Unforbidden

When Paleolithic painters scrawled images on cave walls 20,000 years ago, critics viewing them by torchlight argued about whether they enlightened or corrupted society and about whether they should be censored. We don’t know that for a fact, of course, but since critics have argued about art in this way since there have been written records, it is not a big stretch to suppose they did so earlier as well. There always has been tension between supporters of unfettered artistic freedom and supporters of… well… fetters. Moralists see it as a choice between decadence and decency – sometimes between outright evil and decency. Moralists of a different stripe see the choice as prudery versus liberty. Beneath this tension is the more basic question of the purpose of art. Does it have a purpose? If so, should art uplift or simply reveal?

Decadent art?

The dramatic arts, when they came along, moved to the center of the debate. In the 5^th century BCE Euripides was regarded by conservative Athenian critics as decadent – even dangerous – compared to his elders Aeschylus and Sophocles. Sophocles himself remarked, “I depict men as they ought to be. Euripides depicts them as they are.” Indeed, though Sophoclean characters have their tragic flaws, there is a core of nobility in them. Euripidean characters, by contrast, at their cores are likely to be adolescently voyeuristic (Pentheus), cruelly vengeful (Phaedra), callously opportunistic (Jason), or murderous (Medea). Even Aristophanes, who was pretty edgy himself, satirized Euripides in The Frogs.

When drama moved to the movie screen the tensions remained unresolved. They are to this day. 100 years ago censors (acting sometimes through force of law and sometimes through social pressure) typically framed their objections in religious terms. Today the objections are more likely to be ideological, but whether the concern is cosmic sin or secular political correctness, the effects (and one supposes the underlying impulses) of censorship are similar. Neither side in the debate gets the upper hand permanently. Nannies and libertines trade off ascendency from one era to the next. One very special era in movie history was that of the early talkies (1927-1934) when censors were largely ignored: the pre-code era.

In order to head off regulation by Congress the Motion Picture Association adopted a self-regulatory production code in 1927 and updated it in 1930, but the studios in practice didn’t pay heed to it prior to 1934. Faced in that year with a more serious threat of legal restraints, The Motion Picture Production Code (commonly called the Hays Code) began to be broadly enforced by the studios. The code states, “No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin.” A long and detailed set of rules for following the code (describing, for example, how married couples may be depicted in a bedroom and how long a kiss can last) soon developed alongside the code itself. All but a few of the restrictions would find support from PC censors today, albeit for differently stated reasons. Directors found ways to push the envelope, of course. In Notorious (1946) Hitchcock famously got around the 3-second limit for on-screen kisses by having Grant and Bergman kiss repeatedly over 3 minutes, but never more than 3 seconds at a time. Still, the code remained a real force until the mid-1960s. Prior to then, many of the most interesting movies ever made were pre-codes.

The better of the pre-code films portray people as they are, which uplifting and PC films do not – at least not in any rounded fashion. Fundamentally well-meaning people have dark sides: they can scheme and cheat. People who are fundamentally villains can be kind and generous in any number of ways. Pre-code characters have that complexity. They are human. Once again, that is in the better films; every era generates its share of garbage, and the pre-code era is no exception. A marvelous DVD series of films from this period is the Forbidden Hollywood Collection. I have owned for some time the first two volumes which contain such B-classics as Baby Face and Night Nurse. Last week I added Volume 3 to my shelf and binge-watched its six movies. All six are directed by William “Wild Bill” Wellman, best known for Wings (1927), The Public Enemy (1931), A Star is Born (1937) and Nothing Sacred (1937). The films in Volume 3 are nothing so ambitious. They are small films, but are interesting nonetheless, not least because they mostly deal with ordinary people:

Other Men's Women (1931)

Best friends Bill and Jack are fireman and engineer on a railroad locomotive. Bill is single and devil-may-care while Jack is married and responsible. When he makes an extended visit to Jack’s home, Bill and Jack’s wife Lily (Mary Astor) form a mutual attraction. Trouble ensues, but not in a simplistic way. There are mixed motives, unintended consequences, and guilt all around.

The Purchase Price (1932)

Night club singer Joan Gordon (Barbara Stanwyck) breaks from her underworld lifestyle and her gangster lover Eddie by changing her name and answering a mail-order bride ad posted by a farmer in North Dakota. As one might imagine, Joan doesn’t adjust readily to country life. Her husband Jim (George Brent) is handsome but frequently behaves as a stubborn jerk. Their marriage accordingly gets off to a rough start and is a long time being consummated. To complicate matters, Eddie tracks her down and shows up at the door.

Frisco Jenny (1932)

Jenny (Ruth Chatterton) was raised in what nowadays would be called a “gentleman’s club” owned by her father at the turn of the century. When the 1906 earthquake hits, the club is destroyed, her fiancé and her father are killed, and she finds she is pregnant. Jenny gives up her child but keeps track of him over the years while she achieves criminal prosperity by running a prostitution ring and later by running alcohol. Her son becomes the DA. Not knowing she is his mother, he prosecutes her on capital charges.

Midnight Mary (1933)

As Mary (Loretta Young) awaits the verdict of her trial for murder, we see in flashback Mary’s journey from falsely arrested teenager to prison inmate to cavorter with gangsters. A wealthy lawyer falls for her and tries to change her life, but her past catches up with her, as pasts tend to do.

Heroes for Sale (1933)

Presumed killed in a raid on a German position in WW1, Tom (Richard Barthelmess) is actually severely wounded and captured. After the war he returns home addicted to morphine (from his treatment in a POW hospital) and finds that another soldier has taken credit for his heroics. He gets clean and tries to make a new start in Chicago. He does well and marries Ruth (Loretta Young). Then Ruth is killed in labor unrest and Tom is falsely arrested and convicted. Upon his release Tom takes to the road as a hobo.

Wild Boys of the Road (1933)

In the Depression, high school sophomores Tom and Ed hop a freight train out of their Midwestern small town so as not to burden their unemployed parents. They meet many kids their age who are doing the same, and they team up with a runaway named Sally. They are traveling in search of work, but wherever they go the kids face violence (including sexual assault) and unwelcoming police. When they get to New York, an opportunity arises but a run-in with the law complicates matters.

None of these films is unforgettable, but every one is a solid argument on the side of the artistic libertines. Thumbs Up.

Clip from Frisco Jenny: in pre-quake 1906, night club hostesses relieve customers of cash