[Stephen Prince]Classical Film Violence : Designing and Regulating Brutality in Hollywood Cinema, 1930-1968(pdf){Zzzzz}

Stephen Prince has written the first book to examine the interplay between the aesthetics and the censorship of violence in classic Hollywood films from 1930 to 1968, the era of the Production Code, when filmmakers were required to have their scripts approved before they could start production. He explains how Hollywood's filmmakers designed violence in response to the regulations of the Production Code and regional censors. Graphic violence in today's movies actually has its roots in these early films. Hollywood's filmmakers were drawn to violent scenes and "pushed the envelope" of what they could depict by manipulating the Production Code Administration (PCA).

Prince shows that many choices about camera position, editing, and blocking of the action and sound were functional responses by filmmakers to regulatory constraints, necessary for approval from the PCA and then in surviving scrutiny by state and municipal censor boards.

This book is the first stylistic history of American screen violence that is grounded in industry documentation. Using PCA files, Prince traces the negotiations over violence carried out by filmmakers and officials and shows how the outcome left its traces on picture and sound in the films.

Almost everything revealed by this research is contrary to what most have believed about Hollywood and film violence. With chapters such as "Throwing the Extra Punch" and "Cruelty, Sadism, and the Horror Film," this book will become the defining work on classical film violence and its connection to the graphic mayhem of today's movies.

Publisher: Rutgers University Press (October 1, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0813532817
ISBN-13: 978-0813532813

Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Stephen Prince is a professor of communication studies at Virginia Tech. His many books include A New Pot of Gold: Hollywood under the Electronic Rainbow, 1980-1989; Savage Cinema: Sam Peckinpah and the Rise of Ultraviolent Movies; and Screening Violence (Rutgers).

Customer Reviews

Eye Opening
By Michael Samerdyke on December 18, 2004
This is one of the best books I've read about movies in a few years. Prince looks at the PCA papers for movies from the early talkies to the start of the "ratings system" in the Sixties. He looks at how the films depicted violence, and how they got into trouble with the Code Authority. (Prince doesn't use the word censor, and he shows he has a valid point for this.)

The result is simply eye-opening. It will make you want to see Frankenstein, The Public Enemy, Scarface (1931) and G-Men again. Prince shows how the PCA was especially troubled by violence in horror and gangster films and by edge weapons more than guns. He also shows how "film noir" was a sustained assault on the conventions of screen violence handed down in the Thirties. (Oddly, Prince hardly uses the term "film noir" although the films he mentions: The Glass Key, Brute Force, Kiss Me Deadly, are all from the noir canon.)

Not only does Prince tell the history of American screen violence, but he analyzes the techniques by which filmmakers depicted violence. He never becomes dry or academic as he discusses these films.

Strongly recommended for anyone with an interest in the horror film, gangster movies or film noir.