The Criminal Code is a 1931 American pre-Code romantic crime drama film directed by Howard Hawks and starring Walter Huston and Phillips Holmes.

Six years of hard labor in the prison jute mill has taken its toll on young Graham, convicted of manslaughter after a drunken brawl.

The original play by San Francisco Bay Area native author and playwright Martin Flavin was produced on Broadway in 1929 at the Belasco Theater.

The Criminal Code was the first of Hawks' four collaborations with Harry Cohn, the others being Twentieth Century (1934), Only Angels Have Wings (1939) and His Girl Friday (1940).

This is the only occasion he worked with Niblo, Jr. Stock footage from the film was used by Columbia in the following year's Behind the Mask, which also featured Cummings and Karloff, but in different roles.

[3] Like other prison films of the 1930s, such as San Quentin (1937) and Each Dawn I Die (1939), The Criminal Code encouraged its viewers to question the contemporary American legal and penal systems.

Hawks exploits the prison genre to illustrate the male friendship and 'group as an organic force' themes often present in his works (cf.

This is most apparent in the scene in which Brady starts his first day of work as warden, greeted by a prison yard full of men booing him as if they were but one man.

[4] A Spanish-language version entitled El código penal was directed by Phil Rosen, which stars Barry Norton, María Alba, and Carlos Villarías.