A Journey Through Cinema History

[sabotai]

It Happened One Night (1934)



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)



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)



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)



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)



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)



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)



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)



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)



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)



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)



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)



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)



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)



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]

Originally Posted by sterlingice

I love that this dynasty is still going on

Me too!

Originally Posted by ntndeacon

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)



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)



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]

Originally Posted by korme

Sabotai, are you on Letterboxd?

Yeah

https://letterboxd.com/JayFromNJ/

[sabotai]

David Copperfield (1935)



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)



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)



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)



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



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)



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)



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)



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)



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)



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!



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)