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dangermousieFor those who are unaware, in 1934, Hollywood instituted a "Production Code" which was designed to weed out offensive and immoral stuff (like language, sex, and a great deal of real life). The Pre-Code movies, however, were a lot more open to that sort of thing, and it's rather shocking to see them when you think that all classic Hollywood involved people in two single beds...
The one pre-Code flick I am going to recommend today is A Free Soul. Otherwise known as "the one where Shearer slaps Clark Gable and he slaps her back. It stars Norma Shearer, one of the biggest actresses of 1930s (and also the star of my favorites "The Divorcee," "Barretts of Wimpole Street," "Marie Antoinette," and "The Women.") And since I am on a Clark Gable kick after GWTW, it's also the movie that catapulted him to uber-stardom. This movie also won Lionel Barrymore a Best Actor Oscar. Also, it's my new icon...
What else? It has great dialogue, some really neat early 1930s fashions, and a really frank (for the time) approach to alcoholism, loose living, and extra-marital sex.
The plot: Stephen Ashe (Barrymore) is a brilliant criminal defense lawyer, blue-blood and alcoholic. He'll defend anyone as he is not particularly scrupulous, and at the start of the movie he gets a gangster nicknamed (at least I hope it's not his real name) Ace, played by Clark Gable, acquitted of murder he clearly committed. The one thing in his life that Ashe cares for is his daughter Jan, played by Norma, who has been taught by her father to be independent, a free soul and flaunt convention. The father and daughter are very close, but hey, that doesn't stop him from drinking like a fish or her from turning down a sweet, decent, blue-blooded guy called Dwight and played by Leslie Howard (Ashley in Gone With The Wind :D).
Jan sees Ace and sparks fly. Soon she is always with him. Since this is Pre-Code, it's made clear she is not into him for sparkling conversation. She's quite a "free" woman, saying things like "don’t talk, be a man of action" and laying back, reaching up to him uttering "put ‘em around me" insisting that he "take" her right then and there. And seeing it's Rhett, who can blame her?
Nor is it one of those "good woman reforms bad guy" movies. She doesn't care that he is a gangster and has killed people. She is all about her new boytoy and the sex and the whole "bad boy" thing and breaks off with poor Leslie Howard (who will get his own back years later when Clark Gable will love a woman who is pining for Leslie in Gone With The Wind :D)
And then Ace announces he wants to marry Jan. Jan has no interest in doing so. And since her father utters one of the best lines of dialogue in the movie: "The only time I hate democracy is when one of you mongrels forget where you belong... a few dollars and a clean shirt and you move across the railroad tracks," he is not keen on it either. Well, Ace's ego is bruised and he tells Jan that he is tired of being a boytoy and now Jan will do what HE wants, or it will be the worse for her, and Jan discovers there is a reason why gangsters don't really rank high on the list of desirable boyfriends, when she slaps him in outrage and he slaps her back even harder, in my favorite scene in the movie...
There is eventually a futher revelation of Ace's caddishness, a murder, and a brilliant speech by Barrymore, and Jan realizing what an idiot she's been, and Leslie Howard being wonderful but I don't want to give it all away...
The moral of the story (at least for this viewer) is that you want to marry Leslie Howard, but in the meanwhile it's Clark Gable you want for a one night stand...
Some pics:
Jan and Dwight, her sweet and decent suitor:
Jan and Ace, her un-sweet and indecent :P boyfriend. But hey, even he wears suits. 1930s fashion is great!
Jan and her father, the alcoholic brilliant Stephen:
Coming up next in Dangermousie's random write-ups: "The Divorcee" for which Shearer won her Best Actress Oscar, involving a woman who decides to test her husband's assertion that his cheating on her didn't mean anything by cheating herself...
The one pre-Code flick I am going to recommend today is A Free Soul. Otherwise known as "the one where Shearer slaps Clark Gable and he slaps her back. It stars Norma Shearer, one of the biggest actresses of 1930s (and also the star of my favorites "The Divorcee," "Barretts of Wimpole Street," "Marie Antoinette," and "The Women.") And since I am on a Clark Gable kick after GWTW, it's also the movie that catapulted him to uber-stardom. This movie also won Lionel Barrymore a Best Actor Oscar. Also, it's my new icon...
What else? It has great dialogue, some really neat early 1930s fashions, and a really frank (for the time) approach to alcoholism, loose living, and extra-marital sex.
The plot: Stephen Ashe (Barrymore) is a brilliant criminal defense lawyer, blue-blood and alcoholic. He'll defend anyone as he is not particularly scrupulous, and at the start of the movie he gets a gangster nicknamed (at least I hope it's not his real name) Ace, played by Clark Gable, acquitted of murder he clearly committed. The one thing in his life that Ashe cares for is his daughter Jan, played by Norma, who has been taught by her father to be independent, a free soul and flaunt convention. The father and daughter are very close, but hey, that doesn't stop him from drinking like a fish or her from turning down a sweet, decent, blue-blooded guy called Dwight and played by Leslie Howard (Ashley in Gone With The Wind :D).
Jan sees Ace and sparks fly. Soon she is always with him. Since this is Pre-Code, it's made clear she is not into him for sparkling conversation. She's quite a "free" woman, saying things like "don’t talk, be a man of action" and laying back, reaching up to him uttering "put ‘em around me" insisting that he "take" her right then and there. And seeing it's Rhett, who can blame her?
Nor is it one of those "good woman reforms bad guy" movies. She doesn't care that he is a gangster and has killed people. She is all about her new boytoy and the sex and the whole "bad boy" thing and breaks off with poor Leslie Howard (who will get his own back years later when Clark Gable will love a woman who is pining for Leslie in Gone With The Wind :D)
And then Ace announces he wants to marry Jan. Jan has no interest in doing so. And since her father utters one of the best lines of dialogue in the movie: "The only time I hate democracy is when one of you mongrels forget where you belong... a few dollars and a clean shirt and you move across the railroad tracks," he is not keen on it either. Well, Ace's ego is bruised and he tells Jan that he is tired of being a boytoy and now Jan will do what HE wants, or it will be the worse for her, and Jan discovers there is a reason why gangsters don't really rank high on the list of desirable boyfriends, when she slaps him in outrage and he slaps her back even harder, in my favorite scene in the movie...
There is eventually a futher revelation of Ace's caddishness, a murder, and a brilliant speech by Barrymore, and Jan realizing what an idiot she's been, and Leslie Howard being wonderful but I don't want to give it all away...
The moral of the story (at least for this viewer) is that you want to marry Leslie Howard, but in the meanwhile it's Clark Gable you want for a one night stand...
Some pics:
Jan and Dwight, her sweet and decent suitor:
Jan and Ace, her un-sweet and indecent :P boyfriend. But hey, even he wears suits. 1930s fashion is great!
Jan and her father, the alcoholic brilliant Stephen:
Coming up next in Dangermousie's random write-ups: "The Divorcee" for which Shearer won her Best Actress Oscar, involving a woman who decides to test her husband's assertion that his cheating on her didn't mean anything by cheating herself...
