Pre Code Films

Footlight Parade (1933), my favourite of the 1930s Warner Bros musicals. Production numbers by Busby Berkeley plus Jimmy Cagney! And they're wild magnificent Busby Berkeley production numbers. An absolute joy.

Here's my review.

In High Pressure (1932) William Powell is a company promoter. Really a con man, but what he does is legal. Powell is all manic energy and bravado and fast talking slick ultra-confidence. A charming scoundrel. We want him to get to away with it. Delightful.

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The Road to Singapore (1931) is a very enjoyable overheated pre-code sex, sin, madness and scandal in the tropics melodrama. William Powell plays a cad but we're not sure just how much of a cad he is. Marian Marsh is naughty and adorable.

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Street of Women is a very good 1932 pre-code romantic melodrama about infidelity. There's some depth and moral complexity, it's very pre-code and Kay Francis is excellent.

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Night Court is a very hard-edged slightly proto-noir 1932 MGM pre-code crime thriller. Walter Huston delightfully evil as a crooked judge. In this movie the whole system is corrupt. Ditzy blonde Anita Page is framed on a morals charge. Brilliant film.

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The Broadway Melody (1929), MGM’s first musical. A backstage musical with all the right ingredients but it's too long and it lacks zing. The staging of the musical numbers is unimaginative. Worth seeing for its historical importance.

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Under Eighteen (1931) is very much a Depression romantic melodrama with Marian Marsh  torn between her ingrained belief in respectability and the temptations of lucrative wickedness (in the form of Warren William). Good pre-code film.

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Gold Diggers of 1933 has some great moments but it's not my favourite of the Busby Berkeley musicals. I prefer 42nd Street and Footlight Parade. But it's worth seeing just for the We're in the Money and the Pettin' in the Park production numbers.

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The Wet Parade (1932) is proof not all pre-code moves were good. This moraiising melodrama, full of speechifying, is an extended sermon on the evils of the demon drink. Heavy-handed, clunky, dull. Even Walter Huston is bad. Avoid.

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James Whale's The Kiss Before the Mirror is an overheated, overwrought, contrived, absurdly melodramatic and theatrical 1933 precode film. Mirrors and lies are the key. A murder is committed because of something a man saw in a mirror.

Here's my review.