When the Great Depression struck in 1929, Hollywood was in a quandary. It had promised lobby groups that it would regulate such story elements as adultery, nudity and crime, but to draw Depression audiences into the theatres it felt the need for lurid material: scenes of scantily clad chorus girls, tales that glorified gangsters, melodramas about loose women and caddish men. So it largely ignored its self-imposed Production Code until 1934, when the Catholic League of Decency forced the studios to knuckle under.
And what a code it was. "Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed." The "sanctity of the institution of marriage and the home shall be upheld." Adultery must not be "justified or presented attractively." Ministers of religion "shall not be used as comic characters." Dancing costumes "intended to permit undue exposure or indecent movements in the dance are forbidden."
As an example of how the earlier movies skirted those rules, Universal Backlot Series: Pre-Code Hollywood Collection presents six beautifully restored Paramount films that can't honestly be called classics, but that offer fascinating glimpses of the era. In Hot Saturday (1932), a woman (Nancy Carroll) engaged to an upstanding man (Randolph Scott) becomes the subject of gossip after spending a few innocent hours with a wealthy playboy (Cary Grant). She ends up zipping off to New York with Grant for what he hints will be marriage but viewers sense will be a wild fling, code be damned.
In Search for Beauty (1934), conmen Robert Armstrong and James Gleason rope two Olympic athletes (Buster Crabbe and Ida Lupino) into providing the innocent front for a racy magazine. The bare male bums in a locker-room scene would not have survived 1934. In Murder at the Vanities (1934), the chorus girls wear costumes so transparent it was hardly worth their time to put them on. The film, which weaves a whodunit into a backstage musical (introducing the song Cocktails for Two), also has the variety revue's producer (Jack Oakie) regularly cursing, "Judas H. Priest!" Oh, and a body is discovered while Rita Ross (Gertrude Michael) sings the praises of cannabis: "And then put me to sleep, sweet marijuana." Also in the package: The Cheat (1931), with Tallulah Bankhead, and Merrily We Go to Hell (1932), with Fredric March as a philandering alcoholic.
With its own series of pre-code movies, Forbidden Hollywood Collection Volume 3, Warner Bros. concentrates on the work of director William Wellman, known as Wild Bill for his aerial courage during the First World War and for such antics as firing a gun at the feet of an assistant director who was working too slowly. Two of the films capture the despair of the Depression. In Wild Boys of the Road (1933), two boys and a disguised girl ride the rails looking for work and stealing out of necessity; the studio insisted on a happy ending, which took some doing. In Heroes for Sale (1933), bankers misappropriate investors' funds (sure, like that could happen), while impoverished war heroes are hounded by railroad detectives and the police. The film leaves in shreds the code's insistence that duly constituted authority not be undermined. Also here: Other Men's Women (1931), The Purchase Price (1932), Frisco Jenny (1933) and Midnight Mary (1933).
The set includes a feature-length documentary on Wellman and, for mystery buffs, four unrestored 20-minute whodunits written by S.S. Van Dine and starring Donald Meek as a mystery-solving professor. One still-resonant moment: A crook, hiding money, assures another, "Don't worry. It's as safe here as in a bank." His colleague's skeptical response: " What bank?"
Three documentaries capture three very different worlds. Sandra Chwialkowska's In the Moment (2008) trails six high-school teams as they prepare for the Canadian Improv Games in Ottawa. Twenty teams improvise sketch comedy based on suggestions from the audience ("Your occupation is rodent exterminator, but your characterization is gentle"), but only one gets to be national champion. Fortunately for Chwialkowska, it's one of the six she followed.
Eileen Yaghoobian's Died Young Stayed Pretty (2008) is a more scattershot look at the folks in several U.S. cities who create the posters that promote gigs by local rock bands and that pop up on hoardings and telephone poles. One of the artists in this rough subculture says, "I make cultural artifacts. Some people think of it as detritus."
Mathew Kaufman and Jon Hart's American Swing (2008) is itself a cultural artifact: a record of a famous New York swingers' club (read: get naked and have sex) called Plato's Retreat, which lasted from 1977 to 1985. Part of the documentary focuses on publicity-courting owner Larry Levenson, and part on the club itself, where, to quote one participant, "Anyone who went in the jacuzzi was insane, 'cause I think there was every kind of bacteria. It was chemical warfare."
Hidden DVD bonuses are known as Easter eggs, so it's appropriate that the DVD of Hank and Mike (2008), a lewd and crude comedy about two Easter bunnies (writer-stars Thomas Michael and Paolo Mancini) who are laid off in a cost-cutting exercise, offers several Easter eggs. (Use the arrow keys to find eggs, and click to uncover rehearsal footage.) The non-hidden extras include a "Canadian exclusive": an optional commentary track in which silhouettes of Michael and Mancini whisper and grumble about the film from the bottom of the screen.
Also out: Who Is KK Downey? (2008), a raucous comedy from the Montreal sketch-comedy group Kidnapper Films, about two losers who hit the jackpot by pretending that a non-existent junkie penned a book that one of them wrote; and Cassandra's Dream (2007), from the downbeat side of Woody Allen's oeuvre, with Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor.*****
Extra! Extra!
Playing a German woman who seduces a teenager and harbours more than one secret, Kate Winslet must appear to age from 32 to 68 in The Reader (2008). She therefore had to rely on prosthetics for the first time in her career (Gloria Stuart did the honours as the older Kate in Titanic), and in a 12-minute bonus feature, says she rather enjoyed the novelty of having wrinkled, plastic skin applied to her for hours before the day's shooting. One drawback: "Because the [fake]boobs weigh a ton, I get backache."
Extra! Extra! Extra!
Writer-director Frank Miller's visually impressive film The Spirit (2008) is closer in tone to Sin City (which Miller also wrote) than to Will Eisner's original, more effervescent newspaper comic about a back-from-the-dead crime fighter. Shot against a green screen so the atmosphere could be added later, the film has inspired touches (not least Scarlett Johansson and Eva Mendes as femmes fatales and Sarah Paulson as the police commissioner's daughter) and moments of misjudged camp. When Samuel L. Jackson (as the evil Octopus) appears in his lair in a Nazi uniform, even producer Deborah Del Prete remarks wryly on the commentary track, "Just in case you weren't sure if he was really a villain or not."