This is the second part of a two-part interview. Part one is here. DID CENSORSHIP IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF MOVIES? BNN: Another theory of mine — although I’m opposed to censorship, is that the dreaded Production Code made the Golden Era movies better. When you remove all restrictions from art, everything becomes art, and then there is no art. People forget this but there was no topic these older films didn’t touch upon, be it adultery, incest or homosexuality. The difference was that in order to bypass the Production Code, these issues were relegated to subtext. And subtext is almost always richer, deeper and more satisfying artistically than text. SE: They were forced into subtext and subtlety. Lubitsch is a perfect example. He even worked that way before the Production Code. That was just his intellect, the way he liked to do it. Fritz Lang was the only world class director I got to be friends with, and sometimes he would talk about his German films. He was very proud of “M”– proud that he didn’t show what Peter Lorre did to his victims. He told me that if you show that you lose the audience. You don’t lose them