TCM Archives - Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Vol. 2 (The Divorcee / A Free Soul / Night Nurse / Three on a Match / Female)
by Clarence Brown, Michael Curtiz
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Actor: Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis, Clark Gable, Lionel Barrymore, Norma ShearerDirector: Clarence Brown, Michael Curtiz
Brand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0
Format: Black & White, Box set, Color, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 449 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-03-04
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: WARNER HOME VIDEO
DVD Reviews of TCM Archives - Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Vol. 2 (The Divorcee / A Free Soul / Night Nurse / Three on a Match / Female)
DVD Review: Some good movies, somewhat over hyped
Summary: 3 Stars
Hollywood came into it's own in the 30's after the code was in place.
Not until the late 50's was the "Code" really challenged.
But even in the 20 and early 30's what we see in ordinary European films of today would have been banned? Sin isn't new, but I guess modern civilization has gotten much better at it than in these more innocent days.
My objection with this collection is not the good films in it,
but the presumptive "sale of sin" label given these films.
DVD Review: DON'T watch the documentary first!!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an incredible set of five very entertaining films, and a great look at some popular stars that have been rarely seen. BUT....DO NOT watch the documentary, "HOU SHALT NOT: SEX, SIN AND CENSORSHIP IN PRE-CODE HOLLYWOOD", before you watch the films! The documentary is great - great info, fun footage (especially Cagney stuff) - but it also goes over these specific films in this set in great detail, and gives away tons of spoilers, including the endings!! So make sure you don't watch this first!!
The other reviews pretty much tell it like it is - this is a great set that no old film fan would want to miss.
DVD Review: More fun!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is Volume Two of TCM's popular series,and it's even better than the first one.The films vary in quality."Female","Three On A Match",and
"Night Nurse" are typical low-budget WArner Bros.programmers of the
early Thirties-well-made,fast-moving fun."The Divorcee" and "A Free Soul",
on the other hand,are big-budget,full-scale MGM star vehicles-strong scripts,excellent performances,fine direction.Norma Shearer was never better(she won the Oscar for "Divorcee"),Lionel Barrymore was at his peak
(he won an Oscar for "Soul"),and Gable gives a star-making performance.
This is good classic fun!Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Volume Three (Other Men's Women / The Purchase Price / Frisco Jenny / Midnight Mary / Heroes for Sale / Wild Boys of the Road)TCM Archives - Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Vol. 1 (Waterloo Bridge [1931] / Baby Face / Red-Headed Woman)
DVD Review: More TCM uncenored gems
Summary: 5 Stars
Five more diverse pictures from a unique period in American film, when the advent of sound, and economic gloom blew away the opulence of the silent screen and left the studios no option but to turn out films with plots full of sex, sin, adultery, often from the female viewpoint.
The installation of sound cameras made the films less cinematic, but stronger in pace and plot.
The Divorcee, with Norma Shearer is a good example of exploring different roles, and displaying society with the flaws that did and still do exist in human relationships.
The moralists, usually Catholics, of the time would have hated such aberrations of the norm, and after they took hold when the economy recovered, art as daring as this took a nosedive, as the limits put on freedom of expression took hold.
Unfortunatley these self-appointed guardians are still out there.
The fact that this collection of gems are not rated reveals how purile their rantings were, and still are today.
Oh and Ted Turner should be knighted for restoring a small but vital slice of great art, in an era lovers of American cinema should be proud of.
Looking forward to the next lot.
s
DVD Review: Love and sex, pre-Code style
Summary: 5 Stars
There were a few years in movie making when sound was first introduced but the Production Codes had not yet been in force. These codes would severely limit the ability of movies to depict the real world: sex, violence and corruption were toned down - often to the point of sheer blandness. Crime could never pay, authority figures were always forces of good and even married couples were confined to twin beds. There were those few years, however, from the late-1920s to 1934 which was known as the pre-Code era, a period that offered films that would be much more daring than the movies of just a few years later.
TCM's set, Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Volume Two, showcases five such pre-Code movies. On the first of three discs are a pair of Norma Shearer films. In The Divorcee, she won an Oscar as a wife who discovers that her husband had an affair. Although he assures her it means nothing, it is an obvious hypocrisy that's exposed when she balances the books with an affair of her own. In A Free Soul, she defiantly has a fling with gangster Clark Gable, only to discover that the relationship will have unintended complications. Lionel Barrymore, playing her alcoholic father, won an Oscar for his role and Gable's performance would help transform him from a supporting player into a star.
On Disc Two, there is Three on a Match and Female. The former is a story of three schoolmates who meet in adulthood. Joan Blondell is the bad girl turned good, Ann Dvorak is the good girl turned bad, and Bette Davis is somewhere in the middle. This movie features an early gangster role by Humphrey Bogart. Female has Ruth Chatterton as the driven owner of an auto company. She works hard by day and chooses various male employees to be her playthings at night. It's a fine arrangement until she meets George Brent as the one man who resists her charms.
Finally, on Disc Three, Barbara Stanwyck is the Night Nurse, a woman from the wrong side of the tracks who betters herself by becoming a nurse. Unfortunately, the ethics of the profession compel her to look the other way when she sees malpractice, but she'll put what's right above what's required. Clark Gable is in one of his most villainous roles as a thuggish chauffeur out to kill a couple children. The resolution of this one would involve an act that would never be allowed under the Code.
Also on the third disc is a nice documentary called Thou Shalt Not: Sex, Sin and Censorship in Pre-Code Hollywood. This feature describes more fully what this era meant to film, and what it meant when it ended. One thing that stands out is that this was a time where actresses could have juicy roles, a heyday for Blondell, Davis, Stanwyck and Shearer as well as folks like Crawford, Hepburn and Loy. The Code with its "family values" agenda would pigeonhole the women into much more limited roles.
All these movies are well-made and relatively short: the longest (A Free Soul) runs 93 minutes and Female is just an hour. With the documentary and a couple commentaries (on The Divorcee and Night Nurse), this is a wonderful set that will not only entertain, but serve as a reminder as to what the Production Code took away from movie making.
Description of TCM Archives - Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Vol. 2 (The Divorcee / A Free Soul / Night Nurse / Three on a Match / Female)
THE DIVORCEE (1930): After several blissful years of marriage a woman catches her husband in a compromising position and forces him to confess his infidelities Her solution to the problem is to then try to match him tryst for tryst. Based on the 1929 Ursula Parrott novel "Ex-wife," this highly controversial story was first published anonymously, with the author's name added only after thousands of copies were sold. A FREE SOUL (1931): Lionel Barrymore shines as Stephen Ashe, a brilliant alcoholic lawyer who successfully defends dashing gangster Ace Wilfong (Clark Gable) on a murder charge only to find that his headstrong daughter, Jan (Norma Shearer), has fallen in love with his client. Jan, a fun-loving socialite seeking freedom from her blue-blood upbring, is only too eager to dump her aristocratic boyfriend (Leslie Howard) for the no-good gangster. Barrymore gives a remarkable Oscar-winning performance culminating in a legendary courtroom scene that is powerful and deeply moving. THREE ON A MATCH (1932): Childhood friends Mary Keaton, Ruth Wescott and Vivian Deverse reunite ten years after high school. Mary is now a chorus girl, level-headed Ruth has a job as a secretary, and sexy Vivian is on the verge of deserting her wealthy husband Henry Kirkwood and their baby in favor of a glamorous gangster. FEMALE (1933): In Michael Curtiz's romantic comedy FEMALE, Ruth Chatterton plays Alison Drake, the iron-fisted president of a motorcar company. Alison oversees the daily operations of her male employees with a predatory gaze and frequently exercises her right to engage with them in any way she deems fit. She meets her match in an equally strong-minded new employee, Jim Thorne (George Brent), and the two engage in a smoldering, contentious, sexually charged duel. NIGHT NURSE (1931): William Wellman's NIGHT NURSE is a sassy, unsentimental comedy about a private pediatric nurse named Lora Hart (Barbara Stanwyck) who, after applying as an apprentice in a family home, discovers there is a plot afoot to starve her two rich, fat, young charges to death. The culprit is the family's chauffeur, Nick (Clark Gable), a villain who plans to marry the kids' dissolute mother and make off with their trust fund. THOU SHALT NOT: SEX, SIN AND CENSORSHIP IN PRE-CODE HOLLYWOOD (2008): Over seventy years later, they've lost none of their power to shock, entertain, and titillate. So-called "pre-Code" movies remain among the most vital films America has ever produced. But why were these films so much more sexually free and socially critical than what came before or after? Who created the Code, and what did it forbid? And why did it finally become a Hollywood commandment? The answer is a fascinating mix of scandal, big business and social history - a unique collision of events that resulted in one of the most dynamic - and delicious - periods in Hollywood history.General DVDs
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