William H. Hays

Personnages invincibles, coups de foudre improbables, explosions au timing parfait... Des stars et experts du cinéma démontent ces lieux communs, et bien d'autres.

Le documentaire provocateur de Kirby Dick enquête sur le processus secret et incohérent par lequel la Motion Picture Association of America évalue les films, révélant les efforts sournois de l'organisation pour contrôler la culture. Dick se demande si certains studios bénéficient d'un traitement préférentiel et expose les divergences dans la façon dont la MPAA considère le sexe et la violence.

Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Peter Fonda host an examination of the history of decency standards for movies from the early 1920s onwards.

TV review of a litany of Hollywood impropriety.

The Honorable Will H. Hays, President of the Motion Picture Producers & Distributors of America, speaks directly into the camera about the important new technology to enhance the motion picture going experience, namely Vitaphone which allows the synchronization of the picture on screen with sound. Its development is important if only because of the importance of the motion picture as the chief amusement to millions in the American public. It allows the inclusion of music directly into the motion picture, music which already plays an important role in the motion picture in the pre-Vitaphone era. However, it allows symphonic music to be incorporated, which many of the small hamlets across the country could not afford to provide in their own movie houses. Vitaphone was developed by the Western Electric and Bell Telephone Companies, and is also greatly attributed to the work of Warner Bros. Pictures.

Footage from the premiere of Charlie Chaplin's 1928 film 'The Circus'.

Looks at the stereotype-breaking films of the period from 1929, when movies entered the sound era, until 1934 when the Hays Code virtually neutered film content. No longer portrayed as virgins or vamps, the liberated female of the pre-code films had dimensions. Good girls had lovers and babies and held down jobs, while the bad girls were cast in a sympathetic light. And they did it all without apology.

A look at the forces that shaped Pre-Code Hollywood and brought about the strict enforcement of the Hays Code in 1934.

Ce documentaire examine la sexualité galopante des début d'Hollywood à travers des extraits de films et des témoignages de stars de l'époque comme Gloria Swanson, Mary Pickford et Marlene Dietrich.

This short was released in connection with the 20th anniversary of Warner Brothers' first exhibition of the Vitaphone sound-on-film process on 6 August 1926. The film highlights Thomas A. Edison and Alexander Graham Bell's efforts that contributed to sound movies and acknowledges the work of Lee De Forest. Brief excerpts from the August 1926 exhibition follow. Clips are then shown from a number of Warner Brothers features, four from the 1920s, the remainder from 1946/47.