Pre-code Hollywood

Sure, it produced normal films, but behind that veneer lay a world packed with gangsters, guns, booze, sex, whores, homos, unflinching social commentary and dazzling innuendo. A world ruled by guys like Cagney, Warren William and Calrk Gable, dames like Joan Blondell, Barbara Stanwyck and Jean Harlow, in the hands of film-makers like William Wellman, Lloyd Bacon and Busby Berkeley. An era where studios were unschackled to speak frankly about society. An era killed by wowsers.

I've got no idea about the rest of you, but I love the underbelly of pre-code Hollywood. Whether the genre, whether its:

>Gangster films like THE PUBLIC ENEMY and SCARFACE.
>Social awareness pics like WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD and I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG.
>Sizzlingly sexy pics like RED DUST and PICTURE SNATCHER.
>Daring musicals like 42ND STREET and FOOTLIGHT PARADE.

or pure exploitation like NIGHT NURSE and LADY KILLER - pre-Hays days had it all. Anyone else a fan?

For the uninitiated - take a read of this. It provides a much more informative view than I could ever provide. :)

*I stuck 1927 as a starting date because it was, ya know, the start of talkies. Not really the sinful stuff. ;)

Ah, good times. This is a funny piece on Hedy Lamarr.

Quote :

The Czech director Gustav Machaty cast her as Hedi Kiesler in his 1933 picture Extase - one of the most notorious movies ever made, yet one of the least seen. Hedy plays a young woman who is newly married but crushed to discover that her older husband is impotent. Happily, she finds a younger man who can meet her natural but pressing needs. Along the way there is a lengthy scene in which the entirely naked Kiesler frolics in the sunny countryside and takes a dip in some available water. The nudity is lyrical, quite flagrant, yet very tastefully done. The film is supposed to be "bannable" still for that material. I doubt it. What is far more graphic, and truly erotic still, is a scene in which, in love-making, Hedi Kiesler achieves an orgasm. I'm not sure the female orgasm had been shown before in a movie - or at least not in one offered as a work of general entertainment. The key image was a sustained close-up shot of the ecstatic Kiesler, during which - she reported later - Machaty was applying the sharp end of a safety pin to her bottom to get the right tremors of released desire.

ambler wrote:

Machaty was applying the sharp end of a safety pin to her bottom to get the right tremors of released desire.

Ouch! :shock:

Pre-code stuff is good fun. The one I always think of (probably because of Miram Hopkins' legs) is Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which is a lot of fun.

I've only gone through the second TCM boxset, and... oddly, it's the tamer stuff like A Free Soul that holds up best. Curtiz's Female is hilarious - a self-reliant and successful businesswoman realizes that her life is an empty failure because she's not a housewife. Great stuff.

I want to look at more of the Wellman stuff, although I thought Night Nurse was more boring than it had any right to be. The Public Enemy is great, though. Or... made up of some great moments, to be more precise.

Pre-Code interests me. For the rest of the 30's I find Hollywood output a bit dull compared to some of the more sophisticated films of the 40's.

Still, the Code had it's own upside in terms of forcing smart filmmakers to be inventive.

Anyone know of any good books on the subject?

Apparently Sin in Soft Focus by Mark Vieira is a great read on pre-code.

But good luck finding a buyably cheap copy.

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I've only gone through the second TCM boxset, and... oddly, it's the tamer stuff like A Free Soul that holds up best.

I bought that boxset almost especially for A FREE SOUL - and the disc with that and THE DIVORCEE was damaged. Not happy. Admittedly I did also enjoy NIGHT NURSE and THREE ON A MATCH, and the two films I've seen of the third boxset (WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD and HEROES FOR SALE) were ace. :)