Trouble in Paradise: Pre-Code Hollywood

July 2, 2005 - August 7, 2005

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, July 9

"Oh, ethics, ethics, ethics! That's all I've heard since I came into this business. Isn't there any humanity in it?"
—Barbara Stanwyck as Lora Hart in Night Nurse

In the same reformist spirit that gave us Prohibition, the set of principles known as the Production Code, adopted by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America in 1930, sought to bring social uplift to mass entertainment by limiting the depiction of sex, crime, drunkenness, miscegenation, and anything else that might deform the morals of impressionable audiences. But during the Depression, Hollywood's box office receipts needed uplift too, and the Code was a gentlemen's agreement largely left open to interpretation by producers who knew that sex and sensation sell. So, during the so-called pre-Code era, between 1930 and the establishment of the Production Code Administration to actively enforce the Code in July 1934, images of vice rewarded were rampant on American screens. Rediscovered by cinephiles in recent decades, these movies (many of which were first introduced to PFA audiences by the great scholar-collector William K. Everson) have been celebrated for their lasciviousness, but they're also compelling in the way they confront realities too hot for later, more polite pictures to handle, talking about social injustice and the political economy of sex in a whip-smart American vernacular and with a candor that still startles. Pre-Code films make up a heady cocktail of genres and styles, from Lubitsch's champagne effervescence to melodramas as harsh as bathtub gin, all of them intoxicating.

Juliet Clark

Michael Mashon, curator in the Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division, will introduce a restored print of Baby Face along with three other pre-Code classics on July 23 and 24.

Saturday, July 2, 2005
7:00 p.m. Trouble in Paradise
Jewel thieves Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins take millionaire Kay Francis for a ride, with romantic complications, in Ernst Lubitsch's exquisite gem of a comedy. "A nearly perfect film."—New Yorker

Saturday, July 2, 2005
8:45 p.m. Design for Living
Lubitsch's audacious adaptation of Noel Coward's play wickedly installs American expats Miriam Hopkins, Gary Cooper, and Fredric March in a Parisian garret, where they're hard pressed to keep their minds on their art.

Sunday, July 3, 2005
5:30 p.m. Blessed Event
Lee Tracy delivers his greatest performance as a wisecracking, Walter Winchell-like gossip columnist in this breathless satire, also featuring Dick Powell as a comically insipid crooner. "Quick and breezy and very likable."—Pauline Kael

Thursday, July 7, 2005
5:30 p.m. The Animal Kingdom (Free Screening!)
Wife and mistress reverse roles in this sophisticated comedy starring Leslie Howard, Myrna Loy, and Ann Harding.

Thursday, July 7, 2005
7:30 p.m. Blood Money
Bail bondsman George Bancroft navigates between crooks and cops in a fast-moving crime thriller.

Thursday, July 7, 2005
8:55 p.m. Me and My Gal
Sparks fly between Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett in Raoul Walsh's rough-and-ready waterfront comedy.

Saturday, July 9, 2005
7:00 p.m. Freaks
Tod Browning's "highly unusual attraction" teeters between empathy and exploitation. With its cast of outcasts, seamy sideshow setting, and bizarre revenge plot, it "remains one of the most disturbing films ever made."—N.Y. Times

Saturday, July 9, 2005
8:25 p.m. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Rouben Mamoulian's visually virtuosic adaptation fully develops the erotic implications of Stevenson's story, with Fredric March as the good Doctor and monstrous Mr., and Miriam Hopkins the willing victim.

Thursday, July 14, 2005
7:30 p.m. Female
Trucking company chief Ruth Chatterton makes special demands of her handsome male employees in this brisk, entertaining twist on the old businesswoman-tamed-by-love story.

Thursday, July 14, 2005
8:50 p.m. Heat Lightning
Aline MacMahon, a mannish mechanic at a desolate motor camp, receives an unwelcome reminder of her romantic past in this tense ensemble drama that prefigures The Petrified Forest. Also starring Ann Dvorak.

Saturday, July 16, 2005
7:00 p.m. Bombshell
Jean Harlow mocks her own sexpot persona, playing a movie star relentlessly harassed by unscrupulous publicist Lee Tracy, in this smart Hollywood satire packed with snappy dialogue and studio in-jokes.

Saturday, July 16, 2005
8:55 p.m. Red Headed Woman
Scripted by Anita Loos, this comedy-melodrama has Harlow sleeping her way up the social ladder with an amoral audacity that's still astonishing. "Harlow at her most hilariously wanton."—Village Voice

Sunday, July 17, 2005
5:30 p.m. I’m No Angel
"Mae West is at the peak of her insinuatingly wisecracking form as a carnival chanteuse and lion tamer....If West had never said anything else except 'Beulah, peel me a grape,' she would still rank as one of the immortals of American language."—Village Voice

Thursday, July 21, 2005
7:00 p.m. Skyscraper Souls
Financier Warren William presides over a hundred-story skyscraper, ruthlessly manipulating money and lives, in this vertical version of Grand Hotel. Winsome Maureen O'Sullivan is among William's victims.

Thursday, July 21, 2005
9:00 p.m. Lady Killer
When things get too hot back East, N.Y. mobster James Cagney heads for L.A., where his criminal talents find a perfect expression in the studio system. "A sly satire of Hollywood and the gangster genre."—Time Out

Saturday, July 23, 2005
7:00 p.m. Baby Face
Introduced by Michael Mashon. A new print of the notorious Barbara Stanwyck class-climbing saga restores censored scenes not seen since 1933. "Even the cut version is a jaw-dropper; with its full five minutes of sleaze restored, it has to be seen to be not quite believed."—N.Y. Times

Saturday, July 23, 2005
9:00 p.m. Night Nurse
Introduced by Michael Mashon. Stanwyck and Joan Blondell expose Hippocratic hypocrisy—and plenty of skin—in this medical melodrama, also featuring Clark Gable as the heavy.

Sunday, July 24, 2005
5:30 p.m. Employees’ Entrance
Introduced by Michael Mashon. Warren William gives a classic performance as a hard-nosed department store manager.

Sunday, July 24, 2005
7:25 p.m. Two Seconds
Introduced by Michael Mashon. Condemned criminal Edward G. Robinson recalls his descent into vice in this vividly stylized proto-noir.

Thursday, July 28, 2005
7:30 p.m. Heroes for Sale
William Wellman's hard-hitting portrayal of pre-New Deal America addresses unemployment, urban alienation, and mob violence. "An essential Depression document."—Scott Simmon

Thursday, July 28, 2005
9:05 p.m. The Mayor of Hell
Racketeer James Cagney transforms a brutal reform school into a juvenile utopia in this odd and compelling hybrid of prison drama, gangster comedy, and social problem film.

Saturday, July 30, 2005
7:00 p.m. Blonde Venus
Josef Von Sternberg's luminous vision of America has Marlene Dietrich singing "Hot Voodoo" in a gorilla suit. Need we say more?

Saturday, July 30, 2005
9:00 p.m. Midnight Mary
Lovely Loretta Young struggles to escape from the wrong side of the tracks and the wrong side of the law, with dubious assistance from Ricardo Cortez and Franchot Tone, in William Wellman's elegantly constructed melodrama.

Sunday, July 31, 2005
5:45 p.m. Gold Diggers of 1933
Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler, and Dick Powell in an essential Busby Berkeley extravaganza. Production numbers like "We're In the Money" and "My Forgotten Man" back-handedly inject social relevance into the musical fantasy world.

Sunday, August 7, 2005
5:30 p.m. Girls About Town
Kay Francis and Joel McCrea star, but supporting players Lilyan Tashman and Eugene Pallette really sparkle in George Cukor's lively romp about gold-digging women and the men they mine.

Archival and restored prints are presented with support from the Packard Humanities Institute.

Movie Image and Reel Video in Berkeley generously provided videotapes for our research. Special thanks to Roland de la Rosa.