For a long time, I had heard about the movie Johnny Belinda, and I knew it was about a woman who was deaf, so when I finally got around to watching it, I naturally assumed that she was the title character. But no, her name is Belinda MacDonald, played by Jane Wyman.  As a result of being raped, she is impregnated.  She gives birth to a son, whom she names Johnny.  I should have thought that his name would then be Johnny MacDonald, but nothing is ever said to that effect.  I have never heard of an illegitimate child being given the mother’s first name as his surname, but I suppose she could do that if she wanted to.  No one in the movie says that his name is Johnny Belinda, but given the title, I assume that is the idea.

Most of the time when we watch an old movie, we simply make allowances for the censorship in place at the time of its production, in particular, the Motion Picture Production Code.  Perhaps because this movie is about rape, I found myself paying closer attention to the way this story is told than I might otherwise.

The word “rape” was not forbidden as such, but on those rare occasions when it was uttered, it was more likely to be used in the sense of despoiling, as in, “the rape of Europe had begun” in Mission to Moscow (1943), rather than in the sexual sense.  So, it came as no surprise that no one used the word in this movie.

The movie is set on the island of Cape Breton in the province of Nova Scotia.  The chief industry there is fishing.  As for the rest, there are farmers and merchants. The people that live there are portrayed as backward and ignorant.  It is no surprise, then, that Belinda is not only referred to a deaf and dumb, but is also called “the dummy.”  I can’t say what the people on Cape Breton were really like in 1948, or whether someone in Belinda’s situation would have been treated better in New York or Los Angeles, but that seems to be the way the movie wants us to see things.

Into this community has arrived Dr. Richardson (Lew Ayres), replacing the doctor recently deceased. One night he is summoned to the MacDonald farm where lives Belinda, her father Black (Charles Bickford), and her aunt Aggie (Agnes Moorehead).  They are dirt-poor farmers, and a cow is having trouble giving birth. It is there that Richardson meets Belinda and learns of her condition.

It is our introduction to her as well.  She is portrayed as childlike, although her age is never specified. Jane Wyman was over thirty years old when she made this movie, but that doesn’t mean that Belinda is supposed to be thirty.  Maybe she is supposed to be a fifteen-year-old girl.  Adults often played the roles of teenagers in those days.  Alternatively, it may be that Jane Wyman’s persona in 1948 was naturally childlike.  However, in the movie Stage Fright (1950), made only two years later, she comes across as the mature adult that she was.  In any event, the result is that when she is raped, it is as if a child has been raped.

The next Sunday, instead of going to church like everyone else, Richardson prepares to go fishing on the MacDonald farm, having been given permission to do so by Black as his fee for delivering that heifer.  The women of the community, represented by three old biddies in particular, are scandalized by the fact that Richardson has been living there three months and has never attended church. This is not uncommon in the movies.  As a general rule, if the protagonist is a bachelor, he probably believes in God, but he does not go to church.  If he is married, then he does go to church, from which we infer that going to church is something for women, who bring their domesticated husbands there with them. The Production Code says, “No film or episode may throw ridicule on any religious faith.” And yet, the way the movies depict bachelor protagonists as avoiding church, there is the implication that these characters have disdain for churchgoing, as if it is beneath them. Presumably, this was permitted by the Production Code as long as these bachelor protagonists did not actually say how much they disliked religion.

Richardson’s real reason for going to the MacDonald farm is to try to teach Belinda sign language, with which he was already familiar from having worked with deaf children at a hospital, and which he has been reviewing from a book he has.  He also gets her to start lipreading.  Eventually, he teaches her how to read and write.

Richardson has a cook and housekeeper named Stella (Jan Sterling).  She is in love with him, but it is unrequited.  Her boyfriend is Locky (Stephen McNally), a surly captain of one of the fishing boats. One day, when she sees him looking at Belinda, she becomes jealous, saying, “One thing, she’d never tell on you,” but then admonishes him to stay away from her.

That night at the dance, the three old biddies are watching what is going on.  One of them remarks of a woman on the dance floor, “She looks right spry for a woman who’s just had her arteries cut out.” Another corrects her, saying it was not her arteries.  She leans toward her and whispers something so low that we cannot hear what she says.  We often hear what people whisper in a movie, but not here.

That something is apparently the word “ovaries.”  I guess the censors regarded that word as too suggestive of sex to be permitted utterance in a movie.  The earliest use of that word in a movie that I could find was in 1970 in the movies Getting Straight and Tropic of Cancer.

But why is this scene in the movie?  Presumably it was to show how silly these old biddies are, thinking they have to whisper the word “ovaries” to each other even though no one else was around to hear them. But if these women are silly, thinking the word “ovaries” has to be whispered, how silly were the censors back then to believe that audiences should not be allowed to hear that word at all? If it be argued that there might have been children in the audience, then we are saying that children could watch a movie in which a woman was raped, but not one where the word “ovaries” was said out loud.  It’s almost as if the censors wished everyone were as deaf as Belinda, then no dirty words would ever be heard.

Stella quits dancing with Locky, telling him he is drunk.  He notices that Black and Aggie are riding out of town to visit their sister who has taken sick.  Seeing his chance, he goes to the MacDonald farm and rapes Belinda.  She becomes sullen after that, flinching if someone touches her. Richardson has been away treating sick people, and when he comes to see her, he is able to cheer her up a little.  He offers to take her to a town to see a diagnostician, thinking something might be done about her inability to hear.

When they arrive in the town, they pass by a store that sells women’s clothing.  In the display window, there is a brassiere and, I believe, a full slip.  She points to them, asking in sign language what they are.

This brings us back to the fact that she is portrayed as childlike, one too young to be wearing such undergarments.  Of course, as we soon find out, she is old enough to be pregnant.  Since Jane Wyman is a small-breasted woman, perhaps Belinda’s family figured she could do without such things.

We watch this scene through the display window from inside the store.  In other words, we are not allowed to hear what Richardson says to her.  The word “brassiere” was used in the movie Three on a Match (1932), but that is a Pre-Code movie.  It also is used in The 39 Steps (1935).  So, the word is more acceptable than “ovaries.”  Nevertheless, we are not allowed to hear what Richardson says to her, once again putting us in the position of being deaf like Belinda, right where the censors want us.

We watch Richardson struggle, trying to figure out what to tell her.  Finally, he distracts her by pointing to a scarf, which he buys for her.  Apparently, he decides that she is not old enough to know about such things, that she is like a child.

Richardson finds out from the diagnostician that Belinda is pregnant.  But the word “pregnant” is not used.  Instead, there are variations on phrases that include the word “child,” as when the diagnostician refers to Belinda’s “expected child,” or when Richardson tells Aggie that Belinda is going to “have a child.” The word “pregnant” was pretty much avoided in those days.  Where it occurs, it is usually in a foreign film like Fanny (1932), which is also Pre-Code, or used in a figurative sense, as in Hamlet (1948), where Polonius says, “How pregnant sometimes his replies are!”

Because “being pregnant” and “going to have a child” denote exactly the same state of affairs, the difference must be a matter of connotation.  There is something ominous about being pregnant, whereas there is something warm and cuddly about having a child.  I’ll go one step further.  It is not said that Belinda is “going to have a baby.”  That is too much like “being pregnant,” a dreadful anticipation for an unmarried woman.  Richardson does not tell Black about this, afraid that he will want to kill the father, no matter what words are used to indicate Belinda’s condition.

Black decides that Belinda is doing so well he will take her to church, something he did only once, years ago.  Richardson goes with them.  As noted above, a male protagonist will go to church once he is married, and this indicates, as if we could not already guess, that he and Belinda will eventually marry.

When Locky arrives at church, Belinda reacts with fear in her eyes, something noticed by Richardson, from which he gathers that Locky must have raped her. Anyway, it is announced at church that Stella and Locky will be getting married soon.  Stella has a lot of money that she inherited from her uncle, and this is the chief reason Locky wants to marry her.

Eventually, Aggie has to tell Black that Belinda is going to have a child.  He becomes furious, demanding that Belinda tell him who the father is.  Richardson shows up at that point and tells Black that she has repressed it, that “it’s blotted out of her mind.”  He manages to calm Black down, saying that even if he found out who the father was, bringing it before the community to exact revenge would only be more traumatic for Belinda.  Then Richardson goes to Belinda’s room and tells her she is going to be a mother, which has even more of a positive connotation than “going to have a child.”  As it sinks in, she becomes happy at the thought. When she has the baby, she loves it dearly.

I suppose there are some women who are raped, have the rapist’s baby, and then come to love that baby. But I suspect there are others that would be horrified at the prospect of having the rapist’s baby.  Telling such a woman that she is “going to be a mother” would be the height of presumption, effectively telling her that she is obligated to love that baby.  Instead, she might detest it, being filled with loathing when she sees it, determined to give it up for adoption.

But that’s real life.  I have never seen a movie in which a woman detested her baby.  Even in Rosemary’s Baby (1968), where Satan himself rapes Rosemary (Mia Farrow), when she looks at the baby that she has given birth to, you see the love in her eyes and the joy in her heart.  In It’s Alive (1974), a woman has a baby-monster on account of some birth-control pills she was taking.  It kills every doctor and nurse in the delivery room and then goes out of the hospital to continue its killing spree.  It eventually makes its way back to its mother, who in turn loves her baby-monster.  And in The Brood (1979), we even get to see Samantha Eggar licking the blood off the psychoplasmic baby that she just removed from its external fetal sac.

A possible exception is the baby-monster in Demon Seed (1977), where Julie Christie is raped and impregnated by a supercomputer.  When she sees what she has given birth to, she seems dubious.  However, her child has developed so quickly that it already looks like a seven-year-old girl.  Mothers are no longer obligated to love monstrous children once they are past the baby stage, as in Village of the Damned (1960).

Let us return to movies about normal babies.  If a woman does give up her baby, it is never with great relief to be rid of the damn thing, but usually out of desperation and with much heartache, as in The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931). Even in the movie Juno (2007), which ends happily, the title character cries after giving birth, knowing she will be giving up the baby for adoption.

Anyway, Locky spreads a rumor that Richardson is the father.  If this movie were made today, suspicion would probably fall on Belinda’s father.  But Joseph Breen, head of the Production Code Administration, would have turned purple had there been the slightest hint of that in the script.  That aside, given what Locky has been suggesting, no one wants Richardson’s services as a doctor anymore. Because of Belinda’s shame, people in town stop extending the MacDonalds credit. Richardson offers to marry Belinda, but Black says he would be doing it only out of pity, so that idea is put to rest.

A storm comes up, so everyone scrambles to prepare for it.  As a result, no one is in the house when Locky show us to buy some ground barley.  He sees the baby and starts talking to it when Black walks in, none too pleased to see him.  Locky forgets himself, saying the baby is the “spitting image of his father.” Realizing his mistake, he quickly leaves, with Black following.  They start fighting near a cliff, and when Black slips and struggles to cling to the ledge, Locky refuses to save him, letting him fall to his death.  He leaves, and no one in the movie ever finds out that he murdered Black.  They think it was just an accident.

Richardson decides to leave Cape Breton and take a job in a hospital in Toronto. When he explains this to Belinda, she starts crying and hugs him.  He realizes that she is in love with him, as he is with her.  We can tell they are going to get married. He kisses her, but only on the cheek.

However, he first has to get things ready at his new job and find a place for them to live.  In the meantime, the Town Council has a meeting.  It is decided that something must be done to uphold the honor of the community in light of the shame Belinda has brought upon them.  The baby should be taken away from her and given to the newly married Locky and Stella.  Otherwise, the godless child will run loose like an animal.

Locky and Stella ride over to the MacDonald farm to get Belinda to sign a release and give them the baby. Stella goes in by herself.  Belinda refuses to sign the release, outraged at the idea of giving up her baby. Stella goes back outside and tells Locky they are being mean trying to take away her baby, saying, “She’s his mother.”

Locky replies, “I’m his father,” horrifying Stella.  He goes in the house to get the baby, and Belinda kills him with a shotgun.

She is tried for murder.  At first, Stella plays dumb, but as the trial wears on, especially after Richardson is implicated as the father, she bursts out in court, telling what she knows.  Belinda is acquitted. She and Richardson leave Cape Breton for good, taking Aggie with them, the farm having been sold.

Let us return to the moment right after Belinda has been found innocent.  She comes to Richardson and starts using sign language.  He takes her hand and says, “I know Belinda.  You don’t have to say anything.” He holds her face in his hands affectionately.  Then she turns to get her baby.

It is the end of the movie.  Richardson and Belinda are going to get married and live happily ever after.  In any other movie made back then, the man and woman would kiss.  But not here, not even the little peck on the cheek we saw earlier. Although the Production Code forbade “excessive and lustful kissing,” it still allowed kissing that was unquestionably erotic, as when we saw Locky and Stella kissing at the dance.  So, why don’t we see Richardson take Belinda in his arms and give her a passionate kiss, to which she responds sensually?

As has been noted, Belinda is childlike.  For him to kiss her that way would be like kissing a child in a sexual way.  But that only pushes the question back one step. Why did the movie render Belinda’s character as childlike so as to preclude passionate kissing?  And the answer to that is that she had been raped.

A decent woman that has been raped in a movie might end up finding love and getting married, but if a raped woman is seen, either previously or subsequently, to have strong sexual desires, her moral character is called into question.  To see Richardson kissing Belinda on the lips would remind us of when Locky kissed her on the lips, thereby undermining her innocence.

In the old days, women who were raped were often said to have brought it on themselves by dressing provocatively, and a defense against a charge of rape was the testimony of other men who had had sex with her.  In other words, a woman that enjoyed sex could not truly be raped.  Any indication that Belinda was looking forward with lustful anticipation to frolicking in bed with Richardson on their honeymoon would be unthinkable.  It would suggest that what Locky did to her was not really so bad, that she might even have liked it.

Therefore, Belinda had to be desexualized.  We are supposed to believe that she will be happily married to Richardson, and that would imply a reasonably satisfying sex life, at least for him.  On her part, she will be passive, enjoying it to some degree, but mostly because she sees that it pleases her husband.