The highlights of this month are the 67 pre-code films that TCM will be showing on Friday nights, pre-code referring to the period before the Production Code was enforced: crimes went unpunished, unmarried couples had sex, and married couples could sleep in the same bed (I admit I have never quite understood why the Code did not allow this). My favorites in this group include the sexy and elegant comedies of Ernst Lubitsch, Trouble in Paradise(1932) and Design for Living(1933), and the gritty and class-conscious melodramas of William Wellman: Wild Boys of the Road(1933), Safe in Hell(1931), Frisco Jenny(1933), Heroes for Sale(1933) and Night Nurse(1931). The last of these stars Barbara Stanwyck, who is in a number of these films as a woman who is not afraid of any man. One sees in these films a rather different world than one sees in American films after 1933.
Other favorites of mine this month include Billy Wilder's The Apartment(1960), a funny and moving bridge between his earlier cynical films and his later, more mellow films; Jerry Lewis's The Nutty Professor(1963), one of his more successful films, where he recreates Dean Martin; Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth(1937), with its vivid depiction of a couple who only truly appreciate each other after they split up; Phil Karlson's The Phenix City Story(1955), with its unblinking view of urban corruption; Anthony Mann's Raw Deal(1948) and T-Men(1947), films noir beautifully photographed in black-and-white by master-of-light-and-shadow John Alton.
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