Capra's It Happened One Night and the Hays Code

It Happened One Night 1934

One of the most sensually evocative scenes in Capra’s “It Happened One Night” is when a bare-chested Peter Warne begins undressing in front of Ellie Andrews. He has a giant smirk across his face as he begins unbuttoning his pants, daring her to bolt behind the curtain that he has thrown up on a rope to serve as a divider in the room. She has scoffed at the idea of sharing a room with a man and sees the curtain as a flimsy sort of protection of privacy, while he maintains it is as strong as the walls of Jericho (the beginning of a running gag that will be used again at the end of the film). His smirk and state of half-undress (with the threat of more exposure) is enough to send her fleeing to her side of the room—but the sexual tension created by Peter’s antics make the film sizzle without there actually being any indication of sex or sexual arousal: everything is suggested and mildly hinted at. The curtain represents the Production Code that is meant to preserve the innocence of the viewing audience, as absurd as it might seem and sound on the face of it. Yet the curtain obviously has a function as flimsy as it is. It does serve to keep Ellie and Peter separated—and it is only at the end of the film that the curtain is finally shown falling and the trumpet sounds, humorously indicating that the “walls of Jericho” have fallen and Ellie has surrendered herself to Peter, sexually speaking. The permission given for all this to happen comes directly from Ellie’s own father, who states in a telegram after she runs off from her betrothed (again, with his permission), “Let them fall.” The permission being granted, the sexual relations that follow are viewed as permissible and licit—even if they are not permitted to be shown on screen. The humorous way in which sex is implied is part of a running gag—sophomoric in its own way—but such was the case with screwball comedies during the Production Code era, as Jane Greene explains.

Greene makes the case that “the antagonistic nature of the romantic relationship and the emphasis on physical comedy are generally seen as an outcome of the suppression of explicit sexuality under the Production Code Administration (PCA) after 1934” (45). From this perspective, the curtain erected by Clark Gable’s Peter in Capra’s film serves as a symbol of the Production Code. Gable, with his ever-present wolfish grin, now clad in his robe on his part of the curtain, says to the apprehensive Ellie on her side of the curtain, “You’ve got nothing to worry about: the ‘walls of Jericho’ will protect from the big bad wolf.” The walls of Jericho is a reference to the curtain—and the big bad wolf is a reference to himself or at least to the male sexual appetite. In any case, the scene in the film is an embodiment of the entire era of the Production Code, and Capra is subtly making fun of it in a roundabout way—never actually referring to the Code or to the sexual behavior that it was meant to prevent films from showcasing. Yet the fact of the matter is that in any romantic comedy sex is going to have to be some aspect of the story because at root of romance is sex. Sexual tension is one of the facts of life and if it is not accurately reflected on the screen then the characters and plot end up becoming divorced from real life. The style of the screwball comedy of the time was meant to make up for the fact that sex could not be depicted on the screen—so instead the characters made outrageous faces, engaged in outrageous physical humor and acted insane: as Andrew Sarris notes, “Here we have all these beautiful people with nothing to do. Let us invent some substitutes for sex. The wisecracks multiply beyond measure, and when audiences tire of verbal sublimation, the performers do cartwheels and pratfalls and make funny expressions” (13). Thus, instead of sex on the screen, the characters had to engage in outrageous behavior so as to blow off the steam created by the fact that no one was having sex—at least that was the argument of Sarris.

However, in “It Happened One Night,” the sexual tension is created from the fact that Ellie is fleeing marriage and that Peter is an outsider who somewhat disdainfully and scornfully respects the rules of matrimony—even if his respect is mockingly shown. He does not violate the curtain. And neither does Capra. One of the rules of the Production Code was that there should be no licentious or implied nudity. There is the bare-chest of Gable that is shown—but Capra does not dare risk violating the code by suggesting a bare-chested Ellie. He shoots her from behind as she begins to undress in a scene towards the end of the film when she wonders if she will ever see Peter again as they speak to one another once more through their curtain. She is wearing a thin negligee and she turns so that the audience sees her profile—but she is not nude from the waist up so there is no violation of the Code in the shot. Capra cuts away before she can remove her skirt. Thus, he remains true to the Code, neither suggesting nudity through silhouette nor showing any directly. His approach to the Code is similar to Peter’s approach to sexual morality: he will respect it by keeping to his side of the curtain—but he will not once deny the fact that sex is a real motivation between a man and a woman. Capra likewise does not deny the fact that he knows what the audience wants: the audience wants to see the walls of Jericho fall—and he plays into that gag at the final end of the film, when he does show the curtain falling—but, again, the sex that follows is only implied.

Thus, Capra gets around the restrictive nature of the Code by making a film about sexual tension without ever explicitly showing any sex or nudity. There is no rape or attempted rape shown in the film—although the fear of being raped certainly appears to enter into the mind of Ellie as she flees to her side of the curtain that first night in which she shares a room with Peter. She thinks about fleeing out the window—but the rain prevents her.

Again, another rule of the Code was that there should be no “first-night” scenes, i.e., scenes in which a couple enjoy sex for the first time with one another. Capra gets around this rule by having an older man and woman speculate about what Peter and Ellie could be doing inside their room, having asked for a rope, a blanket and a trumpet. It is clear to the audience that they are recreating their “walls of Jericho” episodes from earlier but that now they are going to finally make the walls fall (the trumpet was the instrument that made the walls fall in the Bible). Capra films only the two older people speculating outside the home; then he moves the camera closer to the home and the trumpet is heard; then he cuts to the blanket falling to the floor for only a brief second before cutting again to the exterior of the home. Neither Peter nor Ellie are shown, and there is not even a hint of a bedroom anywhere in the scene—yet the audience knows exactly what is going on: the two are finally having sex with one another.