Forbidden Hollywood by TCM

jean harlow's notorious sex farce in the 30s that originally enraged the moral code...(barbara stanwyck's "baby face" was released next year. all tales about material girl climing toward wealth by sex )...as i discussed in "baby face" review. the femme fatale stereotype is "gluttonish sensuality and sex appeal" which is attributed to red-headed woman....she's utterly mercenary and she would not pull back once she's determined to claim what she desires...once her appetite is tickled, she wants more and more and more..the loothole of greed could never be fulfilled....always un-content and un-grateful, and her misdemeanor is purely out of avarice. (bad without a cause.)..stanwyck's babyface utilizes men more out of a revengeful hatred toward their exploitations...generally red-headed woman is a flat character for comic relief without the grim complexity of stanwyck's babyface.

unlike babyface which could be deemed as a social satire about a ghetto girl's eager angst to clander to the top in search of power, harlow's reddish circe is more like a ridicule of sex such as the scene she's trapped in the phonebooth and the absurd connotation of sadism & masochism as harlow remarks "do it again! i like it!!!" when the man slaps her facecheek...the first 30 mins, she illuminates her lecherous glitter to pierce audience's eyesight...miss harlow's wardrobe looks its best as the red-headed woman is still on wrong side of the track, later the glamour of flashy ornament is a bit redundant. it offers what the audience wants, it serves you with a shamelessly joyful happy ending for the bad girl to get her way. in a nutshell, jean harlow definitely gratify your mental libido with pleasurable orgasm, then she incarnates into sex itself.

"baby face" was an mighty milestone to set up the stanwyckesque femme fatale image before the fatally classic "double indemnity"...generally..the vital charm of most femme fatales is their gluttonish sensuality and sex apeal...but the allure of stanwyck's femme fatale is based upon her ruthless toughnes and also her un-willing-ness to comprise..sorta refreshing...it's just like a man who takes what he wants without hesitation...basically BF is an heavily melodrama-driven story even it's worthy being praised for its audacious outrage in a conservative decade. to apply nietzscheistic superman into the "bad girl survives and rules" pattern is indeed feministically offbeat that could be considered a defying moral dynamite at that time. babyface's hostility against man is motivated by her experience of being exploited by men, especially her father. her remarks about her father philandering her was incredically explicit in the concern of the censor in the 30's. the quick wit and dare-devil adventurousness of stanwyck's material girl sorta savor the audience's appreciation over babyface's resourcefulness. but the devilsih brazen fun of the movie is somehow hindered by the moralistic closure. (bad girl is suddenly stricken with the meaning of love.) if interpretating it from a different perspect, perhaps it could be a touching story of an astray female discovering the warmth of bona-fide human affection. only stanwyck's swiftly polished acting talent could carry it off without diverged distortion.

a highly underrated james whale flick which surpasses the tear-jerker remake starring vivien leigh and robert taylor in the 40s. most audience who's fond of the taylor/leigh production would recall the sweetened tragic romance between a military prostitute and a naive young soldier: she's the chorus girl who meets a handsome officier during a bomb raid, then love at first sight then they get engaged. the officier departs then she receive the ill-fated news of his demise. to make a living, she degenerates into a prostitute then one day she remorsely discovers her one true love survives and ready to marry her...out of personal shame, she commits suicide by being run over by a truck, then he mourns for her in the rest of his life, chic flick, beautiful with all those talks of romantic idealism, right? huh?

what about the 30s original? nothing like that sort!! our leading lady is from the wrong side of the track, doomed with her slum upbringing, she's a desceneded prostitute long before their encouter when she attempts to pick him up as a potential customer to pay for her debted rental. romantic? huh? then she falls for his boyish innocence, determinated not to ruin his life with deception of her disgraceful profession but she hides this fact with tormenting guilt. eventually our male protagonist acquires the truth of his lover, he still chooses to marry her come what may, stiffening his mind to rescue her with all his consuming passion. ironically our leading lady gets hit by a bomb right after she consents to be his spouse. how consoling. cynical to the top notch. audience wouldn't know if he should laugh or cry when it comes to the end. just chilling coldness strikes over the back of your mind.

the 30s waterloo bridge is more of a psychological drama of conflicted characters bound by the circumstance of war and social level. somehow the spirit of our leading man might be more selflessly chivalric than the dashingly gorgeous robert taylor since he accepts her being whore without contempt but only compassion. our leading woman might not be as beautiful as the feline-eyed vivien leigh, but she demonstrates more of hellish agony to suffer and live with her tainted mark. leigh does a good acting job in warerloo as well, but her prostitute is more like a feminine masochist to accomplish the male ideal of love without the contamination of reality.

if you're a cynicist with a sheer observant eye, you might enjoy the original waterloo bridge without the sparing mercy of idealized romanticism.

mae clarke is notorious for being the woman who gets hit on face by james cagney with grapes in "public enemy"...maybe she deserves much better roles in her acting career.

"a free soul" is the very flick which gets clark gable some female attention with the notorious scene of him pushing norma shearer roughly to the couch for three times! blatant violence on woman, but endearing gable is always excusable since he's doing it for the sake of love.

norma shearer plays a spoilt rich gal jan ashe who defies her family by dating mobster ace wilfong(gable), emancipated by her alcoholic father(lionel barrymore) who encourages her to be free. so she sneaks to the mobster's residence shamelessly as if she's his mistress for months. infatuated by jan's tumultuous lovemaking, wilfong falls head over heels in love with jan, then he consults her father's approval for the marriage proposal...due to the gap of social status, the father finally sombers up and condemns jan for hanging around with wilfong. so jan makes a bargain with dad that if he quits booze, she would quits gable. then the father and daughter disappear for three months in wilderness for eradication of liquor which fails eventually. and norma shearer returns to the dangerously charismatic clark gable while he's infuriated by her abscence, then he threatens her to marry him or he would announce their affair to ruin her social reputation. in the end, shearer's another love interest leslie howard comes to the scene to shoot gable to death, gallantly rescuing her from gable's villainy.

clark gable is still in his mustacheless period and credited as the third in the cast, but his overwhelming caveman-alike machismo thrills millions of women then while he growls "you're mine and you belong to me! don't you ever run away!!!" and his disdemeanors to push norma shear in fur is highly appreciated by the audience in depression period due to the animosity to idle rich, and gable's contempt to norma's social superiority was approved by proles who disdain the condescending loftiness of upper class. besides, gable's character has been devoted to shearer who is just ficklely having a good time slumming, and she's contrary to whoever posts disapproving opinions on her. when her family refuses to accept gable, she throws herself to him, as gable declares his determination to marry her, she ducks away. and he's traumatized by her frivolosity but too proud to admit it. so his rage is perfectly justified, and he wants her so he's gonna rob her away to be his! this tough kind of savage manhood is considered utterly sexy by women then.

"three on a match" is a tragic fable of urbanite incurrences upon three females. the major conspicuous performances are from ann dvorak who plays the nymphmaniac sister of paul muni in "scarface"...that was promoted by joan crawford who introduced her the chance to meet howard hughes then she got the role. dvorak is one of the most underrated and undertreated actresses in cinematic history, used to be frequently casted leading lady in the 30s at warner bro.

dvorak plays a weary housewife who takes her luxurious marital ease for granted, yearning for the thrill and gayety of life...then her considerate and generous lawyer husband arranges a extravagent cruise trip alone to alleviate her dreariness, then she goes astray into degenerated adultery with a sweet-tongued crook on the ship....thus her doom begins.

on the other hand, her other two pals, played by joan bondell and bette davis. bondell is the prodigal playgirl who squanders her adolescence in reform school, conformed to the right track by marrying dvorak's deserted husband, demonstrating great scale of maternality to dvorak's son. bette davis appears almost as oblivion, being characterless as a diligent stenographer and a pleasant friend at her early stage of warner bro. after all, it's not a davis movie but dvorak's.

dvorak is usually typecasted as the rebellious do-wronger who descends into depravity, provided with roles to showcase her flapper burlesque which is also in "g-men" and "scarface"....there's a scene she dances frivolously upon the hotel room desk to a lesser standard. dvorak's part involves the gloomy sequence of decaying, accentuated by her traumatized catastrophe that would be the highlight of dvorak's career.

"three on a match" is inevitably melodramatic as the rot in the dark alley during the depression period. it features cameos of bette davis and humprey bogart who would later be smashing hollywood legends. the major star who exerts herself has been forgotten for good.

"female" is directed by michael curtiz in his early days in warner bro. before he thrives at errol flynn swashbucklers. it's casted with ruth chatteton and george brent as the leads, and it's a story about a businesswoman's convert to her femininity by a dashing masculine hunk with conventional maschismo.

the flick is shot at pre-code area, naturally it has its indulgence of sexual insinuations to some degree... it could be very feministic when it comes to the plots of chatterton's female boss seducing her male employee as sex-mates at night for fun then dismiss them next day in the morning. it might be considered gritty at that time, but it might also reflect the primitive gender revolution at 1920s by terming the feminism as refusal of womanhood and being phallic to emulate the men. but eventually this flick is stil reversed back to the bourgeois track of female virtue since the real man who is not willing to compromise just appears to tame the shrew.

george brent is often casted as the ideal man who softens tough females like bette davis and barbara stanwyck(babyface) in warner's flicks. he does have a mass angular bone structure and a georgeous face as gears of romantic lead, espeacially when he smiles with his radiant dimples.

"night nurse" is another piece of work made in the pre-code period of the 30s, and barbara stanwyck glitters with her inner strength as the heroine who practices the justice among immoral debauchies of a disorientated world under probation. then you might also be amused to glimpse the young clark gable without his trademarked mustache.

stanwyck plays lora hart (which means a pun for heart to suggest her characteristics), who is a compassionate young woman who aspires to nuture others as pleasure. so she enlists in the hospital with the help of surgeon dr. bell as a registered nurse. and joan bondell is her wisecracking confidante who provides mostly the comic relief in the script, such as their habit to imitate the throat-cleaning sound, bondell's chewing-gum vivacity and stanwyck's frequent remark "says me in a big way, sister." and also stanwyck's merciful generosity leads to the friendship or potential love interest of a decent-hearted bootleger, played by ben lyon, who would be the savior later in the flick.

so both bondell and stanwyck pass their tests of ordeals to be the night nurses, then they encounter a job concerned with their professional ethics. they're dispatched with a cse of two sick young girls who have been starved deliberantly to death so their mother and her paramour chauffer(clark gable) could obtain their father's trust fund inheritage. the flick is related to the forbidden subjects of prosmiscuity, illict affairs, alcoholism and child abuse then.

clark gable makes a riveting entrance as the bully man in dragon-embroidered robe, impressing the audience with a certain degree of menace as the brutal villain who smacks stanwycks, and the issue of violence on women is not a pleasant theme for the censor as well. gable shows his darker side of cad convincingly for sure.

"night nurse" is certainly a relish to look at, and you see stanwyck ballistically slaps the rotten mother who disregards the children, that would be a kick for sure.