Baby Face Response

The conclusion of Baby Face, in addition to the film as a whole, shows very clearly its pre-code roots. Though in theory the “moral” of the story is that the “bad girl” sees the error of her ways (as represented by the flashbacks of the men she’d slept with in her rise to power) and learns to love, the fact is that not only is she a consistently sympathetic character, and her relationships are considered “accepted and common” (strictly forbidden with the advent of the code), her plan works. Despite Maltby’s assertion that the film could have passed the code, the sentiment violated the code’s spirit at every turn. The altered ending, with the survival of her husband, simply cements the message that this was not a bad plan- had he died, the moral could have been the more code-friendly “sleeping around eventually leads to heartbreak and tragedy,” while the new ending, especially with a background of her sexual manipulations being encouraged by the one grown man in her life who seemed to really care about her, suggests a moral of “get to the top however you can, just remember that even bad girls need love in the end.”