Hollywood sex and violence: we've seen it all before.

• Author: Barrett, Wayne M.

Those who claim today's films dwell too much on life's darker side obviously haven't watched any old movies lately.

"They don't make movies like they used to" has been the clarion call of close-minded critics throughout the century. Consider the following well-known and well-received features that have illuminated the silver screen over the last 10 decades:

* A gang of masked desperados hold up a train with guns blazing. A posse then hunts down the bandits and wipes them out in the first classic western gunfight scene ever captured on film. This movie will serve as the prototype "good guys always get the bad guys" for years to come (Edwin S. Porter's "The Great Train Robbery," 1903).

* The epic story of the Civil War and Reconstruction is told in the most politically incorrect manner imaginable. The Ku Klux Klan is glorified as the protector of beleaguered white womanhood, and blacks are portrayed as subhuman, bestial darkies complete with all the familiar stereotypes: a shuffling gait, large white teeth, and rolling eyes (D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation," 1915).

* This heavy-breathing silent melodrama has one of the world's most famous actresses playing an alluring femme fatale who ends up as an impoverished Parisian prostitute (Greta Garbo in 1926's "The Temptress").

* A mad scientist obsessed with immortality takes to grave-robbing so he can build a man from dead body parts. His experiment works, but the creature accidently is given a "criminal" brain. The monster goes on a murder spree throughout the countryside before finally being destroyed - or so everyone thinks (Boris Karloff in 1931's "Frankenstein").

* A drifter gets a job at a roadside restaurant and commits adultery with the young, beautiful wife of his fat, middle-aged immigrant boss. The lovers eventually kill the husband, but beat the rap, only to have her die in a car accident and him sent to the electric chair for murdering her - although he didn't (John Garfield and Lana Turner in 1946's "The Postman Always Rings Twice").

* A Hollywood director discovers a talented dancer in a Spanish cafe. She becomes an internationally acclaimed movie star who goes through a succession of lovers before marrying a nobleman who fails to tell her he was rendered impotent in a war-related injury. She cheats on him, gets pregnant, and eventually is shot to death by her no-good spouse (Humphrey Bogart and Ava Gardner in 1954's "The Barefoot Contessa").

* A secretary steals a bundle of cash...