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I’ll play: The Thin Man (1934), It Happened One Night (1934), Dodworth (1936), Fury (1936), The Awful Truth (1937), Grand Illusion (1937), You Only Live Once
by js2 5y ago
I’ll play:
The Thin Man (1934), It Happened One Night (1934), Dodworth (1936), Fury (1936), The Awful Truth (1937), Grand Illusion (1937), You Only Live Once (1937), Wizard of Oz (1939), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), The Great Dictator (1940), His Girl Friday (1940), Philadelphia Story (1940), Rebecca (1940), The Maltese Falcon (1940), Citizen Kane (1941), A Woman’s Face (1941), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), Casablanca (1943), Double Indemnity (1944), Mildred Pierce (1945), It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Great Expectations (1946), The Big Sleep (1946), The Red Shoes (1948), A Letter to Three Wives (1949), Sunset Boulevard (1950), All About Eve (1950), A Place In The Sun (1951), High Noon (1952), Roman Holiday (1953), The Wages of Fear (1953). (I slipped two French films in.)
Almost anything by Hawks during those years. Or Hitchcock. Almost anything with Bogart. Or Grant. Or by Wilder.
Tons of noir films skirted the rules.
Look, I’m not a fan of the Hays code but some of those movies were to me better because of what they had to imply.
This is after the Hays code but as an example I recently watched the original 3:10 to Yuma and the remake. I hated the remake. What appeals to me about Elmore Leonard stories is that despite being about bad guys, they have a degree of charm to them (Out of Sight, Justified, Jackie Brown, Get Shorty,etc). The remake took all of the charm out of the original and replaced it with graphic violence and cruelty.
- WalterBright 5y agoI'll raise you "Gold Diggers of 1933". If you haven't seen it, enjoy! It'll change your mind about old movies. It was a long time before sexy movies returned.
- js2 5y agoI haven't seen it (I'll watch it soon enough...), but does anything top Claudette Colbert in The Sign of the Cross for "sexiness"? I mean, I get it. The Hays code obviously altered movies. But I disagree it was only for the worse. In some ways, I think it improved the films of that era. Anyway, a nice article on the topic: https://web.archive.org/web/20180118002259/http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/features/deep-focus/pre-code-hollywood https://web.archive.org/web/20180118002259/http://www.bfi.or... via https://letterboxd.com/flamerik/list/pre-code/ https://letterboxd.com/flamerik/list/pre-code/ And a fun site I just found: https://pre-code.com/ https://pre-code.com/
- WalterBright 5y agoThe Sign of the Cross was 1932, pre-code! Also, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023470/trivia?item=tr0684068 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023470/trivia?item=tr0684068 Thanks for the links!
- js2 5y agoYes, of course it was. My comment was confusing. Having seen the Sign of the Cross but not Golddiggers of 1933, I was asking whether anything tops the former as a pre-code movie.
- WalterBright 5y agoI've seen Cross, but it was decades ago, and don't recall much from it. Golddiggers is just saucy fun. One of the songs is even titled "Petting in the Park" :-) The 60s generation that thinks they discovered sex should see that movie.
- js2 5y agoJust watched Gold Diggers. It was delightful. Worth it just for the Forgotten Man song at the end but I enjoyed it all. Cross is famous/infamous for the milk bath scene. https://www.nytimes.com/1979/11/16/archives/claudette-colbert-still-tells-demille-stories-walking-across.html https://www.nytimes.com/1979/11/16/archives/claudette-colber...
- WalterBright 5y agoIt Happened One Night is considered pre-code, although it was released in 1934.
- js2 5y agoIn retrospect, I think The Thin Man man is also considered pre-code. That movie is _so_ good. I should watch all the sequels at some point.