October Movies

[osprey_archer]

Julie owns a box set of classic Universal Monsters films, so we attempted to crammed as many of them into October as we could, although in the end we only managed two: the 1932 The Mummy and the 1931 Dracula, both of which feature women mind-controlled by the eponymous monstrous man into some sort of romantic relationship. I guess that’s just the most terrifying thing in the world in the 1930s? From the perspective of 2017 neither of these movies seemed particularly frightening (which is good, because I’m a total baby about horror movies).

I also saw a bunch of movies in theaters this month! Going to theaters by myself is my new favorite thing. Two of them I have already posted about, but I didn’t manage to get to Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, which is about the creator of Wonder Woman and the two women who were the loves of his life and also in love with each other (at least according to the movie; there’s apparently some debate about how they felt about each other IRL) and all lived together in a love triangle in suburbia after the whole thing got the Marstons fired, on account of how the young lady was one of their students when they were both psychology professors.

...Frankly this sounds super unethical but hey, they seem to have been happy together, so I guess that worked out in the end. The sex scenes were hot like burning (there is one scene where Elizabeth Marston is wrapping a rope around Olive - not even tying her up, just wrapping it around - and Olive makes this sound - ) and I thought it was just really well done, overall.

Also, my mother and I went to see Ponyo on the big screen at the ArtCraft. (She’s never seen a Studio Ghibli film before! I may be able to entice her into watching Arrietty with me: she read The Borrowers to me in my youth.) I do like it, but it’s never been my favorite Ghibli film: I just can’t get over the essential weirdness of the fact that the sea sorcerer and the sea goddess decide that it’s a good idea to let the fate of the earth hinge on the faithful trueness of Sosuke’s love for Ponyo. Sosuke’s great, but - he’s five! How many people are forever faithful and true to the person they loved when they were five? Is Ponyo going to turn back into a fish if Sosuke’s attentions wander?

Other movies I saw this month: Steel Magnolias! Which has been on my radar forever as one of the famous movies about female friendship - I’m always seeing it “Movies about Female Friendship” lists like the one where I found Ghost World - and, unlike Ghost World, the female friendships here are actually strong and positive and really the main point of the movie, so that has restored some of my trust in those lists.

Having said that, it’s not really my kind of movie - I think you could classify it as a weepy and that’s just not my thing - but nonetheless I’m glad I’ve seen it and finally have it off my Netflix queue.

Also How to Steal a Million, an Audrey Hepburn movie that I first saw in high school and adored, and watched again this month and… did not adore as much. Not that I disliked it, but it did not cause the same enormous upwelling of delight that I remembered and I am concerned that this means that my sense of joy has gone into a state of hopeless atrophy.

Comments

[osprey_archer]

Noooo, why must you torment me with enticing descriptions of movies I will probably never get the chance to see? Lady by Choice sounds amazing but neither Netflix nor the library has it. Oh well.

I have the impression, which is so vague that I'm not even sure what it's based on so really I may be completely wrong - that pre-Code films tended to be better at female friendship than post-Code. Of course, that's not exactly a high bar to surmount...

Yes, in the 1932 Mummy, the female lead is the reincarnation of the princess Imhotep loved. He was mummified in the first place because he tried to raise her from the dead, and thereby tied their souls together for eternity or something like that.

However, the heroine is not aware of this consciously and basically goes into a trance every time that Imhotep awakens the princess within her, so it's still super creepy.

[sovay]

Lady by Choice sounds amazing but neither Netflix nor the library has it.

I'm sorry! I got the DVDs out of my library, so assumed it was readily accessible. I hope it comes around on TV for you sometime.

I have the impression, which is so vague that I'm not even sure what it's based on so really I may be completely wrong - that pre-Code films tended to be better at female friendship than post-Code.

I'd say that accords with my experience. Pre-Code films are shockingly and immediately better than Code-era films at women in general (gender in general, honestly) and relationships in general, romantic and not. They may have all sorts of weird rough edges, but they feel much more like the world. I am not sure the amount of damage done by the enforcement of the Production Code can be calculated, except that I think it held this country back decades and affects us even today.

However, the heroine is not aware of this consciously and basically goes into a trance every time that Imhotep awakens the princess within her, so it's still super creepy.

Fair enough!

[osprey_archer]

When I saw Clara Bow's It, I had pretty much resigned myself to the movie being wall to wall misogyny because of the premise - the importance of sex appeal! it's going to be all scheming vixens fighting over a man, right? - but actually it's not like that at all: there's a big subplot about Clara's character's friendship with a girl who got pregnant out of wedlock, and is now living with Clara, and in general Clara doesn't seem to see other girls as The Enemy a la Scarlett O'Hara.

Silent films really do seem like a different world than post-Code talkies, and not just because they are silent. (I realize not all pre-Code films are silent, but those are the ones I'm comparatively familiar with.) I've always meant to watch more silent films, but probably I would need to find a silent-film-watching buddy for that project to really get off the ground.

[sovay]

there's a big subplot about Clara's character's friendship with a girl who got pregnant out of wedlock, and is now living with Clara, and in general Clara doesn't seem to see other girls as The Enemy a la Scarlett O'Hara.

I loved It—it was the first place I saw Clara Bow and its handling of the unwed mother character was one of the things that got my attention. I'm not sure where the zero-sum idea of female friendship entered the American mainstream, but I do associate it with the coming of the Code and its programmatic, artificial ideas about men's and women's roles—I have seen rivalry between women in pre-Code films and women who behave badly about men, but I have also seen a lot of women who stick together, even in situations that have nothing to do with men.

Silent films really do seem like a different world than post-Code talkies, and not just because they are silent. (I realize not all pre-Code films are silent, but those are the ones I'm comparatively familiar with.)

So strictly speaking the term "Pre-Code" is usually reserved for the brief window of sound pictures prior to the enforcement of the Production Code, but I agree that the social attitudes visible in silent film are much closer to pre-Code talkies than post-Code ones, especially late silents where much of the cast and crew are the same people who would be making pre-Code pictures in a couple of years. I used to think of silent/sound as being the major divide in early Hollywood, but I'm really coming to believe it's pre-Code/Code. There were actors who survived the transition to sound who did not survive the transition to the Code. The ones who made it all the way through increasingly I think are the outliers who just look normal because of survivorship bias.

[edit] I've always meant to watch more silent films, but probably I would need to find a silent-film-watching buddy for that project to really get off the ground.

I hope you can find one! There are some amazing things in silent film.

[osprey_archer]

The idea that women are inherently rivals seems to have been at least a subterranean current in English & American culture for a long time - hence Isabella in Northanger Abbey declaiming that she intends to show men that women can be true friends, and then totally undercutting her words with her actions.

But it definitely seems to become the overwhelmingly dominant strain of thought in the thirties. I've read some early women's histories from the 1970s and 80s and there's this sense of delighted incredulity as the authors discover that women in the past had friendships with each other. Supportive friendships! That were important to them! That's how thoroughly that cultural shift managed to efface that entire side of the human experience.

Someday my silent film buddy will come! I have faith. And also too many movies to watch already, so there's plenty to keep me busy while I wait.

Are there any good books about the transition to the Code and how it changed movies? I've read a bit about the silent/sound divide, but nothing about the Code itself.

[sovay]

That's how thoroughly that cultural shift managed to efface that entire side of the human experience.

The same thing happened to queer representation, which is part of the reason Richard Barrios wrote Screened Out: Playing Gay in Hollywood from Edison to Stonewall (2003), which I am enjoying very much. It affects post-Code movies, too: I was surprised the first time I saw a woman with an "atypical" role in film noir. The more noir I've watched, the more I've realized that the spectrum of female representation and agency is actually much wider than the narrow band of femme fatale/good girl which has been handed down through popular reception and neo-noir. Kirk Drift strikes again.

Are there any good books about the transition to the Code and how it changed movies?

Mick LaSalle's Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood (2000) and Dangerous Men: Pre-Code Hollywood and the Birth of the Modern Man (2002) are two of the best books I have found about pre-Code movies, the actors and actresses who flourished in them, and the changes that were wrought on the representation of sexuality and gender by the enforcement of the Production Code. Thomas Doherty's Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930–1934 (1999) is supposed to be seminal, but LaSalle writes so much better about movies and actors that I'd start with him.

[osprey_archer]

My library has Dangerous Men! I'll start with that one and request Complicated Women through interlibrary loan if I feel so moved.