Generally, when a TV network puts together a marathon, it’s based on holiday programming or around the return of a popular TV show. But every once and a while, a network decides to get a little cheeky, which is why we are getting the TCM movie marathon “Condemned.” The network’s “festival of films” is going to be completely comprised of movies that were once condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency, an organization that basically served the same purpose and function as the Parents Television Council does today. A C rating from the Legion literally led to condemnation and all the movies you can watch on TCM in March will be on that list.
Some of these are notorious films. The Barbara Stanwyck film Baby Face is literally about a young woman sleeping her way to the top. M is Fritz Lang’s famous story about a serial killer taunting the police. L’Amore notoriously was protested by the Legion all the way to the Supreme Court, who eventually declared that motion pictures were protected under the first amendment. The “Condemned” marathons will run every Thursday in March—which happens to be during Lent. The final marathon day, March 31, will feature a set of films that were condemned by the organization under “special circumstances,” including the aforementioned L’Amore. You can check out the full schedule, below.
Thursday, March 38:00 PM The Story of Temple Drake (1933)10:00 PM Black Narcissus (1947)11:30 PM Design For Living (1933)1:15 AM The Outlaw (1943)3:30 AM Baby Face (1933)5:00 AM Wild Boys of the Road (1933)Thursday, March 108:00 PM M (1951)9:45 PM The French Line (1954)11:45 PM And God Created Woman (1956)1:30 AM Untamed Youth (1957)3:00 AM Breathless (1960)Thursday, March 178:00 PM Viridiana (1961)9:45 PM Kiss Me, Stupid (1964)12:00 AM Blow-Up (1966)2:00 AM Never on Sunday (1960)3:45 AM Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967)Thursday, March 248:00 PM The Carey Treatment (1972)10:00 PM The Competition (1980)12:15 AM Those Lips, Those Eyes (1980)2:15 AM Lemora, A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural (1973)4:00 AM Ice Castles (1978)Thursday, March 318:00 PM The Moon Is Blue (1953)10:00 PM Baby Doll (1956)12:15 AM L’Amore (1948)1:45 AM Strange Cargo (1940)3:45 AM Rififi (1954)5:45 AM Love in the Afternoon (1957)
Amusingly, TCM has hired Sister Rose Pacatte, a member of The Daughters of St Paul, to host each of TCM’s special screenings of flicks the Legion believed were objectionable. Sister Rose Pacatte is also the director of the Pauline Center for Media Studies and is a film critic in her own right.
Obviously, most of the movies that made this list would be fairly tame by today’s standards. In Baby Face, for instance, when the young woman is sleeping around the screen cuts away so that we never actually see her in bed with a young (or older) man. Still, the theme is pretty entertaining, and hopefully it will do exactly what TCM hopes: get a few more people to tune in to watch a slew of famous movies spanning multiple generations.
