"Baby Face", a movie directed by Alfred Green

"Baby Face" is a black-and-white Hollywood movie telling the story of Lily(Barbara Stanwyck), a young woman left alone in the world after her bar-owner father dies in a gas explosion. Classic tear-jerker, eighty minutes of humdrum, predictable lesson about the evils of the world and how pretty young women deserve to suffer, of course? Well, fortunately, the movie was made in pre-code Hollywood. Meaning, sex and money are nothing to be ashamed of. It turns out that her father was keeping Lily down; freed from his baleful influence, she moves to New York with her faithful servant (black, of course, these weren't enlightened times and the movie doesn't pretend), proceeds to make her way up in the world. Literally. Starting from a job on the lowest floor of the multi-storeyed office of a major financial company, she parlays her charms into knowledge of the workings of the very highest level. "Parlays her charms", ha - I ought to be ashamed of myself. She sleeps her way to the top. But she's not asleep, she's wide awake, she's on the make...

We would seem to be exchanging one cliche for another. The movie is far more interesting than that. The idea for her modus operandi does not come from Lily herself, but from a mentor, a benevolent cobbler named Adolph Cragg. He tells her she has power over men of which she is unaware, and to press the point, he quotes, I kid you not, Nietzsche to her! Not one vile thought had entered her virginal mind, until Nietzsche, corrupter of young women, came forth, brandishing madness and moustache and talk of masters and slaves... In the middle of the movie, just before Lily inadvertently causes the murder-suicide of a pair of her lovers (one the prospective father-in-law of the other), a package arrives in the mail. It is from Cragg, and it contains encouragement. Yup, more Nietzsche.

The movie is truly strange - it surrenders the opportunity for exploitation inherent in the theme, it is rigorously Darwinian. Lily is not punished for her methods, instead she finds love with the president of the company in the end... One can imagine how disturbing this amoral vision must have been to the censors, much more disturbing than the innuendo. The filmmakers were forced to add three hilariously absurd scenes to the original, with Cragg insisting that Lily take the "right way" rather than the "wrong way" to her goals, and the movie ending with Lily and the company president forced to work as labourers after losing all their money :)

Catch "Baby Face" if you can. She's so demure, power's the lure... But heavens above, it ends with love!