The “Pre-Codeness” of Only Yesterday (1933) in the Light of Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948): Discrepant Consciousness, Sexual Morality and the Hollywood Production Code

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Abstract

This essay considers a John Stahl-directed “melodrama of the unknown woman” in the light of Max Ophuls’ more famous example. Examining the Studio Relations Committee’s input on the production of Only Yesterday (1933), this essay adds to the ample scholarship that has shown that the early-1930s was in no meaningful way “pre” the Hollywood Production Code. However, pursuing close textual analysis/criticism of the film’s approach to narrative focalisation and its presentation of the discrepancy between the hero and heroine’s understandings of the nature and meaning of their sexual attraction, the essay maintains an emphasis on this “pre-Code” exemplar as distinct from later cinema in the way it presents active feminine physical desire. Elements of Only Yesterday’s “modern” style maintain a critical and oftentimes reflexive critical distance from the mechanisms of romance, Stahl’s film emerging, to echo Robin Wood on Letter from an Unknown Woman, as finely “balance[d] – in terms of the spectator’s involvement – between sympathy and detachment.”
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)204-229
Number of pages26
JournalQuarterly Review of Film and Video
Volume42
Issue number1
Early online date1 Oct 2024
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2025

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