Series explores salacious nature of old films made for ‘public good’
This weekend, the Wexner Center for the Arts will screen three films that aimed to educate audiences — or so the filmmakers claimed.
“Mom and Dad” (1945) beat the drum for sex education, while “Narcotic” (1933) and “Marihuana: Weed with Roots in Hell” (1936) condemned drug use.
Yet Wexner Center director of film/video David Filipi cautions that the messages of such movies probably shouldn’t be taken at face value.
“They give themselves a varnish of doing something for the public good,” Filipi said. “But, really, it’s just masking the thing that hopefully is going to get people in the door, whether it’s little, brief glimpses of nudity or drug use.”
The films — which will kick off the monthlong series “Forbidden Fruit: The Golden Age of the Exploitation Picture” Friday and Saturday at the arts center — were made without conforming to the Motion Picture Production Code of the early 1930s to late ’60s.
The code aimed to expunge controversial content from Hollywood productions, but independently produced films — like those to be shown his weekend — were not obligated to adhere to it.
The trade-off: such films were screened in off-thebeaten-path theaters rather than major chains.
“You maybe wouldn’t be able to show at the Loews chain of theaters, or you wouldn’t be able to show at the Warner chain of theaters,” Filipi said. “There were still independent movie theaters, especially in smaller towns and in the neighborhoods that were a little bit further away from downtown.”
To attract audiences, filmmakers often offered story lines and subject matter that veered into taboo territory.
“There were no stars, or there were kind of over-thehill stars in some of these films, but they had something that the major studios didn’t,” said series curator Bret Wood, a producer at the distributor and homevideo label Kino Lorber. Wood points to three main attractions: sex, drugs and childbirth.
“Mom and Dad” — which screens Friday night — is a case in point: Directed by William Beaudine, the film tells of a teenager whose ignorance in sex education leads to her becoming pregnant. Then, in a lecture-style epilogue, shots of an actual childbirth are included. The consequences of venereal diseases also are graphically illustrated in the film.
Although its intentions may have been prurient, “Mom and Dad” likely proved informative to some moviegoers, Wood said.
“It was difficult for a woman or a man to get information on birth control (in the 1930s),” he said. “People would go to these films for information and they would buy these booklets that were sold sometimes.”
At the Wexner Center screening, 1960s-era sexhygiene booklets will be available.
On Saturday, the featured attraction will be two films railing against drug addiction: “Narcotic” and “Marihuana.” Wood praises the over-thetop style of the director of both, Dwain Esper.
“To me, they’re exhilarating to watch because you’re seeing someone pull out all the stops and throw everything into a movie,” said Wood, who will introduce Saturday’s show. “It doesn’t matter if the movie is supposed to be about marijuana addiction — you’re going to find all sorts of other vices thrown in there, as well.”
The films may or may not have proven insightful to audiences of their day, but Filipi said that viewing them today can offer a different sort of education: reminding viewers of an underexplored corner of cinema.
“Anytime you can shine a light on a relatively unknown segment of film history,” he said, “I think it’s beneficial.”