#31, 3/25 – Baby Face (Pre-Release Version) (1933) (dvd)

(I’ve never watched Barbara Stanwyck, James Dean, and Myrna Loy in the same weekend before. It’s almost too much goodness.)

A film whose reputation precedes it, Baby Face is a very interesting example of Hollywood’s pre-Code era. And while I can (and do) read it in a number of ways, I’m actually most entertained comparing and contrasting it with one of my favorite Broadway musicals, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Yes, it is a daffy connection in a way, but consider the narrative similarities. Finch and Lily each start as social nobodies. Each joins a multinational corporation armed only with self-help philosophies gleaned from a book (Finch’s guide was probably much more direct than Lily’s). Each then rapidly gains more power/material/status by using their charm and guile to exploit people in positions of power (relative to them). The tones of the two works are different, of course—the film version of How to Succeed… is extremely goofy and lighthearted—but I think Finch’s ruthlessness is every bit the same as Lily’s.

I haven’t seen a lot of the late 20s, early 30s pre-Code films, but what I have seen has been rather enjoyable. Actually, they’re especially fun to talk about. For example, just before I sat down to watch this I told my soccer buddy about DeMille’s The Sign of the Cross, a 1932 spectacle which, I think, surpasses the unbearably dull 1951 version of Quo Vadis in every possible way. If you haven’t heard me babble at least once about Claudette Colbert’s bathing-in-milk scene, you’ve probably not talked to me very much. Lucky you.