“Forbidden Hollywood,” Warner Archive’s made-to-order DVD series featuring Pre-Code films, sounds like good, clean – well, dirty – fun. Pre-Code films, made from the late ’20s until 1934, when the ...

Thomas Butt is a senior writer. An avid film connoisseur, Thomas actively logs his film consumption on Letterboxd and vows to connect with many more cinephiles through the platform. He is immensely ...

The most exciting time in Hollywood was arguably the ephemeral period before the stingy rules implemented by the industry. Before the adoption of the Hays Code, the guideline that major studios ...

Parents, lock up your children. Wives, keep a wary eye on your husbands. “Baby Face” is coming to town. More specifically, the uncensored version of the profane Holy Grail of pre-Code Hollywood cinema ...

Old movies are old movies, but pre-Code movies are something else — old and new, vintage and yet strangely and refreshingly modern. Pre-Code festivals used to be an annual staple in San Francisco, but ...

About 20 years ago I was in a kind of partnership with another film historian who told me that, no, there wasn’t a market for a book on pre-code movies. I can only wonder what he thinks today after ...