American Cinematic Morality

Here’s a clip from the classic film Casablanca (1942) where Victor and Isla escape while Rick makes sure no one interferes.

What I find fascinating is that Rick doesn’t shoot Major Strasser until Strasser has pulled his own piston and it even looks like, at least from the twin clouds of smoke, that the major even got off a shot but being a villain naturally missed.

This is a perfect example of the morality that used to permeate American movies. The hero could never shoot down anyone, not evil a NAZI, who was not armed and directly posing a threat.

Another film from a decade later High Noon (1952) displays a similar take on this morality with the vicious Frank Miller, and you know what kind of man Frank Miller is, and his gang of three coming back to town for vengeance the Marshall who has been unable to rouse any help from the frightened townsfolk can’t lie in wait and pick Miller and other off from concealment with a rifle but must forcefully and frontally confront Miller before the gunfight begins.

By the 70’s this morality was fully abandoned. The Production Code, a self-enforced code of censorship from the studios was finally scrapped in the late 60’s and replaced by the first version of the modern rating system though the code had been largely ignored as early as 1960 with Psycho.

The Godfather (1972) is a clear rebuke of American Cinematic Morality it’s protagonists Michael Corleone while denying that he is like his family embraces the criminal life, personally murders his enemies without the cliche of letting them arm themselves or with even any warning and by the end of the tale has orchestrated events so that he is the undisputed crime boss of New York City becoming a greater gangster than his father had ever attained. No justice is ever delivered to Michael, his victory is a defeat of classical film ethics and a direct violation of the historic production code.

With the adoption of the rating system in 1968 I wonder which film was the first to have its hero shoot someone who was either unarmed or unaware of the coming attack?