Fantastic!

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Babyface (Barbara Stanwyk) resides in tough mining town, Scranton, PA. She's getting tired of the mining roughnecks coming to Barbara/Barbara's dad's speakeasy every night, getting drunk and making a lot of noise and trouble, and and harassing Barbara whenever they want to. Back in the 1930s, there weren't the same laws as today and technically it wasn't illegal to grope a woman without her OK, although it was considered terrible manners. It definitely was illegal just like today to get violent with and/or rape a woman back then, thank God. The more gentlemenly type of men back then refrained from the awful manners of groping, but in Scranton, or at least in Barbara's dad's speakeasy, the gentlemen were not the types that came in there. They were tough miners, and the mining jobs were very hard, physically brutal and backbreaking labor, very dirty, unsafe (safety procedures in the mines were less advanced back then and deaths on the job were not too uncommon), and they were long hours. The mining required men with high levels of strength, which some of them we saw in the speakeasy definitely looked like they had. They had some very uncouth, neanderthal attitudes and had no manners or respect for others. Barbara's dad's attitude and behavior was the worst of them all, and Barbara yells those exact words into her dad's face during a heated quarrel. There was also verbal racist hostility going on towards Milda, Barbara's dad's black maid. There was one decent man there who gave Barbara some good advice on how to take advantage of being a pretty young woman. That advice is taken (after a sudden tragic accident with Barbara's dad when a boiler explodes) and that is when the film changes its tune. After Barbara's dad is killed, she hops on to a freight train with Milda. She carries out her newly given advice on a railway worker who tries to throw her off the train until Barbara suggests to him to see if they can "work out another arrangement".Barbara takes herself to new levels when she arrives in New York. In need of employment, she continues to use her advice to get in the front door, and then to, bit by bit, climb herself up the company ladder from mailroom to secretary to a higher up office desk worker to a supervisor's assistant and finally to the company owner's assistant. This is the oldest film I've seen which plays with the (then risky) idea of a woman sleeping her way to the top, and it was considered shocking and unacceptable to many 1930s film audiences, from what I've read. Films like these were the reason the Hays code went into effect. I've read other people's reviews on how much they love pre code films, and how much better they think they are than the "saccharine, sicky sweet, squeaky clean" post code films of Golden Age Hollywood. But those are words of people today talking. The higher percentage of audiences in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s preferred post code. Many of them found the pre code material distasteful, even disgraceful. That's why the Catholic legion of decency succeeded in getting Hollywood to enforce the code. Do you think any such group would ever have any power over Hollywood today? Of course not, they wouldn't have a prayer. The percentage of people who love post code Hollywood over precode has gotten significantly smaller over the decades. Times have changed to say the least. People today usually see no big deal, and often really like movies with sex scenes and sexual humor all over the place. I've lost count on how many people I've talked to who love the "American pie", the " Van Wilder" movies, and all the violent movies like the "Saw" and "Final destination" movies. Even pre code films are lame by today's standards. There's no doubt many more movies today with nymphos in them than back in pre code Hollywood. In "Baby face", Barbara wasn't even so much a nympho, she was just using sex to get promoted at her company. I also noticed how Barbara turned all cold shoulder on the guy she used to get to her present office position when she was ready to use the next guy to advance herself to the next level. I noticed in one scene when Barbara gave the cold shoulder to one of her ex uses, he was wondering why and one of the other office girls told him "don't you know when you've been turned down? Babyface is moving out of your league". Anyway, this is a pretty good and pretty interesting film.

To see a pre-code film like this is to have bawdiness thrown into your face, and have all your pre-conceived notions of the propriety of early Hollywood upended. Baby Face was Warner Bros' attempt to one-up MGM's Red-Headed Woman from the previous year, and both films would contribute to the hastening of the Production Code. Jean Harlow flaunted her infidelity and sexuality at every turn, openly declaring her trashy beauty with see-through dresses and a sexual thrill at being struck, but Barbara Stanwyck only needed a light caress and one look to bring men to their knees. Vice Presidents, aides and bosses walked into the room all thinking to set her straight, yet she has other ideas, and sends them on their way dazed. It is one of Stanwyck's most electric roles, made of smothering closeups and dialogue not merely laced but stinking of suggestion, and it points to her scene-stealing allure no matter the colour or style of her hair. In one particularly intoxicating scene in The Lady Eve, she lies in the lap of Henry Fonda, donning that dark, half-cut dress, and turns a screen icon into putty in her hands. The wardrobe in Baby Face similarly marks her rise from the ashes. Beginning with small-town rags and a reputation for being the town prostitute (she's slept with more men at the film's opening than in Lilian's entire crusade), she emerges from the flames of a fateful fire determined to make a name for herself. Soon she has lacy dresses of all sorts, dons frilly manes and scarfs of ridiculous proportions, and at one point, seems to have fat, furry ferret wrapped around her neck and back (it's a heavy and cumbersome thing). How has she afforded these costumes? Green never shows her truly working, but in an audacious sexual metaphor, utilises a craning shot that gradually rises from the lowly filing department all the way up to executive offices. She is sleeping her way up the corporate ladder.It was wildly progressive in other ways too. Theresa Harris plays Chico, Lily's quiet, unassuming black maid, one of the last times we would see such subtlety before the mammy character took hold. Chico remains a loyal companion throughout, gaining some frilly additions to her dress as well - Lily's insistence that Chico stay by her side while others stared uncomfortably is perhaps the single streak of goodness left in her as she ascends to the top and falls from grace. Yet even before the code censorship boards were still demanding redemption for villains such as Lily Powers, if only eventually. Comeuppance wasn't enough, she had to be beaten into submission, have sentiment reintroduced into her, and so the original script's ending of Lily ending up slaving away in a steel mill was scrapped for the romantic realisation in the ambulance. Only then could it be screened to the public; a hour of debauchery and immorality, only for the conclusion to assert the overpowering values of true love and modesty. Rediscovered in 2004 and restored to its full corruptive allure, the uncut version of Baby Face allows some insight into its intended version. Gone was a man's first consuming gaze of Stanwyck, the camera moving over her long legs, and then only reluctantly up towards her face. Audience did see that same man's shockingly forward approach in propositioning her, first by stroking her on the knee, and then coming up from behind to snatch at her breasts. What they missed was the fiery Stanwyck giving as good as she got: pouring hot coffee over the guilty hand, and then later smashing a bottle over the man's head. They wouldn't see anything as daring as that from a woman for a while afterwards.

I was very surprised by this movie, I really enjoyed it. Lily was the person that I was routing for at times, and other times I didn't know what to think. A woman so beautiful that almost any man will fall in love with her, but she's almost evil, she can get away with almost anything if only she sleeps with a lot of guys. She smiled when her father died, and she gets between peoples relationships. This film is so different from anything that I've seen before. At the end when she denied that mans love, then when she returned to him and found him dead with a gun next him was almost sickening. This was a fantastic movie and I couldn't stop watching.

A woman who was used all of her life by men now makes a decision between power and love. She started from the bottom with a couple dollars to her name and used her looks to get what she wanted to get to the top. She decided that she was not going to be used any longer, and that she was going to use them instead. Once she reaches the top and finds a man who she falls in love with, something tragic happens and she needs to give up everything she has. But is love strong enough to make her give all of her money away? The title of this film is deceiving because you think it is going to be about a sweet and innocent woman.