Pre-Code Hollywood Collection (The Cheat / Merrily We Go to Hell / Hot Saturday / Torch Singer / Murder at the Vanities / Search for Beauty)
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Cary Grant, Fredric March, Randolph Scott, Sylvia Sidney, Tallulah BankheadBrand: Universal
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: Box set, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 420 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-04-07
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Universal Studios
Movie Reviews of Pre-Code Hollywood Collection (The Cheat / Merrily We Go to Hell / Hot Saturday / Torch Singer / Murder at the Vanities / Search for Beauty)
Movie Review: Universal's Pre-Code Hollywood Collection: Hopefully The First Of Many More
Summary: 4 Stars
Universal owns a vast catalog of Pre-Code movies, many of which the studio purchased in the 1970s from Paramount; I hope this boxset collection is the first of many. Offering six movies on three DVDs, the set doesn't feature the most outrageous or even the most memorable of Pre-Code Hollywood, but it's a start. Maybe if enough of us buy a copy Universal will take notice and continue releasing more...
Image-wise the movies look relatively good. Grain is as always evident, but each of these movies is over seventy years old. There are no commentaries or special features, which is a shame. It appears to my untrained eye that these films have been somewhat restored; there's none of that subrate quality one will find on low-tier label releases (I'm looking at YOU, Alpha Video!). For some odd reason the set comes with a pamphlet reprinting the Production Code, the document which neutered the industry. Are we supposed to burn it in rage?
The movies:
The Cheat (1931): Tallulah Bankhead plays a troublesome wife with dreams of glamorous living. Frustrated with her husband's interminable promise that he's soon to make a windfall, she gets mixed up with a globetrotting millionaire who takes a shine to her. Pretty soon it's "Indecent Proposal" six decades early; the globetrotter offers Tallulah money but it's obvious what he expects in return. A hammy melodrama, what most impressed me about The Cheat were the sets, which combine `30s art deco with a Hollywood idea of "oriental." There's nothing particularly "Pre-Code" here. Other than the expectation placed upon Tallulah in return for the money, nothing really happens - except for an unexpected scene in which someone gets branded!
Merrily We Go To Hell (1932): Fredric March plays an upcoming playwright with one heck of a drinking problem. The movie attempts to be a social relevance type of thing, warning of the dangers of alcoholism, yet it can't help but revel in the glamour of high-society partying, complete with tuxedoed drinkers and opulent art deco surroundings. If anything the movie made me WANT to drink. March is good in the role. Sometimes he comes off as too stiff but here he gets into the role, he's fluid with it. In a drunken blur he meets a girl, courts her, and the two get married. Soon after March finds success, but he also runs into an old flame. Blossom rekindles despite his marriage - Pre-Code material for sure, as March and his wife develop an open relationship. The whole thing comes off like some "Ice Storm" sort of 1970s free love/open couples affair, only with booze instead of pot. And the factor which saves their relationship is a depressing event which itself wouldn't be allowed in a Hollywood film, Post-Code.
Hot Saturday (1932): No matter how long I kept watching this movie, it just wouldn't end. There are a bujillion Pre-Code movies that could've been included here instead of this one. But this is what we've been handed: a tedious movie only brightened by Cary Grant's small role. A gaggle of twentysomethings plan a huge weekend party, complete with bootleg booze. Grant plays the dapper gadabout who hosts the party. Our heroine swoons for him, spends most of the night mooning over the lake with him - because he's just a nice guy after all. But next day the lie gets out via her jilted beau that our girl is a floozy. Her image is bashed by an outraged town and her parents threaten to kick her out. Will she find redemption? Pre-Code material: two girls fight over a pair of underwear, with one of them actually pulling it off of the other.
Torch Singer (1933): Oh, how I adore this movie. And what's funny is I'm so completely outside its target audience. For this is a weepy, soapy, maudlin melodrama, one designed and aimed like a rocket for the hearts of a female audience. It's about a single mother forced to give up her child - and who, through various soap-operatic events, goes on to become a torch singer, a children's radio show host, and finally an obsessed seeker of her abandoned child. And why do I adore this movie? Two words: Claudette Colbert. Ricardo Cortez, her co-star in this, was quoted in Lawrence Quirk's 1985 Claudette bio as saying that the Torch Singer was only good because Claudette "willed it." A true and knowing statement; if you've ever wanted to witness a star carrying a picture on her back, then this is it. I'm positive I wouldn't even like this movie if it wasn't for Claudette. But yet I've watched it three times already. Claudette shows off her entire range here: from comedy to pathos. In her "torch singer" faze she vamps it up with delight, singing in key and spinning out one-liners with aplomb. Then when she moves into her "children's radio show host" she's utterly in the moment; there's a scene where you can witness the realization cross her face - that as she delivers this dialog over the airwaves, her abandoned daughter might be somewhere out there, listening. It's a heartbreaking moment. She even gets to play a "down and out" angle; convinced she'll never find her daughter, Claudette escapes to a bar where she drinks herself into a mascara-streaked stupor, a mound of cigarette butts piled beside her lolling head. My definite favorite movie of the collection. And possibly the most Pre-Code movie here, even though it doesn't show anything naughty. Yet Claudette plays an unwed mother and while in her "torch singer" incarnation she acquires a definite "reputation" - two factors at least which would be verboten in Hollywood just a year later. And finally, I find myself humming Claudette's theme song "Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Love" at the oddest times.
Murder at the Vanities (1934): Mitchell Liesen's first sole credit as director; previous to this he'd directed (without credit) some of DeMille's 1932 "The Sign of the Cross" and had co-directed the forgotten Claudette Colbert/Fredric March 1933 film "Tonight Is Ours." A longtime DeMille assistant with a thorough experience in set and costume design, Liesen handles his first assignment with the assured skill of an old pro. The only problem, for me at least, is that the movie's just not very good. For one, it's a musical, and I've never liked musicals. Two, the plot just never gets moving, far as I'm concerned. It's all about a murder which occurs backstage during a musical revue; Victor McLaglen, of all people, plays the inspector who just happens to be in the audience and so investigates the crime. What makes the movie Pre-Code is the flesh-revealing costumes the chorines wear. In the midst of opulent and ornate musical numbers, attractive young women will materialize from the scenery in the skimpiest of costumes. In one sequence a group of them emerge from colossal flowers, topless, covering their breasts with their hands. None of this would be allowed once the Code was enforced. To add gravy there's another number all about marijuana. But despite all the topless, marijuana-praising wackiness there's something about the movie that just bores me. I intend to rewatch it someday soon to see if my feelings for it have improved.
Search for Beauty (1934): A movie calculated to exploit all those elements we seek in Pre-Code cinema. Nudity, unsavory characters, wanton attitudes: all are here in this grubby little gem. My man Larry "Buster" Crabbe appears in his first starring role, a year out from the first "Flash Gordon" serial and with his natural brown hair. We also get, in a marvelously hammy role, Robert Armstrong - "King Kong's" Carl Denham himself. The plot revolves around Armstrong's plan to cater to the burgeoning "raincoat" crowd by publishing a fitness magazine, one which will become more titilating with each issue. In other words, a respectable skin rag. Crabbe's hired on as an Olympic athlete who will lend the magazine some respectability. Only, he soon gets wind of the publisher's exploitative plans and does his best to prevent the ruining of his image. But yes, it's a comedy film - one which peeks into a men's locker room and focuses on alluring women in the midst of form-revealing stretches and workouts. But it's not a particularly funny or memorable comedy, and seems to exist only to exploit those very same elements which its sordid main characters seek to exploit in their magazine.
All in all, six forgotten films from the era in which Hollywood knew no boundaries. For myself I only enjoyed one of these movies enough to watch it multiple times - Torch Singer, of course. But there is a plethora of unreleased Pre-Code material in Universal's vaults. So let's hope they release another Pre-Code boxset - one with a better selection of films.
More Pre-Code Hollywood Collection (The Cheat / Merrily We Go to Hell / Hot Saturday / Torch Singer / Murder at the Vanities / Search for Beauty) reviews:
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Summary of Pre-Code Hollywood Collection (The Cheat / Merrily We Go to Hell / Hot Saturday / Torch Singer / Murder at the Vanities / Search for Beauty)
For the first time ever, Universal opens its vaults to bring you 6 classic films from the most decadent era in motion picture history: Pre-Code Hollywood. In 1934, Hollywood was turned upside down by the enforcement of a strict "Production Code" that would change the way movies were made for the next 34 years. During the "pre-Code" period (1929 to mid-1934), censorship barely existed in Hollywood and filmmakers had free reign to make the movies they wanted and the public demanded. No subject was taboo including adultery, murder, or sex. Starring screen legends Cary Grant, Fredric March, Claudette Colbert, Tallulah Bankhead, Randolph Scott, and Sylvia Sidney, the Pre-Code Hollywood Collection forever captures one of the most unique periods in cinema history. The Cheat A compulsive gambler (Tallulah Bankhead) will do anything to pay off her debt - including turning to a wealthy businessman behind her husband's back. Merrily We Go to Hell An abusive alcoholic (Fredric March) reunites with a woman from his past and drives his wife (Sylvia Sidney) to drastic measures. Hot Saturday Scandal erupts after a young woman (Nancy Carroll) innocently spends the night with a notorious playboy (Cary Grant) and neglects to tell her fianc? (Randolph Scott). Torch Singer After giving up her illegitimate child for adoption, a notorious nightclub singer (Claudette Colbert) attempts to find her daughter through a children's radio show. Murder at the Vanities While sexy musical revue "The Vanities" captivates an audience on its opening night, a murder investigation takes place backstage. Search for Beauty Olympic swimming champions (Buster Crabbe and Ida Lupino) are tricked into endorsing a racy magazine - and much worse.Drama DVD Video
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