Explicit content/profanity/violence in film
 

Title is a bit misleading, because the purpose of this thread is a bit more specific than that. This thread is more about the gradual, increased acceptance of explicit content in film, the rating system, etc. Hell, it can be about ground being broken technically, aesthetically, etc if that's what you want to discuss.

To get the discussion rolling, here's a few questions.

-What was the first use of the word "fuck" in an English language film?
-of full frontal nudity?
-of graphic dismemberment?

I guess my main point of interest here is the "New Hollywood" period. There's a huge difference in the amount of explicit or violent content between early 1960's films like Psycho, The Great Escape, and The Magnificent Seven and late 1960's/early 1970's films such as Bonnie and Clyde and The Exorcist. Even to compare two of Sam Peckinpah's films, Ride The High Country (1962), and The Wild Bunch (1969), one notices a great increase in graphic violence, abrasive dialogue and characters, and other explicit content.

^^i watched a lot of the Hays Office period stuff and they're almost "Victorian" somewhat, in terms of morality and content

this was a backlash against the explicitness of the horror movies of the 30s, which mostly were sparked by highly debatable court cases, where the Defendant/accused blamed their psychosis on movies

i think in the 60s, because of the loosening morals probably shepherded by the Hippies, censorship became less and less stilted and stifling

I've admittedly never seen any of the more violent pre-code films, but how much more profane/violent were they than the films made after? Any really big differences?

Pre-Hayes Code movies were no where near as open with gore, nudity, or profanity as they are today, but they definitely do contain it. The 1930 film Morocco featured actress Marlene Dietrich dressed up in drag and kissing another woman, which at the time was pretty scandalous, but it also made the movie a big hit and Paramount a lot of money. Actress Mae West is another example of what existed in Hollywood during the Pre-Hayes code as she exhibited quite a bit of sex appeal and double entendre lines relating to sex (think of her as a prototype for Roger Moore era Bond Girls).

Because mass communication was still in its infancy, much of middle America (i.e. between the west coast and east coast) was largely unaware of this growing exhibition of art and it all kind of came crashing around them all at once. This also wasn't helped by tabloid papers that make ours today look like The Wall Street Journal. Combined with papers notably owned by William Randolph Hearst, overly sensationalized stories were written about the Godless and evil atrocities that were committed in Hollywood which helped skewer public perception and ruined the lives of some actors, most notably Fatty Arbuckle.

With people making mountains out of mole hills, the MPAA was initiated to start policing Hollywood before the government could do it for them which destroyed the careers of some individuals, such as Mae West. It also made it hard for Hollywood to adapt to the changing culture of the 1960's in the same way that music and literature could. Not helped by the reckless spending of money on lavish effect driven spectacle bombs like Cleopatra in an attempt to compete with television which made investors unwilling to invest money, the Hayes Code really was what made Hollywood almost all but collapse at the tail end of the 1960's.

With the inability to criticize religion or religious figures, as well as being unable to show gangsters doing their business, it made it really hard to work around it in a way that wouldn't violate the code. This caused film makers and studios to challenge the code, and in the 1964 film The Pawnbroker was the first film to feature female nudity since the Hayes Code took power almost 30-years prior. With that, other films started to experiment with what they could get away with and with the massive success of the film Easy Rider, "New Hollywood" was born. Also with the financial collapse at the end of the 1970's, Hollywood executives were far more lenient with what they would let their directors do, which is why you saw such a drastic change in tone and explicit material between the two decades.

Thanks for that explanation. However, I notce that even with the code being ignored and more graphic violence taking place by the end of the 1960's, the language was still pretty mild. The Wild Bunch was perhaps the most violent film up until that point but it contained fairly mild profanity, and none of the really offensive curse words ("fuck or "cunt") (as did other films like Bonnie & Clyde and Easy Rider). However, just four years later, The Exorcist came out and it contained some pretty shocking, vulgar language, yet it still recieved an R-rating, like The Wild Bunch.

I'm doubting The Exorcist was the first film to use such extreme language, so I'm trying to pinpoint exactly where the slackening of the use of vulgar language began.

they weren't graphic, but the innuendo and insinuation were pretty bad, there was something akin to "torture" porn in The Black Cat (1934), with talk of flaying and stripping flesh to bone

compare that with horror movies made under the Hays Code - which were often just usage of shadows or monsters that would only frighten children