When did the Golden Era of Hollywood end? That’s a matter which could be widely debated. The heyday of silent films ended when “The Jazz Singer” introduced talking pictures in 1927. The Roaring Twenties were halted by the Stock Market Crash of 1929. World War II ended when the Japanese surrendered. However, there isn’t a universally acknowledged incident which brought American films’ golden age to an end.
However, I think it’s possible to at least identify the beginning of the end. In 1954, Joseph I. Breen retired from his twenty-year position as head of the Production Code Administration (PCA). The PCA’s job was to enforce the Motion Picture Production Code by ensuring that all films released in the United States were made according to its standards of decency for content. As long as Mr. Breen was in charge, the PCA did its job well, and the result was 20 years of clean movies which the whole family could enjoy. This period also happened to produce some of the greatest movies ever made (but maybe that’s just a coincidence).
Some Statistics
Joe Breen retired from the PCA on Oct. 14, 1954, his 66th birthday. Filming for “The Seven Year Itch” began in September 1954 and ended in November, with additional footage shot in January 1955. The film was released on June 3, 1955. Although Mr. Breen was still officially leading the PCA when principal filming began for this film, he was easing into retirement for several months. The filmmakers knew that it would not be Breen who reviewed the finished film but his longtime assistant, Geoffrey M. Shurlock, who was known to be more lenient. Filmmakers began testing the boundaries more persistently than ever to see how stringently Shurlock would enforce the Code. He quickly showed that he was eager to find a more liberal approach to Code-enforcement.“The Seven Year Itch” was directed by Billy Wilder, thrusting him into the world of salacious comedies which would become his specialty throughout the Shurlock Era and afterward. It was based on the 1952 Broadway hit of the same name by George Axelrod, who co-wrote the screen adaptation with Wilder. The film had Tom Ewell reprise his role as leading man Richard Sherman from the stage, while bombshell Marilyn Monroe played the nameless girl. Although it was a big financial success, Billy Wilder was very displeased with the financial result, which he called “a nothing picture because the picture should be done today without censorship. ... Unless the husband, left alone in New York while the wife and kid are away for the summer, has an affair with that girl there’s nothing. But you couldn’t do that in those days, so I was just straitjacketed. It just didn’t come off one bit, and there’s nothing I can say about it except I wish I hadn’t made it. I wish I had the property now.”
Shocking Shurlocking
The most recognizable moment from this film is when Marylin Monroe’s skirt blows up as she catches a cool breeze from passing subway trains. However, this moment, which isn’t as immodest as the famous publicity shot from the scene, is the least of the movie’s problems. Although the central sin in the play, adultery between a married man and his attractive young neighbor while his wife and son are away for the summer, was removed from the film, the result was far from Code-compliant. Variety referred to the Code’s enforcement during the PCA’s heyday as “breening,” since Mr. Breen knew how to improve story material while cleaning it up. Geoffrey Shurlock, however, had a unique way of enforcing the Code’s black-and-white rules while missing its central spirit, resulting in clumsily butchered takes on the source material which frustrated the authors but somehow still weren’t clean. “The Seven Year Itch” is a prime example of this ineffectual Code enforcement, which I call “shurlocking.”
Sherman may not actually have an affair with the girl in the movie, but that doesn’t mean that he’s upstanding. He’s an egomaniac who spends most of the runtime imagining elaborate romantic situations, which he then daydreams he is telling his wife as proof of his opportunities for infidelity. These fantasies are not only highly suggestive but indicative of Sherman’s mental state and moral compass. His wife and son haven’t even been gone one day before lust for other women consumes him. Unfortunately, he is the most moral man in the story, since he at least tries to remain faithful to his wife for a few hours. The film indicates that all the other “summer bachelors” use their time alone in the hot city to pursue extramarital affairs. Meanwhile, the girl is delighted to learn that Sherman is married, since they can have a little “fun” without her having to worry about his getting too serious. While their fun may not include spending the night together, it does involve three passionate kisses and moments of unmistakable chemistry between them.
This film illustrates the Shurlock trend of Freudian preoccupation with carnal nature. Everything becomes suggestive, in a pointed yet pervasive way intended to make the viewer feel like he’s the one with the dirty mind when he can’t help noticing these risqué clues. Besides the Freudian imagery and the double-entendre-laden dialogue, there are some shockingly suggestive moments visually, as well. The lead couple first interact when she drops a tomato plant from her balcony to his terrace one level down, and it seems like she is nude as she leans over the railing. She talks about storing her “undies” in the refrigerator to keep cool. A photo of her in a photographic magazine is heavily implied to be nude. Billy Wilder even succeeded in making Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 suggestive.
A Waste of Time
From an entertainment standpoint, I consider “The Seven Year Itch” a waste of time. It isn’t a good movie from any point of view, in my opinion. Its main value is as a historical landmark. Beneath all the risqueity, nods to other films, and suggestive costumes, there is very little substance. Blatant foolishness and obscenity always have seemed to go hand in hand in the movie business, since the Code’s strict rules were the only thing which forced filmmakers to dig deeper than cheap laughs and cheaper thrills to find a meaningful plot.One of the things I find most disturbing about this movie is how much it shows the deterioration of culture from the traditionalism which characterized Golden Era America. At the train station, Richard’s son is in his own little world, wearing a space helmet, pretending to shoot strangers with his laser gun, and rudely ignoring his father. Between disrespect from his son and nothing but a list of rules from his wife, Richard’s relationship with his family shows the impending deterioration of the traditional family unit. In his first night alone, Richard goes to a vegetarian restaurant, where he eats a soy-based hamburger, counts calories, and receives a weirdly hippie-like talk on nudism from a pacifist waitress. Was this really made 70 years ago?
If you have any doubt that Joseph Breen’s retirement was what sparked the decline in film quality and moral standards in American culture, consider “The Seven Year Itch.” It wasn’t that none of these sins and bizarre modernist concepts existed before 1955. It was that Breen’s influence over films, the most powerful entertainment medium of the day, encouraged the preservation and propagation of traditional values. Without that godly influence, every filmmaker may as well have been eating soy burgers in the nude while listening to Rachmaninoff.
