The 1930s List: Discussion and Suggestions (Decade Project Vol. 4)

An ongoing project to survey the best films of individual decades, genres, and filmmakers.
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Rayon Vert
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Re: The 1930s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#201 Post by Rayon Vert » Sat Dec 22, 2018 3:10 pm

This is my last batch of revisits for this project*, and I'll spend the next month and a half trying to get as many new films in. (*Excluding Ozu's The Only Son; I lost my beloved, oldest cat of near 18 years eleven days ago - I still have the younger one -, I'm just starting to hold my head above the water and I'll wait a month or so for that one so as not to unnecessarily aggravate my grieving.)


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Three Smart Girls Grow Up (Koster 1939). When I watched eleven of the Deanna Durbin musicals a while back, I gave an edge to this one out of the better films. In a sequel to her debut, Deanna, unbeknownst to her two sisters, tries to fix their love lives. Set in a rather simpler setting than some of the previous films, this one’s comedy, charm and occasional music pieces all generally succeed. Deanna displays her gifts as a comedienne, while Robert Cummings provides a really fun character. These films usually have a nice sheen to them too. Not that this means it’s good enough to qualify for a place on my list though!


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The Scarlet Empress (Von Sternberg 1934). I revisited and wrote this up not long ago for the biopic list project, but watched it again to see the upgrade and rank it here.
Rayon Vert wrote:
Sat Jan 13, 2018 6:09 pm
(...) (W)hat a worthy film this is and what a strange beast to come out of the Hollywood studio system – although maybe not so strange when you take into account that it was made at Paramount (home, during this period, of irony, sophistication, erotic naughtiness, visual sensualism, the European-flavored, and a propensity with experimentation and the bizarre). The comedy is really dry but at the same time quite exalted, sometimes almost in Mel Brooks territory, in addition to being as risqué as any Lubitsch. The story seems almost an excuse to make a film that is just completely, unrestrainedly, about style: the darkly lit photography and décor, an excess of luminous shots of Dietrich through gauze, and the screen constantly filled with those huge, grotesque statues the tone of which parallels the film’s story and the painting of that Russian court as pure insanity. At film’s end, as Catherine comes to power, it’s as if the pretense of narrative has almost been sacrificed to an almost abstract series of visual flourishes.

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Peter Ibbetson (Hathaway 1935). Gary Cooper plays an architect who carries a strange malady in his soul after being taken away from Paris to London after his mother’s death at an early age, and separated from his beloved 8-year-old playmate. The film’s über-Borzagian romantic mysticism surprises in its intensity and by the intoxicated delirium that finally and completely engulfs the narrative. Delightful enough in its first “normal” half or so, but the oddness of its later stages makes it a must-see at least.


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G Men (Keighley 1935). WB’s solution to the Production Code allows the genre and Cagney to continue their thing, with gun violence and killings as intense and numerous as in any pre-code gangster film. It’s nowhere near as stylish as something like The Public Enemy, but it’s a solid, very likeable film, with an entertaining story and personable actors. Brick’s relationship with his trainer McCord is one of the noteworthy dimensions.

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Re: The 1930s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#202 Post by bamwc2 » Sun Dec 23, 2018 10:37 am

Viewing Log:

The Bride Wore Red (Dorothy Arzner, 1937): The first of my Joan Crawford double bill sees her star as Anni, an Italian chanteuse who enjoys two weeks at a haughty resort funded by Count Armalia's (George Zucco) as part of a social experiment. She finds that the rich life suit her well, but needs a new benefactor to keep her in it. Wealthy playboy Rudi (Robert Young) fits the bill. He's smitten with her, but she finds that her heart drifts to the poor, but happy Giulio (Franchot Tone). I found it to be a decent enough drama, but not one that particularly stood out. I doubt that I'll remember it a year from now.

Jewel Robbery (William Dieterle, 1932): William Powell and Kay Francis star in this delightful comedy from Dieterle. Powell plays an unnamed German sophisticate who spends his days robbing the upper crust of Europe. His gang spends about a third of the picture in a heist at a jewelers where Baroness Teri (Francis) is a customer, where the suave thief makes off with the store's inventory and Teri's heart. This is the kind of precode caper that would have been unthinkable just a couple of years later. The villains are the protagonists, they escape punishment, Francis shows a lot of skin early on, the cops are tricked into smoking jazz cigarettes, and a married woman is seduced away from her husband. Overall, this one was a real treat and a strong contender for my list.

Mannequin (Frank Borzage, 1937): My third Borzage for this list project finds Crawford playing Jessie, a poor newlywed married to Eddie (Alan Curtis). John Hennessey (Spencer Tracey), a millionaire industrialist who comes from the same impoverished neighborhood as the newlyweds, meets them as they celebrate their nuptials. Hennessey falls in love with Jessie, but her scheming husband sees it as an opportunity to milk him of his fortune. I felt pretty lukewarm to this one. It did a decent job with its basic love triangle, but the drama over Tracey's fluctuating fortunes felt forced.

The Peach Girl (Wancang Bu, 1931): Miss Lim (Lingyu Ruan) is a poor, but noble daughter of a servant in this Chinese silent. As a child she befriends King Teh-en (Yan Jin), the son of her father's employers. As the two grow older Linn and Teh-en become lovers and she has his daughter. The two want to marry, but his traditional mother is aghast at the idea of someone so poor and rural joining her family. She forbids it, and the pregnant Linn must leave to raise their child on her own. It's an utterly conventional Chinese melodrama that is saved by Ruan's performance. Unfortunately, knowing what happened to her just a few years later makes watching any of her films a bittersweet experience.

Sons of the Desert (William A. Seiter, 1933): Stan and Ollie are back in this comedy about a pair of hen pecked husbands from Los Angeles. The pair belong to a Free Mason-esque fraternal order called Sons of the Dessert. They're about to have their national convention in Chicago, but Ollie's wife refuses to let him go, so the boys concoct a fake illness that gets them a prescription to vacation in Honolulu. Of course they go to Chicago instead while they wives slowly figure out what happened. There's really not much more to say about it without going in to individual gags. Not everything works here, but the laugh to miss ratio is high. I'd put it into the top tier of their work.

The Whole Town's Talking (John Ford, 1935): Edward G. Robinson plays dual roles in this pleasing comedy of mistaken identity from Ford. Arthur Ferguson Jones is a milquetoast office worker who bears an uncanny resemblance to escaped mob boss "Killer" Manion. After the poor guy is taken into custody and cleared, the DA gives Jones a letter to clear him in future stops. It's not long before Manion reads about it in the paper and pays Jones a visit that turns his life upside down. Ford is seldom remembered for his comedies, but he does an admirable job with this one. The middle part seems to stretch on, but it never wears out its welcome.

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Re: The 1930s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#203 Post by TMDaines » Sun Dec 23, 2018 1:06 pm

Cold Bishop wrote:
Fri Sep 28, 2018 3:19 am
Resurrectio (Alessandro Blasetti, 1931)
This, his second film, and Italy’s first sound film, is primarily noteworthy as one of the great unsung early experiments with sound. On paper, it’s one of those late silent films, with a recorded soundtrack and dialogue overdub inserts. Yet, Resurrectio feels like a talking film, not just a silent; instead of making a silent film with some concession to “talkies”, it tackles the dilemmas and ingenuity needed for sound production head on. With its emphasis on “off-screen” dialogue cut into the soundtrack, the film early on establishes an emphasis on off-screen characters and action; regularly the film focuses on hands or object as characters converse, or relegates people, back-turned, to the far ends or corners of the frame. Nor does the film settle for static compositions; an early scene in an Art Deco nightclub finds the camera roving around with Ophulsesque energy. Only when a tracking shot ends with a closeup of a person does the dialogue soundtrack get spliced in. This is also a thoroughly musical film, about as filled with melody as a film can get without being a Musical or Operetta. The musical soundtrack isn’t mere accompaniment; the film is divided into two musical movements, and composer Amedeo Escobar gets a big enough credit (and later, blatant piece of self-promotion) that one perhaps should consider him a co-auteur. The film is wallpapered with music, and even before music reveals itself as being a major thematic point, the various pieces suggest themselves as the primary unifying structure of the film, and a unifying element of cosmopolitan life.
Really enjoyed this. Plays much more like a silent than a sound film, marrying both Soviet montage, and a series of settings and a leading lady who would slot in well in UFA. Plot is wafer thin, but that's not always a bad thing in a film so visually stimulating. Will make the list. Blasetti is a fascinating director for the decade. Terra madre and 1860 are my next to watch, the first for being the most highly influenced by Soviet filmmaking of the time and the latter has been a much watch for me for a decade now for its supposed neorealist influence, despite being a historical epic.

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Re: The 1930s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#204 Post by Rayon Vert » Sun Dec 23, 2018 3:28 pm

The Last Days of Pompeii (Schoedsack 1935). From the makers of King Kong. Tragedy turns a poor blacksmith into a nihilistic gladiator. It’s not off to a good start with the inept acting of Preston Foster, but it then takes a turn for the worse with a cheesy story that has to involve the Jesus narrative. The Pompeii cataclysm is indeed saved for the last ten minutes, pretty much unrelated to what's gone on before, although there is a bit of special effects fun in that sequence.


No Blood Relation (Naruse 1932). I’m new to Naruse, having only previous seen the short in the Eclipse set. This is a sensitively done child custody drama, with a depiction of background social forces like the Depression’s effects. The director injects some stylish visual pizzazz, like those dramatic zoom-in shots. I like the two main actresses’ performances. Still this had only a modest impact on me.


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All Quiet on the Western Front (Milestone 1930). An obvious unwatched title to get to, and I should have a few others like this too. This is an incredible-looking, and even more -sounding film for this early sound year, with virtually no stiffness. I was a lot more impressed than I thought I would be with this on those counts, especially with some of the daytime combat scenes, which feel years ahead of their time. Narrative-wise, I feel this was more touch and go, with Ayres’ acting not always top-notch, and some scenes, like the one where Paul is talking to the dead soldier he’s killed, a bit trite. Overall a definite winner of course, though.

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Re: The 1930s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#205 Post by Rayon Vert » Thu Dec 27, 2018 1:17 am

Green Light (Borzage 1937). I started going through a large chunk of Borzage’s films before these list projects took control of my viewing habits about 2, 3 years ago now, and I’d gotten this far. The source is a novel by the same author who wrote Magnificent Obsession, so this is definitely spiritual-themed material that fits the director’s sensibilities. The specific theme here is sacrifice, as a surgeon portrayed by Errol Flynn takes the blame for another doctor’s fatal mistake, then further gives of himself in a medical cause to find a vaccine. The results on screen, though, are fairly dull overall, with the Flynn protagonist a sort of saintly one-dimensional character that’s really not too interesting. When I read about Borzage's work, in theory I should be favorably inclined to it but, so far, the way his films are executed leaves me disappointed most of the time.


Apart from You (Naruse 1933). This story about the world of working geisha women is even more attuned to social factors than the preceding No Blood Relation, quite immersed in naturalism, while delivering characters that are more developed. I thought this film was definitely stronger, both more interesting and moving, although I felt the melodramatic ending took away a bit from the subtlety the film had going up to that point.


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Marius (Korda 1931). I’ve never before read or seen any Pagnol. In the first twenty minutes or so, I was afraid I wasn’t going to like this: stage-bound, overbearing dialogue scenes. Then the Marius and Fanny story grabbed hold of me and I ended up liking pretty much everything about this. Really memorable, heart-wrenching finale.


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Mutiny on the Bounty (Lloyd 1935). I have vague memories of the Brando version I saw on TV as a kid, and never saw this one. I’ve got to join FrauBlucher (see the seafaring film thread) in his appreciation for this filme. I was really blown away at how good this movie was from beginning to end (OK, maybe just a few very slightly lesser moments in the initial Tahiti segment), really Hollywood film-making at its best. The film was well recognized by the Oscars, including the three leads, and they are indeed all terrific. This is pretty much written and played to perfection on all counts, dramatic and enjoyable as hell, and it will feature high on my list.

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Re: The 1930s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#206 Post by Michael Kerpan » Thu Dec 27, 2018 1:50 am

I think Apart From You, is one of Narus'es most visually beautiful films (up there with Yearning and Song Lantern, among a few others) as well as one of his best overall. The ending, while sentimental, is also devastating
SpoilerShow
especially when one realizes that going to work as a geisha in one of these more out of the way locations almost certainly meant going from a performance-oriented job to a sex-related one
.

FWIW -- My article on this film.

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Re: The 1930s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#207 Post by bamwc2 » Sun Dec 30, 2018 11:32 am

Viewing Log:

Blood Money (Rowland S. Brown, 1933): Bill Bailey (George Bancroft) maintains a facade as L.A.'s top bail bondsman while secretly benefiting from a symbiotic relationship with the city's mafia. They keep his pocket's lined with business and he run interference for them behind the scenes. His life gets turned upside down when he gets involved with Eileen (Frances Dee), a pretty, but troubled socialite with some interesting views on sex ("If I could find a man who would be my master and give me a good thrashing, I'd follow him around like a dog on a leash."). It doesn't take long for both the law and the mob to turn on him, as he has to fight for his freedom and his life. Thanks goes to Cold Bishop for the recommendation. It really is as bonkers as he says. I wouldn't call it a good movie, but it is totally off the wall. My favorite part is the attempted assassination that is so wild it might have been dreamed up by Wile E. Coyote.

The Bowery (Raoul Walsh, 1933): Chuck Connors (Wallace Beery) is the biggest of the tough guys in the Bowery in 1898. The police respect him, the kids look up to him, and the ladies all swoon over him. However, Steve Brodie (George Raft) comes for his crown, and a bet over the ownership of Chuck's bar sees Steve leap off the Brooklyn Bridge and into the hearts of his neighbors. Does Chuck have what it takes to get back on top? It's quite fun to watch these two one up another, but the film is marred by several glaring instances of racism.

Hard to Handle (Mervyn LeRoy, 1933): James Cagney is Lefty Merill, a crooked, but lovable con artist in this comedy from Mervyn LeRoy. As the film begins we see a dance marathon competition that Lefty has rigged. Unfortunately for him, his partner has other plans and absconds with the prize money before he can get away with his scam. From here Lefty goes on to a series of other crooked deals while romancing his gal (Mary Brian). The film drags a bit in the second half, but Cagney's charming portrayal carries it through.

Hello, Sister (Erich Von Stroheim, et al, 1933): Attractive Peggy (Boots Mallory) and homely Millie (Zasu Pitts) are best friends living in the city when Peggy meets Jimmy (James Dunn). The two embark on a romance as Millie's life spirals out of control. The melodrama here is laid on pretty thick, but the real story is the drama behind the scenes. The film was set to be von Stronheim's first talkie, but he saw it snatched out from under him after primary shooting had wrapped. Reshoots were done with no less than three other directors (including Raoul Walsh!) and von Stronheim's name removed from the finished product. The end result is okay, but I can only imagine what we could have had if the German master had been allowed to release his cut.

Me and My Gal (Raoul Walsh, 1932): Spencer Tracey plays Danny Dolan, a recently promoted police detective on the hunt for gangster Duke Castenega (George Walsh). Capturing Castenega would provide Dolan with the prestige and funds he needs to marry his titular gal pal, Helen (Joan Bennett), but he spends most of his days settling disputes with local drunks and setting up fights for feuding youth (!). It's far from the top tier work of anyone involved with the production, but it never wears out its welcome. This dramedy definitely leans more toward the drama side, but has extended comic sequences that work well enough.

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Re: The 1930s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#208 Post by Rayon Vert » Wed Jan 02, 2019 12:12 am

Every-Night Dreams (Naruse 1933). Another melancholy family drama centering on a woman trying to make ends meet as a geisha, but this time involving a returning ex-husband/father. I recognized several of Ozu’s regulars here. Once again I liked the lead actress a lot, but I didn’t think this was in the same league as Apart from You, either in terms of the story’s strength or visual beauty, which Michael was right to celebrate in the preceding film (although this film’s more washed out print surely doesn’t help to do it justice).


History Is Made at Night (Borzage 1937). The dramatic finale definitely makes this a typically Borzagian narrative. I wouldn’t call this bad but neither did it really work for me. I didn’t think the Arthur-Boyer romance had that much chemistry, the psychotic ex-husband was pretty out there, and the mix of drama and comedy mostly felt odd and took me out of the film.


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Captains Courageous (Fleming 1937). This has been written-up by knives already. I watched it with my young nephew, and we both really liked it. There is a naturalness to the way Bartholomew’s character (Harvey) evolves, and I liked the way the male attitudes towards “toughening” him up are counterbalanced with a sympathy towards children, like the way his father respects his grieving. Definitely an enchanting, not only well acted but great-looking sea adventure film, and by far the best Fleming I’ve seen up to now.


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One Way Passage (Garnett 1932). William Powell and Kay Francis fall in love aboard an ocean liner on a 24-day journey from Hong Kong to San Francisco. She doesn’t know he’s a murderer awaiting execution in San Quentin; he doesn’t know she’s got weeks left because of a terminal illness. This is actually played half the time for comedy, thanks in large part to three side characters, one of them a police officer sticking to Powell. Strangely enough (maybe not that much considering who are the leads), this curious little film has a lot of charm and ends up being a small delight. I’m apparently not alone in appreciating it as it’s currently got an 8.0 on IMDB.

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Re: The 1930s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#209 Post by dustybooks » Wed Jan 02, 2019 10:28 am

Yeah, One Way Passage is one of my favorite romances of the period. It's so quick and more than slightly odd and the actors communicate a real sense of loss and longing. Great ending too, as I recall.

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Re: The 1930s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#210 Post by Michael Kerpan » Wed Jan 02, 2019 11:54 am

I initially liked Every Night Dreams a bit more than Apart From You -- largely because of the great lead performances by Sumiko Kurishima (Japan's first star actress -- most of whose work is lost) and Tatsuo Saito (in a rare non-comic role). But Apart From You is much more consistently visually extraordinary. I would hate to be without either. These were Naruse's break-through films -- and show him, even early in his career, as more genuinely sympathetic to the plight of women than Mizoguchi ever was (and without the exploitativeness I often sense in Mizoguchi).

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Re: The 1930s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#211 Post by domino harvey » Thu Jan 03, 2019 12:49 pm

One Way Passage is another film that would look like a masterpiece if you watched it in a bar without the sound on. The script is lousy, as are the jokes, but there is some real clever visual wit in play that is far more elegant than the material warrants. Also, the finale is really depressingly dark-- Hollywood eventually figured out how to do these kind of fatalistic yet upbeat endings (see the Ghost and Mrs Muir), but it doesn't quite work here. I do like the runner with the good-natured cop who unapologetically gives up doing the lawful thing to run away with a prostitute grifter!

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Re: The 1930s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#212 Post by Rayon Vert » Sun Jan 06, 2019 11:26 pm

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Fanny (Allégret 1932). I didn’t think this would be as affecting as Marius but it wound up being moving in another direction, challenging our sympathies from the previous film, and in the end making Panisse the most endearing character. César, Fanny and Panisse form a new family of sorts. The film also feels a lot more cinematic than its predecessor, giving us not only a lot more exterior scenes and shots of Marseille, but generally being more fluid in the camera movements even within the interior ones.


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Captain Blood (Curtiz 1935). Swashbucklers are a genre I’ve neglected until now so I’m going to try to see the best ones for this decade project and the next. FrauBlucher’s ranking of this film in his seafaring thread raised my expections, which generally were not disappointed (even if I’d rate it significantly lower than Mutiny on the Bounty.). It’s a film with a lot of different sections to it, and we don’t get to the buccaneering until halfway in, and all of them are distinct and successful. I actually enjoyed that tension-filled first half even more; the slave angle with the political background draws you into the story, so that it’s never a mere actioner. De Havilland I thought was especially good, not to mention lovely. Really enjoyable cast of “pirate”/prisoner characters surrounding Flynn too.


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Westfront 1918 (Pabst 1930). A striking film in its realism and grimness. The ending to this is a pitiless experience for the viewer. Many combat shots feature a still camera with small figures on the distant horizon, evoking a sense of the anonymity and complete loneliness of war. (What’s missing in those sequences, however, is the impact of the sound you have either in the Milestone film or in Wooden Crosses.) This film really brings home the sense of war’s impact not only on the front but in all of society, with those equally despairing city and domestic scenes. I know it’s not Hollywood filmmaking, but I could have done without that seemingly endless variety show sequence, though.


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Street without End (Naruse 1934). A young waitress gets an offer to marry a poor but sincere man at the same time as she’s asked to become a film actress, then gets accidentally hit by a car driven by a wealthy man. Which decision will bring happiness? To me this was the director’s most satisfying silent, a well-rounded film that mixes effectively the light comedy with the drama, the latter predominating in the later parts. A journey that allows for an examination of the differences between the working and the upper middle class worlds, with evocative use of locations. The theme of strong women and weak men is recurrent in these films.


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The Prisoner of Zenda (Cromwell 1937). I’ve seen later adaptations but this Selznick production brings quite a big of magic to the story. I’m definitely with knives on this one. I thought it was really a delight, starting with that terrific cast (in addition to the leads, Colman and Carroll: Fairbanks Jr., Massey, Niven and Astor, not to mention the dependable C. Aubrey Smith). This is wittily written and everyone plays well, and it looks quite fetching as well (James Wong Howe). Yes, like domino says, the swashbuckling is quite small potatoes, but the film really carried me along and it was entertaining and charming throughout.

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Re: The 1930s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#213 Post by knives » Sun Jan 13, 2019 1:01 pm

Ladies They Talk About (dir. Keighley & Bretherton)
This is an incredibly stupid film that only serves to highlight how amazing Hold Your Man is. This hits many of the plot points of the Jean Harlow film without the depth of character, narrative coherence, and thematic concern. It's that middle part that hurts the film most. Characters do things because the script wants them to and not because it makes any sense. The prison setting of the film as well seems to exist just so that you can have women punch each other. I'd continue, but to be honest that first sentence says everything worth saying.

A Yank at Oxford (dir. Conway)
These college films of the '30s are pretty universally awful and this is not really an exception though it is more blandly thrown off than out and out bad which I suppose is a type of improvement. To be honest I'm not sure what the appeal for this one is even supposed to be.

The Richest Girl in the World (dir. Seiter)
This film is slightly underminded by Fay Wray being way more attractive as a personality and body than Hopkins. It's a cute enough Prince and the Pauper romance though it could have been spiced up into a fabulous screwball in better hands.

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Re: The 1930s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#214 Post by Rayon Vert » Sun Jan 13, 2019 2:27 pm

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Stage Door (La Cava 1937). Maybe my expectations were too high given its reputation, and I was really looking forward to seeing it, but while this is obviously a good film I didn’t find myself thrilled or enchanted by it – surely nowhere near a My Man Godfrey. I don’t know if it’s because I didn’t think it was all that amusing, or the narrative elements that interesting. But the cast was obviously terrific and I got enjoyment out of watching the performances. I’ll give this another spin one of these days.


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The Good Earth (Franklin 1937). I’ve never read the novel so went into this blind. It’s an impressive film. At the same time I can see a little where knives is coming in on this one, because I also thought that Muni wasn’t consistently great in this, but I did think he was generally good enough, sometimes quite likeable even, and he definitely didn’t take me out of it. There is such desolation in this story, and there are some really great scenes – the storm, the masses looting. It frequently looks terrific too – both in terms of the (rewarded) photography and the sets.

The one point where I did get temporarily disappointed was the development in the narrative when
SpoilerShow
the family heads up back north, and Wang’s penis screws things up (I was already blaming it for that fourth child when starvation had already hit!). I don’t know how this reads in the source material, but it feels like such a hackneyed plot twist that I felt it took away from some of the hard-earned realism in the earlier parts of the film. I tended to attribute this to the character, who can be a bit of a dunce, rather than to Muni’s performance. But luckily locusts intervene and save the day!

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Goodbye, Mr. Chips (Wood 1939). Again I’m in some degree of agreement with knives’ reaction to the lead here. I also think Donat’s Oscar-winning performance hasn’t stood the test of time, though, once more, I seem to appreciate it and the film in general more. It’s a likeable piece. In the end it’s similar to films like Colonel Blimp and The Long Gray Line, a biographical trajectory where the theme ends up being life itself, and there’s emotion in that. The film only starts coming alive (like the character) when Greer Garson makes her appearance, though, and those middle sections definitely outshine the rest.


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The Four Feathers (Z. Korda 1939). What a grand, enjoyable film (that I’d never heard about). Really engaging story combined with excellent war and adventure film elements. The actors are terrific but it’s the visuals that send this one over the top for me. It frequently looks ahead of its time, especially the location shooting. So glad I’ve discovered this.
Last edited by Rayon Vert on Sun Jan 13, 2019 4:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: The 1930s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#215 Post by TMDaines » Sun Jan 13, 2019 4:36 pm

I’m as a guilty as anyone for not writing up my watching, but I could continue exploring the 1930s for another year.

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Re: The 1930s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#216 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sun Jan 13, 2019 5:10 pm

TMDaines wrote:
Sun Jan 13, 2019 4:36 pm
I’m as a guilty as anyone for not writing up my watching, but I could continue exploring the 1930s for another year.
Possibly my favorite decade ....

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Screwball Comedies of the 30s & 40s Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#217 Post by movielocke » Fri Jan 18, 2019 2:01 pm

I rewatched only angels have wings and hot damn is it a great film. I last saw it on vhs fifteen or more years ago and remembered very little of the plot details but I do remember it was a mess and hard to follow the dark visuals, what an upgrade!

Definitely making my list possibly top ten, grant is in top form, as is Arthur and Mitchell, the script is superb and those visuals, both the miniatures and the aerials are astounding.

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Re: Screwball Comedies of the 30s & 40s Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#218 Post by swo17 » Fri Jan 18, 2019 2:11 pm

First time I've ever heard that be called a screwball comedy

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Re: Screwball Comedies of the 30s & 40s Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#219 Post by domino harvey » Fri Jan 18, 2019 2:18 pm

There's no way anyone could consider it one, I think he just meant to post it in the 30s thread

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movielocke
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Re: Screwball Comedies of the 30s & 40s Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#220 Post by movielocke » Fri Jan 18, 2019 2:39 pm

domino harvey wrote:There's no way anyone could consider it one, I think he just meant to post it in the 30s thread
Whoops! That would be correct!

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swo17
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Re: Screwball Comedies of the 30s & 40s Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#221 Post by swo17 » Fri Jan 18, 2019 2:47 pm

Ah yes, for a second I was thinking it was a '40s film so I didn't think of that possibility

This is probably a good time to remind everyone that the deadline for the '30s List is just a few weeks away

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Drucker
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Re: The 1930s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#222 Post by Drucker » Fri Jan 18, 2019 10:11 pm

Just saw McCarey’s dreadful film Let’s Go Native which seems to combine many of the worst tropes of the early sound era: stiff acting, boring musical numbers which appear out of nowhere, and most offensively: awful comedy gags which repeat themselves too much and are telegraphed a mile away. Just how many times does the guy working with the movie company need declare himself the “most careful man on the job” and then proceed to drop the expensive vase/desk/mirror? (at least three times in a five minute window but it could have been more). The puns are obnoxious, the editing and pacing have no flow. One more observation: in a film like Lonesome, sublime camerawork and storytelling is awkwardly interrupted a few times, but 95/5 of the film is silent, and the sound parts may interrupt, but don’t negatively impact the story. This film is the opposite. 95% terrible talkie, and 5% silent: think title cards, montage sequences, and gags clearly recorded without live sound. The effect is incredibly jarring, as a slow, awkwardly paced film suddenly accelerates out of nowhere with a quick gag, only to land right back in the slow world of reality. Only McCarey completists need apply, and even then…

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Re: The 1930s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#223 Post by Rayon Vert » Sun Jan 20, 2019 12:28 am

Japanese Girls at the Harbor (Shimizu 1933). This felt promising, with those shots early on of twin, gnarled trees accompanying the two girls vowing to remain friends forever. The melodramatics that follow, starting with the shooting scene, don’t quite mesh with that poetry though. At the midway point, as everyone seems to be betraying everyone, I started not care about any of it. The Eclipse liner notes tell of the Western references in this film, but I was still left wondering why there’s a character called Henry (was the actor supposed to stand in for a Caucasian?) and why they’re all attending a Christian church.


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Liebelei (Ophüls 1933). I’d previously seen The Bartered Bride among his earliest work. This is more archetypal Ophüls, the foundation for later other similar films, especially Madame De, which this one has a lot in common with story-wise. Even though it doesn’t have all of the stylistic and acting nuances of that later masterpiece, this ultra-romantic melodrama is also both lightened and deepened by being played on a variety of notes, including comic ones, and by featuring characters that are richly constructed, notably the very human portrayal of Fritz’s friend, Theo, and his companion Mizzi. Magda Schneider here has a special presence.


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César (Pagnol 1936). So in the end there isn’t a weaker film in the trilogy. It starts off meanderingly, like the others, with those satirical digs at religion. But those scenes about and around Panisse’s passing, like all the ones that follow, are a joy to watch. Pagnol’s visual style is a bit more static than Allégret’s in those conversation scenes, but that doesn’t take away from the vitality. The acting is excellent once again. Quite a perfect ending to the trilogy, frequently moving as the family works out its traumas, and my favorite of the three.


If I Were King (Lloyd 1938). Louis XI takes François Villon up on his wager and allows him to govern the country. I have to side with knives on this one. Not an awful film but just so very unremarkable. One of the problems is Ronald Colman’s Villon, a smart-alecky rogue who’s never really in peril here, busy but unconvincing and not really likeable, and who doesn’t evoke the slightest note of sincerity in his passion in the romantic intrigue with Frances Dee. This is Paramount so I was also expecting the sets to look more impressive than they do. It’s not a credit to Preston Sturges to know he wrote this, even if he was apparently proud of his work.


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The Adventures of Robin Hood (Curtiz & Keighley 1938). I grew up with the Looney Tunes cartoons but never saw the film. It’s a fun film and a truly impressive piece of Technicolor eye candy. Kind of a proto superhero film, and the influences on Star Wars are unmistakable. It’s a little too light-hearted for me to personally rate it higher than Captain Blood, or even The Prisoner of Zenda, but it’s pretty perfect for what it is: the casting, Flynn’s performance, the score, the last dueling scenes – all wonderful.

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Re: The 1930s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#224 Post by dustybooks » Sun Jan 20, 2019 3:30 pm

I was already a fan of Top Hat and Swing Time but only just yesterday saw The Gay Divorcee for the first time. Delightful, of course, but I found myself more entranced by Edward Everett Horton's performance than almost anything else in the film; even though the song sequences were all pretty much flawless, the Astaire-Rogers love story was somehow less compelling to me than Horton's frazzled attorney running around putting out fires.

The other 1930s title I watched this week was Imitation of Life and I'm afraid I found it rather dire -- not so much because of its obviously weird racial attitudes but because the story was all over the place to a confusing extent. I think Domino said over in the Oscars thread that it felt like a skeletal attempt to tick every box of liberal social-problem Hollywood moviemaking and that's very accurate. That said, and as some other posts in this thread have pointed out, there's just something about Hollywood cinema from the '30s -- I didn't think this was a good movie at all, but I still found it totally fascinating, and not because I love Claudette Colbert but just as a warped portrait of America in that time: what the norms were, what we cared about, etc. Frankly I wished the whole movie was about the pancake mix industry and all the attendant marketing blitzes and such.

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Re: The 1930s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#225 Post by bamwc2 » Mon Jan 21, 2019 4:14 pm

Ah Wilderness! (Clarence Brown, 1935): Eugene O'Neill's one and only comedy finds the playwright reimagining his childhood in an idealized manner. Presumably his own stand in is the high school valedictorian (played here by Eric Linden) with his love of literature, fondness for big words, and general innocence that he'd rather you not notice. I found a lot of it too sedate and folksy (heck, Will Rogers was originally cast in it) for its own good, but the attempted seduction scene at the bar was a bit of a kick in the pants. I'm not sure how it got past the censors in its final form.

The Barretts of Wimple Street (Sidney Franklin, 1934): Norma Shearer stars as Elizabeth Barrett before her fame as a poet and her marriage to Robert Browning (played here by Fredric March). Elizabeth lives with her many adult siblings, their servant, and their overbearing father played by Charles Laughton. As the film opens she is an invalid living under her father's oppressive authority, but the love of Browning inspires her to fight back against her illness and her father. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this one, but with outstanding performances from Shearer and Laughton, what's not to love? Definitely a contender for my list.

Bird of Paradise (King Vidor, 1932): Joel McCrea plays Johnny Baker a youthful sailor on an extended stay with a native tribe in the South Pacific. There he meets Luana (Dolores del Rio), a sensual, but innocent girl who is due to someday be sacrificed to appease the local volcano god. The two enjoy weeks as lovers isolated from the tribe, but after they fall in love, can they escape her fate? Aside from the condescending leering at the natives and the ample talents of de Rio's body double (I'm assuming it was a double), there's not much going on here.

Son of Frankenstein (Rowland V. Lee, 1939): Having done off with the mad doctor in the last film, this sequel stars Basil Rathbone as the illegitimate son of Frankenstein. The baron inherits his father's estate along with his notes on reanimation. Though he initially takes a dim view to his father's activities, an encounter with Ygor (Bela Lugosi) convinces him to once more bring life to the monster (Boris Karloff). The monster probably has less screen time here than any of the other entries in the franchise, but it still follows all the same tropes as the other entries in the series. This time we get a happy ending, effectively undoing most of what happened in the previous 90 minutes aside from a few deaths. Despite Rathbone's talents, it was a major step down in quality from the previous two Frankenstein films. Still, there's enough here for a mild recommendation.

Zoo in Budapest (Rowland V. Lee, 1933): Zani (Gene Raymond) is an earnest young zoo employee with a passion for animal welfare. One day he meets and falls in love with Eve (Loretta Young) a young orphan girl on a group outing at the zoo. Zani convinces Eve to stay hidden in an enclosure until after closing. The two meet up, but are searched for by security and soon find themselves entangled with Paul (Wally Albright) a young boy who broke into the zoo after he wasn't able to get an elephant ride during the day. Before long Paul sets in motion a series of calamities that leads the zoo into complete bedlam. The last 20 minutes of this are complete bonkers. Thanks for the recommendation, Tommaso. It was a fun flick, especially at the end. As an ethical vegetarian, I also appreciated its anti-fur protagonist!

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