Baby Face

Dir. Alfred E. Green

71 Minutes

USA

1933

Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent, Donald Cook, Alphen Ethier, Henry Kolker, Margaret Lindsay

****/*****

Rewatch from probably around 2007--part of me thinks that the other (only) time I've seen this film was before I really knew too much about the pre-code designation (aside from some retrospective festivals at the Film Forum in NYC which, again, I'm not entirely sure I knew what it meant at the time). And, years after watching it, realized that its quite the "representative" pre-code (even the first film in the TCM sets that there are like 10 of now!) in its quite risqué content and subject matter. Stanwyck plays Lily, the daughter of an angry, often drunk, man who operates a speakeasy. Lily works in the establishment, and is subject to all kinds of harassment and degradation. Inspired by the one customer she likes (and also somewhat through the writings of Nietzsche), Lily leaves home with aspirations of greater things and with one piece of advice: use men to get what you want. And from there she journeys to New York City, starts working entry level in a bank, and slowly sleeps, cheats, and swindles her way up the rank, leaving quite the wreckage of men at her wake.

This is quite the unsavory piece of business for its time (picture Stanwyck coming on to a train worker who wants to send her and her friend to jail for being stowaways. She looks at him suggestively, her servant starts slowly singing as she walks out of the room, followed by a shot of a pair of gloves coming off and a candle being blown out), and the film is rarely subtle about what is going on. But I think I found it even better than the first viewing, and wished that it gave Lily a more bitter ending rather than going the more routine path towards redemption.

Green has a nice sense for detail and notes the differences in space quite well, from the cramped and seedy, albeit cozy, speakeasy to the increasingly wider spaces (but cramped close-ups) of the business world as she ascends (and I'm a bit of a sucker for the returning visual of the skyscraper that we follow up the floors until the end of the picture). Some interesting things to follow also include her relationship/friendship with her African American servant, and I wonder if a connection can be made between the philosophy of the film and the philosophies that Lily sets out in the world following. Also fun seeing an early John Wayne!

August 16th, 2019