Call Her Savage

For those of us who aren’t relishing the thought of another shakey-cam spookfest, the Harvard Film Archives is offering a neat bit of Cloverfield counter-programming this weekend: Vice vs. Virtue in Pre-Code Hollywood. This three-day festival celebrates the golden age of shock theater with ten films made between the advent of “talkies” in 1927 and the implementation of the 1934 Production Code. As Brandeis University historian Thomas Doherty explains, these movies offered Depression-era audiences taboo-busting escapism, documenting the travails of “trigger-happy gangsters, wisecracking dames, and subversive rebels.” “Frantic for patrons, every studio risked a raid from the vice squad to lure moviegoers whose spending was no longer discretionary, who were sometimes choosing between food and film,” he explains. “Even MGM, the Tiffany studio with high-hat pretensions, bankrolled Kongo (1932), a surreal run through the jungle featuring Walter Huston as a demented ivory trader trafficking in voodoo, vengeance, drugs, and prostitution.” Walter Huston?!

The festival kicks off tonight (1/18/08) at 7:00 PM with a talk by Doherty, who recently published a biography of the man responsible for ending the party in 1934: Joseph I. Breen. Doherty’s lecture will then be followed by a double feature of Call Her Savage (1932), starring Jazz Age cutie Clara Bow as a debutante gone bad (she goes slumming in Greenwich Village, a sure sign of depravity), and Blood Money (1933), starring George Bailey as a bail bondsman who keeps company with kleptomaniacs, nymphomaniacs, cross-dressers, and corrupt pols. Tickets are $10 and may be purchased at the Carpenter Center beginning 45 minutes before the show. (No advanced ticket sales via phone or web.)

For a complete schedule of events and directions to the Harvard University campus, visit the Harvard Film Archive website.