Pre-Production Code shockers - Baby Face (1933) and Red Headed Woman (1932)

In 1930 The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America adopted the productione code to govern the making of motion pictures. For the next 34 years it controlled what could and could not be shown in the movies. Not just language and nudity were proscribed - the movies were required to show positive messages - evil people always had to get what was coming to them and sex could only be hinted at. For this reason, I fear many people have come to believe that no one really had sex outside of marriage prior to the sexual revolution (which just happened to coincide with the end of the production code. Luckily, we still have several pre-production code movies that prove otherwise.  Two of the best are featured here.

Red-Headed Woman synopsis:


Anita Loos wrote the screenplay for this tale of a blatant social climber. The film begins with a brief montage of Lillian or Lil Andrews, played by Jean Harlow, telling us just what kind of woman we are dealing with - dyed red hair and see through clothing! Determined not to live her whole life on the wrong side of the tracks, she first seduces her boss then. Then continues to manipulate him into finally leaving his wife for her. Her goal is to become part of high society. Unfortunately, despite all of her discussion of Louis  Quinze chairs they are having none of her - remaining loyal to the first wife. Her answer is to try to climb higher but she has trouble up there - all of her own making.

Baby Face synopsis:

The climb to the to of Barbra Stanwyck's character, Lily (oddly enough), in Baby Face is, amazingly enough, more directly linked to her sexuality than Jean Harlow's is in Red-Headed Woman, though the basic idea is the same. Born to a bar owner and abandoned by her mother, she grows up in the bar and becomes, as she calls herself, a tramp. She decides to change things after she gets a pep-talk from a professorial customer and his interpretation of Nietzsche. He urges her to use her beauty, which he assures her gives her power over men. Soon she has moved to New York. Taken by a high rise bank building and the money that must be inside, so she proceeds to sleep her way into and to the top of that building, literally. Meanwhile, she internalizes the professor's version of Nietzsche - determined to stay cold and distant.

The primary difference between these two movies is that Baby Face is on the side of the social climber (more or less) while Red-Headed Woman is more on the side of the climbed upon. The behavior of Jean Harlow's, Lil is presented as shocking at every turn. No one wants anything to do with her, including to some extent her husband. Their union is presented as one of lust alone from the beginning.

In Baby Face on the other hand, Stanwyck's Lily is presented as cold and manipulative but her conquests are presented as being in love. She appears to get everything she seeks at each step, the only question being is what she seeks really what she wants.

Both scripts are very good making their points very succinctly. Loos was one of the great playwright/screenwriters of her day culminating in her famous book Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Baby Face was written by the tea of Gene Markey and Kathryn Scola, a team so successful that Markey managed to marry Joan Bennet, Hedy Lamarr, AND Myrna Loy.  Besides you have to love the mere mention of Nietzsche in a movie, let alone making his philosophy a primary plot point is amazing. The directing is also top notch with Baby Face it was Alfred E. Green a solid journeyman director under the tutelage of Darryl Zanuck - one of the most hands-on producers of that era. Red-Headed Woman's director is Jack Conway a key director at Irving Thalberg's MGM who went on to direct higher brow material with even bigger stars (though it was hard to get bigger than Harlow).

Both movies really rise and fall on the backs of their female stars, however and you couldn't ask for two better. Barbra Stanwyck was marvelous in everything she did even this early outing. Be careful not to mistake her character's coldness at the beginning with bad acting. Harlow took Hollywood by storm with her first leading role, in Hell's Angels Howard Hughes magnum opus about World War I. Her sexuality was blatant from the beginning, but her performances got better and better with each film she did as did the camera's love affair with her.

I've linked these movies not just because they are so similar but because the would make a great double feature Neither is very long, Red-Headed Woman runs 79 minutes and Baby Face is 71. Basically you could see both in the same time you could see any single current movie and you'll have plenty of time to discuss afterward. I think the sexual and class politics involved should make for a lively discussion - particularly if there are lots of couples in the audience.

The Philadelphia Story (1940)

Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart, what more could you ask for? Well, you may not ask but it has a brilliant script and excellent direction by George Cukor as well. The movie was based on a successful play by Phillip Barry. Hepburn had starred in the play on Broadway, where she had gone for refuge when her career hit a very rough patch in the late 1930s (she was famously declared to be box office poison by the theater owners). She planned her return to Hollywood brilliantly, however, by purchasing the rights to the play (with the financial support of her then-boyfriend Howard Hughes) so that she could have the last word on co-stars and director. Her first choice for the Cary Grant role was Spencer Tracy whom she had not yet met, but he was tied up so she settled for Grant only slightly reluctantly. This meant the postponement of their romance but it did the movie no harm.

The movie begins with a classic, the wordless end of the marriage of Tracy Lord (Hepburn) and C.K. Dexter Haven (Grant), childhood sweethearts from neighboring main-line Philadelphia families. We then immediately fast forward two years to the week before Tracy's second wedding to George Kittredge, self-made man who just happens to work for her father. In order to kill a story about Tracy's father and his chorus-girl paramour, Grant agrees to get access for two reporters from Spy magazine to do a story on Tracy's wedding. The reporter (Jimmy Stewart) and photographer (Ruth Hussey) are installed as house guests at the Lord mansion. Stewart is a serious writer who writes garbage for Spy to make the living that his serious writing does not produce. He and Hussey are a couple, but he's never been ready to settle down. The presence of these two and ex-husband Dexter wreak havoc on Tracy's wedding plans, thank goodness!

I've made this all sound very serious, but it's really a very funny movie. Of course all turns out well in the end but getting there is full of pitfalls and more importantly a VERY good script. Jimmy Stewart won best supporting actor for his role, although he was quoted as saying he really thought he was given the award because he didn't win for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington the year before. Really it's Katherine Hepburn's movie, as she knew it would be when she acquired the play and insisted they make the movie with her.

The Godfather I and II

I'm starting with The Godfather because so many things do. It is, as Nora Ephron put it in You've Got Mail the I Ching, particularly of 70's movies in general and any gangster movie since. I've included both I and II in this review because they are so great seen together or in close succession. Though each stands on it's own. In fact, part II is arguably the only sequel that was actually better than the original. I have not included part III because it was made so much later that it really doesn't stand with the other two, and with all due respect to the creative people it really doesn't belong on the same page as the other two.

Spoiler Free Synopsis

I'm gearing this page to people who have missed many of the great movies and although it is hard for me to imagine there are too many out there who haven't seen either of these movies I'm sure there are some so I won't spoil in this section.

Godfather I tells the story of Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) major figure in the New York Underworld. It begins during the wedding reception for his only daughter, Connie (Talia Shire) at the Long Island, NY home of the Corleone family. Because it goes against tradition for the Don to refuse a request made of him on this special day he is stuck in his office for most of the wedding seeing supplicants. Based on these requests and his reaction to them we see how powerful and fearful Don Corleone is. Meanwhile we also meet the rest of the family, Sonny (James Caan)the randy eldest son. Fredo (John Cazale) the friendly open middle son, and Michael (Al Pacino) the youngest son still in uniform from World War II and in attendance with his clearly WASP-y girlfriend Kay (Diane Keaton). He spends much of the wedding telling her rather frightening stories about his father and his family while emphasizing that those stories have nothing to do with him or his plans for his life. Michael also introduces Kay to his brother Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall). He explains that Hagen has a different last name because he was adopted by his father after he saw him living on the street but that his believed it would disrespectful to Hagen's birth father to change his name. Hagen has been in on all of the meetings that the Don has been having so we know that he is a close confidant of the Don's.

After the wedding we follow the next few years in the life of the family. There are major changes in the life of all of the characters caused by the dangers of the family business, organized crime. This is the business both of the Don's nuclear family as well as his crime family, all of whom refer to him respectfully as Don or the Godfather. It is clear that the Don is working to transfer control of his family to his son, primarily to Sonny if he can get him away from the women long enough. Needless to say difficulties ensue and the rolls of all of the family members change over time, including that of Michael who was so determined to stay free of the family business.

Godfather II begins with another family/religious celebration, this time the first communion of of Michael and Kay's son. Our location has moved, however from Long Island to Lake Tahoe, NV. Michael, like his father before him is stuck in meetings. This time the business involved is semi-legal, the operation of gambling casinos in Nevada. The tactics have changed less than the location, however. Shortly after the party, we are transported thousands of miles and 60 years away to turn of the century Italy where we meet the young Vito Corleone, nee Andolini. This portion of the Don's early life are woven between the scenes of Michael's quest for legitimacy throughout the movie. The cast of characters for both sections mirrors that of the first movie, though it is the younger versions of Don Corleone and his co-horts that we see in the flashback sequences. Don Corleone is played by Robert DeNiro in these sections.

These are two of the great treasures of American movies. Based on different portions of Mario Puzo's epic book about the American Mafia they are beautifully written by Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola and directed by Coppola. Coppola had a solid career in Hollywood both as a screenwriter, culminating in the brilliant screenplay for Patton and as a journeyman director (most incongruously directing Finian's Rainbow a musical starring Fred Astaire), but it was The Godfather that made him.

Keep in mind that there was little to no Mafia lore prior to the Puzo book and these movies. There were lots of gangster movies but most of those more closely resemble crime dramas than mafia movies. The genre of mafia movie began with the Godfather. Remember that J. Edgar Hoover, and therefore the FBI refused to acknowledge the existence of the mafia for most of his career which didn't end until his death a few months before this movie was released. The Kefauver hearings which tackled organized crime in this country for the first time were only 20 years old.

It's not just that the genre started with this movie though but - what a movie! Brilliant performances mostly by previously unknown actors who later became the voices of that generation. Lushly written and filmed it is, quite simply an essential movie to see for anyone who likes movies at all.