Actors & Personalities · Pre-Code · Sex & Relationships · Women in Film
Mae West: Pleasure Woman
West is a born outlaw, a queen of the underworld who knows that two and two are four but five will get you 10 if you know how to work[…]
Category: Pre-Code
Drama · Melodrama · Pre-Code · Romance · War
Love Stories in Harrowing Times: On Waterloo Bridge (1931) and Little Man, What Now? (1934)
James Whale’s Waterloo Bridge (1931) and Frank Borzage’s Little Man, What Now? (1934) depict human possibility in terms of what can transpire between two ordinary people, while holding out little[…]
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Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Pre-Code
Happy Birthday, Lee Tracy (b. April 14, 1898): “A Manic, Scalding Passion for Success”
“With his impish grin, twinkling eyes, and boyish blond hair, he looks like Tom Sawyer crossed with a Tammany Hall fixer.”
Women in Love: Three Early ’30s Melodramas by John M. Stahl (Seed, Back Street, Only Yesterday)
The subtle beauty of John M. Stahl’s early ’30s work is revealed by the exquisite 35mm prints screening at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in the series Universal Pictures: Restorations and[…]
The Road to Hell: Three Early Films of Edward L. Cahn (Law and Order, Afraid to Talk, Laughter in Hell)
Among Cahn’s champions is Dave Kehr, a curator at the Museum of Modern Art, who has programmed a four-week series (running through Wednesday, June 15) devoted to his tenure at[…]
Directors · Film Technology & History · Historical & Epic · Pre-Code · Religion & Spirituality · Silents
The Wickedest Movie in the World: How Cecil B. DeMille Made The Sign of the Cross
This post was adapted from the new book by Cecilia de Mille Presley and Mark A. Vieira, Cecil B. DeMille: The Art of the Hollywood Epic (Running Press, 416pp, December[…]
Chump’s Ticket: BED OF ROSES (1933), SMART WOMAN (1931)
“Who’d of thunk there was a fake Mae West?”
TCM Alert! Myrna Loy Ahoy! THE BARBARIAN (1933) and PENTHOUSE (1933)
If Zita Johan went off into the Gary Cooper Morocco desert with Valentino as a stud MUMMY and there was 50 SHADES OF GREY UN-PC whipping and dominance head games Stockholm Syndrome romance, well that gives you some of the plot. PRE-CODE RULEZ!
The Savvy Tivo: Exotic Pre-codes for 12/12-12/20
In darker shadowy lairs, Myrna Loy meets with her devoted astrologer, Swami Yogadaci (the ever villainous C. Henry Gordon) to figure out how and when the constellations want her to assassinate her former sorority snubbers. Loy’s the villain, ostensibly, but you’ll be rooting for her all the way (unless you’ve never felt the sting of a snubbing yourself).
DVD & Blu-ray · Pre-Code · Reviews
Criterion goes Pre-Code: DESIGN FOR LIVING (1933)
Unseen for years thanks to its “dangerously progressive” attitudes towards sexual relationships outside wedlock, tomorrow, Tuesday 12/6/12! Criterion has released it in the stand-alone glory it deserves, replete with extras and an essay by the great Kim Morgan.
This week’s TCM pre-code musts: BOMBSHELL, ONE WAY PASSAGE, CITY STREETS
Murders are talked over via close-ups of cat statues, and a very dirty fella named Blackie gets offed by Guy Kibee (as you’ve never seen him before!).
Pre-Code · Reviews · TV & Streaming
March Must-Sees: SAFE IN HELL tonight on TCM, Plus TRISTANA at BAM and a missing link
TONIGHT at 8 PM on TCM! SAFE IN HELL (1931) a very lurid pre-code in the RAIN tradition, directed by unflinching two-fisted auteur William PUBLIC ENEMY/NIGHT NURSE Wellman. TCM’s Roger[…]
TWO SECONDS to Noirville
Is Two Seconds (Mervyn LeRoy, 1932) the first American noir? I’ve read some historians who trace American film noir as far back as Josef von Sternberg’s Underworld (1927). But Underworld,[…]
Pinned on Both Sides: No Escape for Paul Muni’s Fugitive
“The film suggests the denial of the common worker, whose service to industry is only as worthy as his social status.”
Actors & Personalities · Exploitation & Erotica · Pre-Code
Desperation and Divinity: “Help us, Mae!”
Hazy thoughts on the transition from real sex to digital hallucinations
The Branding of THE CHEAT
Kicking off the second pre-code set to come out this year, we’ve got THE CHEAT (1931, another in the “rich ne’er do well offers to ‘help’ married woman” genre. This[…]
The Code and its Perfect Specimens
There’s TWO pre-code sets out for spring: Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 3 and this week comes the Pre-Code Hollywood set from Universal. None of the films quite measure up to the[…]
Dizzy from the Altitude, Happy to Plummet: Pre-Code Cinema and the Post-Code-Shock Syndrome
“The air is saturated with their feelings for each other as they listen to ‘the distant music of the falls,’ the same falls, of course, that will threaten to kill her.”
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