On 2010-02-03 Tonio Gas, wrote: The five films considered separately, I´d give three stars once and four and five stars twice each. But is has to be honored that these pre code films are available in good quality, with subtitles and accompanied by a fascinating documentary and audio commentaries for ´Night Nurse´ and ´The Divorcee´. This is what makes me give a five star rating for the entire box. The following may be said to the films:
1. Female (1933, 60 minutes, Warner, dir.: M. Curtiz, starring Ruth Chatterton, co-starring George Brent): She´s rich. She´s powerful. She´s seductive. She runs an automobile company and dominates any man she wants - in business and in bed. She´s on the man hunt, taking men as sexual objects and pure trophies, to be hired and fired. This is clearly pre code, hard, fast and beautiful... but why must this wild animal be tamed by someone who declares with a total lack of irony that women are by nature born for love, marriage and children?!? Fascinating film with an unbearable ending, but the first 50 of about 60 minutes are that fresh and witty that I´d still give a four star rating.
2. Three on a Match (1932, 63 minutes, Warner, dir.: Mervyn LeRoy, starring Ann Dvorak and Joan Blondell, co-starring Bette Davis and Warren William, featuring Humphrey Bogart): Interesting film about three (female) schoolmates who meet again about ten years later - you´ll see a fine little drama about what women can expect from life and from men (and what they can´t expect), where Dvoraks adultery will at the end be punished, but the film doesn´t condemn her: Women also have a right to strive to happiness, and they have a right to miss something even if their husbands are gentle, kind, loving, noble and wealthy (as is William in the role of Dvoraks husband). This very short and fast-moving film is full of deliberately realistic´, fresh down-to-earth-dialogue instead of MGM-polishing, and with many relations to actual events and trends in American History from 1919 to 1932, often shown by newspaper headlines or some semi-documentary footage. Even an allusion to Mussolini is made! The whole movie is a vivid proof for Warner being the studio for realistic sociocritical dramas instead of creating a polished world of its own (as did MGM). Five stars.
3. Night Nurse (1931, 72 minutes, Warner, dir.: William Wellman, starring Barbara Stanwyck, co-starring Clark Gable, Joan Blondell): Thrilling sociocritical drama about nurses´ lives under hard conditions, due to prohibition, depression, cynicism, and hypocrisy of some of the doctors. Finally, Stanwyck will need all her courage to prevent two little kids from being slowly murdered by underfeeding. She undoubtedly is the best actress to succeed, sometimes very energetic (but never overacting), sometimes just with a silent facial expression which tells both Gable (as the villain) and the public that this tough lady is just overwhelming. The best movie in the entire collection. Five stars.
4. A Free Soul (1931, Metro, 93 minutes, dir.: Clarence Brown, starring Norma Shearer, co-starring Lionel Barrymore, Clark Gable, Leslie Howard): Drama about a young woman between three men, two of them being potential love interests and one being her father who taught her to be ´A Free Soul´ - but who won´t get along with her being in love with a gangster (Clark Gable). Interesting story, but spoiled by some absolutely silly goofs (such as a man not being killed by machine gun fire although sitting just behind a thin wooden wall) and many pathetic talking, static camerawork and exaggerated mannerisms by Shearer (sometimes) and Barrymore (ALWAYS - his performance is the worst overacting I´ve ever seen, making Robert De Niro a master of understatement). Three stars.
5. The Divorcee (1930, Metro, 82 minutes, dir.: Robert Z. Leonard, starring Norma Shearer): It´s quite better than ´A Free Soul´! Shearer has, in some scenes, her mannerisms, obviously imported from the silent era, but she is touching and courageous in most scenes - and so is the script which even advocates sexual equality in adultery!!! Men, and particularly Shearer´s husband, are shown as infantile machos, and Shearer clearly points it out, for which we may love her. The last ten minutes, however, are pure cliché, and the audio commentary is absolutely right in stating that the film is very well written and deserved its Oscar nomination for best script - but not because of the last scenes. Nevertheless, I´d give a four star rating.. And summed up by saying Good compilation of pre code films. Currently TCM Archives - Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Vol. 2 (The Divorcee / A Free Soul / Night Nurse / Three on a Match / Female) has an overall rating of 8 over 10.
TCM Archives - Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Vol. 2 (The Divorcee / A Free Soul / Night Nurse / Three on a Match / Female) can also be found in the following searches:
WARNER HOME VIDEO claimed THE DIVORCEE (1930): After several blissful years of marriage a woman catches her husband in a compromising position and forces him to confess his infidelities Her solution to the problem is to then try to match him tryst for tryst. Based on the 1929 Ursula Parrott novel ´Ex-wife,´ this highly controversial story was first published anonymously, with the author’s name added only after thousands of copies were sold. A FREE SOUL (1931): Lionel Barrymore shines as Stephen Ashe, a brilliant alcoholic lawyer who successfully defends dashing gangster Ace Wilfong (Clark Gable) on a murder charge only to find that his headstrong daughter, Jan (Norma Shearer), has fallen in love with his client. Jan, a fun-loving socialite seeking freedom from her blue-blood upbring, is only too eager to dump her aristocratic boyfriend (Leslie Howard) for the no-good gangster. Barrymore gives a remarkable Oscar-winning performance culminating in a legendary courtroom scene that is powerful and deeply moving. THREE ON A MATCH (1932): Childhood friends Mary Keaton, Ruth Wescott and Vivian Deverse reunite ten years after high school. Mary is now a chorus girl, level-headed Ruth has a job as a secretary, and sexy Vivian is on the verge of deserting her wealthy husband Henry Kirkwood and their baby in favor of a glamorous gangster. FEMALE (1933): In Michael Curtiz´s romantic comedy FEMALE, Ruth Chatterton plays Alison Drake, the iron-fisted president of a motorcar company. Alison oversees the daily operations of her male employees with a predatory gaze and frequently exercises her right to engage with them in any way she deems fit. She meets her match in an equally strong-minded new employee, Jim Thorne (George Brent), and the two engage in a smoldering, contentious, sexually charged duel. NIGHT NURSE (1931): William Wellman´s NIGHT NURSE is a sassy, unsentimental comedy about a private pediatric nurse named Lora Hart (Barbara Stanwyck) who, after applying as an apprentice in a family home, discovers there is a plot afoot to starve her two rich, fat, young charges to death. The culprit is the family´s chauffeur, Nick (Clark Gable), a villain who plans to marry the kids´ dissolute mother and make off with their trust fund. THOU SHALT NOT: SEX, SIN AND CENSORSHIP IN PRE-CODE HOLLYWOOD (2008): Over seventy years later, they´ve lost none of their power to shock, entertain, and titillate. So-called ´pre-Code´ movies remain among the most vital films America has ever produced. But why were these films so much more sexually free and socially critical than what came before or after? Who created the Code, and what did it forbid? And why did it finally become a Hollywood commandment? The answer is a fascinating mix of scandal, big business and social history - a unique collision of events that resulted in one of the most dynamic - and delicious - periods in Hollywood history.
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