The Story of Temple Drake

Stephen Roberts's 1933 film is a loose adaptation of William Faulkner's novel Sanctuary. Temple Drake, granddaughter of a respected small-town judge, is stranded overnight at a bootleggers' hideout; the sexual violence she suffers there and the criminal world it drags her into form the film's centre. Miriam Hopkins's performance carries the ambiguity between victimhood and complicity. The film is often counted among the productions that triggered full enforcement of the Hays Code; in fact several other films angered the pro-censorship camp in 1933, and the crackdown of July 1934 came from all of them together. Once the Code took effect, the Production Code Administration ordered that the film never be re-released, and it went unseen for more than thirty-five years. Karl Struss's cinematography works in the language of gothic horror. Who it's for: viewers interested in pre-Code Hollywood, Faulkner adaptations and the history of censorship. Who it's not for: anyone avoiding sexual violence, or who will find the event's treatment through implication either insufficient or uncomfortable.