November 18, 2017 – December 30, 2017
From the introduction of “talkies” until up until 1934, Hollywood studios produced films en masse that spared few topics and reveled in a ferocious and often problematic honesty in tackling social issues and moral codes. But beginning in July 1934, the Motion Picture Production Code, created in 1930 but not rigorously enforced, was set into its full and originally intended effect by the Joseph Breen–led Production Code Administration. The PCA directly targeted the so-called immoral content of mass-produced films coming out of the major Hollywood studios and served to censor in the name of decency. With the Code, freedom of expression in Hollywood—in all its glorious messiness—was largely quashed in favor of wholesome values and an attempt to control cinema as a key tool for disseminating religious values and shaping the American Dream. For over three decades the Code managed to change the direction of films in ways we will never know. Our Pre-Code Cinema series, featuring everything from wisecracking gangsters to cunning “dames,” hardscrabble women, and the “forgotten man,” uncovers little-known gems and shines a light on some of the masterpieces of this short-lived yet legendary era.
All films presented on 35mm!
42nd Street
Directed by Lloyd Bacon, Busby Berkeley
During the early 1930s, Warner Bros. churned out a series of “backstage musicals” featuring complex choreography by the legendary Busby …
American Madness
Directed by Frank Capra
Producer Harry Cohn made Columbia Pictures one of the key studios of the early 1930s, perhaps the greatest purveyor of …
Baby Face
Directed by Alfred E. Green
One of the most historically renowned pre-code films, Baby Face is the type of film Warner Bros. was so good …
Back Street
Directed by John M. Stahl
Under Carl Laemmle Jr.’s steady leadership, Universal in the 1930s produced a slew of social-issue dramas that were pitched slightly …
Bombshell
Directed by Victor Fleming
Under the leadership of the tragic figure Irving Thalberg, by 1933 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was the house of Hollywood glamour, producing sophisticated, …
Employees’ Entrance
Directed by Roy Del Ruth
Warner Brothers during the late silent era and the 1930s was a true industrial machine, churning out product at a …
Footlight Parade
Directed by Lloyd Bacon, Busby Berkeley
Busby Berkeley’s last of three “backstage musicals” made at Warner Bros. in 1933 is the delightful, somewhat overshadowed Footlight Parade, …
Gabriel Over the White House
Directed by Gregory La Cava
During the depths of the depression, President Judson Hammond (Walter Huston) sides against workers and offers up uninspired political doctrine …
Gold Diggers of 1933
Directed by Mervyn LeRoy, Busby Berkeley
Busby Berkeley’s second of three “backstage musicals” for Warner Bros. in 1933 was the fabled Gold Diggers of 1933, which …
Heroes for Sale
Directed by William A. Wellman
Wellman's pessimistic 1933 film presents the story of Tom Holmes (Richard Barthelmess), a soldier whose heroism on the battlefield is …
Man’s Castle
Directed by Frank Borzage
Frank Borzage developed a successful career as a silent film director at 20th Century Fox with such films as Seventh …
Seed
Directed by John M. Stahl
Stahl, a master of the melodrama often situated as the proto-Douglas Sirk, made his second picture of 1931 with the …
The Story of Temple Drake
Directed by Stephen Roberts
Produced at Paramount at a time when the studio was floundering under financial hardship, The Story of Temple Drake is …
Working Girls
Directed by Dorothy Arzner
Dorothy Arzner was the only female—let alone out lesbian—filmmaker working at a major Hollywood studio in the 1920s and ’30s, …