418 Complaints: This movie had separate screenings for men and women

false modesty (Mother and father from the original title) is an American film directed by William Bodine and released in 1945 in the United States. But beware, you’re dealing with one of the most controversial feature films of all time, a feature film that, despite numerous legal challenges (including 418 lawsuits and nearly 428 lawsuits during its run!) and its images “scandalous” (they between is real). nativity scenes) nevertheless became one of the most profitable of the 1940s, thanks to an unprecedented marketing campaign.

Let’s go back to America in the 1940s, a Puritan era where Christian morality prevailed in many American homes. The sexual revolution of the 1960s would come two decades later, so the vast majority of Americans weren’t ready to talk about premarital sex, let alone watch movies about it.

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In a way, producer Kroger Babb, who made the film a box office success, was a visionary. He understood that there is no such thing as bad press – quite the opposite. So, as Variety reports, he took a meager $67,000 budget from investors and spent six days in 1944 in five separate studios making one of the most controversial films of his decade. Let’s get back to the facts.

What is it about?

SPOILER ALERT! The rest of this article contains the main plot elements of “Fausses Pudeurs”.

false modesty At first glance, it is a simple film about teenage love. Joan Blake (June Carlson) is in love with prominent pilot Jack Griffin (Bob Lowell). After falling in love with a young single woman relentlessly, they have sex. Joan knows nothing about sex, and asks her mother (Lois Austen) for “hygiene books” after the novel. Hygiene books were an effort by progressives of the time to regulate sexual behavior and disseminate information about sexual health—a sort of sex education lesson. Joan’s mother refuses, of course, because Joan is not married. That’s when the tragedy happens.

Before Jack’s plane crashes, causing his death, Joan discovers that he is pregnant out of wedlock: a huge moral lapse at the time. Unable to talk to her parents, the troubled young woman turns to her teacher, Carl Blackburn (Hardy Albright). Carl is unpopular with the local population because he taught sex education classes before he was fired. He blames Joan’s parents for Joan’s ignorance, the ignorance that unwittingly put her in this situation. Joan then confronts her mother, firmly believing that parents have a moral obligation to tell their children the truth about such matters, and there the film changes tone dramatically.

false modesty It takes a very medical direction, presenting the public with graphic images of the female anatomy, showing images of actual childbirth with screaming or, in certain sections of the film, silent, stillborn babies. In addition to normal childbirth, society is treated with images of caesarean sections.

Therefore, most of the film is filled with only clinical scenes: the performance is surprising and causes disgust, indignation, but also curiosity in the audience. Not surprisingly, the film was condemned by the NDL (National Legion of Decency), a censor that at the time tried to control the content of films and ensure its members did not watch projects that offended Christian morality. So the NDL tried their best to ban the feature film, but despite this and multiple trials, the film was a huge success.

Kroger Babe, Marketing Genius

about false modestyWashington Post critic Kenneth Turan said that the film did not “thrive because of its birth pictures or childlike plot”, but that its success “was due to Babb’s extraordinary promotional abilities”. Indeed, producer Kroger Babb distributed 300 copies of the film in US markets weeks before its release and in doing so caused a moral panic himself, attracting the attention of local newspapers by sending them letters and religious tracts protesting the project’s moral underpinnings. . Yes, he directly protested his own film to create “buzz” as we would say today!

According to biographer Eric Schaefer in his book Daring! Daring! Shocking! True!: A History of Exploitation Films (1999), the letters he sent were fake affidavits from imaginary mayors of neighboring towns expressing concern for young local women who had seen the film and whose sexuality had been aroused by it. The idea was to flood the sleepy little towns with letters to create a (false) air of controversy around the film.

As a result, limited adults-only screenings were held in local cinemas, which were segregated: women on one side, men on the other, accompanied by live lectures by “obscene hygiene commentator Elliott Forbes”. Who was Elliot Forbes? Nobody and Everybody, a fictional creature played by several actors, lectures the audience on issues of sexuality – much like the professor in the film. Sometimes “nurses” were also present in case people passed out from the shocking images – or so Joe Bob Briggs wrote in his book. Deeply Disturbing: The Shocking Movies That Changed History (2003).

An undeniable influence

false modesty There were no less than 418 complaint centers aimed at stopping him from broadcasting: “We won each of them” Kroger Babb said triumphantly at the time (via Variety ). “And I’ve yet to hear someone in the witness stand honestly say what they think is wrong with the movie.“, he continued, investing about $500,000 to fight censorship.

“It seems that the protest is aimed at our promotion. The priests told me that they see nothing wrong with the film, but object to the hype and its emphasis on sex and consciousness. However, we have all kinds of support from priests,” he added.

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It’s an old cliché, but in this case, the adage “there is no such thing as bad press” was very true. Kroger Babb knew that sex sells and that the controversy was good publicity, and they ran with it false modesty to unexpected box office success. The film has since grossed between $40 million and $100 million, according to Kenneth Turan, and is considered the most successful sexual health film ever made.

since 2005, false modesty Listed in the United States Library of Congress National Film Registry, which lists American films of “cultural, historical, or aesthetic significance”. In this way, Babb unwittingly exposed the public’s profound ignorance of sexual health, as the medical links embedded in the film ultimately had an educational impact on an issue that was unacceptable at the time. He finally opened a door that hasn’t been closed since.