New York Times, June 24, 2005

'Paramount Before the Code'

by DAVE KEHR

This year, Film Forum is devoting its annual extended summer retrospective to one of the great hoards of relatively unseen American films: those frequently astonishing, often impressive and always interesting features produced by Paramount Pictures between the coming of sound and the enforcement of the Production Code in 1934. Now owned by Universal, as are most of the pre-1949 Paramount films, these titles have gone largely unexplored since their television exposure in the 1970's, and there are many that have not been seen at all since their original release. Now, thanks to Bob O'Neil, Universal's vice president for film preservation, many pre-code Paramount films are returning to the scene, most in 35-mm prints.

Among the 46 programs that Film Forum will be screening from today through July 21 are a handful of famous titles, such as the double bill of Ernst Lubitsch's "Trouble in Paradise" (1932) and Josef von Sternberg's "Blonde Venus" ( with Marlene Dietrich and Sidney Toler), which opens the series today and tomorrow. Paramount's most celebrated directors, Lubitsch and Sternberg prospered in the freedom that reigned before the censorship crackdown, Lubitsch to create his sensual and suggestive comedies, Sternberg to spin his shadowy erotic fantasies starring Dietrich.

While the studio's image was closely associated with Sternberg and Lubitsch's continental sophistication, Paramount also turned out quite a few of the gritty urban melodramas usually associated with Warner Brothers, and this fine series, programmed by Bruce Goldstein, gives pride of place to some surprising rediscoveries from this neglected side of the studio's output. Sylvia Sidney, Paramount's Bronx-accented answer to the innocent ingnues played by Janet Gaynor at Fox, stars in a double bill on uly 5 and 6 of "Ladies of the Big House" (1931) and "Pick-Up" (1933), two gruff, working-class dramas directed by Marion Gering, and even Sternberg made his contribution to the genre by casting Sidney in his 1931 adaptation of "An American Tragedy" (July 9), one of his most underrated films. Paramount's confectionary, cosmopolitan side is also much on display, as in the double feature of July 1, Frank Tuttle's droll romantic comedy, "This Is the Night" (1932), and Harlan Thompson's musical ode to plastic surgery (really!), "Kiss and Make-Up" (1934), both featuring a young Cary Grant. In other words, it's pretty hard to go wrong once you plunge into the schedule, available at www.filmforum.org.