Your average film-goer might think of old movies as “boring,” “safe,” “campy,” “schmaltzy” etc. Old black-and-white films portray a moral universe, where good deeds are rewards, the wicked are punished, the hero gets the girl, and it all ends with a somewhat chaste kiss.

Hollywood was not always like this. It’s no mistake that Kenneth Anger described Old Hollywood as Hollywood Babylon. In the brief window between the advent of the “talkies” and before the Motion Picture Production Code, commonly known as the Hays Code, was enforced in earnest in 1934, film-makers would use any trick at their disposal to put the bodies in the seats.

The cinema of the late ’20s and early ’30s depicts a cynical, gritty realism that’s a far cry from the Bugsby Berkeley musicals, tame romances, and over-the-top melodrama commonly associated with “old movies.”

This era, known as “Pre-Code Hollywood”, is seeped in a sordid worldview of strong-but-damaged heroines, down-on-their-luck gamblers, hardened gangsters, as well as an ever-present entourage of prostitutes, junkies, homosexuals, depicting edgy topics like infidelity, abortion, promiscuity, and intense violence.

Putting The Sin in Cinema and Pre-Code Hollywood

Pre-Code Hollywood is the theme for a new course being offered by Oregon State University as part of their Professional and Continuing Education program. Putting The Sin in Cinema is a 10-week course being held at Cinema 21 in Northwest Portland. Films will be screened at 11:00 am on Tuesday mornings.

Putting The Sin in Cinema is being taught by Oregon State University professor Elliot Lavine. Lavine rose to prominence in the Bay Area of the early ’90s, where he detoured from his burgeoning film career to discover his true calling as a film programmer, scholar, and critic. Elliot Lavine played a pivotal role in the re-discovery of Film Noir as a valid genre, before turning his keen eyes on other fascinating topics like sci-fi films of the 1950s.

Lavine pulled up stakes from his Bay Area home to live beneath our fair gray skies here in Portland, Or. He’s so beloved he gets articles written about him when he moved. Elliot Lavine received the prestigious Marlon Riggs Award from the San Francisco Film Critics Circle for his revival of rare archival titles in 2010. He’s also taught Film Studies at Stanford’s Continuing Studies Program since 2006.

It’s been said of Elliot Lavine that he’s “to movies what a feng shui master is to furniture. The master doesn’t make the furniture but knows where to place it in considered relationship with the other pieces — and what the combinations will mean. This philosophical approach to film has always been part of who he is, even decades before he had a theatre to program.” It’s also been said he’s a born advocate for the neglected and underappreciated.”

It’s beyond exciting to speculate what Levine’s subtle, nuanced analysis and appreciation of lesser-known historical curiosities will bring to this fascinating 10-week series.

Pre-Code Hollywood movies will be shown, in full, at 11:00 am on Tuesday mornings at Century 21. It’s definitely a course for the hardcore cinephile, as you have to audit the whole course and individual tickets are not available. So excited to see this independently-owned-and-operated theater transform into a makeshift Film Studies classroom for ten weeks.

The movies that will be screened as part of Putting The Sin in Cinema are:

Scarface (1932; Howard Hawks) Three on a Match (1932; Mervyn LeRoy) Baby Face (1933; Alfred Green) Island of Lost Souls (1932; Erle C. Kenton) Safe in Hell (1931; William Wellman) Red-Headed Woman (1932; Jack Conway) The Cheat (1931; George Abbott) Downstairs (1932; Monta Bell) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931; Rouben Mamoulian) Footlight Parade (1933; Lloyd Bacon)

It is our distinct pleasure to be able to take this course with Elliot Lavine and some of Portland’s diehard movie fanatics. We’ll be covering the series as it goes on, so make sure to watch this space for news, reviews, thoughts, ramblings, etc.

You can sign up for Putting The Sin in Cinema via OSU. Lavine is also teaching a course on Saturday mornings on Film Noir in the 1950s. You can find tickets for The Grit and the Glamour over here.

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