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James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice, like Double Indemnity, was just one example of a 1930s novel that the Production Code Administration (PCA) would not touch but later endorsed during World War II when conditions were more appropriate. These potentially scandalous stories were reactivated as a cycle of dark film adaptations when it was institutionally viable and profitable. But while censorial resistance finally subsided, the film cycle itself caused controversy. For example, The Postman Always Rings Twice could not be produced in the same way as Double Indemnity-MGM had to "lighten it up," "white wash" and sanitize it.
Nonetheless, both films were indicative of Hollywood's new wartime tendency toward a dark stylistic practice known as film noir which developed in relation to industry censorship during the 1940s. Paradoxically, film noir both complied with, yet undermined, Production Code censorship. Of course, the term film noir was coined after-the-fact by postwar French critics to describe earlier wartime American films, but what were Hollywood filmmakers trying to achieve in these films?
In examining film noir, censorship, and how controversial material got approved by Production Code censors, it is crucial to consider wartime production trends and how the industrial environment during World War II actually advanced film noir style. Within Hollywood's wartime studio system institutional setting, the adaptation of James M. Cain's hard-boiled fiction was significant in the transitional move toward non-war-related subject matter which cultivated racier "red meat" stories. In fact, wartime circumstances undermined the Code and allowed previously unacceptable material to be produced on screen.
Many scholars refer to this noir tradition as a decidedly postwar phenomenon. Yet, given this industrial context, film noir was significantly ` jump started" by the war. Paul Schrader explains that prototypes for noir films began appearing before the war. In fact, Schrader considers this dark tradition in relation to censorship and speculates that "were it not for the war, film noir would have been at full steam by the early forties. The need to produce allied propaganda abroad and promote patriotism at home blunted the fledging moves toward a dark cinema . . . film noir thrashed about in the studio system, not quite able to come into full prominence" (Schrader 8-9).
However, certain wartime industrial circumstances actually compromised...