Wednesday, April 23, 2014

A pre-Code primer

A non-movie blog I follow introduced me today to an article at a site called "The Toast", called Pre-Code Movies Worth Watching. There are a couple of movies I have to admit I don't know, and I don't agree with all of the selections or the author's take on all of them. To be fair, even though it's a blog, there are still going to be space limitations. You can't mention everything in one post. But there are some fun gems in the writing discussing certain movies:

The Maltese Falcon, 1931 -- GAYER AND SLUTTIER THAN THE HUMPHREY BOGART REMAKE (Obviously not as good, though. I mean, it doesn't ask us to believe that Mary Astor is a femme fatale who has had sex, so that gives it a leg up on the John Huston version, but still. Only worth watching as a comparison to the classic. And I don't think being as overt about sexual matters makes much of a difference -- it's still incredibly clear that Bogart and Astor bone, that Joel Cairo is super-mega gay, and that Gutman is giving it to poor Wilmer in the 1941 remake.)

Read the whole thing, as they say.

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