So what's going on with these films? There's a high level of violence but it's all extremely tidy and incredibly clean. What's all that about?
From reading round the subject a bit, it seems that the famous (or infamous) Code which governed US film-making from the 1920s to about the 1950s didn't particularly concern itself with violence. It concerned itself with a lot of other things; swearing and profanity, nudity, sexual relations it deemed to be inappropriate and so on, but the only reference to violence was in the 'caution' section:
And be it further resolved, That special care be exercised in the manner in which the following subjects are treated, to the end that vulgarity and suggestiveness may be eliminated and that good taste may be emphasized:
6.Brutality and possible gruesomeness;
What great phrasing, eh? So, either because of the general air of being a bit careful or because audiences that couldn't deal with someone swearing certainly couldn't be expected to deal with someone actually bleeding after they got shot, the level of violence and associated body count might be quite high but looking at the aftermath, you'd never know. And even though the Code was on the way out in the 1950s, still the films were surprisingly bloodless. Look at Last Wagon where Comanche Todd stabs three people to death (the sheriff's brother and later on, two Indians) and yet doesn't have a speck of blood on his hands. Or in the same film where he shoots an Indian with an arrow and the chap has the decency not to make a mess in front of the boy Billy. In most Westerns and quite a few crime dramas no end of people end up getting shot and of course most of them instantly die (for many years when I was little I assumed that if you got shot, you died; I was astonished to hear of anyone surviving being shot). But they rarely have anything to show for it. The best case of this is the barmaid Susie who gets shot in the arm in Roadhouse, who can't walk as a result of her injury (why?) and yet has no objection to being picked up and carried. In fact you can't even tell which is supposed to be the injured arm.
Perhaps Hollywood would have been better advised to follow the model laid down by Greek theatre in about the 5th century BC; where all the violence and bloodshed happened offstage, and was then faithfully reported by a messenger or the chorus. This worked so much better as the audience's imagination would do what no actor could do or, in the case of films in this era, what any censor board would permit. These days, you probably could show Oedipus raking out his eyes with his wife/mother's hairpins, using clever CGI, but isn't it better not to, and for someone to tell us that's what he's done? - and then when he appears, with a bloodstained bandage over his eyes, you shudder with horror - but you didn't need to see it happen. (As an aside, I think Oedipus Rex would have been a great role for Widmark... one more for the Tardis list...)
Potential spoiler alert - Backlash and Warlock
As it is, whenever there is an injury or any sign of blood in 1950's movies, you can take it that it's far more serious than it actually looks. Three examples; the first from Backlash where Sgt Lake gets dramatically shot and wounded and soon after dies. Slater examines the wound, gives him some water and holds him whilst he dies without a mark on his own shirt. In Warlock, Blaidesdell gets ever-so slightly marked on the arm by a shot from Billy Gannon; even a graze from a passing bullet would make a bit more of a mess than that. But perhaps the scene which they should not have tried to depict injury is the one where John Gannon (Widmark) goes to San Pablo, gets into a fight and ends up being stabbed through the hand. We don't see it happen (so far so good) and Gannon's howl of pain is blood-curdling enough to make you believe this is very serious; but when he gets to go, cradling his injury - well, you'd bleed more than that from a paper cut. Far more effective not to show it at all; the acting did what the special effects could not. [Actually the film makers missed a trick there; they followed the book pretty faithfully all things considered and in the novel version, Gannon bound up his wounded hand with his neckerchief straight away.]
You could go on - there are hundreds of examples - and of course this is all in a time past, and as they say, the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.... but perhaps modern film-making could learn something from the old-timers, stop trying to be too realistic and let the acting stand on its own. Sometimes it's bloody good. Pun intended.
From reading round the subject a bit, it seems that the famous (or infamous) Code which governed US film-making from the 1920s to about the 1950s didn't particularly concern itself with violence. It concerned itself with a lot of other things; swearing and profanity, nudity, sexual relations it deemed to be inappropriate and so on, but the only reference to violence was in the 'caution' section:
And be it further resolved, That special care be exercised in the manner in which the following subjects are treated, to the end that vulgarity and suggestiveness may be eliminated and that good taste may be emphasized:
6.Brutality and possible gruesomeness;
What great phrasing, eh? So, either because of the general air of being a bit careful or because audiences that couldn't deal with someone swearing certainly couldn't be expected to deal with someone actually bleeding after they got shot, the level of violence and associated body count might be quite high but looking at the aftermath, you'd never know. And even though the Code was on the way out in the 1950s, still the films were surprisingly bloodless. Look at Last Wagon where Comanche Todd stabs three people to death (the sheriff's brother and later on, two Indians) and yet doesn't have a speck of blood on his hands. Or in the same film where he shoots an Indian with an arrow and the chap has the decency not to make a mess in front of the boy Billy. In most Westerns and quite a few crime dramas no end of people end up getting shot and of course most of them instantly die (for many years when I was little I assumed that if you got shot, you died; I was astonished to hear of anyone surviving being shot). But they rarely have anything to show for it. The best case of this is the barmaid Susie who gets shot in the arm in Roadhouse, who can't walk as a result of her injury (why?) and yet has no objection to being picked up and carried. In fact you can't even tell which is supposed to be the injured arm.
Perhaps Hollywood would have been better advised to follow the model laid down by Greek theatre in about the 5th century BC; where all the violence and bloodshed happened offstage, and was then faithfully reported by a messenger or the chorus. This worked so much better as the audience's imagination would do what no actor could do or, in the case of films in this era, what any censor board would permit. These days, you probably could show Oedipus raking out his eyes with his wife/mother's hairpins, using clever CGI, but isn't it better not to, and for someone to tell us that's what he's done? - and then when he appears, with a bloodstained bandage over his eyes, you shudder with horror - but you didn't need to see it happen. (As an aside, I think Oedipus Rex would have been a great role for Widmark... one more for the Tardis list...)
Potential spoiler alert - Backlash and Warlock
As it is, whenever there is an injury or any sign of blood in 1950's movies, you can take it that it's far more serious than it actually looks. Three examples; the first from Backlash where Sgt Lake gets dramatically shot and wounded and soon after dies. Slater examines the wound, gives him some water and holds him whilst he dies without a mark on his own shirt. In Warlock, Blaidesdell gets ever-so slightly marked on the arm by a shot from Billy Gannon; even a graze from a passing bullet would make a bit more of a mess than that. But perhaps the scene which they should not have tried to depict injury is the one where John Gannon (Widmark) goes to San Pablo, gets into a fight and ends up being stabbed through the hand. We don't see it happen (so far so good) and Gannon's howl of pain is blood-curdling enough to make you believe this is very serious; but when he gets to go, cradling his injury - well, you'd bleed more than that from a paper cut. Far more effective not to show it at all; the acting did what the special effects could not. [Actually the film makers missed a trick there; they followed the book pretty faithfully all things considered and in the novel version, Gannon bound up his wounded hand with his neckerchief straight away.]
You could go on - there are hundreds of examples - and of course this is all in a time past, and as they say, the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.... but perhaps modern film-making could learn something from the old-timers, stop trying to be too realistic and let the acting stand on its own. Sometimes it's bloody good. Pun intended.
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