This year, I actually completed a pretty decent run of pre-code films for this year’s #PreCodeApril event on Twitter. I always say I’m going to participate in these types of themed events, then end up watching everything but that theme; but this year, I did it. I even started early (3/30). While I did watch non-Pre Code films in April, for the most part, my viewing centered around this very specific era of filmmaking, roughly 1929-mid 1934. While there were a handful of re-watches, there were a lot of first time watches for me. One of my biggest revelations was pre-code Loretta Young! Loretta is someone whose films I hadn’t seen a lot of, because for some reason I thought she was going to be uptight and prissy. That’s probably because of the stories that I’ve heard about her having a swear jar. But pre-code Loretta is everything but prissy. She is strong, sexy, scandalous, suffering, everything you’d want in a pre-code heroine. And poor Loretta really went through the ringer in a lot of her films.
I’m going to attempt to give a little rundown of all the films that I watched; but it might take me awhile, because there were a lot. So we’ll see what happens:
NEW TO ME PRE-CODE
REWATCHES
- 3/30 The Public Enemy (1931)
- 3/30 Blonde Crazy (1931)
- 3/31 Queen Christina (1933)
- 4/1 Red Dust (1932)
- 4/5 The Rich Are Always With Us (1932)
- 4/6 Employees’ Entrance (1933)
- 4/15 Midnight Mary (1933)
- 4/18 They Call it Sin (1932)
- 4/18 Other Men’s Women (1931)
- 4/19 Ten Cents a Dance (1931)
- 4/20 Miss Pinkerton (1932)
- 4/21 Guilty Hands (1931)
- 4/22 Female (1932)
- 4/24 Rafter Romance (1933)
- 4/28 Blessed Event (1932)
- 4/29 The House on 56th Street (1933)
- 4/30 Ladies’ Man (1931)
- 4/30 Torch Singer (1933)
- 4/2 Red-Headed Woman (1932)
- 4/9 The Old Dark House (1932)
- 4/12 Baby Face (1933)
- 4/17 It Happened One Night (1934)
Whimsically Classic 