Sexton Classic Movies: Baby Face

Prior to the Hays Code which served to act as official censorship in Hollywood until the 1960s, movies made there were often startlingly mature. Sex and violence were as common in the talkies made from 1928 to 1934 as they are today. Not so explicitly, of course; but when you consider the period many Hollywood movies did engage in some quite shocking behavior, including nudity and sexual suggestiveness that could make your parents blush even today. One of the films that was most responsible for the censorship crackdown beginning in the middle of the 1950s was Baby Face, starring Barbara Stanwyck. Like most of these pre-code movies, it may actually seem tame by today's standard, but also like most of them it is infinitely more creative and innovative in suggesting that its leading lady must sleep her way to the top.

The always amazing Barbara Stanwyck plays the daughter of a bootlegger who essentially has made her into a prostitute. So much for the goody-goody image you may have of 1930s movies. The father figure in Baby Face is a wretched human being; in fact, it is not going too far to suggest he is a human being. There is, indeed, a disturbing and underlying sensation in the scenes between them that the dad did not just offer up his daughter to other men, but perhaps even partook of her sexual favors himself. Yeah, that's right. In the pre-code era of the 1930s a major up and coming star like Barbara Stanwyck could actually play a potential victim of incest who then goes on to use her amply displayed sexuality to become a screaming success. The scene where the father dies in an explosion of his bootlegging still and Stanwyck coolly watches with an emotionless expression is nothing less than film acting at its finest.