Film Forum's four-week series of Pre-code Paramount films begins this Friday. The series is described by Film Forum as "early 1930s featured cocktail shakers and white ties, sophisticated dialogue and/or international decadence served up amid lavish décor with a distinctive European flavor." Elliott Stein reports on several of the films for The Village Voice, including Cecil B. DeMille's The Sign of the Cross (1932), which features "a depraved emperor Nero (played by Charles Laughto) throwing Christians to the lions and hosting splendiferous orgies while Mrs. Nero (Claudette Colbert) cavorts nude in huge pools of asses' milk." Pre-code, indeed.