Their Own Desire, 1929 (dir. E. Mason Hopper)
Trailer from the 1920 silent film, Within Our Gates, directed by Oscar Micheaux. The film portrays the hardships blacks faced in Jim Crow America. The subject matter was so controversial at the time, that the film was severely edited. Most prints were destroyed, and the film was considered lost for 70 years until a lone print was discovered in a Spanish archive. Within Our Gates is believed to be the earliest surviving film directed by an African-American filmmaker. The full version of the film is available online.
Garbo in Torrent, 1926.
Pre-Code Hollywood refers to the era in the American film industry between the introduction of sound in the late 1920s and the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code (usually labeled, albeit inaccurately after 1934, as the “Hays Code”) censorship guidelines. Although the Code was adopted in 1930, oversight was poor and it did not become rigorously enforced until July 1, 1934. Before that date, movie content was restricted more by local laws, negotiations between the Studio Relations Committee (SRC) and the major studios, and popular opinion than strict adherence to the Hays Code, which was often ignored by Hollywood filmmakers.
As a result, films in the late 1920s and early 1930s included sexual innuendo, miscegenation, profanity, illegal drug use, promiscuity, prostitution, infidelity, abortion, intense violence and homosexuality.
Try to look Vampy, we might get a lift!
On The Front Page (1926)
Greta Garbo and John Gilbert in A Woman of Affairs, 1928
Lonesome, 1928. Dir. Pál Fejös.
Barbara Kent in Lonesome, 1928. Dir. Pál Fejös.
Herr Tartüff, 1925. Dir. F.W. Murnau.
![mudwerks:
retrozone:
mignonette:
Our Dancing Daughters {1928}
[that’s not dancing…]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ktzln0edOM1qzsj7lo1_250.png)
Schloß Vogelöd, 1921. Dir. F.W. Murnau.
