Capra's It Happened One Night and the Hays Code Essay

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It Happened One Night 1934One of the most sensually evocative scenes in Capra’s “It Happened One Night” is when a bare-chested Peter Warne begins undressing in front of Ellie Andrews. He has a giant smirk across his face as he begins unbuttoning his pants, daring her to bolt behind the curtain that he has thrown up on a rope to serve as a divider in the room. She has scoffed at the idea of sharing a room with a man and sees the curtain as a flimsy sort of protection of privacy, while he maintains it is as strong as the walls of Jericho (the beginning of a running gag that will be used again at the end of the film). His smirk and state of half-undress (with the threat of more exposure) is enough to send her fleeing to her side of the room—but the sexual tension created by Peter’s antics make the film sizzle without there actually being any indication of sex or sexual arousal: everything is suggested and mildly hinted at. The curtain represents the Production Code that is meant to preserve the innocence of the viewing audience, as absurd as it might seem and sound on the face of it. Yet the curtain obviously has a function as flimsy as it is. It does serve to keep Ellie and Peter separated—and it is only at the end of the film that the curtain is finally shown falling and the trumpet sounds, humorously indicating that the “walls of Jericho” have fallen and Ellie has surrendered herself to Peter, sexually speaking. The permission given for all this to happen comes directly from Ellie’s own father, who states in a telegram after she runs off from her betrothed (again, with his permission), “Let them fall.” The permission being granted, the sexual relations that follow are viewed as permissible and licit—even if they are not permitted to be shown on screen. The humorous way in which sex is implied is part of a running gag—sophomoric in its own way—but such was the case with screwball comedies during the Production Code era, as Jane Greene explains.Greene makes the case that “the antagonistic nature of the romantic relationship and the emphasis on physical comedy are generally seen as an outcome of the suppression of explicit sexuality under the Production Code Administration (PCA) after 1934” (45). From this perspective, the curtain erected by Clark Gable’s Peter in Capra’s film serves as a symbol of the Production Code. Gable, with his ever-present wolfish grin, now clad in his robe on his part of the curtain, says to the apprehensive Ellie on her side of the curtain, “You’ve got nothing to worry about: the ‘walls of Jericho’ will protect from the big bad wolf.

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” The walls of Jericho is a reference to the curtain—and the big bad wolf is a reference to himself or at least to the male sexual appetite. In any case, the scene in the film is an embodiment of the entire era of the Production Code, and Capra is subtly making fun of it in a roundabout way—never actually referring to the Code or to the sexual behavior that it was meant to prevent films from showcasing. Yet the fact of the matter is that in any romantic comedy sex is going to have to be some aspect of the story because at root of romance is sex. Sexual tension is one of the facts of life and if it is not accurately reflected on the screen then the characters and plot end up becoming divorced from real life. The style of the screwball comedy of the time was meant to make up for the fact that sex could not be depicted on the screen—so instead the characters made outrageous faces, engaged in outrageous physical humor and acted insane: as Andrew Sarris notes, “Here we have all these beautiful people with nothing to do. Let us invent some substitutes for sex. The wisecracks multiply beyond measure, and when audiences tire of verbal sublimation, the performers do cartwheels and pratfalls and make funny expressions” (13). Thus, instead of sex on the screen, the characters had to engage in outrageous behavior so as to blow off the steam created by the fact that no one was having sex—at least that….....

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