Come on Sam! Get real!
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ecarle2 — 2 years ago(June 10, 2023 07:43 PM)
Ironically, I think that was "Hays Code speak" to suggest that Marion would only be ABLE to "swing"(have sex) AFTER marriage.
In 1960 terms, we don't really know if Sam and Marion actually HAD sex in that room before we see them. I'd say yes (she never ate her lunch) but it could be "no" – they just stripped down to underwear and "heavy petted" for awhile.
Whether they did or they didn't, I think Sam said that to make sure that "sex after marriage" was promoted here.
One year earlier in North by Northwest, Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint were trading banter about there "only being one bed" in the sleeping car where Cary was going to spend the night with Eva. The dialogue grows closer and closer to their using the bed THAT way, and then Eva says:
"It means you are going to sleep on the floor."
Man, blue balls. Unless you realize that she HAD to say that line to meet Hays Code censorship and that maybe "in real life(of the movie)…they indeed slept in the same bed and did the deed.
Ah, the late 50's/early 60's. The Hays Code didn't give up without a fight… -
telegonus — 2 years ago(June 11, 2023 06:43 PM)
I agree, EC. Sam and Marion "swung" in that Phoenix hotel room (and likely elsewhere), and while the film "obeyed" some censorship punctilios (of necessity) it was quite obvious while watching it that they'd just had sex, and that they were observing
their
middle class rules of good behavior in order to remain respectable and not hurt their careers and reputations. This is just "the way it was" in movies and on television back in the day, and even on a fairly sophisticated prime time sitcom like Dick Van Dyke's show Rob and Laura slept in separate beds. I doubt that any adult viewer in his right mind felt that this was in any way symbolic of the nature of their relationship. They were a caring, loving and passionate young couple. It was much the same on the much earlier
Honeymooners
series with Jackie Gleason and Audrey Meadows, the title of which told the story. These two had a great and vital relationship in all respects, and just because there were no shots of the bedroom doesn't mean they didn't use it for something other than getting a good night's sleep!
Even Pre-Code movies of a generation earlier were much more unplugged, and even graphic, than when
Psycho
was made. In the 1933
Baby Face
, cafe owner Robert Barrat is angling for a liquor license, which he needs to "do favors" for a local politician to get. His idea, and a gross one it was, was for his young daughter, played by Barbara Stanwyck, do the favor. He suggests as much by literally
pointing
at a bed, repeatedly and emphatically, to make it abundantly clear what he wanted the young woman to do, and it had nothing to do with napping. The rest of the movie made this far more obvious, as we saw young Stanwyck's rise to a measure of financial success by showing rising shots of hotel windows in the big city, with the consequences being that she made it to the top in her newly chosen profession, and there was nothing whatsoever in the picture to suggest that she was doing nothing more in the film than "making out" with rich men, or selling lollipops!
Schrodinger's Cat walks into a bar, and doesn't. 
