TCM CELEBRATES EARLY ERA WHEN IT WAS GOOD TO BE BAD.

Byline: David Kronke Television Critic

IF YOU'VE ever watched an old film on Turner Classic Movies and wondered how anyone could've bought such hokey, unbelievably squeaky-clean material, the network's new documentary ``Complicated Women'' points out that Hollywood filmmakers didn't necessarily buy into such worldviews. They had it forced upon them in 1934 by the Hollywood Production Code. For a brief, liberating period from 1929 to 1934, pre-Code films were cynical, hard-bitten and downright racy - a spate of PG-13 movies before the 30 years of G-rated material that followed.

Narrated by Jane Fonda and written by Hugh Monro Neely (who also directed) and Andi Hicks, adapting a book written by Mick LaSalle, ``Complicated Women'' argues that in that five-year period, a lot of actresses assumed roles significantly meatier and more realistic than many starlets working today. A generous dollop of clips from these pre-Code films are offered for our (by today's standards, mild) titillation, but they're certainly progressive enough to rattle the teeth of audiences who associate old Hollywood with Ma and Pa Kettle and Shirley Temple.

Actresses such as Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo, Claudette Colbert, Tallulah Bankhead and Mae West played prostitutes, bisexuals, gun molls, strippers and women who, in general, enjoyed sex and other forms of bad behavior. Actress Kitty Carlisle shares a great anecdote: A musical she appeared in featured an ode to marijuana (which was legal when the film was shot - but not by the time it was to hit theaters); she, cluelessly, thought the song was about a Mexican musical instrument.

Even better, throughout the month, TCM will air some of these movies in their entirety, including ``Design for Living,'' ``The Divorcee,'' ``Queen Christina,'' ``Frisco Jenny,'' ``She Done Him Wrong'' and ``I'm No Angel.'' Alas, no ``Tarzan and His Mate,'' which featured a considerable nude scene and a suggestion of underwater sex that got the Catholic Legion of Decency absolutely apoplectic.

The film omits social elements that led to the Code's enactment. It also leaves the somewhat erroneous impression that these adventurous movies were subtle and enduring (a lot of them certainly aren't) and that the Code's biggest victims were actresses who reveled in playing full-bodied roles and not the prim schoolmarms they were allegedly consigned to post-1934. Of course, the truth is more pernicious - the Code insisted all films depict good triumphing unambiguously over evil in every fashion, meaning men's roles were diminished a bit, too.

But as film historian Mark Viera notes, in what is presented almost as an aside here, it was ``mature thought'' that suffered most, the possibility that life was neither as black-and-white as those early movies nor as glorious as the Technicolor that soon came to help whitewash the simplistic tales that the Code insisted be told.

COMPLICATED WOMEN - Two and one half stars

What: Documentary on controversial films made before the Hollywood Production Code neutered filmmakers in 1934.

Where: Turner Classic Movies.

When: 5 and 7:30 p.m. today; also May 20.

In a nutshell: Fun clips and history, but somewhat limited in its perspective.

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Photo:

Norma Shearer and Robert Montgomery in ``The Divorcee'' (1930), one of the films made before the Hollywood Production Code that will run this month on TCM.