"Suppose Truth is a woman. What then?" - Nietzsche
Directed by Alfred Green, "Baby Face" is one of the more notorious dramas of the Pre Code era. Filled with sexual innuendos, a fairly erotic plot, many double entendres and some risqué camera work, the film stars Barbara Stanwyck as the aptly named Lily Powers, a plucky young woman who lives with her father in a smoky industrial town.
From the onset it is established that Lily's reality is grim, grim, grim. She lives in a cramped apartment, spends most of her time in her father's dingy speakeasy, has but one friend (an African American maidservant) and is routinely prostituted by her father to local men. When her father dies, Lily thus sets about trying to change her life. She leaves her town and heads for New York City. Here she intends to get rich by marrying a wealthy banker. The film then watches as Lily flirts, sleeps with and cons a series of men, most of whom are multimillionaires or in positions of power. Her actions are guided by Friedrich Nietzsche, the famous German philosopher whose teachings are taught to Lily by an elderly man named Adolf.
Modern, casual film-watchers won't have much use for "Baby Face", but it's an interesting film when put in historical context. Before Hollywood began implementing codes, censures and strictures, a number of somewhat daring films were made. These featured African Americans in fairly strong roles (afterwards, miscegenation laws were essentially used to rationalise kicking blacks off screen) and offered frank treatments of sex, sexism, violence and abuse. In "Baby Face's" case, we have the tale of a sexually abused young woman who understandably grows to hate men, people and perhaps the world itself. This persecution then fuels Lily's perceived right to persecute others. Believing exploitation to be "natural", a "fundamental part of reality", she sleeps with and scams everybody, until she wins the chance to essentially inherit a mega-bank. Lily abruptly turns this prize down, however, having learnt the value of true love, kindness and so forth. Written during The Great Depression, the film's very much a parable about nihilistic, soulless social systems, and a plea for ethics and moral, kinder social relationships.
The film's Nietzschean subtext (and its and character called Adolf) is typically used to link "Baby Face" to The Third Reich. But the film predates Hitler's nefarious scheming and its highly unlikely that its writers were even aware of Hitler at the time. The notion that Hitler was fond of Nietzsche is itself a fabrication (Mein Kampf reveals his love for Schopenhauer, he doesn't mention Nietzsche), largely cooked up by Western and German propaganda, the former trying to demonize, the latter trying hard to build a cult of personality (and German Exceptionalism).
"Baby Face" also highlights your typical mainstream misreadings of Nietzsche. Lily, like most (typically the socially maladjusted) who misread and misapply Nietzsche's readings, believes it to be her right to become an "Ubermensch", exercise her "will to power" and exploit and bully those deemed "inferior". This kind of misappropriation of Nietzsche, a rationalisation for what is essentially fascism and egomania, is largely a result of the book "The Will To Power", essentially a forgery attributed to Nietzsche but really assembled by Nietzsche's racist, anti-semitic, proto-Nazi sister during and after his death. She took one liners and many comments from his manuscripts and assembled them into a book which obliterated all proper context and was designed to be inflammatory. It was her personal goal to start a "pure Aryan" civilisation. Nietzsche himself hated nationalism, often wrote in defence of Jews, and promoted self mastery, not the mastery of others. While branded a nihilist, nihilism is also precisely what Nietzsche sought to combat, through the creation of better values and a trans-valuation of oppressive old ones. And though his writings on the overman are usually twisted to imply the creation of supermen who rule "over other men", what he intended was completely different. The overman must get over his own nature, and self-reflexively divert the energy of primitive impulses, sacrificially, into culturally, higher or socially beneficial activities. Nietzsche would also write that no two overmen are the same; each of us values things differently and therefore one overman may not be the same as others. This is a far cry from the absolutism of fascism.
8.5/10 - Worth one viewing.
Directed by Alfred Green, "Baby Face" is one of the more notorious dramas of the Pre Code era. Filled with sexual innuendos, a fairly erotic plot, many double entendres and some risqué camera work, the film stars Barbara Stanwyck as the aptly named Lily Powers, a plucky young woman who lives with her father in a smoky industrial town.
From the onset it is established that Lily's reality is grim, grim, grim. She lives in a cramped apartment, spends most of her time in her father's dingy speakeasy, has but one friend (an African American maidservant) and is routinely prostituted by her father to local men. When her father dies, Lily thus sets about trying to change her life. She leaves her town and heads for New York City. Here she intends to get rich by marrying a wealthy banker. The film then watches as Lily flirts, sleeps with and cons a series of men, most of whom are multimillionaires or in positions of power. Her actions are guided by Friedrich Nietzsche, the famous German philosopher whose teachings are taught to Lily by an elderly man named Adolf.
Modern, casual film-watchers won't have much use for "Baby Face", but it's an interesting film when put in historical context. Before Hollywood began implementing codes, censures and strictures, a number of somewhat daring films were made. These featured African Americans in fairly strong roles (afterwards, miscegenation laws were essentially used to rationalise kicking blacks off screen) and offered frank treatments of sex, sexism, violence and abuse. In "Baby Face's" case, we have the tale of a sexually abused young woman who understandably grows to hate men, people and perhaps the world itself. This persecution then fuels Lily's perceived right to persecute others. Believing exploitation to be "natural", a "fundamental part of reality", she sleeps with and scams everybody, until she wins the chance to essentially inherit a mega-bank. Lily abruptly turns this prize down, however, having learnt the value of true love, kindness and so forth. Written during The Great Depression, the film's very much a parable about nihilistic, soulless social systems, and a plea for ethics and moral, kinder social relationships.
The film's Nietzschean subtext (and its and character called Adolf) is typically used to link "Baby Face" to The Third Reich. But the film predates Hitler's nefarious scheming and its highly unlikely that its writers were even aware of Hitler at the time. The notion that Hitler was fond of Nietzsche is itself a fabrication (Mein Kampf reveals his love for Schopenhauer, he doesn't mention Nietzsche), largely cooked up by Western and German propaganda, the former trying to demonize, the latter trying hard to build a cult of personality (and German Exceptionalism).
"Baby Face" also highlights your typical mainstream misreadings of Nietzsche. Lily, like most (typically the socially maladjusted) who misread and misapply Nietzsche's readings, believes it to be her right to become an "Ubermensch", exercise her "will to power" and exploit and bully those deemed "inferior". This kind of misappropriation of Nietzsche, a rationalisation for what is essentially fascism and egomania, is largely a result of the book "The Will To Power", essentially a forgery attributed to Nietzsche but really assembled by Nietzsche's racist, anti-semitic, proto-Nazi sister during and after his death. She took one liners and many comments from his manuscripts and assembled them into a book which obliterated all proper context and was designed to be inflammatory. It was her personal goal to start a "pure Aryan" civilisation. Nietzsche himself hated nationalism, often wrote in defence of Jews, and promoted self mastery, not the mastery of others. While branded a nihilist, nihilism is also precisely what Nietzsche sought to combat, through the creation of better values and a trans-valuation of oppressive old ones. And though his writings on the overman are usually twisted to imply the creation of supermen who rule "over other men", what he intended was completely different. The overman must get over his own nature, and self-reflexively divert the energy of primitive impulses, sacrificially, into culturally, higher or socially beneficial activities. Nietzsche would also write that no two overmen are the same; each of us values things differently and therefore one overman may not be the same as others. This is a far cry from the absolutism of fascism.
8.5/10 - Worth one viewing.