And see all those lovely fourteenth-century ceilings?

[sovay]

One week after launching, my Patreon has reached $200 a month. That means all backers get the collected e-book of reviews at the end of the year. People who know who you are, thank you so much. This is wonderful.

(I am now taking suggestions for a next milestone goal. More poetry? More reviews? I'm pretty sure I can't ask to do this full-time, but I would like to know what readers want. This remains an entirely new model of funding for me.)

The 76-minute original cut of Baby Face (1933) is amazing. I don't know if I'd even call it sordid—sexually outspoken, devastatingly cynical, with one of the most triumphantly bump-and-grindy musical leitmotivs I've heard in a long time. Every time Barbara Stanwyck's Lily Powers sleeps her way up another floor of the towering phallic skyscraper of the Gotham Bank, we get a bar of the brassy, strutting "St. Louis Blues," introduced earlier in the film by Theresa Harris' Chico. St. Louis woman with her diamond rings, oh, Lord, she leads that man of mine by her apron strings . . . For much of its runtime, the film clocks along like a comedy, inviting the audience to enjoy watching cool operator Lily game the patriarchy—for every new employee who thinks he's sneaking a perk on the side, there's another, poorer sap reeling in Lily's unrepentant wake, stone cold straight to the top. Her emotional damage is real, but so is the film's frank delight at seeing a once-victimized woman take the system that hurt her for everything she can get. I'm not surprised it couldn't pass the New York State Censorship Board. We're not meant to feel sorry for any of the men. It's unsentimental until the denouement and even then our heroine doesn't collapse into a heart of gold; nor is she punished, much as the censored version tried to give her an unhappy ending. I'm trying to think if this is the earliest film I've seen where a survivor of sexual abuse and a full-scale fallen woman gets a happy ending. The story also contains a black character who is not a stereotype and life advice from Nietzsche that actually works out. I'll try to write something more coherent tomorrow. Right now I'm just really impressed.

Comments

[sovay]

From the moment her wise old mentor figure is like "You know what you need? NIETZSCHE," I knew I was going to love Baby Face.

I love that they evidently keep in touch, because several changes of swanky address later he's still sending her books by Nietzsche in a cheerleading sort of way.

I love that her most important relationship is with her partner-in-crime, who is black and might pose as a maid but is definitely not one!

Yes! And it's true that Chico doesn't play a very active role in the film, but it's also true that her matter-of-fact presence feels groundbreaking just by itself. Theresa Harris is beautiful, she draws the eye like a leading lady and she has the character actor's talent of suggesting much more than her lines say, and the camera notices. She's filmed attractively. I love the Christmas scene where Chico is heading out for the evening and she's dressed every bit as richly as Lily, in jewels and furs that flatter her dark skin. "You shouldn't ought to have given the servants the day off," she reproaches Lily. "I hate to leave you alone." She doesn't seem to be classing herself in that group. Lily's staying in for the night, so Chico tells her there's turkey in the icebox, which again feels much more like basic friend care than domestic work. (And I'm not entirely sure that the movie doesn't ship them, anyway. Lily's first words onscreen are a defense of her friend: "If Chico goes, I go!" Much later, in Lily's penthouse nest, the vice-president of the bank tells her to "get rid of that fantastic colored girl" and only because he's a fatuous idiot misses the death glare he receives in response: "Chico. Stays.") The two of them playing at mistress and maid as the only way to stay respectably together as Lily's station rises feels almost as subversive as Lily's repeated pretense of innocence taken advantage of—the women men don't see.

There's this thing that happens with pre-Code movies where I know that many of their plots are melodramatic and many of them are message pictures and many of them are cashing in on the public appetite for sensation and at the same time there's a realism about the world they depict that's missing from the generation of film that succeeded them. There really are fathers who sexually abuse and exploit their daughters; there really are friendships that cross racial lines; there really are people who have incredibly damaged childhoods and go on to do just fine. (I do think Baby Face has a happy ending—her husband has a good chance of survival, she's got half a million in her valise, they're smiling at one another and the "St. Louis Blues" is the last thing we hear as the picture fades to black, Lily's conquering anthem. I don't know about the bank, but I think they're going to be all right.) This next sentence turned into a paragraph of its own, so excuse the awkward break.

One of the films I watched in December and never wrote about was William Wellman's Wild Boys of the Road (1933), a fast-paced, furiously angry B-picture about homeless teenagers during the Depression. There are a lot of things I like about it, including a cross-dressing co-protagonist who is never seen in gender-conforming clothing,¹ but there was one sequence that blew my mind. By the midpoint of the movie, the protagonists are part of a relatively large gang of runaways, all riding the rails to New York City. It's a mixed group in terms of both race and gender.² Outside of Cleveland, one of the girls is caught alone in a boxcar by a lecherous brakeman and raped. The word isn't used, but we see him seize her when she tries to run and we see her bruises and her tears when the other kids return: "He put his hand over my mouth so I couldn't scream." And her fellow-travelers respond instantly and decisively: they wait for the brakeman to come back and then they kill him. They don't waste time blaming the victim. The police never catch up with them for it. No one expresses any particular guilt for what they've done. And the girl doesn't drop out of the story. She's not abandoned, she's not ostracized, she's not in any way treated as damaged goods—she doesn't kill herself—she's one of the gang until they reach New York and everybody splits up. I can't imagine any of that subplot playing out two years later. I had never seen anything like it in a film made earlier than the '60's. It was, in its own violent way, immensely refreshing.

And I keep finding things like that in pre-Code: fragments of the way the world actually worked, not the interlocking archetypes of moral codes. The latter can be just as fascinating, especially when subverted, but I still want the alternate history of film that evolved without the interference of Hays and Breen.

1 The film's first two protagonists are a pair of Midwestern high-schoolers who decide to run away from home in hopes of finding jobs and sending the money back to their beleaguered families; on the first train they jump, they meet the third protagonist, a tough freckle-faced boy about their own age who turns out to be a tough freckle-faced girl about their own age. This is Sally, Dorothy Coonan's only credited role—she was primarily a dancer; later she married Wellman and they were together until he died—and she breaks most of the rules of her character type. She doesn't become the point of a love triangle between the two best friends. There is never a scene where the boys see her in female clothing and are dumbstruck at her makeover, reevaluate their feelings toward her, anything like that. She has a million-watt grin, braids her hair back tightly under her cap, and passes decently so long as she keeps her voice low; it's unclear how she's perceived by most of the other runaways and it doesn't seem to matter. She and Tommy and Eddie are an unbreakable unit.

2. There's even an explicitly Jewish kid, played by a young Sidney Miller. I'm still not sure how I feel about him being a grifter, but I decided to give the film a pass on it because he's otherwise treated as just another runaway and pretty much everyone takes advantage of Sterling Holloway, because his character is sweet and dumb as a brick. By the same token, I really think Wellman could have skipped having the two black kids eat watermelon, but I appreciate that they are as quick-thinking and resourceful and part of the group as anyone else with uncredited lines.

[skygiants]

Yes! One hundred percent yes; while I love some of the style and banter and understatement that we got out of the careful limitations of the Hayes Code, and I sympathize with whichever actress it was who made the argument that once it became OK for filmmakers to put women back in the bedroom they stopped putting them anywhere else, I'm often just genuinely stunned -- in a good way -- by the kinds of stories that are told in pre-Code films.

(Oh, it's SO EASY to ship Lily and Chico. I actually remember reading that the clear relationship-of-equals and genuine friendship with Chico was one of the reasons the film was so heavily censored. I can't really think of anything else like it in any of the films I've seen from that era.)

Wild Boys of the Road sounds fascinating!

[sovay]

whichever actress it was who made the argument that once it became OK for filmmakers to put women back in the bedroom they stopped putting them anywhere else

Oh, crud, I've heard that and I can't remember; it's a valid point. Still, before the Code kicked in, women were doing all sorts of things onscreen. I would like to have seen the films that followed on that assumption.

I'm often just genuinely stunned -- in a good way -- by the kinds of stories that are told in pre-Code films.

Early in March, I watched a movie called Crooner (1932) which presents a fictionalized history of the megaphone crooner craze as a boom-and-bust fame story with some fantastically racy jokes. I'd never heard of it. I don't think it's famous. It's the earliest screen version I've seen of the story where success goes disastrously to a pop star's head and it's all about the way technology changes the face of pop culture. I had no idea anything like it even existed in 1932. And these films just keep turning up.

(Crooner also has my vote for one of the best gags involving queer sexuality that does not depend on flaming stereotypes: in order to convey the protagonist's unprecedented sex appeal, the camera pans across a nightclub to the honey-melting croon of "Three's a Crowd"; table by table, the women all look dreamy-eyed and excited, the men all look resentful and unimpressed, until we reach the dreamy-eyed young man who gushes, "I think he's superb," while the very butch woman next to him, all slicked-back hair and cravat and monocle, says unimpressedly, "He's lousy.")

I actually remember reading that the clear relationship-of-equals and genuine friendship with Chico was one of the reasons the film was so heavily censored.

I really appreciate that she doesn't fall into any of the supportive black friend stereotypes, either. She's not a source of earthy wisdom, she's definitely not Lily's conscience—she's as startled by Lily's last-minute change of heart as the audience and I find myself hoping she went to Paris anyway; they can always reconnect later—and she's the film's moral center only in the very loose sense that Lily's continuing loyalty to Chico demonstrates that she's capable of real emotional attachment, not just the convincing facsimile that draws her marks in. She's just there, being herself, and as firmly committed to Lily as Lily is to her, and that's wonderful to see.

Wild Boys of the Road sounds fascinating!

I loved it. It's kind of the YA version of Wellman's Heroes for Sale (1933), which I discovered about five years ago and would really love to see again. It's one of the two movies that made me fall in love with Richard Barthelmess, the other being Howard Hawks' Only Angels Have Wings (1939), and it's another movie that couldn't have been made a year later, starting from the premise: a heroically wounded WWI veteran unjustly loses his job because his medical treatment left him a morphine addict, sending him onto the streets and kicking off another brutal odyssey through the down-and-out world of the Depression. I repeat: this is a movie whose brave, dogged, hardworking hero is a junkie and whose first unkind cut is the crap job that his country does taking care of its veterans. Eventually it concedes to a hopeful ending, positioning Barthelmess as a kind of proto-Tom Joad, tramping the roads with faith that human decency is what endures, but in between it's absolutely scathing about the state of the country and the many different axes of trouble that beset it, from have-and-have-not hypocrisy to labor inequalities to Red scares to police violence to stupid shit luck that nobody's safe against. The suspension of disbelief is that so much injustice could happen to the same person; that all of it was happening to different people around the country, there's no doubt. Barthelmess is amazing and Wellman films the whole thing—as he did with Wild Boys of the Road—like a documentary. I haven't seen many of his post-Code movies, but his pre-Code have been consistently interesting to astonishing. The Public Enemy (1931) is the famous one, obviously, but Other Men's Women and Night Nurse are favorites of mine and The Purchase Price (1932) was batshit but worth watching. Oh, right, and Wings (1927) is actually not chopped liver. But Wellman is so good with dialogue, especially the rapid-fire tough-talk dialogue of the early 1930's, I like his talkies better. I've wanted to see Frisco Jenny (1932) for years on the basis of its title.