Passport to Cinema, BFI Southbank

The BFI explores films that were made before the Hays Code was enforced with nine films of of the era. 

The Hays production code, the bane of any adventurous Hollywood Golden Age screenwriter's life, was the stringent censorship code introduced in Hollywood in 1930. In case you've never noticed, there's more or less no film from this period (with the exception of maybe a few Hitchcocks) that has a certificate of less than PG, and that's because this code prevented any studio release from making use of sex, radical politics, violence or drugs. But despite being introduced in 1930, it was never really enforced until 1934. This season at the BFI looks at films that were released during that brief window, and if you thought before the 70s Hollywood cinema was the preserve of prudes and moral hygienists, this season might just make you change your mind.

True, none of these films are eye-poppers by modern standards, but they do deal with surprisingly heavy themes, and have a lot of fun along the way. Let's start with the sex: one of the more erotic films on offer in the season is White Venus, a von Sternberg drama staring Cary Grant and, surprise, surprise, Marlene Dietrich. Dietrich plays a classic von Sternbergian androgynous and powerful woman who is whipped up into a world of sex and corruption when she otherwise innocently enters showbiz to pay for her husband's medical bills. Elsewhere on the programme, Ernst Lubitsch's The Smiling Lieutenant and Howard Hawkes' Twentieth Century provide raucous screwball fun and the glamour and sexuality of 20s and 30s musical theatre is brought to the fore by Lloyd Becon's Footlight Parade and Robert Mamoulian's Applause, which offers an insight into the world of 1920s burlesque.

Amongst the more political films on offer are The Hounds of Zoubaroff, a highly literate film that uses the structure of Shakespeare's Tempest in order to explore 1930s fascist politics, as well as the 1932 original of Scarface that draws heavily on the life of gangster Al Capone in order to draw a surprisingly realistic portrait of the gangland Chicago in the 20s and 30s.

This is a riotous and fun season and, spread across June and July, there's plenty of time to see them all.