Anybody who has, over the past few decades, taken even a vague interest in cinema history will have come across the term “pre-code”. It is used to describe not just films, but actors, directors and writers. One lesser achievement of Mark A Vieira’s beautifully produced book on the era is to confirm older readers’ suspicion that the ubiquity of “pre-code” is relatively recent. Photograph: Paramount/GettyForbidden Hollywood will have revelations for those who buy the caricature of the era as an unrestricted orgy of decadence. But Vieira’s book is, as much as anything else, a history of “pre-code” censorship.

Source: The Irish Times July 02, 2019 04:52 UTC