Based off a prompt on Twitter that sometimes goes around, I’ve decided to create my own incredibly biased film program to take everyone through the history of narrative cinema. It’s not going to be fully comprehensive, but it should be insightful both in terms of me, myself and I. For this entry we’re going to cover both silent and sound cinema in the pre-code era. Most of the films are on YouTube, and where not I’ll link to the trailer or a scene, I feel is representative of what I am trying to showcase. There’s also some reading material I’m going to suggest, if for no other reason than I think these books are neat.
To begin,
The Silent and Pre-Code Era (1894-1933)
Reading:
Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood by William J. Mann
This is probably the book most of you would enjoy. It’s simultaneously a history of Hollywood in the earliest years, and a murder mystery. True crime at its finest. The murder of William Taylor Desmond remains one of Hollywood’s greatest mysteries, and this introduces you to it in a fun way.
Silent Stars by Jeanine Basinger
Probably the most academic book in this roster, here is an opportunity to explore the world of fame before sound. Less an analysis and more a grouped biography, you can explore the faces that made Western cinema. Basinger is an iconic writer in this regard, and she will show up again later. But I wanted to emphasise this book, because it’s probably the most thorough book I’ve read about the era’s stars.
Forbidden Hollywood: When Sin Ruled Movies by Mark A. Vieira
This book is a delightful look at cinema prior to the Hayes Code. If there is a book that describes genre development, it’s this one. And it’s not written like horsesh*t, which is lovely. Oftentimes texts concerning art are dry and methodical, but this is entertaining.
I can’t pretend racism, homophobia, transphobia ect. never and still don’t existed. But I can prevent myself from recommending the worst of it to you. Thus, Birth of a Nation (1915) or films like it are not on this list. We’re going to have (my version of) fun with this. That will never include blackface and literal KKK propaganda.
Moving on!
This is an exciting era, because the stuffiness we associate with black and white cinema hasn’t been established yet. This is a period when boundaries were being pushed. There’s something distinctly modern about many of the films of this era, and the humour tends to hit harder because of it. But there’s also a moralising tone underneath that gets emphasised later, and remains in many films today.
Alice In Wonderland (1910)
The oldest film on this list, I wanted to present what would have been one of the first real special effects films shown to audiences. While there’s nothing special to modern audiences of a girl growing small in a movie, it’s essentially a green screen shot, this would have been astounding to see in an era where film itself was a new medium and hard to access. Short and sweet, it’s a great entry to the silent era.
Camille (1921)
This is probably the film that people should watch to understand the appeal of Rudolph Valentino. It’s not his most famous work, nor his most iconic (both of these awards would go to his brownface rape fantasy The Sheik (1921), not recommended here), but it is the film that feels the most modern out of his catalogue. But also the most foreign? Produced by Alla Nazimova, the female lead and one of my favourite lesbians, the film is aesthetically beautiful in a way most silent era cinema wasn’t. Unless something more sci-fi like Metropolis, most films of this era are more…basic. But with the art deco styling and Nazimova’s pumpkin hair, it’s almost more a fantasy than a standard romantic drama.
Laborer’s Love (1922)
The earliest example I know of for Chinese silent cinema, this is a pretty funny movie. To sum it up simply, this is the story of a Zheng, a former carpenter and current fruit peddler, who must convince a local doctor to allow him to marry his daughter. His solution is to create a staircase that turns into a ramp, making people fall and injure themselves, to boost the doctor’s business. While not the elaborate stunt work of Buster Keaton, there’s a slapstick comedy bent to the film that is reflected later in romance driven film. It’s interesting to see how Chinese cinema reflected and paralleled trends in American cinema. While we’ve already noted the stunt work, the comedy in general has almost a Chaplin-esque flavour to it. If nothing else, it’s a short, enjoyable watch.
Body and Soul (1925)
Black cinema faced an uphill battle throughout pretty much all of Hollywood history, but this twin/evil twin drama is not only available, but also pretty standard for the era. The twin or doppelganger motif was something seen pretty often, and Paul Robeson gives a performance that reads as incredibly natural compared to the rest of the cast. His screen presence would most famously be seen in 1936’s Show Boat, but he’s got a natural charisma that outshines most male leads of the era. Not necessarily a triumph of a film, it’s a great look into how similar stories were told in America for different audiences. Particularly when most films then, as now, were told by white people, with white people, for everyone. Body and Soul is an example of when that paradigm of shift ever so slightly. It’s interesting to see that in the context of an era rarely presented outside of stark white faces.
MGM Studio Tour (1925)
I wanted to bring up back to basics with this short documentary piece meant to promote MGM Studios to the public. It’s quite interesting to see how the grandest studio of the ‘golden’ era of Hollywood wanted to present itself at the time. Most of the faces aren’t ones we recognise, but it is fascinating to see the backstage of silent era movie making from the source. Is it incredibly staged? Obviously. But it’s also extremely raw by comparison to even a few years after.
Flesh and the Devil (1926)
This is the last silent film, I promise. But to end them on a high note, I wanted to send us down the Garbo hole. The tale of a woman who creates discord wherever she goes, Flesh and the Devil can be understood as a transition film between early narrative cinema and the definitive pre-code years. Garbo plays an undoubtably sexual woman who destroys a friendship. Her death occurs when they decide to remain friends at the end. It’s a “moral” tale, but that doesn’t stop it from feeling like it belongs here, rather than simply as a standard silent film.
Hallelujah (1929)
The film that introduced one of Hollywood’s first great black female stars, Hallelujah is the somewhat unoriginal story of a man torn between the more dependable woman and the more desirable one. Nina Mae McKinney plays the sex goddess well, and while this type would later be cemented in film as a harmful stereotype, it’s important to note here that this was a win for black cinema at the time. Not only was this a mainstream film helmed by a major director not looking to present blackness as evil (fuck you D.W. Griffith), but it was actually nominated for an Academy Award at it’s second ceremony, during an era where non-white stories with non-white leads would find it all but impossible to do that.
Scarface (1932)
We’re at the birth of the modern gangster movie in the 1930s, and here we have a prime example, later remade into another classic. While not the first of the genre, there’s a definite tone that this and The Public Enemy (1931) helped to establish for future entries into the genre. The creation of a whole new set of types for actors to slot into is also interesting. The mobster, the snitch, the wife, the moll, they all exist in tandem with each other to tell a story that gets repeated and remixed endlessly. It’s an important entry to note, because of how much it influences other genres. Considered more lowbrow, directors were allowed to experiment visually, and eventually the film noir would spring from this.
Grand Hotel (1932)
We’ve reached peak Hollywood already. Here, we have the star bonanza. A narrative film designed to showcase four of the biggest stars in the world but prevent the two leads that don’t like each other from interacting. We’ve already met Garbo in Flesh and the Devil, but here we get her already in parody mode. Pre-code Hollywood had an irony to how it treated stars, much like the cinema of the 1990s, that allowed audiences to feel winked at when appropriate. Unlike later parodies, this is fairly subtle, with the languishing vamp being turned up, rather than just played broad. Garbo remains compelling. But it’s Joan Crawford, with her big eyes and normal girl persona, who steals the show. Affirming type rather than making fun of it, she stays fun and approachable. Garbo in this film is still shaking her silent era style, but Crawford seems made for sound in a way she never was for silent cinema.
Minnie the Moocher (1932)
An early Betty Boop cartoon, we’re getting a lot from this cartoon. While Steamboat Willie (1928) was the first cartoon with sound, it’s boring and I don’t like it, so we’re going with one that has a dancing walrus tell cartoon icon Ms. Boop the story of a woman who feel in live with a crackhead. Or the 1930s equivalent at least. As she runs away from home, the young girl is serenaded by Cab Calloway as ghosts, ghouls and goblins metaphorically represent the life she’ll lead outside of her home. While cartoons weren’t understood as children’s entertainment in this era (YET) they existed on the cusp. The song bangs, the animation is the best of the era and it’s interesting to see how explicit media was about drug use during this time.
Of Human Bondage (1934)
The final film in this series, let’s turn to the last drops of pre-code films released through the cracks as Hollywood suddenly went clean. Of Human Bondage, the entrance of Bette Davis, the star, is a fun movie. Davis plays the bitch well, and despite the moralising ending where she dies because evil must perish, her conniving is just captivating. But there’s also something very specific about how it punishes her. Garbo collapsed through the ice in Flesh and the Devil, but we watch Davis sicken and die. She is punished for her deeds in a graphic way. In many ways, despite it being of the source material, the visual choices in the last part of the movie feel like a deliberate nod to the censors. If it’s ‘moral’, it can’t be cut. It worked then. But movies were becoming decidedly cleaner…in Hollywood.
The pre-code era, both silent and sound, is one of experimentation with audiences. While some of that experimentation was technical, the main purpose was to see what people wanted to enjoy. It’s a time when archetypes were being explored and defined. This is really what pre-code cinema did for narrative film in the era; it gave space to tell different stories. Whereas the following three decades of filmmaking (in the west) would be focused on refining these types, whittling down what makes a drama, a comedy, a tragedy ect., this was a time of growth. It’s interesting because it’s new and exciting.
I don’t want to suggest the rest of cinema isn’t as exciting. Obviously not, or we would only watch films made before 1934. But more than anything else, I want to affirm that sophistication cannot occur if there is no foundation to build upon. Every one of these films has been done better in later eras, but none of those films could exist without these.
Art is influenced by art. It needs itself to survive.