Life Among the Savages

Somewhere toward the end of Call Her Savage (1932, directed by John Francis Dillon), Nasa Springer (Clara Bow) and her beau of the moment go "slumming" in The Village. Their destination is a bar full of anarchists and degenerates, but that's just movie speak. It's a gay bar and it's not even really coded. Mind you, the movie had already thrown so many fastballs at the audience that it shouldn't have come as a surprise, but it was. This is a movie about all kinds of love, so the "love that dare not speak its name" seems all of a piece. Pre-code movies are kind of awesome this way. There's a lot to digest in the subtexts of this movie. Hell, there's a lot to digest in the not so sub text of this movie. It's at an intersection of sex, gender, race, and class that seems to have permeated the zeitgeist of 1932.

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