Baby Face

“Exploit Yourself.” Barbara Stanwyck puts Nietzsche’s ideas into practice and, using every part of her body, takes over an entire company, which is managed by men, of course. Her path to success begins with the liberating death of her father, who had forced her to sell her body. In the case of other men, she is conversely the one who forces them to submit. By confidently applying the “seduce and smile” technique, she avenges all of the wrongs done to her by men. She drives her short-term lovers away from their jobs and from their wives. She maintains an icy calm while the men around her murder each other. In connection with how she sleeps her way to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder, the camera climbs higher and higher to the top of the building, the phallic symbol of patriarchal power. For Lily, the men are also mere puppets, which is in part due to the fact that she has learned from "their" literature on how to make the world theirs (besides The Will to Power, she diligently studies an etiquette handbook). In short, she has read the opposite sex and is smart enough to know when to play dumb. Apart from Barbara Stanwyck, who does amazing legwork and casts immodest glances with irresistible nonchalance, Baby Face is also worth watching as an illustration of how far Hollywood filmmakers dared to go in the pre-Code era. However, that era’s guardians of morality did not find the film’s nihilism fascinating, but reprehensible, so they first censored Baby Face and then completely pulled it from circulation. The complete version was found only in 2004. And thank goodness it was found, because Hollywood has never offered too many similarly diabolical lessons in social pretence and brazen calls to take more from life than is normatively offered to you. 75% (04.06.2021)