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Jul. 18th, 2011 11:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsSo this weekend a whole bunch of us went to check out the opening of Film Forum's Essential Pre-Code double feature nights, which, by the way: AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME and my greatest sorrow is that I can't see EVERYTHING. ;____;
The first movie we saw was Two Seconds, in which Edward G. Robinson gets the electric chair and sees the Events Which Brought Him to This Sad Fate flash before his eyes. There are number of different morals that can be taken from this movie:
1. NEVER ditch your wingman. EVEN IF all your wingman wants to do is blow his cash on horses and hookers, sticking with your bro is still better than going off alone to a ten-cent dance hall, because . . .
2. NEVER rescue helpless-looking dance hall girls. They are only out for the money you make as a construction worker and will try to seduce you by talking to you about your passion: EDUCATION.
3. NEVER get drunk on dates. You may wake up and find yourself unexpectedly married to a lady who is only out for your money and won't even go to an educational lecture with you. :(
4. In fact, generally staying away from jazz and liquor is probably a good plan.
5. NEVER get into a fight with your best friend on top of a sixty-foot girder. It can only end poorly for one of you.
6. WOMEN ARE OUT FOR YOUR MONEY. AND EVIL.
Which made it kind of hilarious that the follow-up movie was Baby Face, which has a take much more along the lines of "women who decide to take control of their lives by manipulating men for money may be wrong, but . . . also kind of awesome?"
Admittedly 90% of this is due to Barbara Stanwyck's Lily, who won our hearts completely in the first five minutes by dumping hot coffee on a creepy groper's fingers, then, when he doesn't take the hint, calmly smashing him over the head with a bottle in between sips of beer.
Lily starts out the movie working in the speakeasy owned by her terrible terrible father, who's basically been pimping her out to government officials so that he can stay in business. Her only allies are her black best friend Chico who works in the kitchen (note: Chico, played by the fantastic and often-underrated Theresa Harris, doesn't get to do all that much in this movie, but . . . man, just the fact that the film shows her as basically Lily's friend and comrade is pretty good for 1933) and the kindly old German gentleman down the street.
KINDLY OLD GERMAN GENTLEMAN: Lily, you need to get out and make something of yourself! How about the improving books I've been giving you?
LILY: You really think I can have a better life?
KINDLY OLD GERMAN GENTLEMAN: Yes, of course! If you read your Nietzsche, go to the big city, study the uses of power, and use sex to exploit men until you get everything you want, your life will be awesome. Destroy all sentiment, sweetheart!
THE VIEWING AUDIENCE: . . . .
Fortunately, that night Lily's father is killed in a SPONTANEOUS STILL EXPLOSION, so Lily and Chico sneak onto a train to New York.
RAILWAY ENGINEER: Hey, ladies, you can't be on this train!
LILY: *bats eyelashes*
CHICO: *very politely wanders off into a corner of the boxcar and pretends not to see her BFF seducing a railway engineer three feet away*
After arriving in the city with Chico, Lily sets her sights on a bank and basically decides to use Catherine the Great's methods to TAKE OVER one executive at a time, getting herself ever-better jobs, ever-nicer apartments, and ever-more-fabulous dresses.
swankyfunk: She just date-and-dumped John Wayne!
(I will confess I hadn't noticed it was John Wayne; I was too busy staring at her bizarre capelet. Priorities!)
By the time she's worked her way up to this gentleman she has a huge apartment, a footman, and Chico posing as her maid - but a maid who's apparently taking in a good portion of the profits and wears furs on her night out, not to mention this recurring theme:
WEALTHY GENTLEMAN CALLER: So, I'm not sure about that maid of yours -
LILY: You'd better not say anything about that again. If Chico goes, I GO.
Apparently this sort of thing drew a lot of disapproval from studio executives, possibly because it creates the understandable impression that the real OTP of the film is Lily/Chico.
Anyway, things are going pretty well until one of Lily's ex-boyfriends storms in in a jealous rage, finds his boss in Lily's boudoir, and shoots both the boss and himself.
Lily's reaction is to heave a long-suffering sigh and read some fortifying Nietzsche.
Fortunately, all the scandal really does is get her and Chico tickets to Paris, a new job in the Paris bank - which Lily of course excels at, because aside from being good in bed she's also extremely smart - and an introduction to the hot young jet-setting president of the company, who knows exactly what she's been doing and kind of admires her chutzpah.
We all know where this is going.
COMPANY PRESIDENT: Lily, I love you!
LILY: Eh, no you don't.
COMPANY PRESIDENT: I'll give you anything!
LILY: I mean, I'm not going to object to you giving me everything, but that isn't love.
COMPANY PRESIDENT: Well, what do you want?
LILY: I'd kind of like to have a Mrs. on my name before I die, it'd be socially useful. You can divorce me two weeks after that if you want, I don't care.
COMPANY PRESIDENT: . . .
Hilariously, at this point, the president basically takes on the role of ingenue in a romance novel. He knows she's had (many, many) flings before him, and she acts cold and callous because of her tragic backstory, and she's only out for profit, but IF HE JUST LOVES HER ENOUGH, MAYBE SHE'LL EVENTUALLY LOVE HIM BACK.
Sadly, the bank does not see it that way, and arrests him for mismanagement of funds or something. At which point he comes and asks earnestly for all the half a million dollars' worth of gifts he's given Lily to post bail and stop him from going to jail.
Lily gets halfway back to Paris before she realizes that THE POWER OF LOVE has been sort of working on her cold hard heart and she guesses she can post bail after all. Alas, her husband has attempted to commit suicide while she was out . . . but he might survive! And hey, they still have half a million dollars. Happy ending?
(The censored version apparently makes it clear that they both live and forswear the jet-setting lifestyle, but where's the fun in that?
The censored version also makes very sure to cut out all the Nietzsche.)
The first movie we saw was Two Seconds, in which Edward G. Robinson gets the electric chair and sees the Events Which Brought Him to This Sad Fate flash before his eyes. There are number of different morals that can be taken from this movie:
1. NEVER ditch your wingman. EVEN IF all your wingman wants to do is blow his cash on horses and hookers, sticking with your bro is still better than going off alone to a ten-cent dance hall, because . . .
2. NEVER rescue helpless-looking dance hall girls. They are only out for the money you make as a construction worker and will try to seduce you by talking to you about your passion: EDUCATION.
3. NEVER get drunk on dates. You may wake up and find yourself unexpectedly married to a lady who is only out for your money and won't even go to an educational lecture with you. :(
4. In fact, generally staying away from jazz and liquor is probably a good plan.
5. NEVER get into a fight with your best friend on top of a sixty-foot girder. It can only end poorly for one of you.
6. WOMEN ARE OUT FOR YOUR MONEY. AND EVIL.
Which made it kind of hilarious that the follow-up movie was Baby Face, which has a take much more along the lines of "women who decide to take control of their lives by manipulating men for money may be wrong, but . . . also kind of awesome?"
Admittedly 90% of this is due to Barbara Stanwyck's Lily, who won our hearts completely in the first five minutes by dumping hot coffee on a creepy groper's fingers, then, when he doesn't take the hint, calmly smashing him over the head with a bottle in between sips of beer.
Lily starts out the movie working in the speakeasy owned by her terrible terrible father, who's basically been pimping her out to government officials so that he can stay in business. Her only allies are her black best friend Chico who works in the kitchen (note: Chico, played by the fantastic and often-underrated Theresa Harris, doesn't get to do all that much in this movie, but . . . man, just the fact that the film shows her as basically Lily's friend and comrade is pretty good for 1933) and the kindly old German gentleman down the street.
KINDLY OLD GERMAN GENTLEMAN: Lily, you need to get out and make something of yourself! How about the improving books I've been giving you?
LILY: You really think I can have a better life?
KINDLY OLD GERMAN GENTLEMAN: Yes, of course! If you read your Nietzsche, go to the big city, study the uses of power, and use sex to exploit men until you get everything you want, your life will be awesome. Destroy all sentiment, sweetheart!
THE VIEWING AUDIENCE: . . . .
Fortunately, that night Lily's father is killed in a SPONTANEOUS STILL EXPLOSION, so Lily and Chico sneak onto a train to New York.
RAILWAY ENGINEER: Hey, ladies, you can't be on this train!
LILY: *bats eyelashes*
CHICO: *very politely wanders off into a corner of the boxcar and pretends not to see her BFF seducing a railway engineer three feet away*
After arriving in the city with Chico, Lily sets her sights on a bank and basically decides to use Catherine the Great's methods to TAKE OVER one executive at a time, getting herself ever-better jobs, ever-nicer apartments, and ever-more-fabulous dresses.
swankyfunk: She just date-and-dumped John Wayne!(I will confess I hadn't noticed it was John Wayne; I was too busy staring at her bizarre capelet. Priorities!)
By the time she's worked her way up to this gentleman she has a huge apartment, a footman, and Chico posing as her maid - but a maid who's apparently taking in a good portion of the profits and wears furs on her night out, not to mention this recurring theme:
WEALTHY GENTLEMAN CALLER: So, I'm not sure about that maid of yours -
LILY: You'd better not say anything about that again. If Chico goes, I GO.
Apparently this sort of thing drew a lot of disapproval from studio executives, possibly because it creates the understandable impression that the real OTP of the film is Lily/Chico.
Anyway, things are going pretty well until one of Lily's ex-boyfriends storms in in a jealous rage, finds his boss in Lily's boudoir, and shoots both the boss and himself.
Lily's reaction is to heave a long-suffering sigh and read some fortifying Nietzsche.
Fortunately, all the scandal really does is get her and Chico tickets to Paris, a new job in the Paris bank - which Lily of course excels at, because aside from being good in bed she's also extremely smart - and an introduction to the hot young jet-setting president of the company, who knows exactly what she's been doing and kind of admires her chutzpah.
We all know where this is going.
COMPANY PRESIDENT: Lily, I love you!
LILY: Eh, no you don't.
COMPANY PRESIDENT: I'll give you anything!
LILY: I mean, I'm not going to object to you giving me everything, but that isn't love.
COMPANY PRESIDENT: Well, what do you want?
LILY: I'd kind of like to have a Mrs. on my name before I die, it'd be socially useful. You can divorce me two weeks after that if you want, I don't care.
COMPANY PRESIDENT: . . .
Hilariously, at this point, the president basically takes on the role of ingenue in a romance novel. He knows she's had (many, many) flings before him, and she acts cold and callous because of her tragic backstory, and she's only out for profit, but IF HE JUST LOVES HER ENOUGH, MAYBE SHE'LL EVENTUALLY LOVE HIM BACK.
Sadly, the bank does not see it that way, and arrests him for mismanagement of funds or something. At which point he comes and asks earnestly for all the half a million dollars' worth of gifts he's given Lily to post bail and stop him from going to jail.
Lily gets halfway back to Paris before she realizes that THE POWER OF LOVE has been sort of working on her cold hard heart and she guesses she can post bail after all. Alas, her husband has attempted to commit suicide while she was out . . . but he might survive! And hey, they still have half a million dollars. Happy ending?
(The censored version apparently makes it clear that they both live and forswear the jet-setting lifestyle, but where's the fun in that?
The censored version also makes very sure to cut out all the Nietzsche.)
