Review #379: 'Baby Face' (1933)

A film that could easily be a how-to guide, 'How to Destroy Lives and Topple Corporations', sees Barbara Stanwyk's Lily Powers move from the drab surroundings of rural Eerie, to the bustling city of New York, Baby Face is a film about the power of sexuality, and it's inherent dangers. A local friend in Eerie, Professor Adolf Cragg (Alphonse Ethier), reads sections of Nietzsche's 'Will to Power', and asserts that she should move to the big city and exploit her sexuality to manipulate men to get what she wants. Powers proceeds to gain power and position in a bank, using men with sexual favours to climb the ladder, and fundamentally gain material wealth.

This was quite a common theme in Hollywood cinema of the 1930's, with the depression well under way, things were scarce. Jean Harlow had played a similar role in Jack Conway's Red-Headed Woman (1932). Of course this was exactly the kind of amoral characterisations that the Production code, often known as the Hays Code (after it's head Will Hays), was targeting as subversive and depraved for cinema audiences. The morality of the 1920's lingered for a short period into the Great Depression, which was seen by conservatives such as Hays, as a contributing part of the Wall Street crash.

With the progression of Powers through a succession of men within the bank, she inevitably leaves a line of men besotted with her. She becomes a kept woman by the head of the bank, and the confused and simple minds of the men are led to deceit. It's a terrifically twisted plot, but also it does not necessarily give the femme fatale her deserved conclusion. But she does learn the importance of people over the accumulation of material wealth - perhaps the perfect end to decadence in poverty stricken '30's America.


Directed by: Alfred E. Green
Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent, Donald Cook, Alphonse Ethier
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Marc Ivamy