When nobles and their servants are shipwrecked on a South Sea island (Catalina), survival of the fittest threatens to undermine class distinctions and, with it, sexual propriety. Featuring Gloria Swanson's famous bathtub scene, Male and Female was what sex and sophistication in cinema was all about in 1919. Or was it? In adapting J. M. Barrie's popular and witty play The Admirable Chrichton, itself plenty sophisticated, DeMille and writer Jeanie Macpherson played to America's changing mood. Julian Johnson reviewed the film in a 1919 Photoplay: "Audacious, glittering, intriguing, superlatively elegant and quite without heart." Writer Macpherson's specialty was the historical drama, and Male and Female was the first to blend in a (seemingly incongruous) historical flashback to demonstrate a moral lesson. The sexual license displayed by DeMille's wealthy characters is balanced by a flashback to Babylonian times, famously costumed by Mitchell Leisen. "DeMille's racy films flirt with naughtiness and sell conventionality; his religious films flirt with righteousness and sell lewdness." (Gerald Mast, A Short History of the Movies)