This screening will feature a recorded introduction by film writer, historian and Pre-Code season co-curator Pamela Hutchinson which was filmed at the Watershed Cinema.
Listen up, all you dirty rats and hot dames! Let us transport you back to Hollywood's savage years. If you want to see women centre-stage and expressing their own desires, or criminals so charming you’ll pray they get away with the loot, step this way...
Co-curated by film writers and critics Pamela Hutchinson and Christina Newland, Riverside Studios are excited to partner with our friends at Cinema Rediscovered to present key films from a brand new touring package: PRE-CODE.
Featuring sparkling new remasters of some of Tinseltown's most risqué films, made before the conservative 1930's Hays code was enforced, these Pre-Code classics tested the boundaries by breaking every single one of them.
BABY FACE: Pre-Code cinema was often a dangerous game of one-upmanship. Warner Bros took one look at MGM’s highly risqué Red-Headed Woman and decided to respond with this jaw-dropping sensation marketed with the tagline “She had it and made it pay”.
She is Barbara Stanwyck, in a steely early role as single-minded young Lily Powers, sexually exploited from a young age and determined both to turn the tables on men, and to use her feminine charms to create a better life for herself.
Inspired by some words from Nietzsche she hops a train to New York with Chico (Theresa Harris) to embark on a career as a ruthless seductress. In the big city, she starts sleeping her way to the top of a bank run by a notorious playboy played by George Brent...
£100/year gets you: 6 free cinema tickets, 10% off all tickets at Riverside, 10% off our various bars & bakery, free popcorn every cinema visit, no booking fees, AND MUCH MORE
