About 20 years ago I was in a kind of partnership with another film historian who told me that, no, there wasn’t a market for a book on pre-code movies. I can only wonder what he thinks today after ...

Elliot Lavine, programmer of pre-Code films at the Castro Theatre (every Wednesday through March 30), was raised in Detroit, moved to the Bay Area in the 1970s with the thought of becoming a filmmaker ...

Thomas Butt is a senior writer. An avid film connoisseur, Thomas actively logs his film consumption on Letterboxd and vows to connect with many more cinephiles through the platform. He is immensely ...

Despite only lasting four short years from 1930 to 1934, the pre-code era of Hollywood’s Golden Age produced films that pushed the boundaries of cinema and storytelling, even by today’s standards.

The most exciting time in Hollywood was arguably the ephemeral period before the stingy rules implemented by the industry. Before the adoption of the Hays Code, the guideline that major studios ...