It’s probably one of the most famous scenes in American movie history. Sally (played by Meg Ryan) is sitting in Katz’ Deli in Manhattan with Harry (played by Billy Crystal) and they’re talking, as you do, about faking orgasms. Harry thinks he can always tell when women fake it, but Sally proceeds to prove him wrong in the most graphic, hilarious way, prompting the director’s mother to tell the waitress trying to take her order “I’ll have what she’s having.”
When When Harry Met Sally came out in 1989, it was probably that one scene that cemented the romantic comedy’s success, since, really, it’s one of the only scenes that anyone still remembers.
Let’s All Go To The Movies
Yet, if we go back a mere thirty years to 1959, and visit a certain art house cinema in Cleveland, we just might experience a different scene in a different movie where the outcome would prove to be very different.
That movie was called Les Amants (or The Lovers if you need to have it translated into English) and it, too, featured something of a woman’s orgasm. Only this time, some people felt that seeing this kind of thing on the Silver Screen was a bit much.
In case you were wondering, this French dramatic film is about a woman in a loveless marriage who has an affair so that she can learn what human love feels like, or something to that effect. The Heights Art Theatre (in the Coventry Village neighborhood of Cleveland Heights) scheduled two showings of the French film but didn’t quite make it. Instead, Nico Jacobellis, the theater’s manager, was arrested for and convicted on two counts of essentially possessing and showing a naughty video.
Jacobellis’ lawyers appealed the decision; however, the intermediate appellate courts affirmed the decision. In 1962 the Ohio Supreme Court agreed, saying the film lacked any redeeming social values.
Jacobellis v Ohio
In 1964 The Supreme Court of the United States heard the case and for the most part, none of the judges could really agree on most things. The general consensus of the court was that pornographic films shouldn’t really be shown in public. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was … what exactly makes a film pornographic?
So, back in the 1920s, movies were doing a lot of things that some people didn’t like. For example: good things happening to bad people. And sex. And nudity. And violence. And people laughing at religion or religious leaders. And using drugs, other than what was socially acceptable at the time. So they put a stop to it with something called The Hays Code (not named after Will and Grace actor Sean Hayes, because his name has an “e” in it and I don’t think he’d actually been born yet.)
Under the Hays Code, all movies had to adhere to some very strict guidelines – set in place by people who wanted all movies to have a happy ending, movies where the bad guy is always going to not just lose but be humiliated six ways till Sunday, movies that don’t even begin to come close to maybe even possibly glorifying anything that a small group of “moral do-gooders” thought was going to be acceptable.
This era did produce a few good films, even if they were rather predictable and safe. Many filmmakers did have some ingenious ways of breaking the code without actually breaking the code. One legendary example was Alfred Hitchcock who, when it came time for his male lead to get romantic with the female lead and he couldn’t show it – he put his characters on a train and sent that train into a tunnel. Obvious and suggestive, but it somehow passed the censors.
The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) – which was later renamed the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) for many years and is now called The Motion Picture Association (MPA) – was set up to regulate the movie industry and former Postmaster General William H Hays (see, told you it wasn’t Sean) was installed as its leader.
To be fair, its purpose wasn’t just to ensure that all movies made by Hollywood were Rated G, even if that’s all we seem to remember today.
None of this applied to our movie Les Amants since the movie was released and distributed in France and was able to reach that suburban Cleveland theater through channels the MPPDA couldn’t control.
It’s fairly safe to say that everyone with an interest in movies kept at least one eye on the Jacobellis v Ohio case.
Nobody thought that Les Amants was a great film, just one that posed an interesting legal question.
Most people didn’t want pornographic films to be shown at the movie theater. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was – what is pornographic and what isn’t?
Some people agreed with the state courts saying the film was pornographic, and therefore not protected by things like free speech because it depicted a woman having an orgasm.
Other people disagreed. The film told a story – it might not be a good one, but it was still a story. And honestly, the orgasm wasn’t that long and so far that’s the only thing anybody really seemed all that upset over.
The Ruling
In the end, the Supreme Court overturned Jacobellis’ conviction, ultimately saying that the entire film should not be judged obscene because of just one small scene. But, the ruling did a bit more than that, too.
The courts ruled that films should be judged by the values of society in general, not just a few, select group of people – a decision that all but paved the way to the movie rating system that we have today. G-rated movies (G means General Audiences aka safe for the kiddies and those who offend easily) still exist, with PG (maybe the younger kiddies should miss this one) and R (sorry, adults only).
And then, a few years later, with the Robert DiNero staring, Brian De Palma directed film Greetings (1969) we got to add a new letter: X (which later became the NC-17 that we use today).
The most memorable thing that came from this ruling, however, were the words of Justice Potter Stewart when he said that the first amendment applied to all films, except for hardcore pornography. “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”
He’d wait for later courts to figure that one out. Or, not.
And, really it wouldn’t be that long before sensorship and decency laws would be challenged in Ohio … yet again.
