Starring: Fredric March, Claudette Colbert, Elissa Landi, Charles Laughton

Hosted by Caroline Golum and Cristina Cacioppo. Followed by an afterparty in Trees Lounge with a DJ set of pre-code era tunes from Owen Kline plus our signature cocktail special “Blonde in Hell.”

Cecil B. DeMille’s The Sign of the Cross is one of the most notorious spectacles of the pre-Code era, blending religious melodrama with lush, barely veiled decadence. Openly reveling in Rome’s sensual excess, DeMille fills the screen with opulent baths, languid banquets, and orgiastic court entertainments meant to show the moral rot of pagan Rome. With Charles Laughton as a yawning, sadistic Emperor Nero (often flanked by his scantily clad boy toy) and Claudette Colbert as the conniving Empress Poppea, the movie is full of provocative imagery, climaxing with a Colosseum scene that manages to be outrageous without the aid of CGI.