Pre-Code Hollywood Collection (The Cheat / Merrily We Go to Hell / Hot Saturday / Torch Singer / Murder at the Vanities / Search for Beauty) (Universal Backlot Series)

The appeal of the pre-code movies isn't so much their prurience. In every way that defines adult subject matter the 1930s can't compete with our own wicked times. We're just sloppin over with decadence. No, their appeal is any generation's belief that their forebears had any interest in, or knew anything about, robust sexual desire. This fine collection of half-dozen movies from 1931-1934 does a good job of illustrating that grandma was just as lusty as we are. To be honest, none of these movies is really good. "Merrily We Go To Hell" and "Torch Singer" make an effort with a sincere job by Frederic March in the former and a game Claudette Colbert in the latter, featuring adult themes, Also wild parties, clinging gowns and leering men in tuxedoes. "Hot Saturday" stars young newcomers Cary Grant and Randolph Scott in a banal story of a town full of hypocrites punishing an innocent girl for something she didn't do. Too bad the story is so indifferently told. But there are wild parties with fabulously dressed women and men in tuxedos. As an aside, it's easy to see why some people would really, really like to believe that Grant and Scott, two uncommonly good-looking guys and real life roommates, were gay but, alas, they weren't. "Murder At The Vanities" combines a tedious murder tale with lots of musical spectacle highlighting women stripped as naked as they could get them and still get screened. Also a pretty lame number about marijuana.Two movies stand out from the rest. "The Cheat" stars the inimitable Tallulah Bankhead. She didn't make a lot of movies, being more about Broadway than Hollywood. Check her out in Hitchcock's "Lifeboat" She was one of those actresses who could say "dahling" a lot while waving a cigarette poised between well-manicured fingertips, and look totally natural. This is a truly strange yarn, one that seems fantastic from our 21st century point of view and ends with senationally unreal courtroom scenes. A lot happens in 74 minutes and it's worth a look. "Search For Beauty" is a comedy whose few laughs are unintentional. The plot, if that's the word I'm looking for, involves a large cast of athletes, so-called youths who mostly look to be pushing 30. The women are mostly dressed in fancy tight sweatsuits but the guys are stripped down to short shorts. This movie really makes an effort to flex its naughtiness. There is a surprising towel-snapping scene in the shower room. Dowdy matrons do everything but paw the turf and howl while looking at pictures of the athletes. Double entendres and 1930s slang are ricocheting off the walls. Buster Crabbe, an attractive slab and Olympic swimmer but an actor best suited to his subsequent roles as Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, teams with an unrecognizable Ida Lupino against fast-talking Robert Armstrong and comedy relief James Gleason. This is a movie that asks us to believe that hotel guests could be forced to "whistle gaily" while being brutally manhandled into calisthenics at 6:30 in the morning.As to the product itself this is a very handsome set that unfolds into three well illustrated sections, each disc securely mounted into its section. There is a good documentary about the Production Code on the first disc. Included is a copy of the actual Code, a real treasure and it makes for fascinating reading. Note the affirmation that movies are responsible for moral progress and correct thinking. "Correct thinking." If you have to think about that you are not a Correct Thinker.

This Collection combines six films from the Paramount Studios, now owned by Universal. As bonus material, you will get a printed copy of the "production code", strictly enforced in the summer of 1934 and regulating what may be presented oh screen and, more important, what may be not - with a maximum of bigotry. For this reason, films which are made in the pre code era must not necessarily be scandalous or (s)expolitative. Besides, Paramount Pictures at that time always had a maximum of elegance and production values. The following may be said to the six films:"Merrily We Go To Hell" (1932) is the best move of the collection, starring an outstanding Fredric March and a touching Sylvia Sidney, trying to stick to her husband while she belongs to the upper class and he is "only" a reporter, trying to have his breakthrough as a playwright. Besides, he is an alcoholic, and the film manages to take this seriously and does not show the alcoholic as comic relief, as in most films of the period. Billy Wilder always claimed to have made the first serious film about an alcoholic ("The Lost Weekend", 1945) - he is wrong. Besides, it is interesting that this film is directed by a woman, Dorothy Arzner, who was the first well-known female director (before Ida Lupino). When Sidney's last words "my baby" try to strengthen and to save her husband, this may also be a statement that women may well be stronger than men who sometimes would be helpless babies without their wives or girlfriends or mothers.Sex sells: "Search For Beauty" (1934) hat lots of witty lines and is quite entertaining, but a bit skin deep, and Ida Lupino has not yet found her ideal casting in 1934: Two Olympic gold medal winners (Buster Crabbe and Ida Lupino) shall be misused to launch a "men's magazine" and to exploit the upcoming fitness movement. When they establish a beauty farm and training camp, assisted by athletic young men and women as trainers chosen through international beauty contests, the film takes the opportunity to show lots of beautiful bodies in lavishly staged and photographed poses. At last, we have equality of sex in these scenes, for they present not only - as most other films - the female, but also the athletic male body.This may not be said for "Murder At The Vanities" (1934), which presents a staged show with "the most beautiful girls in the world" (shown as nude as possible), in combination with a murderous intrigue backstage. The mixture works quite well, but one shouldn't be too feminist to enjoy it... Unfortunately, the cast does not contain a single great star and the stronger parts are attributed to the comic sidekicks than to the leads.But what a great star Tallulah Bankhead is, may be seen in "The Cheat" (1931) - which is a typical Paramount upper class drama and has the same combination of lavish production values, exotism and perversity as a Paramount Marlene Dietrich vehicle by Josef von Sternberg (a collector of oriental art treats Bankhead the same as his Asian "slaves" and even brands her as his statues in order to show she's his possession). Tallulah Bankhead is every inch a diva with great (but never exaggerated) passion and gesture, whom one may never imagine as a working girl. In doing so, she reminds a little of the later Bette Davis. Although you man really not imagine why people living in such extravagant places may have monetary problems (couldn't they sell some of their paintings, furniture and wardrobe???), it is a good and strong drama, and it's especially well acted by Bankhead. Therefore, I would consider it to be one of the best pictures of the collection.This is also true for "Torch Singer" (1933), starring a strong and touching Claudette Colbert and dramatizing the subject of unwed motherhood (in a way in which it should become impossible unless Ida Lupino got along with it in 1949 - even under the production code). When she manages to go up from the dump to high-class nightclub life, the film becomes his typical Paramount polishing, but it is nevertheless an effective tearjerker. The end comes a little too quick and is a little too good to be true, but I liked it for it is more actual than ever that children need both mother and father.Finally, "Hot Saturday" (1932) gives us the opportunity to watch Cary Grant in maybe his first typical Cary Grant leading role as notorious playboy Romer Sheffield. Although the story has a certain banality and Romer naturally gets the leading girl named Ruth (Nancy Carroll) after a hot Saturday, is has a special quality not to be overlooked. Of course, at the beginning one does not get the point why Ruth does not only fall in love to Romer, but really loves him (and why Romer really loves Ruth and wants to keep her forever). But the interesting point in the story is that Ruth is in the center of the plot, surrounded by a number of men who are all trying to tell her what and who is good for her. Being Romer the only person who does nothing of the same, it is plausible that Ruth and Romer belong to each other. This reminded me of a Sirkian attitude, e.g. shown in "All That Heaven Allows" (1954), although "Hot Saturday" is more skin deep - and funnier.I would rate "Merrily We Go To Hell", "Torch Singer" and "The Cheat" five stars and the other three films four stars.