just a few questions

First of all, they never do get divorced. They talk about it. The plan to do it. However, when it comes time to go to court to get a final decree, Sam never goes. So the marriage is preserved ..... such as it is.

Secondly, the adulterous wife is punished by being left out in the cold, so to speak. By the end she is essentially persona non grata everywhere. (There are loads of adulterers and other such sinners all over Production Code era movies. They just always need to be sufficiently severely punished by fate and / society.)

Thirdly, they very specifically establish that Sam and Edith initially cohabitate platonically, without any physical involvement. Then they never contradict that, never state it has or is about to change. We, as audience members, may very well believe that Sam and Edith will now become an actively romantic couple at the end. However, when dealing with the censors the film makers can still point to that uncontradicted precedent as creating enough "plausible deny-ability" to avoid being denied a certificate.

"We've established both Sam and Edith as good, upstanding, moral people. Why would you think that they would have sex at the end, when Sam is still married to someone else? The movie never says that they're going to have sex. They only ever say that they're *not* having sex."

Yeah, it's a bit of crock (and not the only example of wiggle room about what isn't ever quite explicitly stated being used to get a movie past the Code censors). However, it does follow the letter of what the Code prohibited (just barely).

"concealed nudity"?

"My name is Paikea Apirana, and I come from a long line of chiefs stretching all the way back to the Whale Rider."

Watching this I thought the same thing that the Hayes Code would find so much of this objectionable. Then again when it was made I assume this was more of an art film then a general release, or am I wrong?