All that said, it is important to note the tacked-on, non-canon "happy ending" (above, right) that Murnau inserted for greater appeal in the American market, an impersonal reason for doing so that he was extremely open about. The ending crudely reframes the entire film as ending in a morally just way, with the kind-hearted underdog getting his riches in the end and karmic justice falling upon the cruel antagonists. This adjustment, made before the Hays Code had been dreamt up, shows that with American nationalism and western values on the rise, a code of this sort was truly inevitable.
        
        The Last Laugh and Battleship Potemkin
        Both reject the notion of natural social order; one critiques class hierarchy, the other political authority, directly opposing the Hays Code's state-aligned righteousness.
      - The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928)
        Dreyer’s film, though highly moral in tone, defies the Code’s insistence that earthly institutions: law, the church, patriarchal authority, be portrayed as righteous. Instead, the film exposes the cruelty, hypocrisy, and political motives of Joan’s male judges (above). The narrative sides with Joan’s ecstatic spiritual experience rather than religious bureaucracy, implying that correct order lies in individual conscience, not institutional control. Its intense emotional realism and sympathetic portrayal of a persecuted woman would clash with the later imposed American rules requiring deference to organized religion and established authority.
        
        Mildred Pierce and The Passion of Joan of Arc Joan of Arc was tortured and burned for wearing men's clothes (among other things), despite how much she prayed. The very same God who let that slide killed little Kay Pierce for being a tomboy.
        
        Battleship Potemkin and The Passion of Joan of Arc
        Both portray institutional power as corrupt rather than righteous.
    - - Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945)
        A film deeply shaped by war-era Americanism and righteousness. Mildred’s entrepreneurial ambition and independence, traits that challenge patriarchal natural order, are portrayed as admirable but dangerous. Her daughter Veda, the most unlikeable person ever, embodies the moral threat of class mobility, sexual manipulation, and disrespect for authority. The narrative restores righteous order by punishing Veda and humbling Mildred, reinstating traditional family structures by having her return to her cheating ex-husband in the end (above). Even amid concepts of shadows and murder, the film satisfies Code requirements that aspects like female autonomy, sexuality outside of marriage, and infidelity be contained within moral consequences and that social hierarchies ultimately be reinforced.
  - - - Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)
        Eisenstein’s Potemkin is one of the clearest pre-Code contradictions to the of upholding the law of the state and punishing "criminals" who break the status quo. The mutiny, defined as “crime” by the ruling order, is presented as righteous, necessary, and morally uplifting. Violence by revolutionaries is framed as heroic, while the official forces of law are monstrous to a horrific extent. The Odessa Steps sequence (above) dramatizes state brutality with emotional intensity, encouraging sympathy for the rebels in direct violation of the Code’s insistence that crime, or opposition to the state cannot be shown as understandable or appealing.
      - The "Léontine" Series (1910-1912)
        Leontine is an enigma. Her antics: petty theft, destruction of property, social disruption, are portrayed as charming childish behavior rather than real wrongdoing, but anyone can see they cause immense distress, and often injury to the people around her (above). In technicality, at the end of many of her films (but not all), she is left to face the consequences of her actions. But Leontine is not jailed, or killed off, or punished in any other godly way like many characters who do wrong in Code-era films that would follow. Leontine's wrong-doings are the key appeal of her film series, they are humorous and designed to be encouraged by the audience. In this sense, while consequence is often imposed on the titular rascal, the films most definitely seem to glorify this kind of behaviour more than they discourage it.
    - - Suspense. (Lois Weber, Phillips Smalley, 1913)
        Lois Weber’s Suspense depicts threat, voyeurism, and violence with a psychological immediacy that pre-dates the Code’s strict rules on the representation of crime. The home-intruder sequence is frightening and thrilling without moralizing commentary, but consequences do come to him in the end. The criminal is not framed within a moral parable but as a realistic, unmotivated danger to domestic life. The main action revolves around police going after the victim's husband as he steals a car and speeds to help his wife, unbeknownst to them. This incompetence displayed by the police, as well as the borderline horror of the intruder sequence (above), perhaps wouldn't pass the Hays Code's guidelines, but in the end the evil is acutely punished.
  - - - Branching off from here are three key principals of the Hays Code, and from there, films we've examined in class that either subscribe to its mould, predate it, or otherwise stand in opposition to its values.