Pre-Code Hollywood

[B-Independent.com]

An era of classic cinema that features ribald (for the time) material.

I started a list about 6 or 7 weeks ago, but haven't had a chance to finish it. Like a few of my lists, getting back to them is sometimes harder than compiling them in the first place. Usually, I wouldn't share until it was completed, or at least as complete as I can make it, but I just wanted to get it out there.

Pre-Code Hollywood

Just wondering how familiar you guys are with this area of filmmaking? I'm a bit of a novice and was using the list idea as a chance to explore a new aspect of cinema.

[Sevorin]

The Scarlett Empress, which is a pretty jaw-dropping film, now seems to be available from Netflix.

"Jaw-dropping" ain't the half of it.

The Scarlet Empress stands outside what we refer to as "pre-Code." Not because it doesn't contain elements that we associate with pre-Code films, but because no pre-Code film can compare with it!

It's not just provocative because it contains shots of frontal nudity and whipping naked bodies -- those shots pass too quickly. What makes it so thrilling -- (aside from the inconsequential fact that it just happens to be one of the best studio movies ever made) -- is the absolute refusal to cater to the bourgeois morality of its audience. There are no sops to the viewers' expectations.

Other so-called "pre-Code" films may have saucy dialogue and titillating situations, but what we see as unusual in them is their attitude toward the women protagonists. They're tough, smart, up front about their sexuality, and take and use men as their own reason and desires dictate. But if you look closely at these pre-Code pictures, you'll notice that even the strongest women in them -- like Norma Shearer or Barbara Stanwyck or Ruth Chatterton or Joan Crawford -- wind up back in the middle class cage. A woman may stray, these pictures tell us, but ultimately she must return to her divinely created role -- the helpmate and servant of Man.

Films like Jean Harlow's Red-Headed Woman are the exceptions that prove the rule. As for Mae West, she had already been pissing off the authorities in the nineteen-teens, so she's entitled to a category all her own, one that the expression "pre-Code" is inadequate to describe.

Now let's look at The Scarlet Empress. We first encounter its heroine as a lovely and charming -- but helplessly naive -- German girl. Her face is a mask of child-like wonder as she encounters each new experience at the terrifying court of the Czarina of Russia. Over the course of the film we see Marlene Dietrich grow in stature and dimension until she becomes Catherine the Great -- and great she certainly is. She takes men aggressively, openly, intellectually. It's a treat to watch her amble along a rank of handsome young officers, looking them up and down with a smirk not unlike the way Mae West eyeballs Cary Grant. By the finish of this truly remarkable film, von Sternberg obliquely references one of the more outlandish legends of Catherine's sexual life -- that she had so completely exhausted Russia's manpower in her prodigious erotic escapades that only a horse's cock was big enough and hard enough to get her off. The final image of her feverish, almost frenziedly egomaniacal face, as she stands alongside her white stallion (!), with church bells rioting and Tchaikovsky blaring anachronistically on the soundtrack, is so lunatic that Joseph Breen probably couldn't understand what he was looking at.

This heroine has fucked her heart out (but not her brains). She did it for pleasure, not for love -- and nothing in the movie gives us cause to believe that she will change her ways. If anything, we're distinctly led to infer that she intends to carry on her willful hedonism in the animal kingdom as well as her own. Men are her instruments, not her masters. There's not a glimmer of home and hearth and kitchen and children. For Catherine, apron strings are just another device to strangle an adversary.

Like I say, nothing in the pre-Code canon comes close to this movie. Since this discussion relates to pre-Code films qua pre-Code films, I haven't brought up the extraordinary artistry exhibited by von Sternberg and his production crew and cast in bringing The Scarlet Empress to life. But when I say this picture is some kinda great film, I'm not just cracking walnuts up my ass.

[Devans00]

In the pre-code days, Catherine the Great must have been one of those "out there" roles edgy actresses loved to play. In The Eagle (1925), Czarina aka Catherine the Great, played by Louise Dresser, was a lusty older broad. She'd probably be called a cougar today. The Czarina made Rudolph Valentino an offer he couldn't refuse.

Either be her male equivalent of a mistress or be banished or possibly executed. Talk about having a hard on for someone. Actually, she got visibly turned on watching Lt. Dubrovsky (Valentino) do his thing on a horse. That's how he caught her attention in the first place.

I wouldn't be surprised if the true meaning of the white stallion with church bells ringing The Scarlet Empress scenes went over the heads of most people watching when it first came out. In fact, the film makers probably counted on it. Just as post code filmmakers delighted in see what they could get past the old fashioned killjoys with coded images and slang.

[QuickFics]

Just digging around the old threads. You can add the two earliest Weismuller "Tarzan" movies to the list. "Tarzan the Ape Man" and "Tarzan and His Mate". "Tarzan and His Mate" is notable for Jane's racy nude swimming scene that was excised from all prints shortly after its release. Thankfully, it's been reinstated for the box set that is available on Netflix.

[B-Independent.com]

thanks for the heads up! i've been meaning to get back to this list for a number of weeks, but I've been busy wiht my goal of compiling Distributor catalogs.

[king2clio]

I thought that the documentary on the Code on the Night Nurse disc, Thou Shalt Not, was well done and very informative. If anyone wants to read a very accessible but scholarly book on Pre-Code movies, I recommend "Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930-1934," by Thomas Doherty, available in paperback.

[B-Independent.com]

thanks for the excellent heads up on the book. when i searched Amazon, I didn't find anything currently in print.

[Sevorin]

"Tarzan and His Mate" is notable for Jane's racy nude swimming scene . . .

And don't forget the two-piece outfit Maureen O'Sullivan wears throughout most of the picture.The bra comes from those golden days before bras. And that pelvic flap! It had me cracking my eyeballs around to see as much as I could -- and, brother, when Jane's riding an elephant with her legs splayed, the suspense is terrific! And how 'bout when she wakes up in the treehouse on thoft furths, with that adorable just-fucked glow on her face?

Er . . . The movie has other qualities. It's a real human story. I wouldn't want you guys to get the wrong idea about why I watch it.

[br77]

QuickFics,
Thanks for that! Tarzan is on my list. These pre-Code movies are a real eye-opener. It's like taking the Code Conjurers camouflage off of movie, and thereby, human, history. I thought people didn't think about sex before the 1960's.

[Devans00]

Another thing about watching Pre Code movies, it makes you realize how much popular culture has been filtered and dumbed down. At least until "realism" in movies started taking off again in the 1960s. Even though pre code movies didn't have people cuss and drop their clothes as much as now, the stories and points of view were still oooh, la la, zesty.

[king2clio]

Here are a few other Pre-Code movies that I've seen and liked, or want to see, which you might want to add to your list:
Of Human Bondage (with a great performance by Bette Davis)
It (silent, with the original "It" (i.e., sexy) girl Clara Bow, based on a book written by the infamously racy writer Elinor Glyn, with an insightful scholarly commentary track)
The Smiling Lieutenant (with the Lubitsch touch and positive portrayal of obviously sexual extramarital affair)
A Fool There Was (silent, with vamp Theda Bara and the great title card, "Kiss me, my fool!")
Tabu: A Tale of the South Seas (reputedly racy and well-made, I haven't seen yet)
Bird of Paradise/The Lady Refuses (another racy pre-Code set I'm planning to see)
Sin Takes a Holiday (haven't seen yet, but reputed to be very frank about marriages of convenience and mistresses)
Red Dust (with Harlowe in the shower)
Illegal (1932, sounds like a wild plot of gambling and wild parties)
Damaged Lives (haven't seen, has VD driving the plot)
Design for Living (haven't seen, but supposedly full of double entendres and an implied menage a trois)
Rain (with Joan Crawford as a former prostitute, condemns religious and respectable as hypocritical)
No Greater Sin
Lady Killer
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (excellent movie, sympathetic portrayal of a thief and condemnation of prison and justice system)
The Marriage Circle (Lubitsch, very playful treatment of extramarital affairs)
Sensation Hunters (sounds sexy and fun, haven't seen yet)
Trouble in Paradise (absolutely marvelous, sexy and sympathetic portrayal of thieves and conmen)
Lonely Wives (fun bedroom farce with the great Edward Everett Horton in the lead role)
Footlight Parade
42nd Street
The Animal Kingdom (with mistress portrayed far more sympathetically than the wife)
Applause (sympathetic portrayal of a burlesque stripper as heroine's mom)
One Hour with You (another Lubitsch film with lots of extramarital flirtation)
Street Scene (haven't seen, extramarital affair as the topic)
Tonight or Never (supposedly full of double entendres, haven't seen)
Ectasy (with famous nude scene for Hedy Lamarr)

Seeing more Pre-Code movies is something that I hope to do soon, and I'm happy to chat more about them.

There's a marvelous pre-cursor to "The Divorcee" called "Ex-Lady" starring Bette Davis as a woman who refuses to marry her live-in lover because she wants to stay independent, but that's unfortunately not available on DVD.

[B-Independent.com]

You're officially my new hero. I'll try to get these added this weekend. thanks a ton!

[king2clio]

Shucks, I don't think I've ever been a hero before. I'm happy to oblige, particularly for someone with an interest in pre-Code movies and classic movies generally. If you are working on a list with some other theme related to classic movies, noir and neo-noir movies, or older European films, don't hesitate to let me know you could use suggestions, since those are the genres I know the best.