Pre-Code Hollywood

The Stranger (1946) An investigator from the War Crimes Commission on the trail of an escaped Nazi ends up in a sleepy town in Connecticut.

Dementia (1955) This film, with no dialogue at all, follows a psychotic young woman's nightmarish experiences through one skid-row night.

Anna and the King of Siam (1946) In 1862, a young English widow becomes royal tutor in Siam (Thailand). Culture-clash ensues. (While not pre-code, a very fine version of the tale made just a couple of years after the book was published.)

The Naughty Flirt (1930) Rich party girl sets her eyes on a young attorney. Alice White gets her cute little butt spanked in a generally upbeat movie.

La Grande Illusion (1937) During WWI, two French soldiers are captured and imprisoned in a German P.O.W. camp. Several escape attempts follow until they are eventually sent to a seemingly inescapable fortress. Von Stroheim plays a German officer who becomes Commandant of the fortress.

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Hello, Sister! (1933) Two single women sharing a room in the city are looking for love (room sharing like this was very common during The Depression) This is what remains of what would have been von Stroheim's Pre-Code classic. What we're left with is okay but nothing great either - it definitely still has stuff in it that was only possible in the Pre-Code days.. He finished the movie on time and within budget, but the studio got some of the story changed with new scenes shot by another director - they felt his movie was too gritty for American audiences (no comedy drunk, Millie's suicide attempt caused gas explosion in original etc etc).

Queen Kelly (1932) A convent girl is abducted and seduced by a prince before being sent off to a hotel owned by her aunt in East Africa. Well, that's the script that was submitted to the censors and the financiers, but when it came to filming, the crew soon discovered the "hotel" was actually a whorehouse... Is this starting to sound familiar?... ...Gotta hand it to von Stroheim, he sure had balls of steel - Anyway, pretty much none of the "hotel" footage could be used. This was the nail in the coffin of von Stroheim's directing career, as he got blacklisted... He did actually direct several movies afterwards, but had to do so uncredited, and they had to all fit in within established Hollywood standards.

The Great Gabbo (1929) An insanely egocentric ventriloquist, even though he is possessed by his wooden dummy, is in love with a dancer who is in love with another. Von Stroheim proves that he had the acting chops he demanded from others, and it's a 'talkie' too. Sadly, the colour sequences were lost because the engineers converting to digital set everything up for monochrome only, so the colour scenes are there, but in black & white like the rest of the movie.

The Wedding March (1928) A young impoverished aristocrat falls in love with an inn-keepers daughter, but has to marry money. Von Stroheim wanted to make this movie in color, but that was clearly out of the question, but incredibly, the studio did allow him a five-minute section to be in colour - and even that small section was astronomically expensive to produce for cinema distribution. Making this movie turned out to be THE SCANDAL of the silent era... I mean crazy for any time period, not just the morals of back then. Von Stroheim wanted a party scene that looked very debauched but the actors wouldn't give him what he was looking for. So he hired an entire whorehouse to join the scene... They started filming several takes - the booze was real, so the more they kept going the wilder things got - which turned into a two-day orgy (some say 4 days). It is claimed von Stroheim filmed it all, but needless to say very little of the footage could be used in the final movie.

The Merry Widow (1925) A prince must woo the now-wealthy dancer he once abandoned. to keep her money in the country in order to keep it from crashing economically. If Greed was von Stroheim's most depressing movie, The Merry Widow is his most fun... and once again, lots of little details throughout to delight and inform of attitudes of the time.

Greed (1924) The sudden fortune won from a lottery fans such destructive greed that it ruins the lives of the three people involved. WOW, what an epic piece of cinema! Totally different from anything else made in the silent era - Stroheim flipped from building lavish sets to filming everything on location. A bleak tale, but the original version must have been extraordinary.

Foolish Wives (1922) A con artist masquerades as Russian nobility and attempts to seduce the wife of an American diplomat. I could do a documentary about this movie alone - but needless to say the mere idea of a foreigner seducing an American was a scandal in itself for the studio to handle, but they cut so much (over two thirds of the movie was censored) so a couple of bits you have to realise stuff happened that we don't get to see on screen. This was called the first million dollar movie (the Monte Carlo Casino was not filmed on location, Von Stroheim had an identical replica set built in Hollywood), and established Universal as one of the big players in Hollywood.

Blind Husbands (1919) Original Title: The Pinnacle An Austrian officer sets out to seduce a neglected young wife. Shared in MKV to include embedded subtitles, because dialogue cards in this version are in German.

ERICH VON STROHEIM - The Man They Loved To Hate Documentary on Von Stroheim - Don't worry, family friendly stuff concentrating on his movies.

ERICH VON STROHEIM - 1885-1957 Erich Von Stroheim is perhaps the person from Hollywood history I would have liked to meet the most - genius visionary that hated the studios almost as much as he hated censorship. The stories about him and his silent movies are legendary, but sadly the evidence has long been lost to the cutting-room floor and only mere whispers of greatness and debauchery remain in the highly edited versions that remain. He gave us the legendary archetype of the evil Germanic officer with a monocle, cocked hat and stylish cigarette - a style universally adopted across Hollywood... and the BDSM scene (the tales of Von Stroheim's proclivities are legendary). I suppose you could say he was a one-man pre-pre-code genius. Even without any salacious talk, his ideas and innovation helped push Hollywood to new heights of achievement, and it would be simply unimaginable what a mind like his would achieve with modern technology.

Laura (1944) Classic Film Noir Mystery - A police detective falls in love with the woman whose murder he is investigating. A masterpiece of Noir - with Gene Tierney as Laura, it's very easy to empathise with anyone falling in love with her, but great performances by all.

I seem to be all out of any more Pre-Code movies as far as I can see, but obviously this is a good library that can be accessed any time. Any movies I add that are not Pre-Code will be quality stuff and/or historically significant e.g. there are a couple of silent movies that I have but I assumed many would find them boring.

Brief Moment (1933) A dissolute rich society boy marries a worldly nightclub singer, and she begins to have a wholly unexpected effect on him.