Film review: Night Nurse (1931)

A note about "pre-Code".  The "code" in question is the Motion Picture Production Code, more commonly referred to as the Hays Code, because of the guy who wrote it, Will H. Hays, the president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) from 1922 to 1945.  He produced the guidelines in 1930, just as talkies were taking off, in response to worries about their immorality, but, confusingly, "pre-Code" as a genre of films covers the period from when the code was written to July 1934 when a body was formed with the will and authority to enforce the code, and films suddenly got a lot more bowdlerized and anodyne.  This film, a starring vehicle for Barbara Stanwyck, but also featuring the equally great Joan Blondell, and as the principal heavy, a mustache-less (it suits him!) and very sinister Clark Gable, is a paradigm example of the genre, not just flouting the rules, but almost using the proscribed behaviors as a checklist.  I don't think I could possibly outdo this review, so go read it (and look at the pictures).  I'll just say that, as I often find with older films, the pacing seems odd.  It's a very short film (hour and 11 mins) but it does drag in places, and the tone shifts wildly.  There's broad comedy, shocking violence, pathos, romance, cynicism, and several very gratuitous (but surprisingly non-male-gaze-y) scenes of our heroines stripping to their skivvies - it's got the lot.  The women are the center of the film, and very much self-possessed, but (as the review notes) if there's a male hero, he's a bootlegger who has a couple of friends murder Clark Gable at the end!  (But don't feel sorry for him: he looks like a Nazi in his chauffeur's uniform, and it's very strongly implied he killed a child by running her over.)  Cue him and Stanwyck driving off into the sunset smiling happily.  Perhaps even more interestingly, the rich people are portrayed wholly negatively, as shiftless drunks who party downstairs while children literally starve to (near) death upstairs.  Timely, or what?  Definitely check this one out - the Criterion Channel has a beautifully crisply restored version.