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Which is such a load of crap. Seriously, this is why you have to learn from history, lest you're doomed to repeat it. Look at TH-cam. In its early days it was way less restrictive, but now it's become such a corporate crap hole, that you wondered just when it's going to implode upon itself.
And there were so many movies from the period that give the "simpler time" myth a lie, especially as covert critiques of McCarthyism and willful parochialism. Maybe not huge hits at the time, but rightfully regarded as classics now. The fact that they operated within the context of the Hays Code while maintaining an edge makes them pack even more of a punch than a lot of movies today. "A Face in the Crowd" is one of the zeniths, especially seeing Andy Griffith as a character that taps into the seamy underbelly of folksy populism. Spike Lee considers it one of his favorite films. And even in a very different media landscape, it remains relevant to this day.
In 1978, I was in 7th grade, taking an acting/speech class. We had an assignment where we had to act out an interview, playing both sides. I was in my lunchtime home room, two hours before the class, frantically trying to come up with my interview subject. For some reason, I started thinking of old Disney films, starting with Snow White. I was talking with my friends, listing the seven dwarfs. When I did, I mistakenly alided Sleepy and Sneezy into Sleazy, and the light bulb came on. I interviewed Sleazy, the unknown cousin of the Seven Dwarfs, using the only celebrity voice I could imitate-Mae West. I improv’d most of it, confusing my classmates who had no idea of Ms. West, but my teacher was falling out of her chair she was laughing so hard. I got an A!
Honestly I can fully attest that almost a century later some of the lines they got away with in pre-Code movies are still pretty scandalous to this day
My favorite one is from Duck Soup by the Marx brothers goes something like; - Remember men, you’re fighting for this woman’s honor, which is probably more than she’s ever done.
@@zvidanyatvetski8081 , I love the Mark Brothers, especially Groucho, who was always good for a funny or sarcastic clip, even outside of movie roles. Somebody asked him how he fared in the 1929 stock market crash that began the Depression; he said: "I lost a million dollars: I would have lost even more but it was everything I had".
Same thing happened with the internet. A new medium appears, is wild and free, then popular uptake and corporate takeover result in formal and informal crushing of the vitality out of the medium.
@Inthepotwithdiogenes I found it on Tubi. Fascinating movie, even for its time. It humanized people who were otherwise invisible or shunned, while showing what happens when you harm one of them in their tight-knit community. Highly recommended.
Hays code=youtube rules is so perfect a comparison. I censor myself so much, and even when doing so, i get demonetised, frustratingly after the video has gone live and gone through the checks, even 🤦🏼♀️
It's great seeing you here!❤ It's so disheartening that youtube is still hurting its own content creators with these unreasonable "rules". Important things that need to be addressed, just like you're doing with your videos, get attacked while genuinely hurtful or criminal stuff is kept without thought.
I agree, I get frustrated when I've watched a video, it gets taken down, it gets put back up...with none of the views. I'll often "rewatch" a video on 1.75 speed and muted so that the video still has at least one of its original views
Mae West's influence in pushing forward feminism is really downplayed these days, I would love more content about it, she was a woman so far ahead of her time, it's like she was from a different planet
Being in love with this era it kills me people think older films were *always* straitlaced. Even outside of the precode era it can be untrue, but within it, it's especially untrue. There's an underrated one like Penthouse that subversively makes a heroine of a call girl and has oodles of naughty dialogue you'd expect with such a theme and one like Merrily We Go to Hell which has its female director tackle open relationships (Not in an overtly flattering way, but it at least addressed the toxicity able to take place in an arrangement of that kind), or Design for Living which is the most subversive of all of these. Not to mention ones like Night Nurse or Gold Diggers of 1933 that have strong female characters out the wazoo. I could go on and on. Precodes are the shit.
Comparing The Hayes code to modern day TH-cam guidelines is actually a genius insight holy shit. Now I know how people in the 40s felt being fed edge-less media by creators terrified of the consequences. The situation sucks for both parties
Looking back it's exhausting how conservative religious groups are to this day still shrieking about the same kinds of things they shrieked about back then. But it's also encouraging to think of how we keep inching our way forward despite it all.
And they count on people not knowing enough history, not only of the "traditional" kind ("major" events and figures), but also of areas such as the media. No wonder they want to dismantle public education and complain about people taking courses on the media in universities. They want people to think that their favorite movies and TV (and music and books and ...) are "just a show," divorced from the contexts in which they emerged. They also want people to think that what we're seeing now is a "subversion of traditional values," when that "subversion" has been happening for a long time, and even predate the "traditional values" they want to "bring back." Plus ca change...
Makes me sad that there are clear parallels between the Hays Code and what is currently happening to videos and the Internet in general, and yet, history is repeating itself. Even sadder that there are people today saying it's actually a good thing... Makes me wonder what will happen to video games in the future...
@@cloudsofsunset7323 The seventies were scandalous too don't get me wrong, but they didn't result in a censorship code being created because of them. One of the good things about the Hays Code speaking as a Brit was a lot of Hollywood talent started making films in Europe where they could be a bit less constrained in what they could show.
It definitely threw me off lol. I for a moment wondered if that was some kind of early 20th century slang that I didn't know about, like "old sport". And then I read the rest of the letter hahah
As a recent film school graduate, I love seeing you cover topics like this, because film history is absolutely wild and not enough deep dives are really done into specific eras like this outside of more academically-oriented settings.
Pre Code films I love... Red Dust, Baby Face, Mystery of the Wax Museum, The Maltese Falcon, Golddiggers of 1933, Footlight Parade, Dinner At Eight, I'm No Angel, She Done Him Wrong, Dangerous Curves, Murder In The Zoo...
There's a book called "Siren Queen" by Nghi Vo that talks about a fictional queer Chinese-American woman who becomes an early film star, but it's told like a fairytale with magical realism throughout. Couldn't stop thinking about it while I was listening to this.
I realize that this is a nearly two week old comment so you may not see this, but thank you for sharing about this book! I'm always looking for good queer media of any kind, but especially books and I just added this one to my cart to buy after reading a bit about it. You're an awesome internet stranger!
People often seem to forget that The Jazz Singer was only a partial talky but mostly silent. The first full talking picture was The Lights of New York. I think that deserves its own video.
They always point out the scene with the band, but I've seen the movie and the scene that really sticks with me is where Al Jolson's character is talking with his mother. Hearing the real voices of both of them, and the father really briefly before it switches back to silence, is amazing for a recording almost 100 years old. Of course the limited technology only makes Jolson come through clearly, but you can still hear the other dialogue.
I love when TCM plays silent movies or really old 30s stuff. I grew up watching classic Hollywood movies from the 20th century as a millennial and was so captivated by them. Movies felt like a production and is a totally different experience than today's current movies. People really wanted to tell a story and entertain and captivate their audiences. It's a shame a lot of those early movies are completely lost media due to fires and misplacement or reuse of tape.
Made sometime in the 1920s, staring Joan Crawford, "Rain" is, honestly, one of the coolest movies I've ever seen! From the spiraling camera work to tight character construction and the tense story not quite going where it seems to be going, it doesn't seem like a film that was made a hundred years ago! No spoilers, just see it and be happy you did! Also, I like hearing what Mila has to say. Great video, Kaz!
I don't know many pre-code films, but recently I saw It Happened One Night - it's a complete delight from start to finish, and surprisingly sexy. If I didn't know I was bi before watching it, this film would have made it unavoidable. Clark Gable and Claubert Colbert have perfect chemistry. Plus the story of how it got made is quite surprising - apparently both stars hated the script and each other, and Colbert walked off the set before filming was complete, which forced Frank Capra to come up with a clever way of ending the story that could be pulled off without her being on-camera. And it works!
Just want to say as Jewish woman it's awesome to see you rocking your natural hair!! Took me years to be ok with mine and unlearn the urge to straighten it so thank you and you look amazing. Really empowering to see it on other people.
My father-in-law was born in 1914. He was a really religious guy but at the same time, he grew up in little towns in Kentucky and Oklahoma, not quite the hot bed of scandal. When he was in Jay Oklahoma, he owned a billiard parlor (pool hall) and that was thought to be scandalous (think about the musical "Music Man" and their representation of the game). He also became mayor. Later, he ran the local theater. He moved to Antlers Oklahoma in 1956 and my husband was born there. He tells the story about dad not even watching a movie where the man took off his outer shirt and showed his t-shirt. I found this rather odd considering his youthful jobs of the past. He was also lay minister of the local Methodist church . He liked movies, but just not all the "sin" stuff in some of them. By the time my husband and I were old enough to watch movies at the theater, they had started the rating codes. G for general PG for parent guidance, and M for mature audiences (before they moved to PG because it was vague who was mature enough to see films. And then there were R and X, XX, and XXX).
I study/specialize in Pre-Code films, so it's nice to hear you to give a pretty blanket overview of the story. I'm surprised you didn't name drop the play that got May West arrested >:). To add to Queen Christina though, her star power was super important that they even allowed her to make that film, with the censorship being that Christina's lover had a boyfriend waiting in the wings. It's too bad, but otherwise that movie is a dang masterpiece.
I'm such a nerd I popped for the use of the White Army font XD The uncertainty around one particular aspect of the code - 'no relations between the white and black races' - heavily affected the career of one of my favourite actresses, Anna May Wong. They weren't sure if showing an Asian woman in a relationship with a white man counted as 'miscegenation' so she was relegated to supporting roles, playing exotic servants or evil 'Dragon Ladies'. Then when an adaptation of The Good Earth came along - a story about Chinese people - they wouldn't let her play the female lead because they'd cast the white Paul Muni and put him in Yellowface makeup. Who knows what career she might have had if they'd gone ahead and let her play that role, or given her something good?
Yessss. This whole situation with the Hays code is such an important thing to study nowadays because while we're not facing "formal" censorship on the internet and media that FORBIDS certain topics, we've definitely seen an uptake on control of content from big media corporations. Disney, tiktok, twitter, instagram, youtube.... they have been trying to make the entire internet "family friendly" and centric-leaning, as to not offend anyone, if not outright conservative like twitter. Like sure, some content controls are needed for like children but that's on parents to enforce and the apps to provide the safe options, not to just censor everything. Coincidentally, we're also facing an economic crisis 😅😢 Anyway.... great times we live in.
I remember an anecdote in one documentary or another on the Depression that talked about how people in a neighbourhood would split their tickets - each household would go see a different movie and try to remember it as clearly as possible to relay back to the others, or if there was nothing new, they would all pool their money together for next time to be able to see two movies per household. Some people even would be caught by ushers taking notes by the light of the screen.
Wonderful! Love that you included a quote from my friend Mark’s marvelous book FORBIDDEN HOLLYWOOD My favorite pre-codes: FEMALE (1933) woman executive burns through her male secretaries FRISCO JENNY (1932) a post quake sex worker sets up a ‘house’ with health and childcare benefits for her employees, and THE WET PARADE (1932) a mid prohibition film which reminds viewers why the Volstead act happened and why it wasn’t working (so eye opening!) You’re the best!!
Very incredible video!! Was surprised you didn't bring up any of Tod Browning's films tho, especially 'Freaks.' Of all the precode movies I've seen, that one has stuck with me the longest and hardest because of how shocking the content was. I had to be really objective whilst watching it due to the standards of the time being so different, but was very glad the antagonist got what was coming to her in the end.
I’m convinced the Hayes Code is why people view the 50s as a “simpler time” and its ripple on effects also make people think all black and white film is squeaky clean. But then again, some people who also know about the Hayes Code believe that there are no explicit deep themes in 50s films. I just watched A Place in the Sun (1951) and was surprised at how much it was allowed to get away with
The whole "squeaky-clean" view of the 50s probably comes from television, which had an even stricter censorship than movies. Hollywood movies, on the other hand, were getting edgier year after year over the course of the 50s and 60s, as the Hays Code was slowly losing its influence after the fall of the studio system in 1948.
Erotic media can be true art too! It also could be read either way, or like someone else said it represents both at the same time, and that’s okay too.
I was going to comment that all the uproar was repeated 20 years later with comic books when they were the scary, scandalous new media "corrupting" the youth. The channel Casually Comics has a good video about the code if anyone wants to learn more.
So excited! I have just recently watched Night After Night (1932) Mae West- again! Mae is an Olympian! A regular Atlas! the way she holds the whole picture up! One of her all-time greatest lines is in this movie BUT it's her line leading up to that one (and every single line of her dialogue!) that has stuck with me for decades! I want sell everybody on seeking it out- but I don't have Kaz skills! I can wait no more to see what's covered in this one!!!!
Just to answer the questions at the end, I love pre-code films, they're probably my single favourite era/genre/whatever. Especially love Trouble in Paradise, Gold Diggers of 1933 and Blonde Venus. Thanks for the great video!
This has been a special interest of mine for YEARS. Pre-code favorites: I love Ernst Lubistch films. I think "Design for Living" might be the first film portrayal of what we'd call a polyamorous triad; if anyone can find earlier representation, let me know. In my collection of film memorabilia, I have an issue of "Motion Picture Herald" from August 11, 1934, and the cover story is "What the Production Code Really says" and it is fascinating. Basically "the code and you" for industry professionals.
This was a great video! My favorite pre-codes tend to be anything with Barbara Stanwick and the horror movies. horror movies, especially try to hold onto some of that silent film style and then use sound sparingly
I wrote a paper on The Sign of the Cross last semester (I just clicked on the video, so I don't know yet if you mention it!) and me looking at your sources is very much the Leonardo pointing meme. Very excited to watch this!
"Baby Face" is a given when it comes to pre-code movies, but two other great Barbara Stanwyck flicks are "Illicit," Night Nurse," "Forbidden" and "Shopworn," which sees Clara Blandick (Auntie Em in "The Wizard of Oz") both send Barbara to prison and pull a gun on her to keep her away from Clara's darling son (Auntie Em, for God's sake!). Also "Week-End Marriage," in which Loretta Young becomes a successful business woman while her husband shrivels with shame at not being the breadwinner. The end is very much code-friendly (and economically ridiculous), but the ride is interesting.
38:23 this whole part with the scary words made me realize how wild it is that SO many words on the internet have to be typed with numbers, symbols, or accented letters, or just outright replaced with sound-alikes, emojis, or nonsense synonyms, when that would have seemed bonkers like… 10 years ago? 15 years ago? I was watching original episodes of Fraggle Rock yesterday, and some of the characters sometimes offhandedly use the words k!11 or d!3 and the fact that I was taken aback like “they can use those words in a kids’ show?!” speaks volumes about the state of censorship today. 😵💫😵💫 (Also the editing on this part gave me a good laugh, thank you 🫶)
Minor note: Howard Hughes directed and produced, but did not star in Hell's Angels (1930). Great video, regardless. Love to hear and learn about film history, especially at that time covered here.
Oh, God, the making of Hell’s Angels could merit a video on its own. Hughes was such a perfectionist and took so long that he started it as a silent film and converted it to a talkie partway through. He lost his original leading lady because he was taking so long and replaced her with Jean Harlow.
Your average person doesn't know about the Hays code or why movies and TV shows have more mature content in the last two decades than 40 years before. We were watching It Happened One Night and I commented that it had to have been made before the Hays Code went into effect, and my family was very confused. Also, live Mae West and would love it if you made a video on her life and career.
I think I've only seen one pre-code talkie - Just Imagine (1930). It's a romance set in the sci-fi futuristic world of 1980, and it's not very good but it is fascinating. All food is in pill form, all cars are flying cars, and people have numbers instead of names, but everyone still uses fountain pens. The costume design is pretty interesting, and it includes a trip to Mars, and a man being brought back to life after being frozen for 50 years. It's technically a musical, but it has very few songs and they're mostly forgettable.
Tallulah Bankhead was my mother’s cousin. I grew up hearing wonderful stories about how fucking amazing she was. She was my mom’s fave extended family member and she’d always talk about what a huge progressive influence she was on my mother
That's excellent. Nazimova was my grandfather's cousin, but he only met her once in Russia when he was a child. She was probably too extreme for her religiously conservative Jewish family. 😢
A fact I find interesting is that, along with Steamboat Willie and Snow White, Franklin Roosevelt loved Mae West's I'm No Angel which is intresting because his presidency coincides with end of the the pre-code era and the hay day of the Golden Age of Hollywood.
And never forget our favorite horror films were made during these years. Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man. The Mummy and the Bride of Frankenstein. So much for scandalous films
Awesome video topic! I researched the Hays Code for my history day project in my junior year of high school. I only wish this vid had been made sooner so I could get my hands on more sources 😆
I watch a lot of Turner Classic Movies. Like I think any amount of TCM is probably weird for a early 30s millennial but it is always on in my house. I like classic cinema. One of my favorite things is how excited the presenters get when they talk about pre-code movies.
No it's not. I'm 31 and I've been watching and collecting classic Hollywood movies since I was in my late teens early twenties. Still do. My favorite movie series are the Thin Man and Tarzan films from MGM. My favorite actor is Cary Grant and favorite actress I'll have to get back to you on that. There's too many great ones
I have personally watched 1 silent film and 1 pre-code talkie, and I love both so much. The silent film was Anders als die Anderen (Different than the Others, staring Conrad Veidt), which is a film from 1919 about a gay couple having to deal with a blackmailer who makes the life of specifically one of them basically hell. It's often seen as one of the first if not the first more positive depictions of queer relationships. The talkie was The Vampire Bat from 1933 (staring Dwight Frye and Fay Wray), which is mostly just funny to me. A small german town is faced with weird deaths, and everyone jumps to the conclusion of vampires, but the main detective of the town isn't convinced. Both are here on youtube, and I do very much recommend them.
As a fan of Pre-Code Hollywood, the thing you realize after watching a bunch of Pre-Code films...their idea of what is scandalous back then is rather tame. You go in expecting something really taboo. But after the Hays code ended in the late 1960's, it was the films of the 1970's that were FAR more explicit in content. Sex, sexuality, Queerness, violence, profanity, subversive anti-religious, anti-government content was like nothing you saw from 1929-1934. Past the 70s, movies slowly got more tame throughout the 80's and 90's. The last 25 years have been, overall, the tamest time in movies since the end of the Hays Code.
I have a fondness for the 1933 International House starring W.C. Fields. It's worth seeing for the song performed by a juvenile Rose Marie (who played Sally in The Dick Van Dyke Show) and for Fields and George Burns tag-teaming a then-brunette Gracie Allen and losing. However, I like it for two innuendos delivered by Fields, best experienced in context: "Don't let the posy fool you!" and "I'm trying to find the button."
1, As soon as a technology becomes publically accessible, people start to test the boundaries of "propriety." Then 2, legislation is forced on the masses "for the greater good" requiring "propriety" to become standardized. Then 3, when that soulless standardization becomes unpopular, in turn lessening profitablity, those at the top making all of the legislation & the profit have to quarrel over which is more important (profit almost always winning out) regardless of what the public wants or needs as the technology becomes more privatized & inconvenient. And then 4, a new technology comes about to replace it & the cycle starts all over agin.
One of my favorite films is *All Quiet on the Western Front* It’s not necessarily scandalous (aside from being extremely anti-nationalist), but I was surprised by how dark it gets in places. The most iconic moment is probably the hands on the barbed wire (which hasn’t held up in terms of special effects but manages to be striking and haunting in spite of that), but the most horrific scene imo was the boots montage. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go watch *All Quiet on the Western Front*
This was the first film that came to mind when I clicked on this video. For the last several years, I've slowly been working my way through the "must see" classics. All Quiet on the Western Front shook me to the core. A truly excellent film, but it absolutely goes to places far darker than I ever expected. The hands on the barbed wire will stay with me for a long, long time.
@@rhondaorberson9664 something I forgot to say about the barbed wire thing that makes it even darker is that it didn’t come from the book: one of the German vets who worked on these movie said they saw something like that actually happen in the war
People sometimes forget that the Hayes Code era also surpressed anything immoral, not just sex. My favorite “pre code” is Trouble in Paradise, not JUST because of the witty reparte between Miriam Hopkins and Herbert Marshall and the Lubitch Touch, but because the con artist-thieves GET AWAY WITH IT and presumably live happily ever after. That ending would have been impossible just two years later.
42:12 I don’t have full context for what they’re saying here about The Philadelphia Story or context for how the movie would have been interpreted in 1940, but it seems like they way missed the mark on what the text of that movie is saying. If I recall correctly Tracy acts/seems like she’s above everyone else, looks down on others, but simultaneously doesn’t want to be put on a pedestal. Both she and Dexter had to grow and change after their divorce. Tracy does hers over the course of the movie. It’s when she acknowledges her flaws and owns the consequences, good and bad, that she and Dext get back together. She doesn’t try and change herself to make the wedding with George work when he asks her to. Sure the optics of getting black out drunk and cavorting with a guy who isn’t your intended aren’t great, but it’s not condemned by the text. Learning to be a “proper and good wife who must support her husband despite his faults” and only then self worth blah blah hits on the truth in a very limited way. The movie is about her and Dext growing in ways that ultimately make them better people and better partners to each other. It’s very Jane Austen. Speaking of… Code era, Regency era, hilarious subtext and sexual innuendo in some stories as a result of society’s rules… Love that shit.
I am very interested in pre code films. Since Arzner and Clara Bow were mentioned here, there is a big spot in my heart for "The Wild Party" (1929). I like how it explores the homosocial environment of a college in a very queer way, including romantic friendship. Also it is a flapper look for the 1930s, showing us femmeness as something aspirational and transgressive, expression of a working class character aiming for a better life and dressing the part. Knowing about the butch behind the camera, this feels very much like a representation of things to come for the midcentury. Garbo and Marlene of course made great films. "The Smiling Lieutenant" (1931) might be my favorite Lubitsch musical but he really did a lot during these years. "Forsaking all Others" (1934) is on the tail-end of that era. But it explores some kink and consent in a playful way I can appreciate.
My favorite movie is The Unknown with Lon Chaney and Joan Crawford (it might be her first film). Todd Browning directed and cut it down to the bare bones of the story, so anything salacious is implied.
One of my favourite films with a pre-code sensibility is Over The Moon… made in 1939. It’s a British production, and it offers a glimpse of some startling differences in the attitudes of the British Board of Film Censors vs The Code. The whole story is how a young woman with vast resources and no minders can experience a *lot* of life’s spice and become worldly without becoming a used-up, jaded cynic. No one shoots a cop, but there’s few other items from the code that don’t get gleefully trodden upon and still the BBFC hung an approval on it.
This was very fine. An excellent treatment of a complex topic in a complex way. You always enlighten and entertain, but this episode was a high point. Also, great voicing of Mae West!
I realize this has nothing to do with the topic but I love the era appropriate costumes you choose. And unlike many you look comfortable and natural in them. I love most of your content too.
I remember growing up and going to a Parochial (i.e., Catholic) school. They posted the monthly newsletter of the Legion of Decency and they had nothing good to say about any movie. I starkly remember their gripes about Jonathan Livingston Seagull. 🙄 I don't remember one movie they actually embraced wholeheartedly.
Honestly this is the best essay on the Hays Code I've watched on TH-cam, congrats! I'm a huge nerd for pre-code films, pre-code queer cinema and women pioneers like Arzner and Lupino, so it's very refreshing to see this cinema history period discussed. Thanks!! (btw I've discussed the Hays Code in my own cinema youtube channel @KinocubeCinema, in the video about gangster films ofc)
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🆗 29:22
36:42 🥀
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I love those films before 1935, some were just mind fks hilarious and OMG!! lolmao
the hays code is why so many people think that the 50s were a "simpler time"
Which is such a load of crap. Seriously, this is why you have to learn from history, lest you're doomed to repeat it.
Look at TH-cam. In its early days it was way less restrictive, but now it's become such a corporate crap hole, that you wondered just when it's going to implode upon itself.
Exactly, it wasn't "simpler" it was simply "over-policed."
And there were so many movies from the period that give the "simpler time" myth a lie, especially as covert critiques of McCarthyism and willful parochialism. Maybe not huge hits at the time, but rightfully regarded as classics now. The fact that they operated within the context of the Hays Code while maintaining an edge makes them pack even more of a punch than a lot of movies today.
"A Face in the Crowd" is one of the zeniths, especially seeing Andy Griffith as a character that taps into the seamy underbelly of folksy populism. Spike Lee considers it one of his favorite films. And even in a very different media landscape, it remains relevant to this day.
@@jrneal1220 interesting. I'll have to check it out.
@@AlexanderJWFprecisely. Don’t like something your workers are doing; to HUAC with those “Commie sympathisers”.
In 1978, I was in 7th grade, taking an acting/speech class. We had an assignment where we had to act out an interview, playing both sides. I was in my lunchtime home room, two hours before the class, frantically trying to come up with my interview subject. For some reason, I started thinking of old Disney films, starting with Snow White. I was talking with my friends, listing the seven dwarfs. When I did, I mistakenly alided Sleepy and Sneezy into Sleazy, and the light bulb came on. I interviewed Sleazy, the unknown cousin of the Seven Dwarfs, using the only celebrity voice I could imitate-Mae West. I improv’d most of it, confusing my classmates who had no idea of Ms. West, but my teacher was falling out of her chair she was laughing so hard. I got an A!
i would pay money to watch a weird preteen do may west interviewing Sleazy Dwarf that is excellent
@@emoloser8642 oh, the interviewer had my regular voice. It was Sleazy who sounded like Mae West!
That’s incredible 😂
Honestly I can fully attest that almost a century later some of the lines they got away with in pre-Code movies are still pretty scandalous to this day
Or maybe we consider them scandalous because we are living in post-Code days? 🫣
The Jane Russell pointy-bra scene, filmed in a barn by Howard Hughes, fell afoul of the "roll in the Hays" code! 😉😁
My favorite one is from Duck Soup by the Marx brothers goes something like;
- Remember men, you’re fighting for this woman’s honor, which is probably more than she’s ever done.
Well, Groucho Marx in general got away with some amazing lines
@@zvidanyatvetski8081 , I love the Mark Brothers, especially Groucho, who was always good for a funny or sarcastic clip, even outside of movie roles. Somebody asked him how he fared in the 1929 stock market crash that began the Depression; he said: "I lost a million dollars: I would have lost even more but it was everything I had".
Same thing happened with the internet. A new medium appears, is wild and free, then popular uptake and corporate takeover result in formal and informal crushing of the vitality out of the medium.
I think we've prolonged the censorship this time. We're inching forward, progress will progress. Remember net neutrality?
My favorite Pre-Code film is Freaks, and I'm sad it got so much backlash for being anti-eugenics.
You could not have endorsed a film more effectively. I will check it out!
@Inthepotwithdiogenes it really is good. And the ending genuinely gave me a shudder the first time I watched it.
Freaks is astounding, shocking and profound. A must-see!
One of my favorite movies!
@Inthepotwithdiogenes I found it on Tubi. Fascinating movie, even for its time. It humanized people who were otherwise invisible or shunned, while showing what happens when you harm one of them in their tight-knit community. Highly recommended.
Hays code=youtube rules is so perfect a comparison. I censor myself so much, and even when doing so, i get demonetised, frustratingly after the video has gone live and gone through the checks, even 🤦🏼♀️
It's great seeing you here!❤ It's so disheartening that youtube is still hurting its own content creators with these unreasonable "rules". Important things that need to be addressed, just like you're doing with your videos, get attacked while genuinely hurtful or criminal stuff is kept without thought.
Love your stuff!
I agree, I get frustrated when I've watched a video, it gets taken down, it gets put back up...with none of the views. I'll often "rewatch" a video on 1.75 speed and muted so that the video still has at least one of its original views
We need something like what ended the hayes code and broke up the studio system for youtube. That means breaking up youtube and google
Hi!!! I love your videos! ❤
Mae West's influence in pushing forward feminism is really downplayed these days, I would love more content about it, she was a woman so far ahead of her time, it's like she was from a different planet
"I'm the girl that works at Paramount all day and Fox all night" 🤭😳
- Mae West
That would be an awesome video for Kaz to do! I'd watch it in a heartbeat
Based as fuck.
7 years in Hollywood was pretty respectable career for a woman back then. Actresses didn’t last long as a rule
Mae West was a smart business woman. She invested in real estate and they say she made more money in that than she did in her movie career.
Being in love with this era it kills me people think older films were *always* straitlaced. Even outside of the precode era it can be untrue, but within it, it's especially untrue. There's an underrated one like Penthouse that subversively makes a heroine of a call girl and has oodles of naughty dialogue you'd expect with such a theme and one like Merrily We Go to Hell which has its female director tackle open relationships (Not in an overtly flattering way, but it at least addressed the toxicity able to take place in an arrangement of that kind), or Design for Living which is the most subversive of all of these. Not to mention ones like Night Nurse or Gold Diggers of 1933 that have strong female characters out the wazoo. I could go on and on. Precodes are the shit.
They way people pretend like Hollywood movies were the only ones in existence kills me as well.
But even those “straitlaced” films are still containing some of the best cinema ever!😊
@@loadishstone It all depends! Sometimes it feels prudish, but other times it's wholesome. 😄
where can i watch?
I tend to stick to mostly French and German films during this time period, so I appreciate the American suggestions!!
"this collectable 1970s Arby's Mae West glass" is a phrase I didn't know I needed in my life lmao
Seriously!
Comparing The Hayes code to modern day TH-cam guidelines is actually a genius insight holy shit. Now I know how people in the 40s felt being fed edge-less media by creators terrified of the consequences. The situation sucks for both parties
all my homies HATE the hays code🗣️🗣️
REAL
facts 💯💯
WE DO!!!!
Agreed. 😑😒
It's like saying all my homies hate Spanish Inquisition) It doesn’t exist anymore 🙂
I love that Tutter has his own little chair
He looks kind of terrified, what has he been forced to witness?
Like Cinderella lol
30:30 this letter sent me
“My dear Bozo…” 😂😂
"I don't even hope that you are well" did it for me. added to vocabulary.
I literally almost spit out my hot tea
I’m gonna start calling people fat heads now
Same omg
28:55 "if these people can't go to a church or be led off to war or be given a new hysteria, they're kind of lost"
Good to see not much has changed
Is it tho? Sometimes I think we’re doomed
It's almost like they see us as faceless masses instead of individuals with dreams and ambitions... almost...
Ding ding ding
Nothing has changed.
Looking back it's exhausting how conservative religious groups are to this day still shrieking about the same kinds of things they shrieked about back then. But it's also encouraging to think of how we keep inching our way forward despite it all.
Conservatives are the original creators of “cancel culture”…. Now they all cry about it since it’s no longer in their favor 💀
That is if a certain orange man doesn’t become the most powerful person in the world for 4 years and turns us into christofascist state 😃
And they count on people not knowing enough history, not only of the "traditional" kind ("major" events and figures), but also of areas such as the media. No wonder they want to dismantle public education and complain about people taking courses on the media in universities. They want people to think that their favorite movies and TV (and music and books and ...) are "just a show," divorced from the contexts in which they emerged. They also want people to think that what we're seeing now is a "subversion of traditional values," when that "subversion" has been happening for a long time, and even predate the "traditional values" they want to "bring back." Plus ca change...
Love this, two steps forward, 1.9 steps back.. just keep swimming, just keep swimming... 🐟💙
@@jrneal1220 So you're saying they want people to think their favorite movies and TV fell out of a coconut tree?
Makes me sad that there are clear parallels between the Hays Code and what is currently happening to videos and the Internet in general, and yet, history is repeating itself. Even sadder that there are people today saying it's actually a good thing...
Makes me wonder what will happen to video games in the future...
makes me sad we are seeing many parallels to the 1920s and 30s in general :(
@@valentinaaugustina True that... I can only fear the 40s...
Video games have already gone to the federal level in the USA
I studied this era during my Media Studies degree, I was surprised just how scandalous they were! Look forward to watching this.
even more than the 70's??? seriously?
@@cloudsofsunset7323 The seventies were scandalous too don't get me wrong, but they didn't result in a censorship code being created because of them. One of the good things about the Hays Code speaking as a Brit was a lot of Hollywood talent started making films in Europe where they could be a bit less constrained in what they could show.
"My Dear Bozo"
That caught me so off guard 💀
It definitely threw me off lol. I for a moment wondered if that was some kind of early 20th century slang that I didn't know about, like "old sport". And then I read the rest of the letter hahah
As a recent film school graduate, I love seeing you cover topics like this, because film history is absolutely wild and not enough deep dives are really done into specific eras like this outside of more academically-oriented settings.
Pre Code films I love... Red Dust, Baby Face, Mystery of the Wax Museum, The Maltese Falcon, Golddiggers of 1933, Footlight Parade, Dinner At Eight, I'm No Angel, She Done Him Wrong, Dangerous Curves, Murder In The Zoo...
The remake of The Maltese Falcon is better
I appreciate both for different reasons 🙂
Can't stand it when people say "You can't joke about anything these days" as if the Hays code era was any better.
There's a book called "Siren Queen" by Nghi Vo that talks about a fictional queer Chinese-American woman who becomes an early film star, but it's told like a fairytale with magical realism throughout. Couldn't stop thinking about it while I was listening to this.
I realize that this is a nearly two week old comment so you may not see this, but thank you for sharing about this book! I'm always looking for good queer media of any kind, but especially books and I just added this one to my cart to buy after reading a bit about it. You're an awesome internet stranger!
@@melaniebyrd3322 so glad that I could help! I really hope you enjoy it 😊
Literally one of my fave topics ever! 👏 and thank you Kaz for having me be your Mae West 🥰💃🏻✨
People often seem to forget that The Jazz Singer was only a partial talky but mostly silent. The first full talking picture was The Lights of New York. I think that deserves its own video.
why is it seen as the first talkie anyways?
@@jordynsimmons1107 Other silent films before then had had sound singing but Al Jolson improvised the dialogue section.
They always point out the scene with the band, but I've seen the movie and the scene that really sticks with me is where Al Jolson's character is talking with his mother. Hearing the real voices of both of them, and the father really briefly before it switches back to silence, is amazing for a recording almost 100 years old. Of course the limited technology only makes Jolson come through clearly, but you can still hear the other dialogue.
It also wasn't the first feature film to use a synchronized soundtrack, that was Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans released just months before
I love when TCM plays silent movies or really old 30s stuff. I grew up watching classic Hollywood movies from the 20th century as a millennial and was so captivated by them. Movies felt like a production and is a totally different experience than today's current movies. People really wanted to tell a story and entertain and captivate their audiences. It's a shame a lot of those early movies are completely lost media due to fires and misplacement or reuse of tape.
....thank...God...Kaz is back... the way i have missed them 😢 time for my monthly dosed of history and sass
“I don’t even hope that you are well” DAMN
me when I get led poisoning from my 70s may west arbys cup: yipppeee!!!!!
Made sometime in the 1920s, staring Joan Crawford, "Rain" is, honestly, one of the coolest movies I've ever seen! From the spiraling camera work to tight character construction and the tense story not quite going where it seems to be going, it doesn't seem like a film that was made a hundred years ago! No spoilers, just see it and be happy you did!
Also, I like hearing what Mila has to say. Great video, Kaz!
Great timing, since Mae West's birthday was yesterday!
I don't know many pre-code films, but recently I saw It Happened One Night - it's a complete delight from start to finish, and surprisingly sexy. If I didn't know I was bi before watching it, this film would have made it unavoidable. Clark Gable and Claubert Colbert have perfect chemistry. Plus the story of how it got made is quite surprising - apparently both stars hated the script and each other, and Colbert walked off the set before filming was complete, which forced Frank Capra to come up with a clever way of ending the story that could be pulled off without her being on-camera. And it works!
Just want to say as Jewish woman it's awesome to see you rocking your natural hair!! Took me years to be ok with mine and unlearn the urge to straighten it so thank you and you look amazing. Really empowering to see it on other people.
My hair is the same
@@harrietamidala1691 Hair twins
@@laurabayford1987 same background as well.
My father-in-law was born in 1914. He was a really religious guy but at the same time, he grew up in little towns in Kentucky and Oklahoma, not quite the hot bed of scandal. When he was in Jay Oklahoma, he owned a billiard parlor (pool hall) and that was thought to be scandalous (think about the musical "Music Man" and their representation of the game). He also became mayor. Later, he ran the local theater. He moved to Antlers Oklahoma in 1956 and my husband was born there. He tells the story about dad not even watching a movie where the man took off his outer shirt and showed his t-shirt. I found this rather odd considering his youthful jobs of the past. He was also lay minister of the local Methodist church . He liked movies, but just not all the "sin" stuff in some of them. By the time my husband and I were old enough to watch movies at the theater, they had started the rating codes. G for general PG for parent guidance, and M for mature audiences (before they moved to PG because it was vague who was mature enough to see films. And then there were R and X, XX, and XXX).
I study/specialize in Pre-Code films, so it's nice to hear you to give a pretty blanket overview of the story. I'm surprised you didn't name drop the play that got May West arrested >:). To add to Queen Christina though, her star power was super important that they even allowed her to make that film, with the censorship being that Christina's lover had a boyfriend waiting in the wings. It's too bad, but otherwise that movie is a dang masterpiece.
Her boyfriend gets killed off, so that counteracts it
I was legit rambling at my boyfriend last night about the Hays' Code so this is perfect timing lol
My favourite Mae West quote from ‘Myra Breckinridge’: ‘Never mind about the 6 feet… let’s talk about the 7 inches…’
I'm such a nerd I popped for the use of the White Army font XD
The uncertainty around one particular aspect of the code - 'no relations between the white and black races' - heavily affected the career of one of my favourite actresses, Anna May Wong. They weren't sure if showing an Asian woman in a relationship with a white man counted as 'miscegenation' so she was relegated to supporting roles, playing exotic servants or evil 'Dragon Ladies'. Then when an adaptation of The Good Earth came along - a story about Chinese people - they wouldn't let her play the female lead because they'd cast the white Paul Muni and put him in Yellowface makeup. Who knows what career she might have had if they'd gone ahead and let her play that role, or given her something good?
22:02 It’s only a little jarring that she speaks with the same cadence as Tree Trunks from Adventure Time
ahahha I’ve been told that every time I do that accent 🙈
“Everywhere that learning is too big of a burden for mortal minds” 😂😂😂
Yessss. This whole situation with the Hays code is such an important thing to study nowadays because while we're not facing "formal" censorship on the internet and media that FORBIDS certain topics, we've definitely seen an uptake on control of content from big media corporations. Disney, tiktok, twitter, instagram, youtube.... they have been trying to make the entire internet "family friendly" and centric-leaning, as to not offend anyone, if not outright conservative like twitter.
Like sure, some content controls are needed for like children but that's on parents to enforce and the apps to provide the safe options, not to just censor everything.
Coincidentally, we're also facing an economic crisis 😅😢 Anyway.... great times we live in.
I remember an anecdote in one documentary or another on the Depression that talked about how people in a neighbourhood would split their tickets - each household would go see a different movie and try to remember it as clearly as possible to relay back to the others, or if there was nothing new, they would all pool their money together for next time to be able to see two movies per household. Some people even would be caught by ushers taking notes by the light of the screen.
Wonderful! Love that you included a quote from my friend Mark’s marvelous book FORBIDDEN HOLLYWOOD
My favorite pre-codes: FEMALE (1933) woman executive burns through her male secretaries FRISCO JENNY (1932) a post quake sex worker sets up a ‘house’ with health and childcare benefits for her employees, and THE WET PARADE (1932) a mid prohibition film which reminds viewers why the Volstead act happened and why it wasn’t working (so eye opening!)
You’re the best!!
Yes, Ruth Chatterton! She was fabulous and now, unfortunately, pretty much forgotten.
Very incredible video!! Was surprised you didn't bring up any of Tod Browning's films tho, especially 'Freaks.' Of all the precode movies I've seen, that one has stuck with me the longest and hardest because of how shocking the content was. I had to be really objective whilst watching it due to the standards of the time being so different, but was very glad the antagonist got what was coming to her in the end.
Best outro I've ever heard: "... And if you're caught between two evils, pick the one you've never tried before."
I’m convinced the Hayes Code is why people view the 50s as a “simpler time” and its ripple on effects also make people think all black and white film is squeaky clean. But then again, some people who also know about the Hayes Code believe that there are no explicit deep themes in 50s films. I just watched A Place in the Sun (1951) and was surprised at how much it was allowed to get away with
The whole "squeaky-clean" view of the 50s probably comes from television, which had an even stricter censorship than movies.
Hollywood movies, on the other hand, were getting edgier year after year over the course of the 50s and 60s, as the Hays Code was slowly losing its influence after the fall of the studio system in 1948.
Original Tarzan swimming nude with Jane was true art expressing the desire to escape modernity it wasn't erotic.
Sure jan
It can be two things 😊
Erotic media can be true art too! It also could be read either way, or like someone else said it represents both at the same time, and that’s okay too.
Tarzan and Jane tapped into the European construct of "the noble savage".
never realized it but seems like Comic book code took alot of influence from Hayes code.
I was going to comment that all the uproar was repeated 20 years later with comic books when they were the scary, scandalous new media "corrupting" the youth.
The channel Casually Comics has a good video about the code if anyone wants to learn more.
Comics Code Authority!
So excited! I have just recently watched Night After Night (1932) Mae West- again! Mae is an Olympian! A regular Atlas! the way she holds the whole picture up! One of her all-time greatest lines is in this movie BUT it's her line leading up to that one (and every single line of her dialogue!) that has stuck with me for decades! I want sell everybody on seeking it out- but I don't have Kaz skills!
I can wait no more to see what's covered in this one!!!!
Been having a horrid weekend so this new episode will no doubt brighten my life.
Just to answer the questions at the end, I love pre-code films, they're probably my single favourite era/genre/whatever. Especially love Trouble in Paradise, Gold Diggers of 1933 and Blonde Venus. Thanks for the great video!
The sheer amount of sass in this video is through the roof! I love it!!!!
This has been a special interest of mine for YEARS.
Pre-code favorites: I love Ernst Lubistch films. I think "Design for Living" might be the first film portrayal of what we'd call a polyamorous triad; if anyone can find earlier representation, let me know.
In my collection of film memorabilia, I have an issue of "Motion Picture Herald" from August 11, 1934, and the cover story is "What the Production Code Really says" and it is fascinating. Basically "the code and you" for industry professionals.
This was a great video! My favorite pre-codes tend to be anything with Barbara Stanwick and the horror movies. horror movies, especially try to hold onto some of that silent film style and then use sound sparingly
i just submitted an essay on madam Satan (1930) and then you come out with this banger???
1932’s Red-Headed Woman (starring Jean Harlow) has one of the craziest endings I’ve ever seen in a movie. Just truly wild. 10/10.
i honestly thought alaska was exaggerating when she impersonated mae west but no not really
“When I’m good I’m good, but when I’m bad a get a serious venereal disease, auuauauauhwehhoooo.”
I wrote a paper on The Sign of the Cross last semester (I just clicked on the video, so I don't know yet if you mention it!) and me looking at your sources is very much the Leonardo pointing meme. Very excited to watch this!
"Baby Face" is a given when it comes to pre-code movies, but two other great Barbara Stanwyck flicks are "Illicit," Night Nurse," "Forbidden" and "Shopworn," which sees Clara Blandick (Auntie Em in "The Wizard of Oz") both send Barbara to prison and pull a gun on her to keep her away from Clara's darling son (Auntie Em, for God's sake!). Also "Week-End Marriage," in which Loretta Young becomes a successful business woman while her husband shrivels with shame at not being the breadwinner. The end is very much code-friendly (and economically ridiculous), but the ride is interesting.
38:23 this whole part with the scary words made me realize how wild it is that SO many words on the internet have to be typed with numbers, symbols, or accented letters, or just outright replaced with sound-alikes, emojis, or nonsense synonyms, when that would have seemed bonkers like… 10 years ago? 15 years ago? I was watching original episodes of Fraggle Rock yesterday, and some of the characters sometimes offhandedly use the words k!11 or d!3 and the fact that I was taken aback like “they can use those words in a kids’ show?!” speaks volumes about the state of censorship today. 😵💫😵💫 (Also the editing on this part gave me a good laugh, thank you 🫶)
Forget 10 years ago. It's bonkers right now. Censoring words like 'kill' or 'die' is kindergarten level BS.
I'm so glad we got to hear Nima's opinions on sound's negative affect on movie cinematography. Fascinating thoughts!
FINALLY a video about pre code from a fashion history/queer perspective!!!! Yay!!!
Minor note: Howard Hughes directed and produced, but did not star in Hell's Angels (1930).
Great video, regardless. Love to hear and learn about film history, especially at that time covered here.
Oh, God, the making of Hell’s Angels could merit a video on its own. Hughes was such a perfectionist and took so long that he started it as a silent film and converted it to a talkie partway through. He lost his original leading lady because he was taking so long and replaced her with Jean Harlow.
Your average person doesn't know about the Hays code or why movies and TV shows have more mature content in the last two decades than 40 years before. We were watching It Happened One Night and I commented that it had to have been made before the Hays Code went into effect, and my family was very confused.
Also, live Mae West and would love it if you made a video on her life and career.
I think I've only seen one pre-code talkie - Just Imagine (1930). It's a romance set in the sci-fi futuristic world of 1980, and it's not very good but it is fascinating. All food is in pill form, all cars are flying cars, and people have numbers instead of names, but everyone still uses fountain pens.
The costume design is pretty interesting, and it includes a trip to Mars, and a man being brought back to life after being frozen for 50 years. It's technically a musical, but it has very few songs and they're mostly forgettable.
Couples sleeping in the same bed? Scandalous.
Tallulah Bankhead was my mother’s cousin. I grew up hearing wonderful stories about how fucking amazing she was. She was my mom’s fave extended family member and she’d always talk about what a huge progressive influence she was on my mother
That's excellent. Nazimova was my grandfather's cousin, but he only met her once in Russia when he was a child. She was probably too extreme for her religiously conservative Jewish family. 😢
Monster movies are some of my pre-code favs. Mae West always brings a smile to my face. Watching old movies on tv was a way of bonding with my dad.
A fact I find interesting is that, along with Steamboat Willie and Snow White, Franklin Roosevelt loved Mae West's I'm No Angel which is intresting because his presidency coincides with end of the the pre-code era and the hay day of the Golden Age of Hollywood.
And never forget our favorite horror films were made during these years. Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man. The Mummy and the Bride of Frankenstein. So much for scandalous films
Can't wait for your Mae West video!!!
Omg I saw the title and could not be more excited! 🥺🤩
Awesome video topic! I researched the Hays Code for my history day project in my junior year of high school. I only wish this vid had been made sooner so I could get my hands on more sources 😆
I watch a lot of Turner Classic Movies. Like I think any amount of TCM is probably weird for a early 30s millennial but it is always on in my house. I like classic cinema. One of my favorite things is how excited the presenters get when they talk about pre-code movies.
No it's not. I'm 31 and I've been watching and collecting classic Hollywood movies since I was in my late teens early twenties. Still do. My favorite movie series are the Thin Man and Tarzan films from MGM. My favorite actor is Cary Grant and favorite actress I'll have to get back to you on that. There's too many great ones
@@nicklundy9965I’m a big Spencer Tracy and Doris Day fan myself.
@@Jonasansu oh those are great ones!
Howard Hughes did not star in Hell’s Angel with Jean Harlow. He did produce the movie though.
Howard Hughes produced and directed Hell’s Angels.
The Mae West glass is a treasure!! ❤️
I have personally watched 1 silent film and 1 pre-code talkie, and I love both so much. The silent film was Anders als die Anderen (Different than the Others, staring Conrad Veidt), which is a film from 1919 about a gay couple having to deal with a blackmailer who makes the life of specifically one of them basically hell. It's often seen as one of the first if not the first more positive depictions of queer relationships. The talkie was The Vampire Bat from 1933 (staring Dwight Frye and Fay Wray), which is mostly just funny to me. A small german town is faced with weird deaths, and everyone jumps to the conclusion of vampires, but the main detective of the town isn't convinced. Both are here on youtube, and I do very much recommend them.
As a fan of Pre-Code Hollywood, the thing you realize after watching a bunch of Pre-Code films...their idea of what is scandalous back then is rather tame. You go in expecting something really taboo. But after the Hays code ended in the late 1960's, it was the films of the 1970's that were FAR more explicit in content. Sex, sexuality, Queerness, violence, profanity, subversive anti-religious, anti-government content was like nothing you saw from 1929-1934. Past the 70s, movies slowly got more tame throughout the 80's and 90's. The last 25 years have been, overall, the tamest time in movies since the end of the Hays Code.
got the notification and IMMEDIATELY sent it to my dad (this is his niche)!!
I have a fondness for the 1933 International House starring W.C. Fields. It's worth seeing for the song performed by a juvenile Rose Marie (who played Sally in The Dick Van Dyke Show) and for Fields and George Burns tag-teaming a then-brunette Gracie Allen and losing. However, I like it for two innuendos delivered by Fields, best experienced in context: "Don't let the posy fool you!" and "I'm trying to find the button."
I love all of your videos--and can't wait to see one about Mae West.
1, As soon as a technology becomes publically accessible, people start to test the boundaries of "propriety."
Then 2, legislation is forced on the masses "for the greater good" requiring "propriety" to become standardized.
Then 3, when that soulless standardization becomes unpopular, in turn lessening profitablity, those at the top making all of the legislation & the profit have to quarrel over which is more important (profit almost always winning out) regardless of what the public wants or needs as the technology becomes more privatized & inconvenient.
And then 4, a new technology comes about to replace it & the cycle starts all over agin.
One of my favorite films is *All Quiet on the Western Front*
It’s not necessarily scandalous (aside from being extremely anti-nationalist), but I was surprised by how dark it gets in places. The most iconic moment is probably the hands on the barbed wire (which hasn’t held up in terms of special effects but manages to be striking and haunting in spite of that), but the most horrific scene imo was the boots montage. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go watch *All Quiet on the Western Front*
This was the first film that came to mind when I clicked on this video. For the last several years, I've slowly been working my way through the "must see" classics. All Quiet on the Western Front shook me to the core. A truly excellent film, but it absolutely goes to places far darker than I ever expected. The hands on the barbed wire will stay with me for a long, long time.
@@rhondaorberson9664 The part that really got me was the boots montage. That and when Paul goes home near the end
@@mollywantshugs5944 definitely! The boots spoke volumes about the cruel reality of war.
@@rhondaorberson9664 something I forgot to say about the barbed wire thing that makes it even darker is that it didn’t come from the book: one of the German vets who worked on these movie said they saw something like that actually happen in the war
People sometimes forget that the Hayes Code era also surpressed anything immoral, not just sex. My favorite “pre code” is Trouble in Paradise, not JUST because of the witty reparte between Miriam Hopkins and Herbert Marshall and the Lubitch Touch, but because the con artist-thieves GET AWAY WITH IT and presumably live happily ever after. That ending would have been impossible just two years later.
I LOVE THE EVENHANDED BALANCE AND DEPTH YOU BRING TO YOUR STORYTELLING.
42:12 I don’t have full context for what they’re saying here about The Philadelphia Story or context for how the movie would have been interpreted in 1940, but it seems like they way missed the mark on what the text of that movie is saying. If I recall correctly Tracy acts/seems like she’s above everyone else, looks down on others, but simultaneously doesn’t want to be put on a pedestal. Both she and Dexter had to grow and change after their divorce. Tracy does hers over the course of the movie. It’s when she acknowledges her flaws and owns the consequences, good and bad, that she and Dext get back together. She doesn’t try and change herself to make the wedding with George work when he asks her to. Sure the optics of getting black out drunk and cavorting with a guy who isn’t your intended aren’t great, but it’s not condemned by the text. Learning to be a “proper and good wife who must support her husband despite his faults” and only then self worth blah blah hits on the truth in a very limited way. The movie is about her and Dext growing in ways that ultimately make them better people and better partners to each other. It’s very Jane Austen. Speaking of…
Code era, Regency era, hilarious subtext and sexual innuendo in some stories as a result of society’s rules… Love that shit.
Yay new Kaz!
I can never skip a Kaz upload
I am very interested in pre code films.
Since Arzner and Clara Bow were mentioned here, there is a big spot in my heart for "The Wild Party" (1929). I like how it explores the homosocial environment of a college in a very queer way, including romantic friendship. Also it is a flapper look for the 1930s, showing us femmeness as something aspirational and transgressive, expression of a working class character aiming for a better life and dressing the part. Knowing about the butch behind the camera, this feels very much like a representation of things to come for the midcentury.
Garbo and Marlene of course made great films.
"The Smiling Lieutenant" (1931) might be my favorite Lubitsch musical but he really did a lot during these years.
"Forsaking all Others" (1934) is on the tail-end of that era. But it explores some kink and consent in a playful way I can appreciate.
My favorite precode is Baby Face, the Barbara Stanwyck epic sometimes called the Citizen Kane of precode. You must see it
My favorite movie is The Unknown with Lon Chaney and Joan Crawford (it might be her first film). Todd Browning directed and cut it down to the bare bones of the story, so anything salacious is implied.
"My dear bozo" is wild but kind of iconic ngl
Between “My Dear Bozo” and “You Fathead,” the letter almost sounds like something from A Christmas Story. 😂
One of my favourite films with a pre-code sensibility is Over The Moon… made in 1939. It’s a British production, and it offers a glimpse of some startling differences in the attitudes of the British Board of Film Censors vs The Code. The whole story is how a young woman with vast resources and no minders can experience a *lot* of life’s spice and become worldly without becoming a used-up, jaded cynic. No one shoots a cop, but there’s few other items from the code that don’t get gleefully trodden upon and still the BBFC hung an approval on it.
This was very fine. An excellent treatment of a complex topic in a complex way. You always enlighten and entertain, but this episode was a high point. Also, great voicing of Mae West!
This was really well done in explaining the Pre-code era and drawing a connection to today's censorship all within 45 minutes. Thank you!
I realize this has nothing to do with the topic but I love the era appropriate costumes you choose. And unlike many you look comfortable and natural in them. I love most of your content too.
I would love to hear you do a video on Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, especially “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane” :)
I wish every youtuber would band together and say fuck in every video. Like what are advertisers gonna do? Not advertise on youtube?
I remember growing up and going to a Parochial (i.e., Catholic) school. They posted the monthly newsletter of the Legion of Decency and they had nothing good to say about any movie. I starkly remember their gripes about Jonathan Livingston Seagull. 🙄 I don't remember one movie they actually embraced wholeheartedly.
Honestly this is the best essay on the Hays Code I've watched on TH-cam, congrats!
I'm a huge nerd for pre-code films, pre-code queer cinema and women pioneers like Arzner and Lupino, so it's very refreshing to see this cinema history period discussed. Thanks!!
(btw I've discussed the Hays Code in my own cinema youtube channel @KinocubeCinema, in the video about gangster films ofc)