A scene from “Three on A Match,” the first film, showing as part of the Lincoln Theater’s Classic Film Club. Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.

The movies are full of sex, violence, nudity, bad people getting away with it, good people suffering, adult themes, and more sex.

Welcome to the 1930s.

And welcome to Damariscotta’s Lincoln Theater, where moviegoers hungry for the most risqué and notorious movies the Pre-Code film industry had to offer are flocking to the Classic Film Club. Offering up a roster of classic films from the time before the infamously restrictive Hays Code stunted the maturation of the nascent motion picture arts with its draconian and deeply church-y rules for what could and most definitely could not be included in Hollywood movies, this season’s Classic Film Club offers up a glimpse of where Pre-Code Hollywood was going.

For the uninitiated, the Motion Picture Production Code (known popularly as the Hays Code after the censoriously prim head Will Hays) was instituted by the Hollywood studios themselves after a campaign of moral outrage at their supposedly smutty output threatened to see government regulation of the industry. The thing is, such moral panics are ginned up regularly, with conservative elements seeking to stamp out ideas they don’t approve of. Coupled with the less-publicized fact at the time that the entire Hays Code was designed by representatives of the Catholic Church, the sweeping content restrictions outright banned a whole lot of subject matter.

Naturally, nudity was out, as was any suggestion that sex outside of marriage was anything but an unforgivable evil. Crime was always punished, police and government officials were always respected and fair, and the clergy were strictly off-limits to criticism, as was the U.S. government. Alcohol and drugs were forbidden, unless you wanted to show how booze leads to well-deserved damnation. Homosexuality was overtly banned from screen, as was any mention of “miscegenation” (or “race-mixing”), since censorship always gives a glimpse into the censors’ queasiest fears and ugliest bigotry.

Apart from this no-nos checklist however, the Hays Code’s most damaging artistic crime was a blanket proclamation that motion pictures must always present a world where good and bad are separate and inviolable, and that moral ambiguity equals immorality. Talk about a black-and-white worldview.

So what, some might say – it was the 1930s. What could movies made nearly a hundred years ago do that would shock anybody?

Well, the first film being shown (on Thursday and Friday) as part of the Lincoln Theater’s Pre-Code showcase is 1932’s “Three on a Match.” Starring Bette Davis, Joan Blondell and Anne Dvorak, the Mervyn LeRoy-directed melodrama sees three formerly troubled school friends reconnecting, only to find their former vices flare up once more in a tangled tale of adultery, divorce, child kidnapping, gambling, addiction and, eventually, suicide. So plenty of no-nos there, according to the Code. But what was most threatening, certainly, was how the film remains devoutly on the side of these three imperfect women, whose misdeeds can’t break the bonds among them, and whose hardships are presented as not all that uncommon for working women in a world of predatory and untrustworthy men.

Up next, on Nov. 3 and 4, is director Alfred E. Green’s still-shocking 1933 drama “Baby Face,” starring the incomparable Barbara Stanwyck as a young woman, sexually exploited since the age of 14 by her father and the slimy customers of her father’s speakeasy, who flees to New York (alongside her Black best friend, played by Theresa Harris, whose career stalled thanks to Hollywood racism) and systematically sleeps her way to the top of a powerful, male-run financial institution. Stanwyck’s tough and battered Lily Powers unashamedly turns the sexual tables on every man she deems necessary to rise in the world, and while she might finally succumb to the charms of a good man, Lily is never truly punished. It should be noted that a lot of Pre-Code films presented a forthright and unequivocal appreciation for strong and defiant women, another theme the censors were eager to extinguish. For some reason.

Both represent the sort of storytelling moral complexity that’s commonplace enough now that the Hays Code (gradually weakened until being abolished in favor of the current Motion Picture Association of America ratings system in 1968) is ancient history, and filmmakers are free to explore any subjects or themes they can imagine. Except that Pre-Code filmmakers were already doing that a century ago, and only the imposition of a narrow-minded, overtly prejudiced system of censorship prevented generations of filmmakers and storytellers from maturing along with the young and vibrant movie industry. It also deprived generations of moviegoers from being exposed to controversial, world-expanding, thought-provoking themes, something, I maintain, that stunted our growth as a culture.

Movies are powerful. That’s why they got censored, banned and forcibly reshaped into inoffensive reflections of a world those censors would have people believe is the only one that exists. And while I’m the first to say that a single, well-intentioned message movie can’t really change the world, I maintain most strongly that people exposed to a film culture full of ideas, people and situations different from them are better, smarter, wiser and more accepting people. Censoring movies (or banning books, as current-day conservatives are all fired up to do) is an act of violence from those seeking to stamp out the existence of ideas – and ultimately people – they don’t approve of. The Hays Code crushed the narrative soul of a movie industry just awakening to the possibilities of a new and exceptionally powerful form of artistic expression. And we’re the worse for it.

Classic Film Club host Jeannie MacDonald will introduce each film and lead a post-film discussion. Photo courtesy of Jeannie MacDonald

So here’s to the Lincoln Theater and film scholar and Classic Film Club host Jeannie MacDonald, who’ll introduce each Pre-Code classic and lead a post-film discussion laying bare all the elements of each film that drew the ire of Will Hays and his scissor-happy band. Taking place on the first Thursday and Friday of each month until March, the series includes such once- and sort-of still-scandalous Pre-Code pictures as “Red-Headed Woman,” “Gold Diggers of 1933,” “Night Nurse” and “Red Dust.” In addition to the informative talk by noted film historian MacDonald, Classic Film Club members receive free popcorn and a free glass of wine, beer or cider, thanks to Lincoln Theater partners Stone Cove Catering. Talk about scandalous.

Check out the Lincoln Theater’s website, lincolntheater.net, for showtimes, movie descriptions and tickets, which are $8, $6 for Lincoln Theater members and free if you’ve paid the $55 for a Classic Film Club membership.

Dennis Perkins is a freelancer writer who lives in Auburn with his wife and cat.