saw different versions depending on the local censorship regulations. Critical responses varied widely among those who saw the film on the independent circuit. Most knew of the film's reputation from press coverage of its European release, and it was also widely believed the Nazis banned the film because Hedy Kiesler was Jewish. The story of Fritz Mandl's attempts to buy up all existing prints of the film (detailed in the next chapter) was also familiar to many, as was the rumor that he pressured his old friend Mussolini to award the top prize at the Venice Film Festival to Man of Aran instead of Ecstasy.
Informed critics also knew that the film they were reviewing contained the inserted sequence in which we are informed that Eva has obtained a divorce from her husband. They most likely were cheated of the view of Hedy Kiesler's naked breasts and the orgasm sequence but were treated to a new soundtrack composed by William Colligan and Henry Gershwin, rather than the original by Giuseppe Becce. As Vinzenz Hediger has discussed, Machaty likely anticipated censorship problems and shot several versions of Ecstasy to accommodate local censorship requirements; most writers agree that the preferred version is the 2005 reconstruction by Prague's state archive, Narodni Filmarchiv.23
The Legion of Decency's response to Machaty's film was typical of the moral perspective taken on Hedy's role: “[The love] affair, accompanied by heavy-handed symbolism, is portrayed solely on an animal plane. ‘Bestiality’ would be a far more descriptive title than ‘Ecstasy.'”24 Other critics deemed it an art film with appeal to that specific audience. For a few, Ecstasy was considered art of the highest order:
Someone has well denned great art by stating that it will yield only in part to dissection and analysis. Always there remains an elusive residue of the unexplainable. For this reason we are at a loss for words with which to convey the qualities of Ecstasy. It is a pictorial poem, a symphony in moods and movement expressed in the most evanescent overtones of sight and sound. It lives with a harmony and a rhythm which are the rising and falling rhythms of nature, and it overwhelms us with the ecstasies and the inappealable tragedies which they bring. No picture which we have seen has so completely realized the cinema as an independent art form.25
In a subsequent editorial in The Hollywood Spectator, editor Welford Beann returned to the film and its triumph as an art film, praising in particular its spare use of dialogue: ”Ecstasy was made by people who know what motion pictures are. Ours are made by people who lack such knowledge, or perhaps by people who are not allowed by the higher-ups to apply such knowledge to their screen creations.”26
Those reviewing the film as a work of art managed to turn a blind eye to Cummins's and the independent cinemas’ marketing campaigns for Ecstasy, which promoted the product as the “sensational uncensored European version” and decorated their lobbies with sensual images of the naked Hedwig Kiesler. Cummins released the film in certain districts to coincide with the opening of other films starring Hedy (now Lamarr); thus, Ecstasy received a November 1940 release in New York to coincide with the first night of Comrade X (King Vidor, 1940) and Cummins re-released it in New York in 1950 to take advantage of the publicity for Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah, in which Hedy played the starring role.
Viewing the new print in May 1937, Joseph Breen, the sober head of the Production Code Administration (PCA), whose job it was to enforce morality on Hollywood, pronounced that “the picture is definitely and specifically in violation of the Production Code. This violation is suggested by the basic story and by a number of the details, in that it is a story of illicit love and frustrated sex, treated in detail and without sufficient compensating moral values.” The PCA ensured that Hollywood cinema conformed to the standard of morality set forth in its Production Code, and Breen was charged with guiding filmmakers toward acceptable treatments of taboo subjects, such as sex, particularly premarital or miscegenation.27 Filmmakers either heeded Breen's advice or risked having no outlets that would show their film. Cummins appealed Breen's decision, pointing out that, among other issues, the film was already being shown at independent production houses and if anything people were disappointed that it was so mild.28
PCA vice president Francis Harmon urged Breen to remain steadfast. Ecstasy violated the Production Code on several counts, primarily in its refusal to take a moral stand on the actions of its protagonists, its depiction of nudity, and its proposal that adultery was attractive. Warming to his theme, Harmon wrote that
this girl, married unfortunately to an impotent husband, could have secured an annulment under civil law or the canonical law of various religious bodies. She had adequate grounds for a divorce. Yet her craving for sexual satisfaction is so pronounced that she dashes through a terrific storm to commit adultery with a man who had caught her fancy, as uninhibited by legal or moral considerations as her father's mare which ran away with her clothes at the neigh and scent of a stallion. Nor does the picture have sufficient compensating moral values to correct this distorted attitude toward the sacred union between a man and a woman, licensed by the state and approved by religion, upon which our entire social structure rests.29
As always, the most pressing anxiety weighing on the administrators of the Production Code was that susceptible individuals (i.e., women and members of the working class) would be led into the moral abyss by watching this kind of fare. Ecstasy, they concluded, was designed to wake lustful desires in those who viewed it. Doubtless, they were less worried by the reaction of audiences who had benefited from the kind of education that they relied on to guide their decisions.
When PGA board members viewed the contentious film in Columbia's projection room, they were quite immune to its artistic merits; indeed Harmon remarked that his colleagues were so bored during the first few reels, it was hard to persuade them to stay. Only during the scene in the engineer's cabin did they begin to sit up and take notice.
Once again, Joseph Breen declared that Ecstasy was not suitable fare for the American public, and editing would not make it so.
Proposals to remake the film immediately began circulating Hollywood, most particularly in the PGA offices. In 1941, a Mr. Geza Herczif wrote a script intended as a remake of Ecstasy, with the same title. Herczif was an associate of Martin Licht, director of Wyngate Company.30The script was rejected by the PGA. Wyngate, however, leased Ecstasy from Eureka and, despite the PCA, it gained a limited showing from October 1941 through September 1942. As a result, it once again became the subject of a court case, this time over the American rights to the soundtrack (anyone today watching the film on DVD or in an English-language version will not hear the original soundtrack, most of which was replaced, most notably with Tchaikovsky's “None But the Lonely Heart”).
By July 1945, Machaty himself proposed a remake. The new version would feature a voice-over from Eva, affirming that she was divorced from her first husband and would marry Adam. Set in Prague, it was to star Hedy Lamarr and Aribert Mog with Zwonimir Rogoz as Frederick and Leopold Kramer as the Father; Joy Williams was to narrate.
However, the script, titled My Ecstasy, contained both the nude sequence and the orgasm scene. The PGA informed Machaty that the film could not be titled Ecstasy or anything similar and they approved a new title, Rhapsody of Love. Machaty also had to remove the offending scenes before the film received the PCA's Certificate of Approval in February 1949. Machaty's producer was the Pix Distributing Corporation in New York City, which was headed by Harry Rybnick. Pix changed the title to My Life.
Released in January 1950, the film played in New York City's Rialto Theatre. However, the Rialto advertised it as the complete version of the original Ecstasy and adorned its foyer with stills from the original alongside news reports of its sensational nature. The PCA sent two employees, Gordon S. White and Arthur deBra, to see what the Rialto was showing. They reported back that the film was being advertised as “HEDY LAMARR in MY ECSTASY” and that it carried a Production Code Seal but that this was
