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 3/10 Fair --- killthesnark.blogspot.com http://killthesnark.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
Monday, April 21, 2008 --- 93 days ago http://killthesnark.blogspot.com/2008/04/stanwyck-x-2.html
| Forbidden (U.S., 1932) * * * D: Frank Capra Shopworn (U.S., 1932) * * D: Nicholas Grinde As part of a series of recent Columbia Pictures restorations, the UW Cinematheque last night screened two pre-Code melodramas starring Barbara Stanwyck. Stanwyck (1907 - 1990) is my favorite actress of the 30's, straddling the line between button-cute and drop-dead-sexy, and when given the right writers and directors, could make dialogue crackle, zing, or smolder, as appropriate. Perhaps best suited to screwball comedies (as in Preston Stuges' superior The Lady Eve, or Peter Godfrey's Christmas in Connecticut), she could also make lasting impressions in film noir (Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity) and sensationalistic pre-Code soap operas (the notorious Baby Face), where a low-cut blouse, a significant look, and a fade to black would also be accompanied by a suggestive double-entendre not possible a few years later. The two films screened, Forbidden and Shopworn, were both produced in 1932, two years after the Code was established, but two years before it began to be effectively enforced. Within that four-year span, the Talkies pushed the envelope as far as they possibly could, most famously with the nude skinny dipping of Tarzan and His Mate (1934). Stanwyck's career flourished in this period, although her truly great work wouldn't come until later; audiences were struck by her combination of beauty and natural, casual wit and intell ... |
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