A Journey Through Cinema History

[sabotai]

Working List(s) for 1933.

"Must Watch" Movies
Cavalcade
King Kong
The Private Life of Henry VIII
Morning Glory
Lady for a Day
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
Gold Diggers of 1933
Dinner at Eight
Footlight Parade
Duck Soup
42nd Street
Man's Castle

That's 12. Let me know if there are any movies you guys think of as "must watch" that I missed or think that a movie on my "maybe" list below should get promoted to "must watch". I've spent a good portion of today looking up movies and where to watch them. I'm having trouble tracking down a streaming option for "Lady for a Day", so that one might not make the cut.

"Maybe Watch" Movies
Queen Christina
Secrets (Mary Pickford's last movie so good chance it gets promoted)
Le Tete d'un Homme
Bomshell
Little Women
Alice in Wonderland
The Kennel Murder Case

Japanese Movies
Every-Night Dreams (Naruse)
Apart From You (Naruse)
Passing Fancy (Ozu)
Woman of Tokyo (Ozu)
Dragnet Girl (Ozu)
Japanese Girls at the Harbor (Shimizu)

These are the Japanese movies on FilmStruck and I plan to watch all 6, but again, if any of them are literally silent movies (no music), they'll get the ax. It might seem overkill to watch all of them, but I have non-this-Dynasty reasons for wanting to get a very thorough education on Japanese film history (as a wanna-be writer, trying to get as much exposure to non-Western story telling that I can to hopefully improve my own story telling abilities)

[Brian Swartz]

This is pretty much fantastic. That is all.

[Izulde]

It might seem overkill to watch all of them, but I have non-this-Dynasty reasons for wanting to get a very thorough education on Japanese film history (as a wanna-be writer, trying to get as much exposure to non-Western story telling that I can to hopefully improve my own story telling abilities)

Which non-Western writers do you read?

[sabotai]

Which non-Western writers do you read?

... uhhhh...that's another area I need to work on. Not many yet. I read "The Three Body Problem" by Liu Cixin earlier this year. That's the most recent.

I have Haruki Murakami's books on my "to read" list, as well as some of the classics of Japanese literature. I've still yet to read any of the Russian (if we're not counting Russian writers as "Western") classics that have been on my bookshelves for years.

So yeah, if you got any suggestions for non-Western literature, I'm all ears.

[sabotai]

This is pretty much fantastic. That is all.

Thank you!

[Izulde]

... uhhhh...that's another area I need to work on. Not many yet. I read "The Three Body Problem" by Liu Cixin earlier this year. That's the most recent.

I have Haruki Murakami's books on my "to read" list, as well as some of the classics of Japanese literature. I've still yet to read any of the Russian (if we're not counting Russian writers as "Western") classics that have been on my bookshelves for years.

So yeah, if you got any suggestions for non-Western literature, I'm all ears.

Arg. Damn work logged me out and ate my post. I'll come back to this when I'm at home where I'm perma-logged in.

[larrymcg421]

Great stuff. I loved I Am a Fugitive on a Chain Gang. FWIW, my top 10 for 1932 is:

1932

Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch)
I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (Mervyn LeRoy)
American Madness (Frank Capra)
Freaks (Tod Browning)
Me and My Gal (Raoul Walsh)
One Way Passage (Tay Garnett)
The Old Dark House (James Whale)
One Hour With You (Ernst Lubitsch)
I Was Born, But.... (Yasujiro Ozu)
Shanghai Express (Josef Von Sternberg)

Your 1933 to watch list is terrific. I would recommend adding, if they are available:

Counsellor at Law - Solid legal drama with John Barrymore
Queen Christina - On your maybe list. I think it's worth watching.
A Man's Castle - Spencer Tracy is terrific in this.
Design for Living - Great romantic comedy.

[sabotai]

Okay, so he's the 'final' list. Can't find Counsellor at Law or Design for Living on a streaming service, and I can't find Lady for a Day on one either, so I'll bump Queen Christina up. I'm also going to include Secrets. It's Mary Pickford's last movie. I feel I gotta have it in. Also, all 6 Japanese movies have sound (music). So hurrah! Lots of Japanese movies this year.

Movie List for 1933

Cavalcade - Oscar Winner Best Picture
Drama, directed by Frank Lloyd. Starring Diana Wynyrd and Clive Brook

Passing Fancy - Kinema Junpo Award for Best Film
Drama, directed by Ozu Yasujirō. Starring Sakamoto Takeshi, Fushimi Nobuko, Obinata Den

The Private Life of Henry VIII - Oscar Winner Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Picture Nominee
Bio-Pic, directed by Alexander Korda, Starring Charles Laughton, Robert Donat, Merle Oberon

Morning Glory - Oscar Winner Best Actress in a Leading Role
Drama, directed by Lowell Sherman. Starring Katherine Hepburn, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Adolphe Menjou

42nd Street - Oscar Nominee for Best Picture
Musical, directed by Lloyd Bacon. Starring Warner Baxter, Bebe Daniels, George Brent

King Kong
Monster Movie, directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. Starring Fay Wray, Bruce Cabot and Robert Armstrong

Queen Christina
Bio-Pic, directed by Rouben Mamoulian. Starring Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Ian Keith

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
Crime, directed by Fritz Lang. Starring Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Otto Wernicke

Gold Diggers of 1933
Musical Comedy, directed by Mervyn LeRoy. Starring Warren William, Joan Blondell, Aline MacMahon

Dinner at Eight
Comedic Drama, directed by George Cukor. Starring Marie Dressler, John Barrymore, Wallace Beery

Footlight Parade
Musical, directed by Lloyd Bacon. Starring James Cagney, Joan Blondell, Ruby Keller

Duck Soup
Comdey, directed by Leo McCarey. Starring The Marx Brothers

Man's Castle
Drama, directed by Frank Borzage. Starring Spencer Tracy, Loretta Young

Secrets
Western, directed by Frank Borzage. Starring Mary Pickford, Leslie Howard, C. Aubrey Smith

Every-Night Dreams
Drama, directed by Naruse Mikio. Starring Kurishima Sumiko, Saitō Tatsuo, Yoshikuwa Mitsuko

Apart From You
Drama, directed by Naruse Mikio. Starring Yoshikuwa Mitsuko, Isono Akio, Mizukubo Sumiko

Woman of Tokyo
Drama, directed by Ozu Yasujirō. Starring Okada Yoshiko, Egawa Ureo

Dragnet Girl
Gangster/Crime, directed by Ozu Yasujirō. Starring Tanaka Kinuyo, Oka Joji, Mizukubo Sumiko

Japanese Girls at the Harbor
Drama, directed by Shimizu Hiroshi. Starring Oikawa Michiko, Inoue Yukiko, Egawa Ureo

[sabotai]

42nd Street (1933)

https://i.imgur.com/3oMFxBnm.jpg

Directed By: Lloyd Bacon, Busby Berkely
Written By: Rian James, James Seymour
Starring: Warner Baxter, Ruby Keeler, Bebe Daniels, Dick Powell, George Brent
Length: 89 min.
Genre: Musical / Backstage Musical (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backstage_musical)
Based On: The Novel "42nd Street" by Bradford Ropes

Oscar Nominee for Best Picture

We start off 1933 with the movie that's credited for starting off the musical craze of the 1930s as well as saving the Warner Bros. studio from bankruptcy.

The production of a new musical called "Pretty Lady" is starting up and Julian Marsh (Warner Baxter) is hired to direct it. Peggy Sawyer (Ruby Keeler) is new in town and dreams of making it in the city. With the help of two actresses, she makes it onto the production. The show's juvenile lead, Billy Lawyer (Dick Powell), takes an interest in Peggy right from the moment she accidentally walked in on him changing.

The show's star, Dorothy Brock (Bebe Danials) spends her time giving the old financial backer of the show some attention, but is secretly involved with Pat Denning (George Brent). When Marsh notices this, he contacts some mobster friends of his to rough up Pat. Following this episode, Pat and Dorothy break off their relationship and Pat leaves for Philadelphia. During this time, however, Pat had also been showing interest in Peggy Sawyer.

Rehearsals for the show go on and on. The show looks and feels like it's going to be a dud. As the show nears opening night, the director drops a bomb on his cast...they're going to open in Philadelphia, which apparently is a fucking terrible thing. And then the night before opening, Dorothy breaks her ankle. Peggy is recruited to fill in. The movie ends on a few musical numbers, and Peggy is an instant star.

It's not something I'd consider "Best Picture", but it was an okay movie. I'm not someone who typically goes for musicals. My biggest complaint is that the musical scenes in musicals tend to go on for way too long (and I usually don't like the music to begin with). But, I'm sure people who are fans of musicals love that, so I'm not exactly the target audience for these. Having said that, I thought it was a decent movie.

This movie does appear on a few of the AFI's lists from the mid 2000s. They ranked it the 13th best musical in 2006, ranked the song "42nd Street" as the 97th best song, and gave the line "Sawyer, you're going out a youngster, but you've got to come back a star!" 87th on its list of 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes.

My Rating: 6/10
IMDB User Rating: 7.6/10 (9k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 95% of Critics (21-1), 74% of Audience (3.6 / 5 ; 7k votes)

[sabotai]

The Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)

https://i.imgur.com/5sNyhRK.jpg

Directed By: Mervyn LeRoy, Busby Berkely
Written By: Erwin S. Gelsey, James Seymour
Starring: Warren William, Joan Blondell, Aline MacMahon, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell
Length: 96 min.
Genre: Musical Comedy
Based On: The Play "The Gold Diggers" which ran from 1919 to 1920

More of a comedy than 42nd Street, a lot of the humor in this movie is very out-dated. But, I still found some of it funny.

The movie is about a group of women trying to make it big in theater. They get word that a producer they've worked with before is putting on a new show. It'll be about the working man and the depression. The only problem is he has no funding.

A man who lives across the alley is a piano player and singer, and is dating one of the girls. He's trying to make it with his music, and the producer hears him playing. The producer loves the music and wants him to write the songs. And sing! But, the young man declines to sing in the show, but will create the music. And after hearing about the producer needing money, claims he can get it. No one believes him, and the next day he's late, but he does show up with the money. The gang suspects foul play.

Turns out, the young starving artist is actually wealthy, and that comes to light after the show when the young songwriter had to participate in the musical. The songwriter's rich older brother and his even older associate demand that the relationship be called off.

Comedy twist, they make this demand to the wrong girl. Hilarity ensues as the younger brother tells the girls to keep stringing the older brother and older associate along. They do, but people start catching feelings. The movie ends with a super mega happy ending.

I actually enjoyed this movie, despite the really outdated comedy. The first several scenes are the most brutal when it comes to that, but once the film hits its stride, when the older brother comes into it, it becomes quite humorous.

This musical is where the song "We're in the Money" comes from, and I'm sure just reading that title put the song in your head. You're welcome.

My Rating: 7/10
IMDB User Rating: 8.0/10 (6k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 100% of Critics (10-0), 86% of Audience (4 / 5 ; 2k votes)

[sabotai]

Footlight Parade (1933)

https://i.imgur.com/j94YGtim.jpg

Directed By: Lloyd Bacon, Busby Berkeley
Written By: Manuel Seff, James Seymour
Starring: James Cagney, Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell
Length: 102 min.
Genre: Musical Comedy

This is a talking picture about how a musical director deals with how the talking pictures are destroying musical theater.

Chester Kent (James Cagney) gets an idea on how to 'mass produce' prologues, short live musicals put on before the movie begins. He works constantly and his partners are hiding the profits. On top of that, their main rival keeps stealing his ideas.

Nan (Joan Blondell), his secretary, is in love with him. But when Kent meets her roommate, he falls for the roommate. Nan didn't hold back the insults at her throughout the movie either. "As long as there are sidewalks, you'll have a job." = how I know this is a pre-Code movie.

Once again Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell play supporting characters who end up falling in love.

The business is on the verge of collapse, but they have one last chance. They need to impress an owner of a chain of theaters to buy their prologues with 3 performances in one night. Kent locks everyone in the practice theater to prevent leaks and they practice night and day.

Nan finds out about the partners stealing from her boss, so she blackmails them to help Kent out of a bind (his ex-wife who isn't technically an ex-wfie showed up demanding money). But then she turns around and tells Kent about his partners stealing form him, and he does not take the news well. And Nan's roommate who Kent fell for? Yeah, she was just in it for the money and Kent eventually realized that. He storms out in the middle of practices, but returns soon after as he's struck by inspiration. The exhausting practices become even more exhausting until the night of the performances.

And that's when, if you're not a fan of musicals, this film comes to a total screeching halt. Up until this point, the movie wasn't really a musical at all. Some brief singing here and there, but no musical numbers at all. I was rather enjoying the movie. A lot.

The last half hour or so was nothing but 3 back-to-back-to-back long ass musical numbers. It certainly didn't help that the first one called "Honeymoon Hotel" was by far the worst of three IMO. That started this half-marathon of musical performances off on a bad foot. The second, "By the Waterfall" was okay. The third, called "Shanghai Lil", features Cagney singing as his character went on instead of the main singer who refused to perform because he was too drunk.

So really, this was a 70 minute long movie with 30 minutes of musical performances at the end. Other than successfully impressing the theater owner at the end, absolutely nothing of narrative importance happens in the last 30 minutes. The first 70 minutes were great, the last 30 was a total drag.

The movie was a massive success though. Without the revenue generated by 42nd Street, The Gold Diggers of 1933 and Footlight Parade, there wouldn't be a Warner Bros. today.

My Rating: 6/10
IMDB User Rating: 7.7/10 (3k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 100% of Critics (9-0), 83% of Audience (3.9 / 5 ; 1k votes)

[Suicane75]

This musical is where the song "We're in the Money" comes from, and I'm sure just reading that title put the song in your head. You're welcome.



Oh god damn you!

[sabotai]

港の日本娘 (1933)
Minato no Nihon musume
English Title: Japanese Girls at the Harbour

http://i.imgur.com/rJitYeAm.jpg (https://imgur.com/rJitYeA)

Directed By: Shimizu Hiroshi
Written By: Mitsuru Suyama, Toma Kitabayashi (story)
Starring: Oikawa Michiko, Yukiko Inoue, Ranko Sawa, Ureo Egawa
Length: 72 min.
Genre: Drama

The story centers around, as the title indicates, a group of girls in the harbor city of Yokohama. Sunako and Dora are students at a Catholic girls school who are best friends. They always walk together to and from school. They're always going to be close in each other's lives.

The third girl, Yoko Sheridan is a more...let's say...experienced girl. And all three have caught the attention of a young man name Henry. Between Sunako and Dora, Sunako is more successful at gaining his attention, and Dora, while hurt at first, refuses to let a boy come between her and her friend. Yoko Sheridan, on the other hand, is ruthless in her attempts to win Henry.

This drives Sunako crazy. She can't accept it. While Henry is with Yoko Sheridan late one night at the church, Sunako shows up and shoots her. Sunako flees.

Cut to years later. Sunako has moved around from city to city, and eventually makes her way back to Yokohama, reluctantly at first. With her is Miura, a painter who follows Sunako around like a puppy dog. Sunako, a nice girl before all this, has become a dancing girl. She works in bars, dances with men...probably other things the movie never shows. She acts happy around others, but she's hit rock bottom.

Back in Yokohama, Henry runs into Sunako. Henry had married Dora. Now that Sunako is back, Dora is intent on trying to be friends again. Henry seems to regain his interest in Sunako. The rest of the movie is the back and forth as they try and try not to be in each other's lives. Henry starts hitting the bottle hard, Dora is at the end of her rope with him. Sunako finds Henry in a bar, takes him back to Dora, and leaves for good. She leaves, accompanied by Miura, on a ship leaving Yokohama.

A bittersweet ending with Sunako leaving behind most of the people in her life, but determined to improve her life.

I really enjoyed the story, and the movie overall. I feel like I'm becoming a broken record, but again, here I am, pointing out creative use of the camera and editing and how much I enjoyed it. Maybe I should have become a cinematographer...

My Rating: 7/10
IMDB User Rating: 7.0/10 (460 votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: N/A Critics, 67% of Audience (3.6 / 5 ; 100 votes)

[sabotai]

Dinner at Eight (1933)

https://i.imgur.com/Aw81K4Mm.jpg

Directed By: George Cukor
Written By: Frances Marion, Herman J. Mankiewicz
Starring: Marie Dressler, John Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, Lionel Barrymore, Billie Burke
Length: 113 min.
Genre: Drama

See, I thought the actress who played Glinda, the Good Witch of the North(Billie Burke), in The Wizard of Oz talked that way because the Good Witch was supposed to majestic ... nope, that's just how see talks.

Oliver (Lionel Barrymore) is the head of a shipping company that's falling on hard times. Every one is, it is the Great Depression after all. He wants Dan Packard (Wallace Beery) to buy some stock to help the company out, but he says he'll consider it but doesn't commit. Meanwhile, Oliver's wife, Glinda the Good Witch of the North, decides to throw a dinner party and invites the top of their social ladder.

The movie is mostly about the intertwined social connections of the guests for the dinner party. There's Kitty (Jean Harlow) who is Dan Packard's wife, but is having an affair with a doctor who is also invited to the dinner party. Oliver and Glinda's daughter is secretly involved with Larry Renault (John Barrymore), a movie star - also invited to the party. Carlotta Vance (Marie Dressler) is a former stage star who currently lives in Europe but is in town for financial reasons and is a former love interest for Oliver's - and the interest doesn't seem to have faded by the way he interacts with her.

And so it's one whole mess. Most of the characters are once wealthy people who have fallen on bad times. I can see how it appealed to the masses for its time. A bunch of once wealthy people trying to continue to live like they're wealthy, usually ending in a terrible consequence. Larry Renault can't take not being on top so much that he kills himself.

Overall, the movie didn't do much for me.

My Rating: 5/10
IMDB User Rating: 7.8/10 (6k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 100% Critics (17-0), 74% of Audience (3.7 / 5 ; 2k votes)

[sabotai]

King Kong (1933)

https://i.imgur.com/ChTIy4Hm.jpg

Directed By: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack
Written By: James Creelman, Ruth Rose
Starring: Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Bruce Cabot
Length: 100 min.
Genre: Monster Movie

A filmmaker is looking for a young actress for his upcoming movie, but he has a reputation for going to far off places to film and this time, he won't even tell anyone where he's going. No one will agree to the gig. He ends up finding a down on her luck woman and offers her the role. On the way to the unknown location, the ship's first mate falls in love with her. We're not really shown any of that.

The movie up until they get to the island was excruciatingly boring, poorly written, poorly acted.

Then they get to the island, the natives kidnap the 'golden woman' and give her to King Kong. The movie finally begins. The filmmaker and the ship's crew run into the jungle after Kong to rescue her. Lots of fight scene with Kong vs. other massive monsters ensue. When the crew catches up to Kong, they don't stand a chance. He playfully shakes them of a fallen tree and down into a crevasse to their deaths. Only the filmmaker and first mate survive.

The filmmaker runs back to the ship to get more men and supplies. The first mate continues to follow Kong, waiting for his chance. A few more monster fights later, he manages to save her and they run back to the village. Kong chases and, eventually, the crew manages to knock out Kong with a gas bomb.

They take Kong back to New York, put him on display and he escapes. He finds his golden woman, takes her up a skyscraper where he's shot down.

I've seen several of the remakes and psuedo-remakes over the years, but not the original. I though the entire 2005 version was brutally boring, so I went in thinking I wasn't going to like this one. I did, though. It was, once they got to the island, an enjoyable monster movie. The dialog was cheesy and the acting wooden, but nice visual effects on the fight scenes and Kong's rampage.

My Rating: 7/10
IMDB User Rating: 7.9/10 (71k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 98% Critics (55-1), 86% of Audience (3.7 / 5 ; 89k votes)

[sabotai]

Queen Christina (1933)

http://i.imgur.com/SAURh6nm.jpg (https://imgur.com/SAURh6n)

Directed By: Rouben Mamoulian
Written By: Ben Hecht
Starring: Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Ian Keith
Length: 97 min.
Genre: Drama / Romance

King Gustav dies on the battlefield during the 30 Years War in 1632, and Christina is named queen at the age of six. Fast forward a few decades, and Queen Christina (Greta Garbo) welcomes home her cousin and battlefield hero Karl. He's also the latest possible candidate to marry Queen Christina. She deflects that while carrying on a secret love affair with Count Magnus (Ian Keith).

She takes off one day to go horseback riding in normal clothes. She has a few run ins with a group of Spaniards headed by Antonio (John Gilbert). He mistakes her for a man due to her clothes...you know, despite the fact that she looks like Greta fucking Garbo. They end up sharing a room for the night, Antonio finds out about her being a woman, and they fall in love.

Antonio is in the country to present the Queen with an offer a marriage to the Spanish King. At the inn, Antonio finds out the person he's run into a few times was a woman. It's not until he shows up in the capital that he finds out she's the Queen. The Queen doesn't accept the offer, but the Spanish envoy stays as guest of Christina and so the love affair continues.

Magnus gets the people to turn on Christina. "Why are the Spanish still here!?" they say. In the end, the Spanish envoy is forced to leave. Christina then abdicates the throne to her cousin Karl and leaves the country. She intended to leave with Antonio, but he got himself killed when he dueled Magnus and lost. And so she leaves alone headed for Spain.

It was a decent romantic historic drama. The ending was pure fiction, though. The real Queen Christina did abdicate, but she went to Rome and converted to Catholicism. Antonio is based on a real person, and there were rumors of their involvement, but he wasn't killed in Sweden and continued to serve Spain to the 1670s.

This was one of the last moves for John Gilbert. He goes on to act in The Captain Hates the Sea (1934), but that would be it. Years of alcoholism took its toll on Gilbert's health. In December 1935, he would suffer a heart attack and then a second heart attack a month later would be fatal. He was 36 years old when he died.


My Rating: 6/10
IMDB User Rating: 7.8/10 (6k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 89% Critics (17-2), 84% of Audience (3.9 / 5 ; 3k votes)

[sabotai]

Man's Castle (1933)

https://i.imgur.com/DfKmIlrm.jpg

Directed By: Frank Borzage
Written By: Jo Swerling
Starring: Spencer Tracy, Loretta Young
Length: 75 min.
Genre: Drama / Romance
Based On: The play "Man's Castle" by Lawrence Hazard

Dinner at Eight was a look at how the rich were handling the Great Depression, Man's Castle is a look at the poor.

Bill (Spencer Tracy) and Trina (Loretta Young) meet on a bench in a park. He's well dressed and she hasn't eaten for days. He takes her to a restaurant but at the end of their meal, he tells the manager he will not pay for he has no money. After getting kicked out, Bill informs Trina that the reason he looks so well dressed is because his suit is an advertisement. The words "Gilsey House Coffee" lights up on his shirt.

Bill lets Trina live with him in a shanty town where he's been staying. He doesn't like to be tied down to a place, but Trina falls in love with him and that drives the main romantic conflict. Once things get real, Bill has a desire to take off. And things keep getting more real until eventually Trina gets pregnant.

That's it for Bill. He decides to take off, but only after he leaves a good amount of money behind for Trina. He takes his neighbor Bragg up on his plan to rob the safe at a toy factory where Bragg works. The plan goes wrong, Bill ends up not only shot, but double crossed by Bragg who sets off the alarm. Bragg, you see, wants Trina for himself.

Bill escapes and Bragg is shot dead by Flossie, a friend of Bill and Trina's, to keep him from going to the police. Bill and Trina leave the city together.

I liked the movie a lot. There was one major issue I had with it, though. Bill is a thoroughly unlikable character. He basically treats Trina like shit, but she still falls for him. In at least 90% of their interactions, if he's not putting her down, he's threatening to smack her around. But hey, at least he didn't rape her.

But larry was right, overall this movie was far and away better than that trainwreck garbage of a movie A Farewell To Arms. This actually had character arcs, subplots, good acting and consistent and well timed pacing. I just could not stand the main character.

I'm also wondering if I just hate Spencer Tracy. Just the way he talked in the movie was annoying, and I hated him in 20,000 Years in Sing-Sing as well.

My Rating: 7/10
IMDB User Rating: 7.4/10 (1k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: N/A Critics (4-0), 76% of Audience (3.9 / 5 ; 245 votes)

[sabotai]

東京の女 (1933)
Tokyo no Onna
English Title: Woman of Tokyo

https://i.imgur.com/1IgAMgym.png

Directed By: Ozu Yasujirō
Written By: Noda Kōgo
Starring: Okada Yoshiko, Egawa Ureo
Length: 45 min.
Genre: Family Drama

A short movie Ozu made in between shooting Dragnet Girl and Passing Fancy.

Ryoichi (Egawa Ureo) is a student and he lives with his older sister Chikako (Okada Yoshiko). She works two jobs, one in an office and the other helping a professor, in order to pay for her brother's education.

But the police show up at her work and start asking her employer questions. Turns out Chikako's night job isn't what she says. It quickly gets to Ryoichi's girlfriend who then tells Ryoichi. Ryoichi confronts his sister who confesses that she lives an immoral life to pay for his schooling. Ryoichi commits suicide. Chikako and Ryoichi's girlfriend mourn and deflect attempts by reporters to get a scoop.

This movie was very heavy handed in its theme. It can definitely be described as "preachy". Some of Ozu's signature low angle shots during transitions, but overall, just an average movie.

My Rating: 5/10
IMDB User Rating: 7.2/10 (639 votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: N/A Critics, 92% of Audience (3.8 / 5 ; 34 votes)

[sabotai]

非常線の女 (1933)
Hijōsen no Onna
English Title: Dragnet Girl

https://i.imgur.com/sim6UOXm.jpg

Directed By: Ozu Yasujirō
Written By: Ikeda Tadao
Starring: Tanaka Kinuyo, Oka Joji, Mizukubo Sumiko
Length: 100 min.
Genre: Crime/Family Drama

Joji (Oka Joji) is the leader of a small band of gangsters. Hiroshi wants to join his gang, but Hiroshi's sister, Kazuko (Mizukubo Sumiko) asks him to reject her brother so he'll go straight. Joji takes an interest in Kazuko, which causes his current girlfriend, Tokiko (Tanaka Kinuyo) to become insanely jealous. So much so that she nearly kills Kazuko.

But then crazy jumps all the way to other side and Tokiko tries to act all domestic and begs Joji to give up his life of crime. There's a problem. Hiroshi has gotten himself into a lot of trouble. Joji and Tokiko pull one last job to help him.

The job is done and Hiroshi is saved, but the cops are on Joji and Tokiko before they could escape, largely to Tokiko's desire to just turn themselves in, pay for their crimes, and then go straight. Joji keeps trying to flee, Tokiko keeps trying to get him to turn himself in. When he finally decides to just leave her behind, she shoots him. The cops find them and arrest them.

This was another heavy handed movie. The ending went on for way too long and it was quite preachy as well. I like the way Ozu shoots his movies. The camera lingers on characters in an effective and dramatic way. But, overall, this was just another average film.

My Rating: 5/10
IMDB User Rating: 7.1/10 (512 votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: N/A

[sabotai]

Unfortunately, I didn't get to Secrets before it was taken off of Filmstruck and I can't find it anywhere else. So it looks like Mary Pickford's final movie is getting chopped off the list.

That leaves: Cavalcade, Passing Fancy, The Private Life of Henry VIII, Morning Glory, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, Duck Soup, Every-Night Dreams, and Apart From You

Eight more to go. I didn't intend for 1933 to last this long. In fact, a few weeks ago I was meaning to have a few movie marathons to get through the year and onto 1934 around the beginning of August....but then Rimworld happened.

[sabotai]

Morning Glory (1933)

https://i.imgur.com/YfLNXzGm.jpg

Directed By: Lowell Sherman
Written By: Howard J. Green
Starring: Katharine Hepburn, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. , Adolphe Menjou
Length: 74 min.
Genre: Drama
Based On: The play "Morning Glory" by Zoë Akins

1934 Oscar Winner - Best Actress in a Leading Role, Katharine Hepburn

A young, naive and ambitious girl from a small town named Eva Lovelace (Katharine Hepburn) tries to make it on Broadway.

The movie starts off at the office of Easton's theater. Eva Lovelace is there to talk to Easton about his upcoming play. Louis Easton (Adolphe Menjou) is the owner of the theater and is the one making all the decisions. Joseph Sheridan (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) is a playwright who is writing Easton's newest comedy. Rita Vernon is Easton's main star. She is played by Mary Duncan, last seen on this journey in the movie City Girl (1930) and won't be seen again as this was her last movie. And finally, Robert Hedges, played by C. Aubrey Smith, is an old actor who is there to speak to Easton about a small role in his upcoming play.

So the first sequence introduces everyone and ends with Eva finally getting her chance to talk to Easton. He tells her they have nothing for her but to keep in touch.

Montage.

The next scene sees Robert Hedges finding Eva at a diner. He had agreed to tutor her on her acting and this scene, apparently, takes place several months after the first. He takes her to a dinner party hosted by Easton. When they arrive, she apologizes for not not doing well in that role her gave her.

What?

And so the movie goes on like this. It becomes clear after looking up information on this movie that this was a terrible case of sticking too closely to the source material. There are two main jumps in time (shown badly as montages), the one following the first scene, and the one following the dinner party. After both jumps, they spend a considerable amount of time bringing the audience up to speed on what happened. It's a movie, not a stage play, just film what happened! This movie skips over all of the character development.

Even besides that issue, the movie was pretty bad. Everything besides the acting was terrible. The only possible reason to watch this would be to see Hepburn, Fairbanks Jr. and Menjou do their best with terrible material. And even then, not the best performances I've seen from them.

My Rating: 3/10
IMDB User Rating: 6.6/10 (2k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 67% Critics (6-3), 46% of Audience (3.3 / 5 ; 827 votes)

[sabotai]

The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933)

http://i.imgur.com/163OOpam.png (https://imgur.com/163OOpa)

Directed By: Alexander Korda
Written By: Lajos Bíró, Arthur Wimperis
Starring: Charles Laughton, Binnie Barnes, Robert Donat
Length: 97 min.
Genre: Comedic Drama

Skipping Catherine of Aragon, this movie was about Henry and his wives. It begins with the execution of Anne Boleyn and Henry's marriage to Jane Seymour. She dies in childbirth and Henry eventually agrees to marry again, this time to Anne of Cleves.

Until this point, the movie to me was really flat. Not funny nor dramatic. Just very boring. But then Anne of Cleves comes on the scene and she is pretty funny. She intentionally makes ugly faces to repulse Henry for she never wanted to marry him. Nor him her. It was a political marriage forced on both.

The scene with Henry and Anne playing cards on their wedding night was easily the best scene of the movie. Quite funny with Anne making her faces and beating Henry over and over. In the end, Henry says he can't stay married to such a woman, and she negotiates a settlement for annulment right there with him.

Then Henry marries Katherine Howard, who is carrying on an affair with one of Henry's courtiers, Thomas Culpeper. They are eventually found out and executed.

Henry finally marries Catherine Parr, who essentially mothers him.

A popular movie with high ratings, it was just an average movie overall. It gets off to such a slow, boring start, hits paydirt with the Henry - Anne of Cleves scenes, and then settles into an okay, average movie the rest of the way.

My Rating: 6/10
IMDB User Rating: 7.2/10 (3k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 100% Critics (14-0), 75% of Audience (3.5 / 5 ; 1k votes)

[sabotai]

君と別れて (1933)
Kimi to wakarete
English Title: Apart From You

https://i.imgur.com/Clgc1Tcm.png

Directed By: Naruse Mikio
Written By: Naruse Mikio
Starring: Yoshikawa Mitsuko, Isono Akio, Mizukubo Sumiko
Length: 61 min.
Genre: Drama

Yoshikawa Mitsuko plays Kikue, an aging geisha with a son, Yoshio (Isono Akio), who is ashamed for his mother's profession. Terugiku (Sumiko Mizukubo) is a younger geisha who is close with Kikue.

Yoshio is hanging with the wrong crowd and getting into trouble. Kikue tries to get through to him, but he keeps getting more and more into trouble. Terugiku takes Yoshio to visit her family. There, she reveals that she hates being a geisha, doesn't want her sister to be a geisha and ends up in a terrible fight with her family.

After seeing how hard being a geisha has been for Terugiku, and realizing his mother was making the same sacrifice for him, Yoshio agrees to leave the gang. They don't let him off easy and a fight ensues. Terugiku tries to intervene and ends up getting stabbed. She recovers, but moves away to save her sister while Yoshio stays behind to take care of his mother.

I really liked this movie. The acting was superb. Just the right amount of emoting for silent film, but it never goes over the top., thanks in part to lots of close ups. The reveal that Terugiku hated being a geisha (with hints of it dropped before hand), and the blow up with her family, effectively added a whole layer of drama to the story.

Naruse also fine tuned his zoom-in technique. In No Blood Relation it would often lose focus, but it held on to it in this movie, even though I did think he did it a few too many times.

As of now, I'd rate this my favorite Japanese silent movie.

My Rating: 8/10
IMDB User Rating: 7.2/10 (386 votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: N/A Critics, 100% of Audience (4.1 / 5 ; 22 votes)

[sabotai]

出来ごころ (1933)
Dekigokoro
English Title: Passing Fancy

https://i.imgur.com/2ObNgBum.jpg

Directed By: Ozu Yasujirō
Written By: Ikeda Tadao, Yasujirō Ozu (under his alias James Maki)
Starring: Sakamoto Takeshi, Fushimi Nobuko, Obinata Den, Iida Chouko, Kozo Takkan
Length: 101 min.
Genre: Drama

1934 Kinema Junp Awards: Winner for Best Film

Kihachi (Sakamoto Takeshi) works at a brewery with his friend Jiro (Obinata Den), and is a single parent to his son, Tomio (Kozo Takkan). The movie starts, as Ozu's films often do, with a comedic scene. This one involves the three at a rōkyoku theater. An empy wallet gets passed around as person after person sees it, looks inside, finds it empty and then tosses it away. Eh, this was a miss for me.

The plot begins soon after as they and find a young woman, Harue (Fushimi Nobuko) begging. Kihachi takes a liking to her, while Jiro does not. Kihachi sets her up at his friend's restaurant. Kihachi makes several attempts to get Harue to notice him, but she tells him that she sees him like an uncle. Eventually Otome, the restaurant owner, asks Kihachi to help her set Harue up with Jiro. Kihachi agrees. But Jiro, who has been nothing but an asshole towards Harue, rejects the idea. And keeps being cold towards Harue.

After Kihachi's son becomes very sick, Jiro has a sudden change of heart, but he borrows money to give to Kihachi to pay his medical bills. To pay back the money, he decides to go to Hokkaido for higher paying work. Kihachi stops him and takes his place, leaving his son in the care of Otome. On the boat to Hokkaido just as it leaves, Kihachi realizes he's making a mistake in leaving his son, jumps off the boat and swims back to shore. The end.

The really liked most of the movie, but it got off to weak start and I thought the last Act, Jiro's sudden change and Kahichi running off to Hokkaido, felt like a non-organic way to build drama at the end.

I really like Takeshi's performance as Kihachi. He was a regular in Ozu's movies. He played Kennosuke's boss in I Was Born, But... and he played the old employee that Okajima stands up for in Tokyo Chorus. Over the next two years, he'll play a character named Kihachi in 2 more Ozu movies, but it's not really a trilogy. It seems the actor and the character name is the same, but the story, family situation, etc. are all different.

My Rating: 7/10
IMDB User Rating: 7.5/10 (1k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: N/A Critics, 72% of Audience (3.7 / 5 ; 145 votes)

[sabotai]

Well this sucks.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-cards="hidden" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">FilmStruck will discontinue service on 11/29/18. If you are a current subscriber, please visit <a href="https://t.co/ht0FF065M9">https://t.co/ht0FF065M9</a> for refund information. It has been our pleasure bringing FilmStruck to you and we thank you for your support. <a href="https://t.co/J9lGX23V3Y">pic.twitter.com/J9lGX23V3Y</a></p>&mdash; FilmStruck (@FilmStruck) <a href="https://twitter.com/FilmStruck/status/1055834635429666816?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 26, 2018</a></blockquote>
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[sabotai]

Okay, so, this royally sucks. Filmstruck quickly became my second favorite streaming service, behind Netlix, and it's soon to be gone.

I'm still going to do this dynasty, because I enjoy the gimmick of watching these movies in chronological-ish order and writing up short reviews, but it's going to be on hold a bit.

I've got 'til Novermber 29th, when Filmstruck shuts the power off, to watch as many movies as I can. From what little random sampling I've done, the biggest loses with be the films of the Japanese directors. All but the most popular of Ozu and Naruse's films can't be rented or bought anywhere digitally, and few more can be found on DVD or Blu-Ray, and those are in expensive box sets.

So for the next month, I'll be binge watching as many films from Ozu, Naruse, Kurosawa and all of the rest of the Japanese directors that I can.

[Izulde]

Your dynasty was the very first thing I thought of when I read about FilmStruck being discontinued. I was really disappointed when I read it and was like "Damn. I wonder how this is going to affect sabotai's dynasty."

[sabotai]

My first thought was "Well I guess my dynasty is dead again."

But it might not be that bad. The Filmstruck library of The Criterion Collection are two separate things. More than half, and maybe as much as 75%, of the movies I watched on Filmstruck were from the Criterion Collection. Hopefully they find a new home soon.

[sabotai]

Looks like Criterion will be starting up their own streaming service, launching in Spring of 2019.

New, Independent Criterion Channel to Launch Spring 2019 | The Current | The Criterion Collection (https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6044-new-independent-criterion-channel-to-launch-spring-2019)

[Groundhog]

That's really awesome, although I imagine it won't be available in Australia with our stupid digital licensing issues. Love checking in on this thread from time to time, and you are slowly inching towards my favourite era of classic movies (post WW2 Japan), so I hope it continues. :)

[sabotai]

So where were we...

[sabotai]

Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (1933)
English Title: The Testament of Dr. Mabuse

https://i.imgur.com/GZJQ9Cem.jpg

Directed By: Fritz Lang
Written By: Fritz Lang, Thea von Harbou
Starring: Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Otto Wernicke, Oscar Beregi Sr., Gustav Diessl
Length: 124 min.
Genre: Crime Drama

Dr. Mabuse seems to have found a way to run his criminal organization for the mental hospital he's locked up in. Inspector Karl Lohmann (same character as in M, but I don't believe that was ever referenced) is on the case.

I'm starting to think that I must just not like Fritz Lang movies for whatever reason. Well, I like them, but I don't hold them up as much as others. Of course I thought Metropolis was a masterpiece, but I went back over my old reviews to see how I scored Lang's other movies. Spies (1928) 5/10, Woman in the Moon (1929) 6/10, M (1931) 6/10. And here's another crime drama that I liked, but didn't think it was noteworthy.

And that's what really disappointed me about this movie. It had it's twists and turns. It had a big reveal. It should have been a movie that I really enjoyed. There was nothing wrong with the plot, but I just wasn't drawn in at all. In my review for "Woman in the Moon", I said "It wouldn't be a Fritz Lang movie if it didn't last forever". This movie probably could have lost a good 15 minutes. Then the pacing might have felt right. Many scenes in this movie felt like they dragged on a good minute more than they needed to.

There were some good shots and effects, though. I particularly liked the way one assassination scene was shot. Overall though, I did like the plot, the acting, but I thought the pacing was way too slow. And, something else. I can't quite put my finger on it, but just like the M, I just simply could not get into the movie.

My Rating: 6/10
IMDB User Rating: 7.9/10 (10k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 89% Critics (16-2), 90% of Audience (4.0 / 5 ; 5k votes)

[sabotai]

Cavalcade (1933)

https://i.imgur.com/RemNkA8m.jpg

Directed By: Frank Lloyd
Written By: Frank Lloyd, Winfield R. Sheehan
Starring: Diana Wynyard, Clive Brook, Una O'Connor, Herbert Mundin
Length: 112 min.
Genre: Family Drama
Based On: The play "Cavalcade" (1931) by Noël Coward

1934 Oscar Nominee - Best Actress in a Leading Role, Diana Wynyard
1934 Oscar Winner - Best Art Direction, William S. Darling
1934 Oscar Winner - Best Director, Frank Lloyd
1934 Oscar Winner - Best Picture

Wow, look at all them oscars.....it's a shame the movie sucked.

The story of two London families, told over the span of 30+ years. This movie puts characters from the same family into some of history's biggest moments, and in the end, a lot of them have died. A movie with a lot of death in it. Once again, a movie I should have enjoyed...

The movie starts off on a positive note in a way. The two main families are the Marryots, the well-to-do family, and the Bridges, Alfred Bridges is the Marryots's butler and his wife also works for them. Robert Marryot and Alfred Bridges head off to fight in the Second Boer War. And good news, they both come back alive.

A few years later, Alfred is owner of a pub and a stinkin' drunk. His daughter, Fanny, is around 8 or 9 now, and she loves to dance. In one of his drunken outbursts, Fanny runs out of the house and sees people dancing in the streets. She joins them. Alfred also runs out, and gets hit by a horse drawn carriage and is killed. His daughter dancing not far from his dead body, blissfully unaware.

Okay, that got my attention.

And then it all goes to hell.

Let me ask you this. If a title card came up showing the date "April 14, 1912" and the scene you see is of two people on a large boat....where would you think this scene was taking place? Yeah, I would have said The Love Boat too, but apparently that's not it, because as the scene ends, the characters move away to reveal .... a life preserver with the name "TITANIC" on it! (*dramatic music*)

Okay, that's a minor complaint, but by the time we got to that scene the movie was losing me again. And then World War 1 happens. And wouldn't you know it, one of the main characters dies on one of the last days of the war. Right after he had fallen in love, no less. One son dies on the Titanic on his honeymoon, the other in the last week of the Great War. What crappy luck this family has.

Every character talks very dramatically with their very dramatic lines. In all seriousness, that's one of the biggest issues with this movie. Every line is very dramatic, and it's delivered very dramatically. Times certainly have changed in what we view as good and bad acting. The shoehorning of people into major historic events could be forgiven, or even a plus if done right, but it was clumsily done here. And there really wasn't much a of a plot to speak of. Stuff happened...but it didn't feel like it told a cohesive story. More like bits of story here and there.

If it weren't for Crash, I'd say this was the worst Best Picture winner ever. It'll have to settle for second place (for now).

My Rating: 3/10
IMDB User Rating: 6.0/10 (3.8k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 61% of Critics (14-9), 26% of Audience (2.9 / 5 ; 1k votes)

[sabotai]

Duck Soup (1933)

https://i.imgur.com/OD9kqFfm.jpg

Directed By: Leo McCarey
Written By: Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby
Starring: The Four Marx Brothers, Margaret Dumont, Louis Calhern, Raquel Torres, Edgar Kennedy
Length: 68 min.
Genre: Comedy

Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx) is made leader of a small country called Freedonia at the insistance (never explained why) of Mrs. Teasdale, who bails out the country financially. The leader of neighboring Sylvania wants to annex Freedonia, so he sends two not so bright spies played by Chico and Harpo Marx.

The usual antics in a Marx Brothers movie occur. Groucho is an endless series of one-liners and puns. Chico does his tough guy with an italian accent act, and silent Harpo has his props and gags. As with the previous Marx Brothers movies, Harpo was the only one that got a few laughs out of me...but only a few.

Obviously, being around 80 years later, a lot of Groucho's jokes were really obvious. I did learn that Futurama's "Robonia" for the episode where Bender pretends to be a fembot was a reference to this movie. The name is a play on it, and the anthem of Robonia was set to the same music as Freedonia's. There was also a "mirror" scene where Groucho and Harpo dressed as Groucho mimic each other. After looking it up, seems like Chaplin was the first to do in the movies it in 1916. But it seems like it was a routine in comedy plays going back to the late 1890s. Good thing I looked it up, I was about to give the movie credit for something. But they did do a funny "mirror" routine.

In the end, there's a battle between Freedonia and Sylvania, and even though Freedonia gets their ass kicked, the ambassador of Sylvania (who is their leading general too?) surrenders after getting stuck in a doorway and getting pelted with oranges.

Both critics and audience on Rotten Tomatoes is over 90% and it has an 8.0 on IMDB. Looks like I'm in the minority of this one. After 3 Marx Brothers movies, I guess I'm just not a fan of their's.

Zeppo was in the movie too.

My Rating: 5/10
IMDB User Rating: 8.0/10 (51k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 94% of Critics (44-3), 91% of Audience (4.1 / 5 ; 36k votes)

[sabotai]

夜ごとの夢 (1933)
Yogoto no yume
English Title: Every-Night Dreams

https://i.imgur.com/Wuifd0om.jpg

Directed By: Naruse Mikio
Written By: Naruse Mikio
Starring: Kurishima Sumiko, Saitō Tatsuo, Yoshikawa Mitsuko
Length: 64 min.
Genre: Drama

This one was a bummer.

Omitsu (Kurishima Sumiko) works at a bar to support her son, Fumio. Her estranged husband, Mizuhara (Saitō Tatsuo) shows up one day wanting to see his son and convinces Omitsu to take him back. He also insists on providing for the family, however, he can't get work. He's frequently ill and is frail. He's not able to do manual labor.

Fumio gets hit by a car (seriously, almost every movie from Japan has someone getting hit by a car) and is hospitalized. Now the family is in real dire straits. Mizuhara breaks and resorts to robbery to get some money. Omitsu begs him to turn himself in. Instead, he leaves her the money and leaves.

The next morning his body is found. He had committed suicide by drowning himself. Omitsu tells her son that he must grow up to be strong...which I guess was the moral of the story?

Technically, it was Naruse at the same level as Apart From You. His zoom ins were better, it featured his typical frequent cuts and style. But man, the story was just depressing. Which would be fine, but it was essentially 60 minutes of watching a guy get repeatedly kicked while he was down. At first, you're thinking "what the hell is she doing taking that dead beat back", but then you see him get humiliated for 60 minutes before killing himself. Not really a plot there nor any real character development. Just see a guy get beat while he's down and now he's dead.

My Rating: 5/10
IMDB User Rating: 7.1/10 (380 votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: N/A Critics, 88% of Audience (3.9 / 5 ; 27 votes)

[sabotai]

And that does it, finally, for 1933. I'll post some final thoughts on the year soon and get to work on the list for 1934.

[sabotai]

The Movies of 1933, Ranked

1. Apart From You
2. The Gold Diggers of 1933
3. Japanese Girls at the Harbour
4. Passing Fancy
5. King Kong
6. Man's Castle
7. Footlight Parade
8. Queen Christina
9. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
10. The Private Life of Henry VIII
11. 42nd Street
12. Duck Soup
13. Dragnet Girl
14. Woman of Tokyo
15. Every-Night Dreams
16. Dinner At Eight
17. Morning Glory
18. Cavalcade

Overall, a good amount of good movies (five 7's) but only one in the "great" (8+) category, Apart From You.

In fact, I would have hated the 1934 Academy Awards. Cavalcade was the night's big winner, and I hated that movie. Katherine Hepburn won for Morning Glory, the second worse movie of the year. Charles Laughton won for The Private Life of Henry VIII, an okay movie. A Farewell To Arms gets 2 awards, booo!

The 1934 Oscars was the last year the period for awards was split between to calendar years. For the first few, it went from Summer of one year to the next. For the 1934 Oscars, it went from August 1st, 1932 to December 31, 1933. After this one, it would all be in just one calendar year, making my job of picking which movies to watch a lot easier.

3 Japanese movies in the top 5, but the other three fall way down the rankings. The ones near the bottom are there because they felt preachy, and had either uninteresting or somewhat non-existant plots. But when they got it right, they got it really right.

And so ends 1933.

Criterion says they are on schedule for a Spring launch of their online service. Luckily, I did manage to watch a few 1934 movies before Filmstruck was murdered.

[sabotai]

And for funsies, let's look at the rankings for the best movies of the decade so far.

Top Movies of the 1930s (only rated 8 and higher)

1. Apart From You
2. All Quiet on the Western Front
3. I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang
4. The Public Enemy
5. Hell's Angels
6. City Lights
7. Vampyr
8. Wooden Crosses

Not that the rankings mean much here. All of these movies were rated 8. No 9s or 10s yet.

[JonInMiddleGA]

I'm starting to think that I must just not like Fritz Lang movies for whatever reason. Well, I like them, but I don't hold them up as much as others.

Random thread read gets random question: is that a function of the cast? Or casting maybe?

(Literally no clue off the top of my head, every movie he did could have the same cast for all I know, but it seemed like a reasonable possibility to throw out there)

[sabotai]

Maybe, there i some cast crossover, but not a lot.

I've thought about it more, and I think it comes down to cinematography. If you're going to make a "it's long and not much happens" movie, I need some good visuals to go along with it. The Revenant and There Will Be Blood are possibly 1a and 1b for me over the last 10+ years. Both are long, not much happens, but greatly acted and just visually a work of art. Metropolis was a work of art as well. The rest of Lang's movies are long, not much happens, and don't look like they have much more production budget than the Marx Brothers movies I've seen. (Of course, this being the early 30s, the state of Germany's economy at the time could be the biggest factor it that.)

[larrymcg421]

Your thoughts on Lang are interesting because I have the exact opposite opinion of his films. And I enjoy them so much precisely because his films move so fast. He always seems to have a powerful, driving narrative.

Also, I thought the cinematography in his other films, while not matching the amazing levels of Metropolis, is still pretty incredible. I'm thinking of the long, silent sequence in M where the underworld tracks down Peter Lorre's character. That's just far beyond what most other directors were capable of at that time.

Anyways, I didn't mean this as an attack. Just thought it was interesting that we saw things so differently.

I also loved Duck Soup. It's my favorite of the Marx Bros films, mainly for the political satire, but I definitely agree that Cavalcade was a snoozer.

[sabotai]

I didn't take it as an attack. We're just talking about art here. I don't take people disagreeing with me about movies personally.

Also, I lied about moving on to 1934 just yet. I noticed there's a good number of silent movies on Amazon Prime now. Most I've seen, but some I didn't, and since Japan is moving into sound pictures in 1934, I figured I'd take a break and watch (and review) some of these silent movies I missed my first time through before leaving behind silent cinema (mostly) for good.

Here's a short list of the silent movies
A whole bunch of shorts starring The Keystone Kops, Fatty Arbuckle and Mabel Normand
Several Buster Keaton Shorts
The Prisoner of Zenda (1922)
The Extra Girl (1923) - Mabel Normand comedy
The Eagle (1925) - Rudolph Valentino
Cobra (1925) - Rudolph Valentino
Joyless Street (1927) - Garbo's debut
College (1927) - Buster Keaton
The Beloved Rogue (1927) - John Barrymore
The Iron Mask (1929) - Douglas Fairbanks

[larrymcg421]

I didn't take it as an attack. We're just talking about art here. I don't take people disagreeing with me about movies personally.

Also, I lied about moving on to 1934 just yet. I noticed there's a good number of silent movies on Amazon Prime now. Most I've seen, but some I didn't, and since Japan is moving into sound pictures in 1934, I figured I'd take a break and watch (and review) some of these silent movies I missed my first time through before leaving behind silent cinema (mostly) for good.

Here's a short list of the silent movies
A whole bunch of shorts starring The Keystone Kops, Fatty Arbuckle and Mabel Normand
Several Buster Keaton Shorts
The Prisoner of Zenda (1922)
The Extra Girl (1923) - Mabel Normand comedy
The Eagle (1925) - Rudolph Valentino
Cobra (1925) - Rudolph Valentino
Joyless Street (1927) - Garbo's debut
College (1927) - Buster Keaton
The Beloved Rogue (1927) - John Barrymore
The Iron Mask (1929) - Douglas Fairbanks

Of this list I have only seen The Iron Mask and College. I loved one of those and hated the other.

[sabotai]

The Criterion Channel is now live, so I guess I can start this back up. Filmstruck had to ability to browse by year, country, etc. which helped a lot in narrowing down what movies to watch. CC doesn't. Just a search and a bunch of lists. Oh well, just means a bit more work in creating a list of movies to watch.

And the app so far is fairly buggy, but I expected that on day 1.

I didn't get around to watching most of the silent moves on Amazon. Just haven't been in a movie watching mood much lately. I did watch a few of the Fatty Arbuckle and Mabel Normand shorts, and they were bad. Not because the short itself was bad, but because whoever put them on Amazon slapped on some generic comedy soundtrack that didn't match what was going on in the short. On top of it, it wasn't just music. It really did sound like some comedy music radio show or something. It was odd to put that against a silent short, and completely ruined it for me.

I also watched College, a 1927 Buster Keaton comedy. A good comedy. I'd give it a solid 7/10. Not among my favorite Buster Keaton comedies, but it was a fun movie...except it did have one scene that has not aged well and made it very awkward for awhile...

But that's part of the dilemma with rating a really old movie. On one hand "It was a different time, and if someone wasn't outright racist, they were at least incredibly ignorant. It was 1927 after all and we can't hold them to a standard set nearly 100 years later." .....vs.... "Jesus fucking Christ, sab, , it's Buster Keaton in blackface swinging his arms exaggeratedly, obviously imitating a monkey, as he pretends to be a 'colored waiter'. That's not okay and you can't possibly give a movie with such a racist portrayal of black people a good rating! WTF!"

Without that scene, it's a 7/10 movie. With it...ugh, yeah, that scene is really bad.

Anyway...

Time to get back to 1934 I suppose. I'll get to those silent movies as I move along.

[molson]

Saw this bumped and was interested in your thoughts on The Criterion Channel....Sounds like it's probably worth the trial to see what's there.

[larrymcg421]

I also watched College, a 1927 Buster Keaton comedy. A good comedy. I'd give it a solid 7/10. Not among my favorite Buster Keaton comedies, but it was a fun movie...except it did have one scene that has not aged well and made it very awkward for awhile...

But that's part of the dilemma with rating a really old movie. On one hand "It was a different time, and if someone wasn't outright racist, they were at least incredibly ignorant. It was 1927 after all and we can't hold them to a standard set nearly 100 years later." .....vs.... "Jesus fucking Christ, sab, , it's Buster Keaton in blackface swinging his arms exaggeratedly, obviously imitating a monkey, as he pretends to be a 'colored waiter'. That's not okay and you can't possibly give a movie with such a racist portrayal of black people a good rating! WTF!"

Without that scene, it's a 7/10 movie. With it...ugh, yeah, that scene is really bad.

Glad to see this get bumped!

Aside from the controversy, I liked College much less than you did, mainly because it felt like a mediocre copy of Harold Lloyd's The Freshman.

As for the controversy, I'd end up on the latter part of that debate. That scene is ridiculously racist. It doesn't matter what people might've thought in 1927. It offends me now and that makes it a worse movie.

Also, I'd argue that not everyone was okay with stuff like that in 1927. Just like there were protests of Birth of a Nation in 1919, there were certainly people who were offended by that scene in 1927. So I think you can hold the movie accountable even using many people's 1927 standards.

[sabotai]

So late last night, I thought of something. I put "1934" into the search on the Criterion Channel, and I got all of the movies they have for that year. I'm actually surprised that worked.

Here's the tentative list of movies for 1934. It's a lot but some will be cut.

from the Criterion Channel
Street Without End - Director: Naruse Mikio
The Cat's Paw - Harold Lloyd comedy
Evergreen
On demande une brute - French Short
Man of Aran - Docufiction
The Return of Bulldog Drummond
The Private Life of Don Juan
The Rise of Catherine the Great - Starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr and Elizabeth Bergner
The Scarlet Pimpernel
A Mother Should be Loved - Director: Ozu Yasujiro
A Story of Floating Weeds - Director: Ozu Yasujiro
The Man Who Knew Too Much - Director: Alfred Hitchcock
L'Atalante

Amazon Prime
Of Human Bondage - Starring Bette Davis
Babes In Toyland - Laurel and Hardy
Judge Priest - Will Rogers comedy

Amazon or VUDU (to Rent)
It Happened One Night - Oscar winner for Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress
The Barretts of Wimpole Street - Best Picture nominee
The Thin Man - several nominations
The Black Cat - horror starring Karloff and Lugosi
The Gay Divorcee - Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, several Oscar nominations

[sabotai]

Movie List for 1934

It Happened One Night - Oscar Winner Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress
Romantic Comedy, directed by Frank Capra, starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert

A Story of Floating Weeds - Kinema Junpo Winner Best Film
(Japan) Family Drama, directed by Ozu Yasujiro, starring Sakamoto Takeshi, Iida Chouko, Yagumo Rieko

The Barretts of Wimpole Street - Oscar Nominee Best Picture
Romantic Drama, directed by Sidney Franklin, starring Norma Sheater and Fredric March

The Thin Man - Oscar Nominee Best Picture
Comedy, directed by W.S. Van Dyke, starring William Powell and Myrna Loy

The Gay Divorcee - Oscar Nominee Best Picture
Musical, directed by Mark Sandrich, starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers

Here Comes the Navy - Oscar Nominee Best Picture
Comedy, directed by Lloyd Bacon, starring James Cagney and Pat O'Brien

Of Human Bondage - Oscar Nominee Best Actress (write-in, not official)
Drama, directed by John Cromwell, starring Bette Davis and Leslie Howard

Babes In Toyland
Comedy, directed by Gus Meins and Charley Rogers, starring Laurel and Hardy

Street Without End
(Japan) Drama, directed by Naruse Mikio, starring Shinobu Setsuko, Isono Akio, Yamanouchi Hikaru

A Mother Should be Loved
(Japan) Drama, directed by Ozu Yasujiro, starring Iwata Yukichi, Yashikawa Mitsuko, Ohinata Den

The Cat's Paw
Comedy, directed by Sam Taylor, starring Harold Lloyd and Una Merkel

Man of Aran
(Ireland) Docufiction, directed by Robert J. Flaherty, starring Colman King and Maggie Dirrane

The Rise of Catherine the Great
(UK) Biopic, directed by Paul Czinner, starring Elisabeth Berger and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

The Scarlet Pimpernel
(UK) Adventure Drama, directed by Harold Young, starring Leslie Howard and Merle Oberon

The Man Who Knew Too Much
(UK) Thriller, directed by Alfred Hitchock, starring Leslie Banks and Edna Best

The Godess
(China) Drama, directed by Wu Yonggang, starring Ruan Lingyu and Zhang Zhizhi

[Breeze]

I loved the Thin Man movies...lots of humor especially with their over the top drinking...

[sabotai]

Babes in Toyland (1934)

https://i.imgur.com/XzGrIwim.png

Directed By: Gus Meins, Charles Rogers
Written By: Frank Butler, Nick Grinde
Starring: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Charlotte Henry, Felix Knight
Length: 77 min.
Genre: Comedy

It's Babes in Toyland starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy as Stannie Dum and Ollie Dee.

Stannie and Ollie live in a shoe with Mother Peep and her daughter, Bo Peep. The mortgage is due and the evil Silas Barnaby wants his money. Mother Peep can't afford it, but Barnaby says he'll rip up the mortgage if Bo Peep marries him. Ollie promises that he and Stannie can get the money.

What follows is Ollie and Stannie in a series of gags of them failing to get the money and scheming to get Mother Peep out of the mortgage. The 'Laurel and Hardy' parts of the movie were hilarious. I loved their shorts when I was a kid but I've never seen a full length movie of their's.

The problem is the rest of the movie. Just plain and boring. The music was boring. The movie would cut away from Laurel and Hardy for extended periods of time, mainly for the musical numbers and the love subplot between Bo Peep and Tom-Tom. I've never seen Babes in Toyland (did when I was a kid, but don't remember), so I have no idea how it measures up to the standard musical Babes in Toyland.

When the movie was over, it didn't make me want to watch more Laurel and Hardy movies. Just watch their shorts again. Still, the Laurel and Hardy half of the movie was great.

My Rating: 6/10
IMDB User Rating: 7.3/10 (5.5k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 100% Critics (15-0), 78% of Audience (3.6 / 5 ; 4.6k votes)

[sabotai]

It Happened One Night (1934)

https://i.imgur.com/bgqVptgm.jpg

Directed By: Frank Capra
Written By: Robert Riskin
Starring: Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert
Length: 105 min.
Genre: Romantic Comedy

1935 Oscar Winner - Best Writing, Adaptation - Robert Riskin
1935 Oscar Winner - Best Actress - Claudette Colbert
1935 Oscar Winner - Best Actor - Clark Gable
1935 Oscar Winner - Best Director, Frank Capra
1935 Oscar Winner - Best Picture

One of 3 movies to win all of the Oscars that make up "The Big Five", Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Writing (either of them) and Best Picture. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Silence of the Lambs are the other 2.

Claudette Colbert plays a rich woman, Ellen Andrews, who has eloped with a man against her father's wishes. She's in Florida and her new husband is in New York. She escapes her father and sets off on a road trip (by bus) to get to NY. Her father hires detectives to find her and bring her back (apparently a thing a father could do in the 1930s was kidnap his adult daughter).

Peter Warne (Clark Gable) is a journalist who has just been fired from his paper. He hops on a bus to New York to speak to his former employer in person. He meets Ellen on the bus and they don't get off to a good start, but he quickly figures out who she is. He'll help her avoid attention and get to New York for exclusive rights to her story.

What follows is a series of misadventures that see the couple suffer set back after set back, and along the way, wouldn't you know it, they fall in love.

Fairly standard rom-com. The basic beats have been there since the early films of Harold Lloyd and they're unchanged here. They hate each other, they love each other, they miscommunicate and then a chase-style scene.

I know you all know how I feel about rom-coms by now, but this one did have its moments. And it was very well acted. There was a scene where they are hitchhiking. The cars constantly pass him but one stops once she shows her leg. This scene might be one of the most parodied and referenced scenes in cinema history. And I thought the scene where they act like an arguing married couple to throw off a few detectives was very funny. But overall, underwhelming for an Oscar winner.

This film came out at just the right time. Its release date was February 22, 1934, and some of the scenes here were a bit scandalous. The Motion Picture Production Code, aka "Hays Code", would go in full effect by the middle of 1934. I doubt this movie would have passed the test with all of the scenes of a man with a married woman in a room together.

My Rating: 6/10
IMDB User Rating: 8.1/10 (84k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 98% Critics (55-1), 93% of Audience (4.2 / 5 ; 33k votes)

[sabotai]

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

https://i.imgur.com/dLaWfECm.jpg

Directed By: Alfred Hitchcock
Written By: Charles Bennett, D. B. Wyndham-Lewis
Starring: Leslie Banks, Edna Best, Peter Lorre, Nova Pilbeam, Frank Vosper
Length: 75 min.
Genre: Crime Drama

The daughter of a couple on a trip to Switzerland is kidnapped when her parents come into possession of information concerning a planned international crime. He father doesn't talk to the police, on the orders of the kidnappers, but tries to find his daughter on his own.

It's hard to judge a movie like this on its own merits, considering many aspects of it has been parodied for longer than I've been alive. There were a few Calculon style dramatic pauses that I'm sure were dramatic back in 1934, but now are just comically bad.

Trying to put things like that aside, I thought the movie was good-ish. It was fast paced, but made a few leaps in logic to keep the pace up, and I thought it was well acted. It still feels like during this time, Hitchcock still hadn't quite become "Alfred Hitchcock". If I watched this movie without knowing who the director was, I would never have guest Hitchcock. It was just indistinguishable from many of the other movies I've seen. I might even say that Hitchcock at this stage of his career was simply mimicking other directors and hadn't yet begone to try to find his own style.

Overall it was a decent, well acted crime thriller, but had a feeling of blandness to it.

My Rating: 6/10
IMDB User Rating: 6.9/10 (15k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 88% Critics (28-4), 67% of Audience (3.5 / 5 ; 8k votes)

[sabotai]

Quick programming note, I'm cutting Man of Aran from the list. I've tried a few times to watch it, but I can't understand what they are saying and there are no subtitles. I think it's a combination of their thick Irish accents and poor audio quality.

[sabotai]

The Rise of Catherine the Great (1934)

https://i.imgur.com/zkSRZoam.jpg

Directed By: Paul Czinner
Written By: Marjorie Deans, Arthur Wimperis
Starring: Elisabeth Bergner, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Flora Robson
Length: 94 min.
Genre: Historical Drama

The story of how Princess Sophie Auguste Frederika of Anhalt-Zerbst became Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia.

The movie starts with Grand Duke Peter declaring he doesn't wish to be married and storms off as Princess Sophie (soon to be named Catherine) is walking to meet him. After she arrives and finds the Grand Duke has run off, Sophie also runs off, declaring she will not marry him either. Wouldn't you know it, the two run into each other having no idea who the other is. She wins him over, he finds out who she is and then he leads her back where they came from and announces he will marry her.

The Grand Duke turns out to be one easily manipulated and insecure man. On his wedding night, someone makes an offhand comment about Sophie using her "womanly charms" on him. This causes him to cheat on Sophie on their wedding night. And then he continues to spend his time drinking and whoring.

She eventually does win Peter over for a time (because she keeps loving him despite him being a total chad), but when Empress Elizabeth dies, Peter takes full control and begins a public affair which ends in Peter going out of his way to humiliate Catherine. In the end, Catherine seizes the throne in a coup d'état.

I didn't like this one. A lot of times, Catherine came off as naive. Other times, just downright stupid. I know it's hard to have historical dramas be free of contemporary morality, but it was pretty thick in this one.

There was one scene that felt incredibly anachronistic. When Empress Elizabeth dies, Grand Duke Peter takes over, even though it's pretty much an open secret that Catherine had been running the empire for some time now. Peter takes control and tells Catherine (paraphrasing but the last line is word-for-word) "We're drawing up new laws for government. There will be no more women in positions of power. You'll be back in the kitchen where you belong!"

Back in the kitchen? Since when the hell is an empress, whether the head of state or married to the head of state, ever 'in the kitchen'? It just felt like such an absurd thing to say.

It's also incredibly fast paced as it's trying to get to every major moment in Catherine's rise. Obviously, not very historically accurate, and I didn't think it was particularly well acted either. And no creativity at all in the camera (I know, I've become a film snob). Not a good movie.

My Rating: 4/10
IMDB User Rating: 6.5/10 (510 votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: N/A Critics, 53% of Audience (3.4 / 5 ; 41 votes)

[sabotai]

The Gay Divorcee (1934)

https://i.imgur.com/gd9RvlXm.jpg

Directed By: Mark Sandrich
Written By: George Marion Jr., Dorothy Yost
Starring: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers
Length: 107 min.
Genre: Musical Comedy

Ginger Rogers plays a woman looking to divorce her husband. He has been refusing, so she sets up a plan to have him catch her with another man, hired by her and her aunt. Fred Astaire runs into her at the airport and becomes enamored with her, and the two keep running into each other, though she keeps rejecting him as she's set on her plan.

I'm sure Fred Astaire was wildly talented at what he did, it's just...I don't get tap dancing. I'm sure it takes a lot of talent, but it doesn't look like it does.So all of the song and dance numbers with him blending ballroom dancing with tap dancing didn't do anything for me.

It did have a few laugh out loud moments, but those were few and far between. Astaire and Rodgers do have a lot of on screen chemistry. The back and forth in their dialog flows, but the plot was bare and the dancing was, well, tap. And I don't get tap.

My Rating: 5/10
IMDB User Rating: 7.5/10 (6k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 100% Critics (12-0), 82% of Audience (4 / 5 ; 3.3k votes)

[sabotai]

Ok, long break over. Got caught up watching the MCU movies. I had been putting off watching them because I wanted to watch them all after they came out. Plus some shows I wanted to watch. I'm actually mostly through my list, just haven't written up the reviews.

[sabotai]

The Thin Man (1934)

https://i.imgur.com/cepc91Fm.jpg

Directed By: W. S. Van Dyke
Written By: Albert Hackett, Frances Goodrich
Starring: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Maureen O'Sullivan
Length: 93 min.
Genre: Comedy
Based On: "The Thin Man" novel written by Dashiell Hammett

Nick Charles (William Powell) is a retired detective who spends his days and nights partying with his wealthy young wife Nora (Myrna Loy). He gets pulled out of retirement by Dorothy Wynant (Maureen O'Sullivan). Her father was an old client of Nick's and he has gone missing.

I found the movie very funny. The comedy in it doesn't feel dated at all. Nick and Nora are constantly, usually drunkenly, going at each other playfully. Much of the plot has become so cliche that it's impossible not to see the twists coming, but the comedy of Nick and Nora keeps the movie entertaining.

I would advise not watching the trailer beforehand, though. That was horribly dated and quite painful.

My Rating: 7/10
IMDB User Rating: 8.0/10 (24k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 97% Critics (37-1), 94% of Audience (4.4 / 5 ; 13k votes)

[Izulde]

The novel is great too - one of my favorites of Hammett's. The same humor and sheer enjoyable nature of Nick and Nora's relationship are in the book. I keep meaning to catch the film adaptation.

[sabotai]

Of Human Bondage (1934)

https://i.imgur.com/gXjFR3em.jpg

Directed By: John Cromwell
Written By: Lester Cohen, Ann Coleman
Starring: Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, Frances Dee
Length: 83 min.
Genre: Drama
Based on: 1915 novel "Of Human Bondage" by W. Somerset Maugham

The only reason to watch this movie is to see Bette Davis and work towards your "Bette Davis Collection" Achievement. There isn't much to see here.

Philip Carey (Leslie Howard) is born with a club-foot, and he's a wanna-be artist. A teacher tells him he has no artistic talent so he returns to London to study medicine. Okay, so he might turn out to be a sympathetic character. Disabled and told he sucks at his passion. Let's see how he deals with adversity.

He meets a woman named Mildred (Bette Davis) and does everything he can to win her over. She's a bit of a player, she tolerates Carey's advances while also tolerating the advances of other men. And so it goes throughout the movie. They sorta get together, but then she rejects him. She falls on hard times, he takes her back. She rejects him again, but comes running back when things go sour. He takes her back again, she ends up rejecting him again. So often this happens, along with a few other dumbass decisions our hero makes, that I just can't feel sympathy for his character at all by the midpoint of the movie. I'm now actively rooting against him, hoping he ends up miserable.

Bette Davis absolutely nails her character. Months later, I can still hear her "I don't mind" line in my head. I can see why voters for the Oscars had a write-in campaign on her behalf. But I can also see why the Academy overlooked the movie, because besides her performance, this was a stinker. I didn't think any of the other performances were particularly good and the story was more annoying than anything else.

Everything about this movie, besides Davis, was bad.

My Rating: 4/10
IMDB User Rating: 7.2/10 (5k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 83% Critics (10-2), 69% of Audience (3.7 / 5 ; 2k votes)

[sabotai]

The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934)

https://i.imgur.com/QNZvzkCm.png

Directed By: Sidney Franklin
Written By: David Ogden Stewart, Ernest Vajda, Claudine West
Starring: Norma Shearer, Fredric March, Charles Laughton
Length: 110 min.
Genre: Drama
Based on: 1930 play "The Barretts of Wimpole Street" by Rudolf Besier

1935 Oscar Nominee for Best Picture
1935 Oscar Nominee for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Norma Shearer)

Very easy to tell that this was based on a play. There were only 2-3 sets for the entire movie.

The movie centers around Elizabeth (Norma Shearer). She is bedridden with some illness that she has suffered from for a long time. She refuses to leave the room or even get out of bed most of the time, even though her family and doctor try to encourage her to do so. All except for her overbearing father, who seems to want he illness to go indefinitely as he keeps ignoring the doctor's orders, always telling people to leave her room so she can rest, etc.

And so goes the drama of the film. Father tries to keep the house quiet and Elizabeth confined and alone. The rest of the family encourage her to leave or have visitors. With Elizabeth in the middle of it. She becomes more willing to walk and leave her room. She even tries to begin a relationship and Father tries to torpedo that as well.

And that's basically the movie. Well acted and well written, I thought. But just an okay, generic very-wealthy-family drama movie. Nothing about it really stood out and it wasn't memorable.

My Rating: 5/10
IMDB User Rating: 7.0/10 (1.4k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 78% Critics (7-2), 72% of Audience (3.7 / 5 ; 328 votes)

[sabotai]

The Cat's Paw (1934)

https://i.imgur.com/QFbe3Czm.jpg

Directed By: Sam Taylor
Written By: Sam Taylor
Starring: Harold Lloyd, Una Merkel, George Barbier
Length: 102 min.
Genre: Comedy
Based on: 1933 novel "The Cat's Paw" by Clarence Budington Kelland

Ezekial Cobb (Harold Lloyd) grows up the child of missionaries in China, and when he comes of age, he heads back to the United States to find a bride. Immediately after arriving in America, he gets roped into a scheme to run for office by a few unscrupulous politician types. He's supposed to lose.

Surprise, he wins, and surprise, he takes his job seriously, completely ruining the scheme from the bad guys. As for finding a bride, Lloyd's character falls in love with the first woman he comes across.

Much like the last Lloyd comedy, this just felt like it was missing something. I didn't find it all that funny, though I did find the story a bit more interesting than Movie Crazy. Just an alright movie, nothing stood out. The politics were a bit weird, though. Lloyd's character is exceptionally authoritarian, and his solution to the conflict in the final climax turns that authoritarianism to 11. But his opponents are truly corrupt and bad people, so I guess it's okay. I mean, I get it, it's a comedy, who cares. It was just a bit weird is all.

On a plus side, I found Una Merkel great in her role. The few laughs this film got from me came from her.

Lloyd only has a few more films left. Judging by the IMDB ratings, it's not looking like he goes out on any high notes.

My Rating: 5/10
IMDB User Rating: 6.7/10 (1k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: N/A Critics (3-0), 50% of Audience (3.2 / 5 ; 120 votes)

[sabotai]

限りなき舗道 | Street Without End (1934)

https://i.imgur.com/f5gEEWhm.jpg

Directed By: Naruse Mikio
Written By: Ikedo Jitsuzô, Kitamura Komatsu
Starring: Shinobu Setsuko, Isono Akio, Yamanouchi Kikaru
Length: 89 min.
Genre: Family Drama

Again with the being hit by a car. Weird how this is a plot point in so many Japanese movies.

Sugiko, a waitress, gets engaged to her boyfriend, even though her bf's family wants him to marry someone else. On her way to meet him, Sugiko is hit by a car. She goes to the hospital, but her bf has no idea. She was hit by a wealthy man, and bf gets a glipse of her in the backseat of his car as they drive by him. He goes to her apartment the next day and Sugiko's roommate says she didn't come home last night.

Well so he gives up and heads back home apparently.

Sugiko is then courted by the man who hit her (well, his driver hit her) and gets married. She was also recruited to be an actress, but her friend got the job instead. No hard feelings, Sugiko is happy for her.

After Sugiko marries the wealthy man, she finds both mother-in-law and sister-in-law very unhappy. Mother-in-law scolds her for being too nice to the servants, and sister-in-law wanted her brother to marry her friend.

Halfway through this movie, there was even a title card that broke the 4th wall and explicitly stated one of the themes of the movie. That Japan's society is clinging to outdated feudal ideas.

I really enjoyed this movie. A lot of characters and moving parts within the plot. Most family dramas just stick with one main conflict and ride it for an hour and a half. This had a good number of conflicts surrounding multiple characters which made the movie's plot progress at a good pace.

Like with most Naruse movies, the camera is moving a lot more than is typical for silent movies. Almost the exact opposite of Ozu, but I enjoy both styles. Naruse's silent movie career goes out on a high note. Not quite as good IMO as Apart From You, but still good. Naruse starts making movies with sound next year, but for some reason, The Criterion Channel doesn't have any sound movies from him until 1951. Looks like I'll have to do some searching.

My Rating: 7/10
IMDB User Rating: 7.0/10 (270 votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: N/A Critics (0-0), 50% of Audience (14 votes)

In terms of the number of IMDB and RT votes, I wonder if this is my most obscure movie so far.

[sabotai]

Here Comes the Navy (1934)

https://i.imgur.com/RxYmQOom.jpg

Directed By: Lloyd Bacon
Written By: Earl Baldwin, Ben Markson
Starring: James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Gloria Stuart
Length: 87 min.
Genre: Comedy

James Cagney joins the navy! ... in order to get a second fight with some dude who took his gal.

So we open up with Chesty O'Conner (James Cagney) getting into a verbal pissing contest with a navy officer who is walking by the construction site where Chesty is working. Later that night, that officer, Biff Martin (Pat O'Brien) runs into Cagney's date for a ball and is smitten right away. So Martin and Chesty fight it out. Chesty becomes distracted and Martin lays him out with a punch.

Chesty needs to even the score, and the only to do that is to JOIN THE NAVY! So he does. Lucky for him, after training, he gets assigned to Martin's ship. Chesty also ends up dating Martin's sister, and the main source of conflict from that point is Martin getting in the way of their relationship, and Chesty's desire to run away from the Navy because he hates it.

The movie was fine. The pacing was really good. The two main conflicts for the main character is something a lot of movies don't get right. An external conflict (Chesty vs. Martin) and an internal conflict (Chesty hates being in the navy), both of which threatens his relationship with Martin's sister really keeps the pace up. When a movies just focuses on an external conflict, the pacing usually drags because you can only go so far for so long on one source of conflict. And without internal conflict, characters just come off as one-dimensional cardboard cutouts, no matter how many external conflicts the screenwriter puts in for his characters.

But overall, not funny, and all of the characters were annoying. Very watchable, though, for most of it, but the 3rd act just completely fell apart for me, and the ending was just awful. My biggest laugh was not with the film, but at the film during the ending.

If you're really into US History, one reason to watch the movie would be to see the USS Arizona and USS Macon. The film had much of it shot on the USS Arizona (sunk at Pearl Harbor) and the USS Macon (an airship that crashed off the coast of California in 1935) was featured in the film's climax.

My Rating: 4/10
IMDB User Rating: 6.3/10 (748 votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 80% Critics (4-1), 44% of Audience (279 votes)

[sabotai]

Almost a year since I started 1934. I only have 3 more movies to watch (2 new ones and 1 to rewatch because it's been over a year since I've seen it).

A Mother Should Be Loved is being axed. Turns out the first part and the ending are lost, so what's available is only part of the movie.

[sabotai]

The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934)

https://i.imgur.com/zpxVZhRm.jpg

Directed By: Harold Young
Starring: Leslie Howard, Merle Oberon, Raymond Massey
Length: 94 min.
Genre: Adventure Drama
Based On: The 1908 Novel written by Baroness Orczy

At the height of the Terror during the French Revolution, a British aristocrat starts sneaking the French aristocracy out of the nation.

The movie starts off with the Scarlett Pimpernel getting the family of a French lord out of the country. It's a very Robin Hood like sequence, at least that's what it sorta reminded me off as I watch this in 2020.

And then we get like an hour of court gossip and politics. Everyone is asking who the Scarlett Pimpernel could be. We know who it is, but no one suspects him because he's flamboyant and portrays himself to be a pampered troublemaker. He's supposed to be charming and witty, but he's mostly just annoying.

A man named Chauvelin is appointed the new ambassador and Robespierre tells him to find out who the Scarlett Pimpernel is. And he is the worst 'detective' I've ever seen on screen. Entirely witless and the only way he finds out any information is by blackmailing people to help him. And then he entirely screws up with the information he's given.

So the movie starts off with an action sequence, we get a bunch of court gossip, a half hour of a cat and mouse game with a cat we know is way too stupid to catch the mouse, and then a sequence with SPOILERS the Scarlett Pimpernel winning.

It started decently, ended predictably but it was done okay, and the middle 80% was incredibly boring and the humor fell completely flat for me.

My Rating: 4/10
IMDB User Rating: 7.4/10 (3k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 88% Critics (7-1), 74% of Audience (3k votes)

[sabotai]

神女 | The Goddess (1934)

https://i.imgur.com/U4utFYwm.jpg

Directed By: Wu Yonggang
Written By: Wu Yonggang
Starring: Ruan Lingyu, Zhang Zhizhi
Length: 73 min.
Genre: Silent Drama

A young woman works as a prostitute to support herself and her infant child. One night while running from the police, she hides inside the home of a man who turns out to be a crime boss. He forces her to work for him. She runs away, but he finds her and brings her back to Shanghai.

Fast forward a few years. She finds a place to hide away money so she can pay to send her child to school. Rumors about what she does as a job spread around and the parents of the other kids send letters to the principal demanding the kid be expelled. The principal refuses after meeting with the mother, but the school board want to expel the child anyway so the principal resigns.

The crime boss finds her stash and she goes to confront him. During their argument, she hits him in the head with a bottle and kills him. She's arrested and sentenced to 12 years. The principal tells her that he'll take her son in and educate him himself.

The was Wu Yonggang's first feature film and it was a big hit in China. Raun Lingyu was already a big star and this film kept her popularity going. At the 2005 Shanghai Critic Awards, this movie was named among the Top 22 movies of Chinese cinema.

As for my opinion, I thought is was a good silent movie. The 73 minute run time kept the pacing tight. The camera work and cinematography were uninteresting, though. Pretty much just the standard shots. Not much camera movement, every angle was a simple straight on shot. A few shots purposefully out of focus to express delirium, a few double-exposure effects, but overall just a simple silent movie with a solid plot and characters.

My Rating: 6/10
IMDB User Rating: 7.7/10 (1.7k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 100% Critics (5-0), 89% of Audience (515 votes)

[sabotai]

浮草物語 | A Story of Floating Weeds (1934)

https://i.imgur.com/py8o9cXm.png

Directed By: Ozu Yasujirō
Written By: Ikeda Tadao, Ozu Yasujirō
Starring: Sakamoto Takeshi, Iida Chôko, Mitsui Kôji, Yagumo Emiko
Length: 86 min.
Genre: Silent Drama

1935 Kinema Junpo Winner: Best Film

Kahichi is the leader of a traveling troupe of actors, and they are making a stop in a village that is home to a former lover, Otsune, and their son, Shinkichi. To spare the son the shame of having a traveling actor as a father, they tell him that he is his uncle. The troupe gets stuck at the village for an extended period of time due to poor weather.

It gets out that Kahichi has been spending all of spare time at one home, so one of his actresses (and implied current lover), Otaka, heads there with another actress, Otoki. Otaka learns that Shinkichi is Kahichi's son, and gets Otoki to seduce Shinkichi. That backfires in that the two fall in love. And when Kahichi finds out, he was not happy.

There was a subplot in the movie concerning one of Kahichi's actors and his son, showing what life is like for a son who is taken on the road by his traveling actor father. It was an effective way of demonstrating what it was Kahichi was trying to avoid by leaving his son behind.

This was one of the best silent movies I've seen. Just about everything about the movie was very well done, and this was the first movie from Ozu where I felt like he had really developed his style, and the first movie from him where this idea that he was a master of scene composition really shows.

All of the actors did a great job as well. No over-acting that is common with silent movies. And of course, I have to say it, multiple layers of conflict kept the tension up and the story moving at a good pace.

We'll be getting one more silent movie from Ozu (An Inn in Tokyo - 1935) before he moves on to sound in 1936.

My Rating: 9/10
IMDB User Rating: 7.8/10 (2.7k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: N/A Critics, 83% of Audience (407 votes)

[sabotai]

1934 Rankings

1. A Story of Floating Weeds
2. The Thin Man
3. Street Without End
4. The Man Who Knew Too Much
5. It Happened One Night
6. The Goddess
7. Babes in Toyland
8. The Gay Divorcee
9. The Barretts of Wimpole Street
10. The Cat's Paw
11. Here Comes the Navy
12. The Scarlet Pimpernel
13. Of Human Bondage
14. The Rise of Catherine the Great

Overall, an okay year for the movies.

The Good - A Story of Floating Weeds was the best movie I've seen since 1928, when both Speedy and Steamboat Bill Jr got 9s from me. The Thin Man was great and I really enjoyed Street Without End.

The Bad - But it was a drop off from there. the 4th best movie in 1934 gets just a 6 from me, and half of the movies I watched got a 5 or worse.

The Silver Lining - But the worse grade I gave out for the year was a 4. None of the movies from this year were nearly as bad as Cavalcade (1933) or A Farewell to Arms (1932). So 1934 had one of the best silent movies every made, a really funny comedy, another really good silent movie and a whole bunch of movies that were just between "meh" to "it was...good, I guess".

[sabotai]

The Pool to choose from for 1935.

Here is a long list of movies that I could watch for 1935. Here's the list be category (movies that are bold will definitely make the cut)

Oscar Nominees for Best Picture
Mutiny on the Bounty (Winner)
Alice Adams
Broadway Melody of 1936
Captain Blood
David Copperfield
The Informer
The Lives of Bengal Lancer
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Les Misérables
Naughty Merietta
Ruggles of Red Gap
Top Hat

Other Oscar Winners
Dangerous (Bette Davis - Best Actress)
The Scoundrel (Best Original Story)
The Gold Diggers of 1935 (Best Song)
The Dark Angel (Best Art Direction)

Available on Criterion Channel (and IMDB voters give it a 7.0 or higher)
The 39 Steps
If You Could Only Cook
The Whole Town's Talking
Toni
Carnival in Flanders
And Inn in Tokyo

Japanese Movies (that I found on Youtube)
Sazen Tange and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo (Yamanaka Sadao)
Wife! Be Like a Rose! (Naruse Mikio)
Maria no Oyuki (Mizoguchi Kenji)
Poppy (Mizoguchi Kenji)
A Girl in the Rumour (Naruse Mikio)
Saakasu Goningumi (Naruse Mikio)
The Actress and the Poet (Naruse Mikio)

Other Foreign Movies
New Women (China)
National Customs (China)
The New Gulliver (Russia)
Triumph of the Will (Nazi Germany)

Other (here because of genre or top grossing)
China Seas
Roberta
Anna Karenina
A Tale of Two Cities
Bride of Frankenstein
A Night at the Opera
Werewolf of London
The Irish in Us
Crime and Punishment
The Little Colonel
G Men

...and I have to stop somewhere so that'll be it, unless someone thinks I really should add another movie. There are 40+ here with 9 that have pre-made the cut. Some or all of the Japanese and the rest of the foreign movies will unofficially "make the cut" only because I plan on watching them all anyway outside of this dynasty. If I don't get to them before the year is done, I'll move on "officially".

[sabotai]

Movie List for 1935

Mutiny on the Bounty - Oscar Winner for Best Picture
Adventure, directed by Frank Lloyd, starring Charles Laughton, Clark Gable and Franchot Tone

Wife! Be Like a Rose! - Kinema Junpo Award for Best Picture
(Japan) Drama, directed by Naruse Mikio, starring Chiba Sachiko, Hanabusa Yuriko, Itô Toshiko

The Informer - Oscar Nominee for Best Picture , Winner Best Director, Winner Best Actor, Winner Best Screenplay
Crime Drama, directed by John Ford, starring Victor McLaglen, Heather Angel and Preston Foster

Captain Blood - Oscar Nominee for Best Picture
Adventure, directed by Michael Curtiz, starring Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland and Lionel Atwill

Alice Adams - Oscar Nominee for Best Picture
Romantic Comedy, directed by George Stevens, starring Katharine Hepburn, Fred MacMurray and Fred Stone

David Copperfield - Oscar Nominee Best Picture
Historical Drama, directed by George Cukor, starring Freddie Bartholomew, Frank Lawton and Edna May Oliver

Les Misérables - Oscar Nominee Best Picture
Drama, directed by Richard Boleslawski, starring Fredric March, Charles Laughton and Cedric Hardwicke

Top Hat - Oscar Nominee Best Picture
Musical Comedy, directed by Mark Sandrich, starring Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers and Edward Everett Horton

The 39 Steps - NYFCC Award Nominee Best Director
(UK) Film-Noir Thriller, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll and Lucie Mannheim

China Seas
Action Drama, directed by Tay Garnett, starring Clark Gable, Jean Harlow and Wallace Beery

A Tale of Two Cities - Oscar Nominee Best Picture (at the 9th Academy Wards in 1937)
Historical Drama, directed by Jack Conway, starring Ronald Colman, Elizabeth Allan and Edna May Oliver
- The movie premiered in NYC on Dec 25th, 1935. I guess it was released just passed the deadline for the 8th Academy Awards

An Inn in Tokyo
(Japan) Drama, directed by Ozu Yasujirô, starring Sakamoto Takeshi, Okada Yoshiko and Iida Chôko

Sazen Tange and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo
(Japan) Comedy, directed by Yamanaka Sadao, starring Ôkôchi Denjirô, Kiyozo and Sawamura Kunitarô

Bride of Frankenstein
Horror, directed by James Whale, starring Boris Karloff, Elsa Lanchester and Colin Clive

A Night at the Opera
Comedy, directed by Sam Wood, starring the Marx Brothers (minus Zeppo but who cares)

New Women
(China) Drama, directed by Cai Chusheng, starring Ruan Lingyu, Wang Naidong amd Zheng Junli

The New Gulliver
(Russia) Animated Comedy, directed by Aleksandr Ptushko, starring Vladimir Konstantinov, Ivan Yudin and Ivan Bobrov

Triumph of the Will
(Nazi Germany) Nazi Propaganda, directed by Leni Riefenstahl, starring Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring and Max Amann


And the list of "If I Fell Like It before 1936" movies
Gold Diggers of 1935
G Men
Anna Karenina
Dangerous
The Whole Town's Talking
Maria no Oyuki (Mizoguchi Kenji)
Poppy (Mizoguchi Kenji)
A Girl in the Rumour (Naruse Mikio)
Saakasu Goningumi (Naruse Mikio)
The Actress and the Poet (Naruse Mikio)

[sterlingice]

I love that this dynasty is still going on

SI

[ntndeacon]

This is a fantastic dynasty!

[sabotai]

Captain Blood (1935)

https://i.imgur.com/XfCsIfGm.jpg

Directed By: Michael Curtiz
Written By: Casey Robinson
Starring: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Lionel Atwill
Length: 119 min.
Genre: Adventure
Based On: The 1922 Novel "Captain Blood" written by Rafael Sabatini

1936 Oscar Nominee - Best Picture
1936 Oscar Nominee - Best Director
1936 Oscar Nominee - Best Writing, Screenplay

Peter Blood (Errol Flynn) is a doctor who makes the fateful decision to treat the wounds of some men who happened to have rebelled against the crown of England. Peter tries to plea to the court that he was merely doing his job as a doctor, but the judge cares not. He's sentenced to death, but the crown sees a chance for profit and commutes the sentence of all men not yet hanged to be sold into indentured servitude. He gets sent to Port Royal to serve a term of 10 years working for the highest bidder.

Side note: One of my ancestors came to America the same way. In 1715, he was on the wrong side of a rebellion in Scotland (started in Scotland, ended in northern England) and was sent to Maryland as an indentured servant for a term of 7 years. Anyway, back to the story.

Arabella Bishop (Olivia de Havilland), the daughter of Colonel Bishop (Lionel Atwill) buys Peter Blood for 10 pounds. He isn't nearly as grateful as she thinks he should be, so she sends him to work on her father's land. And so begins their romantic subplot.

Peter gains favor with the governor by treating his gout and this annoys Col. Bishop. Peter makes the decision to escape. He has a relatively easy life since gaining the governor's favor, though, but many of the people he's come to care about do not. Plus, even if he has it easy, who wants to live life as someone else's property. So he hatches a plan to escape along with several others.

Well, the plan fails. He was to be at the docks by midnight, but Col. Bishop, tired of Peter's attitude, He has Peter tied up and is about to kill him. So how is Peter going to get out of this. Will Arabella show up and save him? Will he survive this beating, and plan a new escape?

No. Pirate ex machina happens. The Port is attacked at that very moment, and Spanish pirates storm the city. Peter and his friends make it to the dock, but their ship has been sunk. They manage to get aboard the Spanish pirate ship and take it over. And so begins their lives as pirates!

Later in the film, Captain Blood is able to turn the tables on miss Arabella Bishop. She is taken hostage by Blood's partner Captain Levasseur. Blood buys Arabella from Captain Levasseur, but he is not happy with the arrangement and the men duel, with Captain Blood killing Captain Levasseur. Now it is Arabella's turn to be ungrateful after being bought.

The movie was a huge success. The budget was between $1m and $1.2m, and made back twice as much. It was nominated for Best Picture and helped launch Errol Flynn to stardom. This was his first big role in a Hollywood movie, but it certainly wouldn't be his last, nor will it be his last with Olivia de Havilland.

One thing about this movie really bugged me. We watch Peter Blood plan and set in motion his plan to escape. But it all fails, and they escape anyway. I hate when the actions of the characters are inconsequential to the plot. Had Peter not planned any escape at all, they still would have escaped! If their prep had somehow helped the pirates take the city, then that would have worked. But for 30 minutes of the film, the character's actions did not matter at all.

(It's one thing if the theme of the movie is fatalism, if the movie is trying to make a philosophical point about human behavior and human actions. But this movie is not. It's an adventure story. The actions of the characters should matter, and they shouldn't be saved by whatever-ex-machina).

That aside, I did enjoy the movie overall. It struck a nice balance of action and drama, the duel scene was well done and the main actors were all great. The romantic subplot was cheesy and rushed, but what romantic subplot isn't. But I was disappointed. It was supposed to be a pirate adventure, but it was that for only half the movie. I would have liked it if they got to the piracy a good deal sooner, especially since their 30 minute Act 2 was, in the end, pointless.

I was also impressed by how accurate the film was in some aspects of pirate life. For example, Captain Blood and his crew, immediately after taking the Spanish ship, write up a document detailing how everyone will be compensated, along with a list of monetary compensation for losing their limbs. (400 for a right arm, 300 for a left arm, etc.). That actually did happen on pirate ships.

And later in the film, while sailing they mention how they had every flag of every nation on board. Pirate ships weren't run by idiots. They didn't fly a pirate flag while sailing in the open water. Pirate ships would fly a nation's flag, then raise their pirate flag when they got too close for the ship to run. They did this because 99 times out of 100 the ship they were 'attacking' would then immediately surrender without a fight. It was actually rare for pirates to have to fight to take a ship, mainly because they wouldn't try to take a ship they knew could actually put up a fight.

Overall, a bit disappointing that was nonetheless a decently fun adventure, but features a major writing pet peeve of mine, so it gets a full point deduction for that.

My Rating: 5 / 10
IMDB User Rating: 7.7/10 (12.3k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 100% Critics (25-0), 89% of Audience (8k votes)

[sabotai]

I love that this dynasty is still going on

Me too!

This is a fantastic dynasty!

I agree.

[sabotai]

Over the last several months, I have watch maybe 5 movies total. I had a backlog of PC games to play and I built a new PC awhile back for a reason. :)

But let's get back to it.

The 39 Steps (1935)

https://i.imgur.com/qgbxp8ym.jpg

Directed By: Alfred Hitchcock
Written By: Charles Bennett
Starring: Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll
Length: 86 min.
Genre: Spy / Adventure
Based On: The 1915 Novel "The Thirty-Nine Steps" written by John Buchan

1936 NY Film Critics Award Nominee: Best Director

So I hated this movie, unlike everyone else it seems.

First, the good. It does a great job of tying the beginning of the story to the end. And there was a nice twist in the middle of the story that changed the goals of the main character. Nicely done there.

My problem with the story otherwise, and why I hated it so much, is that every character is so insanely stupid. The cops go from being the greatest detectives by tracking down our hero across the entire country of England in a very short period of time only to turn into bumbling fools at the moment of capture so that our hero can get away.

The main villain at one point shoots our hero, and yet doesn't check to see if he's dead. You would think the total lack of blood from the person you just shot from near point blank range would maybe make you think to check?

This wasn't a case of "well if every one did the right thing there'd be no story". No, no one did a single thing that was remotely intelligent at all. Keystone cops, keystone villains, keystone hero and keystone dame. Just everyone was far beyond the level of stupid that I could put up with in a movie that I could not stop hate-laughing at it, until I has just hating it.

A shame. Everything else about the movie was fine. Acting was good, directing, sound, everything technical was good. The middle had that nice twist and reveal...and then the movie totally ruined it by having a villain ten times dumber than the most incompetent Bond villain.

My Rating: 4 / 10
IMDB Rating: 7.6 (51k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 96% Critics (49-2), 86% of Audience (23k votes)

[sabotai]

A Night at the Opera (1935)

https://i.imgur.com/leKEyZXm.jpg

Directed By: Sam Wood
Written By: George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind
Starring: The Marx Brothers: Groucho, Chico and Harpo
Length: 93 min.
Genre: Comedy

Well, here we are. Another Marx Brothers movie, another night of disappointment. I really wish I loved these movies like most others do, but they just don't do it for.

Every Marx Brothers movie has that one scene that I love. In this movie, it was everyone cramming into Groucho's room on the ship. Just like the fake mirror scene in Duck Soup, it's a gag I've seen countless times, but the Marx Brother's 'new to me' scene was still really funny.

But just like the rest of the Marx Brothers movies I've seen, the rest of the movie was...you know, okay. Nothing really bad, but nothing remarkably funny. It was just....you know, okay. Some of the opera scene gags during the climax were really funny, some were yawn-worthy.

Zeppo was not in this movie and no one noticed. And Harpo is still the funniest Marx Brother.

My Rating: 6 / 10
IMDB Rating: 7.9 (30k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 97% Critics (67-2), 91% of Audience (20k votes)

[korme]

Sabotai, are you on Letterboxd?

[sabotai]

Sabotai, are you on Letterboxd?

Yeah

https://letterboxd.com/JayFromNJ/

[sabotai]

David Copperfield (1935)

https://i.imgur.com/AIexzEmm.jpg

Directed By: George Cukor
Written By: Hugh Walpole
Starring: WC Fields, Freddie Batholomew, Llonel Barrymore
Length: 133 min.
Genre: Drama
Base On: The 1850 Novel "David Copperfield" written by Charles Dickens

1935 Venice Film Festival Nominee: Best Foreign Film
1936 Oscar Nominee: Best Picture
1936 Oscar Nominee: Best Film Editing
1936 Oscar Nominee: Best Assistant Director

Well, I'm going to power through this review the way I powered through only ~50 minutes of this boring-ass movie.

First off, the acting was way over the top. Extremely stage-play like performances that are just out of place in a movie. Young Mr. Copperfield is living in a new location every 5 minutes. The movie is boring because the plot moves too quickly. One location, one thing happens, off to the next location.

The first time anything interesting happens, which is Copperfield getting mugged, he has to travel all the way to his aunts house with no money. Sounds like it might be an interesting Act. But it was a simple, short montage of his hardships and suddenly he's at his aunt's house. I'm done. *turn it off*

Absolute garbage.

My Rating: 1 / 10
IMDB Rating: 7.4 (3k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: (website not working for me right now)

[sabotai]

東京の宿 | An Inn in Tokyo (1935)

https://i.imgur.com/pQUWjHol.jpg

Directed By: Ozu Yasujiro
Written By: Ozu Yasujiro, Ikeda Tadao
Starring: Sakamoto Takeshi, Okada Yoshiko, Iida Choko
Length: 80 min.
Genre: Drama

Ozu's final silent movie.

Kihachi walks around, day to day, looking for work with his two sons. They find occasional other sources for money, like catching stray dogs and turning them in for a reward. Kahichi eventually runs into an old friend of his who helps him find a job and gives him and his sons a place to stay. They also befriend a homeless woman and her daughter.

The movie spends most of the time focusing on the two boys as they follow their father around, what antics they get into while he's trying to apply for a job, and their friendship with the homeless woman's daughter, who one day stops showing up to play.

So this movie has long stretches of time that were quite boring. The movie overall wasn't bad, but this was a basic story I've seen several times from Ozu, Naruse and other Japanese directors. A slice of life of a poor family's life in 1930s Japan. There wasn't anything new here. It was a letdown after the masterpiece that was A Story of Floating Weeds, but not an overall bad ending to Ozu's silent career. It was just an ok movie.

My Rating: 5 / 10
IMDB Rating: 7.6 (1k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: N/A Critics (0), 84% of Audience (100+)

[Groundhog]

Enjoy coming back to this dynasty every other year. Really need to track down A Story of Floating Weeds, I'd never heard of it before your post.

[molson]

It's been a bit since I noticed this thread, but great to see the updates, I'm still following along.

[sabotai]

The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

https://i.imgur.com/ohtC7Ljm.jpg

Directed By: James Whale
Written By: William Hurlbot
Starring: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Valerie Hobson
Length: 75 min.
Genre: Horror / Monster

1936 Oscar Nominee: Best Sound, Recording

I suppose whether you like this or not depends on if you think a talking monster (even if it is basic) who understands English is lame or not. I lean heavily towards lame.

So the movie picks up right after the last one ended. You know, the movie where both the Monster and Dr. Frankenstein both die. Well, they don't. Dr. Frankenstein is taken by the mob to the village where it's discovered he's actually still alive, barely.

And even though the Monster is killed when a burning building on top of a hill collapses, it turns out there's a massive pit underneath the mill, and the Monster survives. He then kills several people while making his escape.

Dr. Frankenstein visits another doctor, Septimus Pretorius, who has been doing his own experimenting, and Pretorius wants to create a mate for the Monster by growing a brain.

During that scene, Pretorius shows Frankenstein several small people he created. It's a neat demonstration of the visual effects technology of the time, but it felt really out of place. It goes on for several minutes and is never mentioned or referenced again in the movie. Just a weird "let's show off our visual effect talent" scene.

Wanna-be writers like me have heard the phrase "kill your darlings". That sequence should have hit the cutting room floor, even if it was interesting.

So like I said, the Monster talks. By the end of the movie he's speaking in simple sentences and...it just doesn't work for me. Him yelling single words is fine but in the last scene when he's talking, albeit in 2 or 3 word sentences, I hated it. And then I burst out laughing. Until then it was still an ok monster movie, but the ending killed the movie for me even more.

But most people seem to really love it.

My Rating: 4 / 10
IMDB Rating: 7.8 (43k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 98% Critics (45-1), 87% of Audience (10k+)

[sabotai]

Addendum: to the last review:

I wrote it up quickly and I feel like, reading it over, that I put too much emphasis on the Monster talking, as if that turned a good movie bad.

That was really an overall minor point. IMO, the greatest sin the movie committed was bring Dr. Frankenstein back to life. Pet peeve of mine when sequels do that by itself. It's even worse when bringing him back to life completely undermines the theme of the first movie. Dr. Frankenstein is given the ultimate punishment for trying to play god. The sequel takes that punishment away.

IMO, It would have been a far better movie had Septimus Pretorius had to recreate Frankenstein's research and experiment on his own, rather than just forcing a "actually he's not dead" Dr. Frankenstein into doing it. It was a redemption arc for Dr. Frankenstein that I just simply didn't buy.

Also, at just 75 minutes, the movie still felt long. Like there was only 60 minutes of movie there, but it was stretched to 75 with meaningless scenes (like the little people scene).

But, like I said, most people seem to really love it so don't listen to me.

[sabotai]

So where was I....

Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)

https://i.imgur.com/YbVnmfUm.jpg

Directed By: Frank Lloyd
Written By: Talbot Jennings, Jules Furthman, Carey Wilson
Starring: Charles Laughton, Clark Gable, Franchot Tone
Length: 132 min.
Genre: Action Adventure
Based On: 1932 Novel "Mutiny on the Bounty" by Charles Nordhoff and James Normal Hall

1936 Oscar Winner: Best Picture
1936 Oscar Nominee: Best Actor: Clark Gable
1936 Oscar Nominee: Best Actor: Charles Laughton
1936 Oscar Nominee: Best Actor: Franchot Tone
1936 Oscar Nominee: Best Director: Frank Lloyd
1936 Oscar Nominee: Best Screenplay
1936 Oscar Nominee: Best Film Editing
1936 Oscar Nominee: Best Music, Score

Based on a novel that is based on a real mutiny on the HMS Bounty in 1789.

The three main characters are Captain William Bligh (Charles Laughton), Roger Byam (Franchot Tone) and Lt. Fletcher Christian (Clark Gable). Bligh is established and a brutal captain from the start of the movie, where a man had been sentenced to a number of lashings. When the man dies during the punishment, Bligh orders that the lashings continue until all of them have been given. Christian continuously tries to keep Bligh from being too cruel, and the character of Byam is set in between them. On one hand, he thinks Bligh is very brutal, but on the other hand, he has an unshakable loyalty to the chain of command.

On the voyage, they continue to show Bligh being brutal, punishing men in very creative ways that when they die left me thinking "the fuck you think was going to happen?" I though Charles Laughton did a great job with the role, but the character is just way too much. I'm sure they were trying to establish a conflict between being loyal and being loyal to someone like Bligh, but I thought it went too far. I felt no empathy for any of the characters who remained loyal or even the ones that were conflicted over the mutiny. The typical audience of the mid 1930s might have felt differently than me, though.

The real Captain Bligh wasn't nearly the deranged lunatic as the character in this movie. In fact, no one died from any of the punishments from the real Captain Bligh. When compared to the movie, the real events on the HMS Bounty seem pretty tame. That story would have provided a very good shades-of-gray conflict, not this one-side-is-obviously-the-good-guys conflict.

Overall though, the movie was a really good adventure. There was a lot of entertaining back and forth between Bligh and Christian as Christian kept trying to keep Bligh from going too far with his discipline. Laughton and Gable made a great pair.

My Rating: 7 / 10
IMDB Rating: 7.7 (22k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 93% Critics (39-3), 84% of Audience (5k+)

[sabotai]

The Gold Diggers of 1935

https://i.imgur.com/2vV4i8cm.jpg

Directed By: Busby Berkeley
Written By: Manual Seff, Peter Milne
Starring: Dick Powell, Adolphe Menjou, Gloria Stuart, Alice Brady
Length: 95 min.
Genre: Musical Comedy

1936 Oscar Winner: Best Music, Original Song - "Lullaby of Broadway"
1936 Oscar Nominee: Best Dance Direction

The first Gold Diggers was a lost silent movie released in 1923. The second is a partially lost 1929 The Gold Diggers of Broadway. The third was a movie I enjoyed, the Gold Diggers of 1933. All three were based on the 1919 play The Gold Diggers.

This one, the fourth installment, was not. It was an original story. And it stunk.

Dick Curtis (Dick Powell) is engaged to Arline Davis (Dorothy Dare) and is studying to become a doctor while working in a hotel. Mrs. Prentiss (Alice Brady) hires Dick to escort her daughter Ann (Gloria Stuart) for the summer to keep her out of trouble. She also wants Ann to marry a middle-aged millionaire who's passion is snuffboxes (in other words, he's a very boring person). Ann loves expensive things and adventure much to the consternation of her mother.

Wouldn't you know it, Dick falls in love with Ann (practically immediately). But it's okay, Ann's brother is falls in love with Arline at first sight and Arline falls for him. So the engagement is off. Amicably. Like that scene in Seinfeld where he ends his engagement to Janeane Garofalo.

Much like Gold Diggers of 1933, this movie spawned a song that everyone has heard of, "Lullaby of Broadway".

So, I hated the plot and I didn't find the movie funny at all. Even Adolphe Menjou couldn't save this one.

My Rating: 3 / 10
IMDB Rating: 6.9 (2.6k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 100% Critics (5-0), 70% of Audience (500+)

[sabotai]

Top Hat (1935)

https://i.imgur.com/Vr6WoGgm.jpg

Directed By: Mark Sandrich
Written By: Allan Scott, Dwight Taylor
Starring: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers
Length: 101 min.
Genre: Musical Comedy

1936 Oscar Nominee: Best Picture
1936 Oscar Nominee: Best Art Direction
1936 Oscar Nominee: Best Dance Direction
1936 Oscar Nominee: Best Music, Original Song "Cheek to Cheek"

An entire movie based on a mistaken identity joke.

Jerry Travers (Fred Astaire) is in London and dancing in his hotel room. dale Tremont (Ginger Rogers) is on the floor below him and goes to his room to complain. Guess what!? Jerry falls in love right then and there and follows her around London.

Well Dale mistakes Jerry for a man named Horace who is married to an acquaintance of her's. And they awkwardly play the pronoun game in conversations throughout the movie to keep the mistaken identity joke going.

The biggest sin, and I've been trying to stay away from spoilers in the recent reviews, but here's your warning to stop reading if you do plan to watch Fred Astaire movies. (But I already spoiled in my first line anyway) The biggest sin is that the reveal happens off screen. The moment where she finds out the Fred Astaire is not the married man she thought he was is not shown. She's on the verge of finding, cut to a scene with some side characters, cut to a scene with Rogers and Astaire talking about how she mistook him for someone else.

Maybe they filmed the scene and it didn't work so they cut it. I don't know. But I don't know how you don't have the big payoff happen on screen.

My non-enjoyment of the movie went beyond that. It's a genre I don't particularly enjoy. Like I said in my last Fred Astaire movie review, I just don't get tap. The dance scenes were boring to me. I did laugh a few times at the dialog, though, despite myself.

But, you know, even though I'm not enjoying a lot of these movies, in a weird way I'm still enjoying the process. I like that I know where songs like "Cheek to Cheek" and "Lullaby of Broadway" came from. Not just reading about where they came from in Wikipedia, but experiencing it myself. If that makes any sense.

Anyway, did not like the movie, and I'm in the small minority.

My Rating: 4 / 10
IMDB Rating: 7.8 (18k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 100% Critics (42-0), 90% of Audience (5k ratings)

[sabotai]

The Informer (1935)

https://i.imgur.com/EqLApLIm.jpg

Directed By: John Ford
Written By: Dudley Nichols
Starring: Victor McLaglen, Heather Angel, Preston Foster
Length: 91 min.
Genre: Drama
Based On: The Novel "The Informer" (1925) by Liam O'Flaherty

1936 Oscar Winner: Best Actor in a Leading Role (Victor McLaglen)
1936 Oscar Winner: Best Director (John Ford)
1936 Oscar Winner: Best Writing, Screenplay (Dudley Nichols)
1936 Oscar Winner: Best Music Score (Max Steiner)
1936 Oscar Nominee: Best Picture
1936 Oscar Nominee: Best Film Editing

Gypo Nolan (Victor McLaglen) informs on a friend of his, Frankie, to the police because he's destitute and is desperate for money, not only for himself but for his girlfriend. His friend ends up being killed by police. Gypo tells his IRA buddies that it was a man named Mulligan who informed on Frankie. But throughout the rest of the movie, they are suspicious of Gypo.

The plot moved at a glacial pace, there's no real character development of any kind, it's just a terrible person getting drunk and either trying to deflect blame from his IRA friends or living it up in bars throughout the city and in general being a brutish thug. Yeah, it has an ending someone might point to and say "but he changed!"...did he though? I was not enjoying the movie at all but it did have a chance near the end to have some redeeming quality but they just doubled down on how horrible of a person the main character was. AND THEN the final scene was so heavy handed that it managed to make me hate the movie even more.

This movie was about as boring as a movie could be without me turning it off halfway. But again, my opinion is a minority opinion. Not only did the movie win a ton of awards and praise during it's time, it has generally high ratings from people watching today.

My Rating: 2 / 10
IMDB Rating: 7.4 (6.2k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 94% Critics (15-1), 77% of Audience (1k ratings)

[sabotai]

G Men (1935)

https://i.imgur.com/CAZ6mRtm.jpg

Directed By: William Keighley
Written By: Seton I. Miller
Starring: James Cagney, Ann Dvorak, Margaret Lindsay
Length: 85 min.
Genre: Crime Drama

James Cagney plays a lawyer, James "Brick" Davis, who is recruited to join the FBI. He hesitates at first, but after his fiend is killed while trying to arrest a gangster, Brick joins the force for the purpose of trying to find and bring his friend's killer to justice. There's a bit of an issue though. His law school tuition was paid for by a local mob boss named Mac which I'm sure won't come up again.

In a storyline that is a copy of Cagney's movie Here Comes the Navy from the previous year, Cagney has a mutual feeling of mistrust/hatred (in this case, his Instructor Jeff McCord) while chasing after his sister. I'm starting to think I'm going to see that a lot in Cagney's movies. Or maybe this was just a coincidence.

The movie had some good action scenes, moves along at a nice pace, Cagney is great as always. Safe to say I've become a fan and not just of his crime drama roles. He's won me over as simply a great actor.

On the other hand, nothing about the film really stands out or is all that memorable. In fact, I was about to say after my last review "I'm all caught now" but then I rechecked my list and saw G Men way down at the bottom and thought "...I watched that, didn't I?" so I watched the trailer and went "Oh, right, I did watch this." That's how memorable this movie was.

Overall, it was a decent crime drama starring James Cagney. Nothing more, nothing less.

My Rating: 5 / 10
IMDB Rating: 7.2 (3.7k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 100% Critics* (3-0), 68% of Audience (500+ ratings)

* - --% on RT, I guess having only 3 critic reviews isn't enough to 'officially' give it a 100%

[sabotai]

A Tale of Two Cities (1935)

https://i.imgur.com/AIsXKMxm.jpg

Directed By: Jack Conway
Written By: W.P. Lipscomb, S.N. Behrman
Starring: Ronald Colman, Elizabeth Allan, Edna May Oliver
Length: 123 min.
Genre: Historical Drama
Based On: The Novel "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens

1937 Oscar Nominee: Best Picture
1937 Oscar Nominee: Best Film Editing

(The movie premiered on December 15th, 1935, but for whatever reason it didn't get into the Academy Awards until 1937)

This was the watchable Dickens movie but still rather average. Don't really need a plot summery for this one, right?

Nothing really stands out about the movie, except the scenes of the French Revolution. The revolutionary mobs, the trials, the depiction of the Terror. That was all very well done. But I suppose it makes sense for the movie to spend most of its time on the romance and all that. I found the A Plot very boring. All the rest of the movie was entertaining enough. But again, I'm in the minority. The general public as well as the critics both seem to really like this one.

My Rating: 5 / 10
IMDB Rating: 7.8 (5.6k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 93% Critics* (14-1), 84% of Audience (1,000+ ratings)

[sabotai]

China Seas (1935)

https://i.imgur.com/j4MVEqVm.jpg

Directed By: Tay Garnett
Written By: James Kevin McGuinness, Jules Furthman
Starring: Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Wallace Beery
Length: 87 min.
Genre: Action Adventure
Based On: The Novel "China Seas" by Crosbie Garstin

Gable plays a ship's captain, Jean Harlow his ex-girlfriend, and hilarity ensues when Harlow ends up on Gable's ship, and she really ramps up the crazy when Gable gets engaged. And while all that is going on, a plot to hijack the ship and rob it is being carried out.

So the comedy was the usual "love triangle" type. Gable and his fiancée have to deal with Harlow's antics. The type of stuff I usually groan at, but the way Harlow plays crazy made it not so terrible.

The action scenes were good, and the movie is only an hour and a half, so it moves at a good pace. A good 30's MGM adventure movie, but there's nothing really special about this one.

My Rating: 6 / 10
IMDB Rating: 6.9 / 10 (2.5k votes)
Letterboxd: 3.2 / 5 (654 ratings)
Rotten Tomatoes: 80% Critics* (4-1), 73% of Audience (500+ ratings)

[larrymcg421]

Always happy to see this updated. I haven't seen China Seas, but I did see Tay Garnett's One Way Passage and loved it. Looking at his filmography and it's clear he liked boats as many of his films are set on one.

[sabotai]

Thanks larry!


妻よ薔薇のやうに (1935)
Wife! Be Like a Rose!

https://i.imgur.com/wEUYeG1m.jpg

Directed By: Naruse Mikio
Written By: Naruse Mikio
Starring: Chiba Sachiko, Okawa Heihachiro, Hanabusa Yuriko
Length: 74 min.
Genre: Family Drama

1936 Kinema Junpo Awards Winner: Best Film

Kimiko lives in Tokyo with her mother and is engaged to get married. However, she needs he father to get involved to make the marriage legal. Her father left her mother for a geisha and moved to a rural village a long time ago, and the only contact he has had with them is the little bit of money he sends them. So Kimiko heads to the country to see her father.

I guess I have to stop saying that I generally don't like family dramas. Some of the silent and early sound family dramas from Japanese filmmakers like Ozu Yasujiro and Naruse Mikio are really good movies (with a few being some of the best I've seen). It certainly helps that the movie is short. Only 74 minutes, it keeps the plot moving forward. And unlike most family dramas which focus on one conflict in the family and slowly deals with it, this keeps going by shifting the conflict halfway.

Naruse Mikio is so good at the midpoint twist. Didn't see it coming in Apart From You, didn't see it coming in this movie. Guess I'll be looking out for it in the future.

Unfortunately I did have to settle for watching a very low quality version of the movie on YouTube.

My Rating: 7 / 10
IMDB Rating: 7.5 / 10 (442 votes)
Letterboxd: 3.7 / 5 (449 ratings)
Rotten Tomatoes: 80% Critics* (4-1), --% of Audience (Fewer than 50)