Category Archives: Pre-Code Reviews

Morocco
Directed by Joseph von Sternberg
Written by Jules Furthman from a play by Benno Vigny
1930/US
Paramount Pictures
IMDb page
First viewing/owned DVD

Amy Jolly: There’s a Foreign Legion of women, too. But we have no uniforms, no flags, and no medals – when *we* are brave. No wound stripes – when *we* are hurt.

Von Sternberbg’s smoldering love triangle features Gary Cooper and Marlene Dietrich at their peak.

Amy Jolly (Dietrich) is a cabaret singer who has seen better times and has washed up to start all over again in Morocco.  Millionaire Monsieur La Bessiere (Adolphe Menjou) clears customs at the same time she does and immediately offers to “help” her.  She refuses.

Foreign Legionnaire Tom Brown is a womanizer who plays fast and loose with ladies from officer’s wives to the local street walkers.  Both he and La Bessiere attend Amy’s opening performance.  It is lust at first sight as Amy and Tom exchange glances during her act.  When she circulates through the audience she hands him her key.  He heads straight for her room after her show.  After some repartee that leads to his departure, Amy runs after him and he spends the night.

None of this deters La Bessiere in the slightest and he continues to hang around with lavish floral offerings and diamond bracelets.  Finally he offers marriage.  In the meantime, Tom is called out for combat.  The outcome of the love triangle is nominally in question for the length of the film.

Both Dietrich and Cooper are absolutely beautiful in this movie.  This is also Dietrich at her softest and most vulnerable, despite some tough poses. This is one film that inexplicably seems unavailable except for purchase whenever I look for it.  I’m glad I finally got to see it.

This was Dietrich’s American film debut.

Morocco was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Actress, Best Director, Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction.

Animal Crackers
Directed by Victor Heerman
Written by Morrie Ryskind from a play by Ryskind, George S. Kaufman, Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby
1930/US
Paramount Pictures
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/YouTube

Capt. Spaulding: How happy I could be with either of these two if both of them just went away.

This is possibly my favorite Marx Brothers movie.

Mrs. Rittenhouse (Margaret Dumont) is hosting a lavish house party to introduce African explorer Captain Geoffrey T. Spaulding (Groucho) to her high society friends.

Chico, Harpo and Zeppo show up and mayhem ensues.  With Lillian Roth as Zeppo’s love interest.

This is chock full of gags but does not go into frenetic overdrive like some of the later ones do.  Everybody looks like they were having a good time and I had one too.

The Last of Mrs. Cheyney
Directed by Sidney Franklin
Written by Frederick Lonsdale from his play
1929/US
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Fay Cheyney: I know too much about you. And you know too little about me.

Oh, how this movie cried out for the Lubitsch touch!

New widow Fay Cheyney has burst on the London social scene and let it be known she is looking for a husband.  The “smart set” adopt her and invite her to their homes.  Finally she snags a invite to a very wealthy woman’s home for a country weekend.  While there she takes turns flirting with her two suitors, elderly dunderhead Lord Elton and debonair confirmed bachelor Lord Arthur Dilling (Basil Rathbone).  Fay manipulates both men, playing very hard to get with Arthur and patronizing Lord Elton.

Half-way through the movie we learn Fay’s secret.  Arthur isn’t far behind and takes charge of her.  With Hedda Hopper as one of Fay’s new friends.

This could have been a rather funny and sophisticated farce in the hands of Lubitsch.  Unfortunately, we get actors must who have been coached to speak their lines in as affected and wry manner as possible.  This got on my nerves and by the end of the film I didn’t care what happened to anyone.

The Criminal Code
Directed by Howard Hawks
Written by Fred Niblo, Jr. and Seton I. Miller from a play by Martin Flavin
1930/US
Columbia Pictures
IMDb page
First viewing/YouTube

Mark Brady: An eye for an eye. That’s the basis and foundation of the criminal code. Somebody’s got to pay!

Hawk’s fun early prison movie gets an extra star for the always wonderful Walter Huston.

Mark Brady (Walter Huston) is a District Attorney with political ambitions.  Robert Graham is a naive young man who kills a guy who was hitting on his girl in self defense.  Although Brady knows the kid has a valid defense he convinces his attorney and him to take a plea to a manslaughter charge.  Robert is convicted and sentenced to ten years.

Segue to six years later and Robert is a miserable and hardened inmate.  He shares a cell with one man who is planning an escape and Galloway (Boris Karloff) who has vowed to kill one of the guards.  The two keep a parental eye on their young friend.

Brady, having failed on his bid for the Governor’s mansion, is appointed Warden at the jail where Robert is incarcerated.  Now he goes all out trying to help Robert by trying to win him a pardon.  In the meantime, he gives the kid a soft job as his valet.  Brady has brought his daughter Mary (Constance Cummings) with him.  The two young people develop unspoken feelings for each other.

The whole thing ends with an escape attempt and hostage taking and Robert must choose between the code between criminals (no squealing) and the Criminal Code Brady is bound by.

This is a pretty good movie made even better by the dynamic Huston.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen him give a bad performance.   Hawks is building up to Scarface (1932) and The Front Page (1931) with some snappy dialogue here.  And to add to it Boris Karloff has a nice juicy non-Monster role!  Recommended.

The

Thunderbolt
Directed by Josef von Sternberg
Written by Jules and Charles Furthman, Josef von Sternberg and Herman J. Mankiewicz
1929/US
Paramount Pictures
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020499/reference
First viewing/YouTube

Warden: Listen Doc, you just gotta see that this man lives. Do something. I’ve got to execute him tonight.

George Bancroft has some marvelous bits in this gangster/love triangle/deathrow tale. The rest is pretty “meh”.

Jim ‘Thunderbolt’ Lang (Bancroft) is the boss of a gang of vicious thugs. He is wanted for bank robbery and murder.  Ritzie (Fay Wray) is his moll.  But lately she has fallen for straight arrow banker Bob (Richard Arlen) and attempts to break up with Thunderbolt. Nobody quits the Thunderbolt and he makes it his mission to assassinate Bob.

His mission fails.  He is apprehended, tried, and sentenced to death.  Thunderbolt will not rest until Bob dies before he does.  So he frames him and soon Bob is his neighbor on death row.

Bancroft is great, as always, in this.  The part where he tries to get an annoying dog to come to him is hilarious.  On the other hand, I have never seen Wray or Arlen give such stilted performances.

George Bancroft was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar.

Catch the glance George Bancroft gives singer Theresa Harris.  Definitely pre-Code!

Coquette
Directed by Sam Taylor
Written by John Grey and Allen McNeil from a play by George Abbott and Ann Preston Bridgers
1929/US
Pickford Corporation
IMDb page
First viewing/YouTube

Norma Besant: I’ll tell you somethin’ I never told any other man, ever! Just the way you are, now, you’ll be the best lookin’ man there. Now, will you come?
Michael Jeffery: No.
Norma Besant: Well, you’re the first man I ever told that to the just didn’t naturally melt away.
Michael Jeffery: I reckon I’m different from the other men – you’ve never told that to.

I can’t believe Mary Pickford won an Oscar for overacting terribly in this romantic tragedy.

Norma Besant (Pickford) acts like a five-year-old around her beloved Daddy.  She is a consumate flirt who tries her craft on any man available including Daddy.  Daddy keeps an eagle eye on her.  She is being courted by Stanley, a man in her social circle, but has fallen in love with Michael Jeffrey (Johnnie Mack Brown).  Daddy doesn’t like Michael because he is not of their class and has a reputation as a shiftless hothead.  He orders Norma never to see him again.  The lovers agree to separate for six months so that Michael can get himself established in a good job.

Michael can’t stay away and returns 3 months later.  Norma doesn’t listen to Daddy and ends up sneaking out with Michael to his mother’s cabin and does not return until 4 a.m.  Daddy is outraged and shoots and kills Michael.  Daddy’s attorney urges Norma to tell several lies on the stand to protect Daddy from the death penalty.

I watched this for Mary Pickford and was disappointed.  I thought she went over the top both as the belle of the ball and as a tragic heroine.  She acts about 5-years-old in her scenes with Daddy.  Pickford produced the picture and possibly there was no one to restrain her.   Other than that, the production is quite adequate and watchable.

Mary Pickford won the Academy Award for Best Leading Actress.

Clip  – I thought the father looked so much like Anton Walbrook it was eerie

Desert Nights
Directed by William Nigh
Written by John T. Neville et al
1929/US
Metro Goldwyn Mayer
IMDb page
First viewing/YouTube

Hugh Rand: [Overcome by Diana’s beauty] Three years away from the world – – a man almost forgets there are women like you…

Fun, short romance/adventure with John Gilbert and Mary Nolan.

Hugh Rand (Gilbert) is the manager of a diamond mine somewhern in southern Africa.  The mine is preparing for the arrival of Lord Stonehill (Ernest Torrence) and his daughter Lady Diana (Nolan).  They ask Rand to guide them on a lion hunt.  When he sees how beautiful the daughter is he agrees.  So begins a somewhat stormy romance.

Hugh offers to show Mary some rough diamonds and suddenly some thugs with guns arrive to assist Mary and her “father” (also known as Steve) in pocketing the entire tray worth millions of dollars. They then kidnap Hugh to force him to  guide them to safety on a trek through the Kalahari desert.  But water runs out.  Hugh is determined to recover the diamonds.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Gilbert in anything but very serious roles.  Here he has a dashing cockiness reminiscent of Errol Flynn. Nolan is gorgeous and is very good as a sly conwoman and love interest.  Available free on YouTube.

John Gilbert tribute – what a gorgeous man!

The Letter
Directed by Jean de Limur
Written by Monta Bell and Jean de Limur from a stage play by W. Somerset Maugham
1929/US
Paramount Pictures
IMDb page
First viewing/YouTube

Howard Joyce: Damn clever, these Chinese.

The original adaptation of the Somerset Maugham story has many pleasures and makes an interesting contrast to the 1940 version with Bette Davis. Jeanne Eagels is a revelation.

If you have seen The Letter (1940), you already know the plot.  Leslie Crosbie (Eagels) is the wife of a rubber plantation manager (Reginald Owen) living in Malaysia.  She is bored with this existence.  She is also vain, selfish and vidictive.  She has been having a long term affair with Geoffrey Hammond (Herbert Marshall).   One night when her husband is out of town she writes a letter begging Geoffrey to come to her.  He is now living with a Chinese “half-caste” woman and wants to break it off with her.  So she shoots him.  This happens in maybe the first five minutes of the film.

Leslie is put on trial for her life.  She claims Geoffrey made advances on her and forced her to defend herself.  Things seem to be going in her favor.  Then the letter she wrote on the night of the murder surfaces, complicating Leslie’s life enormously.

Eagel’s take on her character is far less sympathetic than Davis’s.  Nevertheless, they are two great performances by accomplished actresses.  This movie is only 65 minutes long – it was lost for years – but manages to convey the whole story.  It leaves out a lot of the nuance contained in the later film.

Eagels, who had sad and eventful life, was nominated for the first posthumous Academy Award.  She died of a drug overdose shortly after the film was released.  The Letter was the American film debut of both Marshall and Owen.  Herbert Marshall, who plays the lover here, played the husband in the 1940 version.

Painted Faces
Directed by Albert S. Rogell
Written by Fanny and Frederic Hatton; story by Frances Hyland
1929/US
Tiffany-Stahl Productions
IMDb page
First viewing/YouTube

Now there’s some sad things known to man
But ain’t too much sadder than
The tears of a clown
When there’s no one around – Hank Crosby, Smokey Robinson, and Stevie Wonder

Joe E. Brown gives a nuanced performance in this pre-Code courtroom drama.

Hermann (Brown) performs as the  clown Beppo in a vaudeville show.  One fateful night, a performer named Roderick arrives.  He has been making unwanted advances to a young fellow performer.  Her boyfriend is insanely jealous.  When Roderick is murdered, the young man is found with a gun in his hand.

Herrmann ends up on the jury for the young man’s trial on capital murder.  (We will overlook how improper this would be as he knew all the principals personally).  We move to the jury room where eleven members want to go home and will vote guilty on the first and all subsequent ballots.  Herrmann is the sole holdout.  He won’t explain himself but keeps repeating that the evidence is circumstantial and he just knows the boy did not do it.  Far be it from me to spoil a mystery.

I had never seen a picture with Joe E. Brown from back in his heyday and was curious so decided to try this out.  I was impressed.  Brown gives a nuanced performance in which he moves from pathos to comedy with ease. He even maintains a creditable (German?) accent throughout.   I enjoyed the film.

Smokey Robinson and the Miracles – 1970 performance