Baby Face (1933)

(On Cable TV, November 2020) Every time I think I’ve seen enough of the Pre-Code era, TCM unearths another example of the period from its archives and I’m left agog at how good 1930–1934 movies could be. To be fair, Baby Face is an exemplary example of the form (“The Citizen Kane of Pre-Code movies,” as it’s been memorably called), with Barbara Stanwyck playing a young woman who uses sex to climb up the social ladder. Through a series of seductions and some incredible chutzpah whenever danger threatens to bring her down, she spends the film going from success to success. There are clear plot similarities here with Red-Headed Woman, as Warner Brother was trying to outdo MGM in the salaciousness department. But Baby Face still has the power to astonish by its very direct references to the lead characters’ carnality and her utter amorality—it’s no wonder that it’s often mentioned as one of the dozens of movies that specifically caused the Hays Code to be imposed on Hollywood in 1934-35. Now that it has been unearthed from the archives (and even included in the National Film Registry!), it’s a welcome reminder that the “innocent” Hollywood of 1935-60ish was an imposed fabrication rather than a representation of people who didn’t know any better. Stanwyck is remarkable here, although, as usual, her role is strikingly different from any of the other movies she’s known for: he managed to evade pigeonholing, at the expense of developing a consistent screen persona like so many of her contemporaries. Elsewhere in the cast, a young John Wayne shows up as one of the seduced men. I was really enjoying most of the film until the ending—after so much status-seeking depravity, it seems a bit cheap to have the protagonist see the errors of her ways at the very end. But that may be asking a bit too much for even a Pre-Code film: a completely amoral ending that respected the character would have been going too far. Still, the rest of Baby Face is definitely worth a look: Pre-Code Hollywood is special.