TCM Archives: Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Vol. 1
Studio: Warner Home Video
Rated: NONE
WorkNameSort: TCM Archives: Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Vol. 1
The notion of ‘pre-Code Hollywoodâ?� has always been an enticing one. The notion that, before the prim censors got their hands on motion pictures, the studios were busy crafting degenerate and debauched fare in the ’20s and ’30s speaks directly to a prevailing belief that dirty minds are eternal. While the content of the movies made before the self-imposed Hays Code was indeed shocking, looking at the three films presented in the first volume of TCM’s Forbidden Hollywood series, it’s not for the reasons one may think. Adultery and the notion of ‘kept womenâ?� runs rampant through Baby Face (presented here in both its released version and a previously unseen, unedited version) and Red-Headed Woman (with Jean Harlow), while Waterloo Bridge cuts through the crap and just goes ahead and makes its protagonist (Mae Clarke) a prostitute. However, a weird sort of inverted sexism is far more prevalent and offensive; the women here are the predictable shrill subordinates; yet they also manage to be sexually manipulative and shrewdly exploitative in ways that are near-cartoonish in nature. Sure, you may get a flash of Jean Harlow’s boobs in Red-Headed Woman, but what will truly shock you is the concept of gold-digging as Nietzschean virtue that Barbara Stanwyck represents in Baby Face.
This article appears in Dec 13-19, 2006.