Baby Face |
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Director Starring |
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Here’s a perfect example of a once-lost and now-recovered film the world would have been a sadder place without. The restored, uncensored print is awesome. Another interesting artifact: a Warners’ memo on the bits to be censored — including, interestingly, all explicit mention of Nietzsche — can be found here.
This film isn’t shy about anything, portraying a young woman who is whored out by her father from the age of 14, advised by the one man who doesn’t use her for her body to go to a big city to take advantage of the opportunities afforded to beautiful young women (but the “right way”), but knowing nothing else she ends up sleeping her way up to the top floor of a major bank. Lilly’s hatred of men is absolute and her willingness to use them is remorseless. Every man, right down to the chubby drone in the personnel office, is a stepping stone for her. There are a couple times when she witnesses a man’s utter downfall through her actions, and she becomes like a stone, completely unconcerned — Stanwyck underplays these moments with intense focus.
Indeed, Stanwyck is brutal in the role, and downright game for anything, playing the part with a sexual frankness that truly is eye-opening to a modern viewer. With a lot of these pre-codes, you have to say “wow, that was shocking, considering it was 1933!” It’s shocking only because you expect them to be wholesome, but they’re just a little less than. Baby Face really pushes the envelope, sexually, ethically, philosophically… and come to that, it’s one of the more mature examinations of gender and class I’ve seen out of old Hollywood.
You don’t get to see Lilly’s interactions with women much, although it is clear she feels no regret for what her sleeping with various men does to lives of their girlfriends and wives, either. She’s not a misanthrope or sociopath, though. The really interesting relationship is between her and the family’s black barmaid, Chico. Her loyalty to the other woman is absolute and evident from her first scene; she saves her job, takes her with her to New York, and to an extent the two scheme together for their advancement. It is the only true and lifelong relationship Lilly has. There is a sort of sisterly solidarity between the women that is very interesting, across racial and class lines.
The other usual caveat about pre-codes is that for all their “shocking” elements, they usually end by reinforcing accepted social mores, and the only unfortunate thing about this film is that it does, too. There isn’t necessarily a problem in that, but in this case both the censored and uncensored endings ring false given everything we know about Lilly [in the real ending] and a rich man’s resources [in the tacked-on one]. But it doesn’t really harm all that came before, which positively cooks. Great, great film.
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