1930s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 3)

[myrnaloyisdope]

Officially finished up Josef von Sternberg's 1930's output with viewings of The King Steps Out and Sergeant Madden. The films are perhaps most interesting because of how decidedly un-von Sternberg they are. The King Steps Out is a sort of Lubitsch-esque farce about a playboy King (Franchot Tone), trying to avoid his future fate of having to marry a princess. He falls for the princess' sister who is pretending to be a commoner. The film is light and breezy with the occasional laugh and misunderstanding. It's not particuarly good, but is very watchable. But the interesting thing is that there isn't any of the trademark sensuality of the Dietrich films, nor is there any of the dense mise-en-scene that marks the majority of his work. So what you have is a fairly modest B-picture without that is competently directed, but not particularly memorable.

Sergeant Madden was interestingly enough an MGM picture, though it's clearly a low-budget one. Wallace Beery is a working class NYC cop trying to raise two boys into cops themselves. The older son is rebellious from the start and wants to become a cop for the glory, with disastrous consequences, as his hot temper and gun craziness lead him into a life of crime. Beery is fun as usual as the curmudgeon with a good heart and Alan Curtis is good as the murderous son.

But again nothing stands out about the film stylistically and it's almost anathema to see von Sternberg just doing contract work, as you can tell his heart really isn't in it, even as he delivers a competent and watchable picture.

On the subject of Herr von Sternberg, does anyone know where I can track down a copy of The Fashion Side of Hollywood? It's the only 1930's film of his remaining for me to see and I'm just curious what it's about.

[life_boy]

I unintentionally stepped out during the pre-20's and 20's lists but feel I must take part in the 1930's list because of my love for the decade (also, I discovered the richness of the decade via the last list project go-round and have enjoyed many suggestions from forumers and list project participants).

At this point, I have no idea what my list will look like beyond roughly the top 10-12, but I am sure shorts will be making a generous showing. I appreciate Saturnome's guide to 30's animation and have checked out many of his recommendations.

Swing You Sinners! (1930) is a phenomenal eschatological fever dream I think I may prefer to Bimbo's Initiation at this point and Fleischer's Snow White (1933) transcends the 'reflexive cartoon re-telling of well-worn fairy tale' premise with the absolutely sublime 'Cab as Koko moonwalking through hell on a slab of ice to St. James Infirmary' sequence. Pick your favorite Popeye cartoon but I have to agree with Saturnome's suggestion of Sock-a-Bye Baby (1934): the violent rampage of Popeye in the name of maintaining the sleeping baby he is inexplicably caring for breaks from the standard Popeye structural conventions and is simply hilarious to watch. A one joke premise if there ever was one but the gusto with which it embraces it and, of course, must give us that final punchline that is easy to guess but fulfilling when it comes.

In the more avant realm, let's not forget Len Lye whose Trade Tattoo (1937) featured highly on my list last go-round and is only more assured of it's spot now. (I think it barely broke the top 100, weighing in at 99 or 100 thanks to zedz, myself and probably someone else.) It is evident from his films that Lye found funding for his experiments by making these sorts of pre-commercials for companies, but Trade Tattoo works for me conceptually as well as visually, building the frantic pace and rhythm of industry and commerce while proving the temporality of it all is just as essential to its whole as the individual importance supposedly given to each letter mailed through the G.P.O. Unlike Fischinger's work, Lye's films are easily available on YouTube for the curious. A Colour Box (1935) is magnificent as well.

I am glad to read some love/discussion of one of my favorite little orphans from last time, Salt for Svanetia (1931). Is there a more potent image in 1930's cinema than the mourning mother squeezing the milk of her breast into the soil of her child’s grave? Nothing really to add to what has already been said except encouragement to try and find it if you can (I snagged the Kino VHS years ago during one of their VHS clearance events). Some kind soul has ripped the VHS and posted it on YouTube in the meantime.

I shouldn't have to say it -- judging by its meager showing last list I feel I must -- but let's not forget Joseph Cornell's canonical surrealist masterwork Rose Hobart (1936). The film is an absolute wonder and it is impossible for me to express exactly what moves me so much about it. But I could watch it over and over every day for the rest of my life. It will be in my top 3.

[swo17]

Trade Tattoo will probably make my list--not only because of how impressive it is, but also because so much energy was put into what basically amounts to an extended ad reminding people to turn in their mail before the post office closes at 2pm. Why can't more of life be this way?

I also really like Rainbow Dance, cheesy as it is.

[Dr Amicus]

I'm glad to see that there's some serious Lye love going on here - I'm a (very) recent convert as I'm making my way through the magnificent BFI GPO sets. Both Trade Tattoo and Rainbow Dance are very likely to make my list - probably quite highly - and Colour Box should as well.

Whilst making my way through these and finding the expected classics (eg Coal Face) there are also some gloriously bizarre entries. The Glorious Sixth of June has to be seen to be (dis)believed, but in The Fairy of the Phone we have a likely contender for my much coveted Number 50 slot (I'm still gutted I didn't get a list together for the 20s with Gus Visser and his Duck there...). Camp (dear God is it camp!), Pythonesque and genuinely bizarre (talking statues! singing telephone operators) - it's 12 minutes of unadulterated pleasure.

[Wu.Qinghua]

I am glad to read some love/discussion of one of my favorite little orphans from last time, Salt for Svanetia (1931). Is there a more potent image in 1930's cinema than the mourning mother squeezing the milk of her breast into the soil of her child’s grave? Nothing really to add to what has already been said except encouragement to try and find it if you can (I snagged the Kino VHS years ago during one of their VHS clearance events). Some kind soul has ripped the VHS and posted it on YouTube in the meantime.

I guess this documentary won't be orphaned any longer. I am still struggling with its arty design, but will revisit it these days, too. Though it comes in handy, that the movie can be found on youtube, be warned that it is incomplete. The third out of six parts part seems to be lost, so, as far as I can see, 10 central minutes are missing, which means you either have to resort to the 'Turksib/Salt ...'-VHS or track it down elsewhere.

[knives]

Three Songs About Lenin really surprised me mostly in what it is rather than the quality(which of course is great). I thought it was going to be another silent symphony, but there's a lot of sound beyond the score that makes for an interesting composition. I'm really curious what would have happened had he been given free reign tech wise after this. The whole film was composed a bit like Godard's essay films(which in hindsight should have been obvious), but with intertitles in place of narration. He just layers the pieces to film in such a unique way that it's hard not to respond.
The content though is probably the most shocking aspect. The narrative he spins is a hagiography, but there's always this fatalist feeling creeping throughout. I suspect that it has a lot to do with how he slowed his montage, but maybe there is a bit of poison slipping into his sainting of the soviet state. I think all of the Lenin stuff is genuine, but the way he phrases and shows certain things makes me think he was doubtful that the Soviets had a future. One of the few shots of Stalin, lurching over Lenin's corpse, is connected with a loud angry section of the score. This leads me to think that the film is intended as ironic for the most part. I'm not sure how much this is him and how much is the censors, but he at least got one potshot in on Stalin's rule by saying that Lenin would be remembered long after this government.

[Tommaso]

Much to my surprise - but a very pleasant one it was -, Pal Fejös' "Lonesome" figured rather high on the final 20s list. I loved that film, and so I recently checked out two of his films that he made after returning to Europe.

First, Spring Shower (1932), made in his native Hungary, but starring French actress Annabella in the main role as a young girl who becomes pregnant out-of-marriage, has to suffer from the misgivings of the village folk, and whose child is taken away from her by the authorities because she has found refuge with the understanding ladies from a brothel. This sounds melodramatic, but it isn't played too much as such, and the film actually intends to illustrate an old Hungarian legend, which only becomes clear in the end even though the initial credits announce it. When the girl dies, she is transported into heaven, and when she sees another young girl about to go down the same path as she did, in her now attained heavenly powers she covers the village in a very heavy spring rain, thus bringing about a change in destiny.
This is a film that almost exclusively relies on the images and the music, there are perhaps 20 lines of dialogue in the whole film, and what is said is exactly what you'd expect from the characters at those very moments. So, this is basically like a silent film, and I see that as a great advantage, because it allows Fejös to again concentrate on the inner states of his character and create a semi-magic atmosphere that is not too far away from "Liliom" (both versions) and even Cocteau, especially at the end of the film. But there's something otherworldly to the whole of it, mainly because of the stunning visuals and indeed the absence of any dialogue for the most part of the film. Fantastic performance by Annabella in a truly intense and captivating film. Try to see it by all means: it's floating around in both the original Hungarian and in the French version called Marie, legende hongroise. The latter might be preferred, because it comes from a much, much better and brighter print, and as I said, the language here really doesn't matter at all.

Secondly, Sonnenstrahl (1933), one of Fejös' two Austrian productions (the second called "Frühlingsstimmen" seems to be completely unavailable even in the backchannels). This is another beautiful film about two lovers (both suicidal at first), and in this respect it's very slightly reminiscent of "Lonesome". But this one has another drift: the poor couple tries to get on with life, we see them struggling for work and so on, and when the boy has a bad accident, it is finally the community who secures a living for them. So, this - despite all of its melancholy - has a somewhat optimistic or 'socialist' ending. And while it's set in Vienna, it has nothing to do with the typical 'Vienna films' of the time (which I also love), as it shows the city as a modern and difficult place to live in. Fine acting by Annabella again, this time accompanied by Gustav Fröhlich of "Metropolis" fame, who delivers one of his most convincing performances here (I'm not a great fan of him generally).

Both films will most likely be on my list, and I consider them as being among the really important discoveries for myself in the last few months. Fejös obviously was a real poet of the cinema, and I find his combination of realism and lyricism utterly remarkable. That not one of his films is available on an official dvd (if I'm wrong, please correct me) amounts to a minor scandal in my view. If this isn't MoC or Filmmuseum material, or at least worthy of an Eclipse set, what is?

[swo17]

Well, a restoration of Lonesome was recently completed, which will hopefully bode well for an upcoming release from...someone. The other two films you mention sound lovely--I look forward to checking them out!

[myrnaloyisdope]

The Fejos films sound great. I'm still in a very much pre-code binge and haven't really gotten around to watching any non-Hollywood stuff from the era (since the project started), but I expect these will be among the first things I watch.

The latest highlight for me Hell's Highway by Rowland Brown. It came out at pretty much the same time as I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang and deals very much with the same subject of prisoner abuse. The plot is a bit hokey, with Richard Dix as a convicted bank robber who one the eve of breaking out of prison, finds his younger brother about to go to prison. But the plot seems more of an excuse to do a lot of interesting things with montage, imagery and sound. The early sequences especially have a really gritty, documentary feel and the film attains a striking level of brutality. It's actually pretty discomforting at times to know that this kind of thing was going on. Another really interesting aspect is the presence of a great deal of black prisoners, including the always great Clarence Muse. Although they aren't particularly involved in the plot and in fact their lodging appears to segregated, the film takes a sympathetic lens towards race and doesn't really contain the cloying caricatures one would expect.

A particularly great sequence, involves a group of black prisoners singing a really great and soulful song, whose lyrics recount the sordid murder committed by one of the prison guards, meanwhile a black prisoner is shown to be sketching the details of the story, and through stop motion we see the events unfold on paper, before finally doing a great dissolve from the drawn pallbearers to the real ones. It's a really dynamic sequence.

It's an undeservedly forgotten film and hey it's available for free right here: http://www.archive.org/details/HellsHighway

I'm interested now to see Brown's two other films. He reportedly punched out a producer which sunk his directorial career, but he wrote quite a few screenplays for various gangster and noir films into the 1950's.

[swo17]

Just a heads up, Mamoulian's City Streets, which is unavailable on DVD as far as I know, will be airing on TCM on March 12th.

[knives]

So I went about watching movies that were mentioned up thread and I think I've seen a great one. Swing You Sinners takes a cheesy and some what terrible idea and makes it into a triumph. The entire time I couldn't help but think of the Trial section of The Wall. It's spastic and mean. The whole film is off it's rocker and becomes comic through those two aspects. There is hardly a more fun way to spend eight minutes. That said is there an actual collection of the Fleischer brothers shorts out there? This and the clown destroying the earth one from the last list are two of the most pleasant finds I've had through this project.

[Cold Bishop]

Swing You Sinners is a thing of beauty. If were to ever program The Seventh Victim at a cinema, that would be the opening short I'd pair it with. Poor Bimbo never knew what hit him.

[HerrSchreck]

The latest highlight for me Hell's Highway by Rowland Brown..

Yes!! YES!! Y E S!! Rowland was positively the core and essence of pre-code brutality and in your face tour de force-ness... a man who indeed was a bit too hardboiled for Hollywood's well mannered ladder of ascendance. But run, don't walk to see QUICK MILLIONS and BLOOD MONEY. They're the better two of the three-- in my humble op-- including HELL'S HIGHWAY (which is good stuff indeed).

And if you like this kind of brutal, hard edged pre-code material, I once again scream it from the mountaintops-- track down AFRAID TO TALK by Ed Cahn, an early Universal gangster pic shot by Karl Freund. It might be the nastiest gangster flick ever made!

[Saturnome]

That said is there an actual collection of the Fleischer brothers shorts out there? This and the clown destroying the earth one from the last list are two of the most pleasant finds I've had through this project.

Not really. There are nice editions of the Superman, Popeye (the first volume includes a few Ko-Ko shorts from the 1910s and 1920s) and the Color Classics, but that's pretty much all I know of. I believe the late 1920s and early 1930s is where the best Fleischer is found, but that's exactly what's missing on DVD. Betty Boop doesn't even have a legit release in America. There is, in France, a complete Betty Boop set, in English, it's also the only DVD release of Swing, you Sinners! as a bonus. It's too bad it's the only one, making the 18 other Talkartoons without Betty Boop unreleased. And only the very early Betty Boop is worth watching, the less they make sense the better they are.

[knives]

Thanks a bill. I'm assuming the French set is better than the Echo Bridge one here in the states.

[Saturnome]

I took a quick look, The Echo Bridge set is all made of late Betty Boop shorts. They're far more typical 30s cartoons than the earlier wild stuff (and a lot of them are more interested in her new, cute puppy companion, Pudgy). Around the mid-1930s wild cartoons were seen as dated in some way I think, mainly because of Disney. Fleischer started doing cute Disney-like stuff (the Color Classics) and it's too bad really.
The 1930-1933 shorts are all about scat singing, dream logic, ghosts, throwing parties in hell and killing each other. They also include the first guest starring in cartoons, with Cab Calloway casted and rotoscoped as a ghost walrus (???) or as Ko-Ko the clown in another short. I can't imagine the people who are into kitsch pink and red Betty Boop merchandise liking this.

I think they never surpassed the ending of Swing, you Sinners!, but it's all worth a look.

[knives]

I think they never surpassed the ending of Swing, you Sinners!, but it's all worth a look.

Before recently I only knew them from the Superman shorts so these unknown films are making for a eye opening experience. There's so little that touches this odd stuff.

[knives]

William Wellman's pre-code Safe in Hell is airing on TCM tomorrow at 8 EST.

[swo17]

And if you like this kind of brutal, hard edged pre-code material, I once again scream it from the mountaintops-- track down AFRAID TO TALK by Ed Cahn, an early Universal gangster pic shot by Karl Freund. It might be the nastiest gangster flick ever made!

I just watched this, just now, since you said to, and though it lacks the star power of the Cagney pictures and feels perhaps a little stagy at times (unsurprisingly, it was adapted from a play) WOW this gets into some pretty dark territory. Unlike Public Enemy's plea that the gangster is a "problem that we need to solve," the ethos here seems to be that the entire system is not only corrupt, but malevolently so, and any attempts to stand up against it are more or less hopeless. (This is in contrast to the more hopeful message of Angels with Dirty Faces.) I'll leave it to someone else to say how much the U.S. political climate resembles the one depicted here, but suffice it to say, this all makes for a pretty juicy pre-code steak.

Also:

The absolute highlight in the set, however, is Night Nurse (William Wellmann, 1932), again starring Stanwyck together with Joan Blondell. They become nurses to two sickly children, and suddenly find themselves in a world of darkest crime and mystery. Extremely well written, very intense and captivating, and sexy on top of it, this film must find a place on my list somehow.

Ditto. This feels like the quintessential naughty, preposterous pre-code film that I was hoping to find when I dove into the various sets.

Spoiler

The moment where Clark Gable's character is introduced was particularly well done, and shot as though we're not supposed to know it's him until just the right moment. Of course, he wasn't a big star yet at this point, but Wellman must have had a premonition. It's kind of depressing though to think that there couldn't be any more films about murdering babies for almost forty years after this one.

[Cold Bishop]

I mentioned it in the Western list, but if you liked Afraid to Talk (which is a masterpiece), track down Cahn's Law and Order. Based off those two films (and descriptions for the lost Laughter in Hell and obscure Radio Patrol) this guy should have had a brilliant career. But much like Rowland Brown, his career ended as soon as it started taking off, and as soon as the Code kicked in, he seemed to largely vanish for about a decade.

[Gregory]

I'm a big fan of the early Fleischer stuff, and beyond what it meant for animation (a lot) I think it was part of a period in the late '20s and early '30s when the influence of Surrealism and Dadaism was apparent in commercial films. With Fleischer, I think this reached a technical peak with things like "Ko-Ko Back Tracks" and "Ko-Ko's Earth Control," and then reached still new heights of strangeness with "Bimbo's Initiation" etc.
More generally, in Hollywood live-action features, a great example of all this is The Big Broadcast (1932), and while I've seen the film some time ago, I wonder if it's been released commercially anywhere. In a way, it would be surprising for such a reasonably well-known film to have gone unreleased worldwide all this time. Would love to see the scenes with the cat again!

[knives]

Trying to get some Shimizu in and to my surprise A Star Athlete is a pretty generic propaganda piece. Well I suppose Shimizu can't do generic and there's a large number of odd occurrences throughout, but it never really rises above that. Sure there is a slight subversive streak there(love the comic relief characters whose only point is to show the absurdity and stupidity of the plot), but none of that is really as meaningful as Shimizu's obvious disconnect from the story.
It's almost Fincher-esque how he plays with the camera and adds in odd conversations just to get through a story that he doesn't seem to want to bother with. That lack of commitment really sicks the ship, but I suppose it's better than a reverent film.
There is one really excellent interlude though that takes up the final third or so of the film where the propaganda elements are dropped and it's just the lead student trying to council a woman whose child he accidentally got sick. It's very sweet the various ways different people try to help her like an exorcism that utterly fails(that sentence makes the film seem a lot more abnormal than it actually is). There's the expectant humour and love of humanity and everything really gets to a fantastic roll even if it ends far too soon. I did like the end note of the students 'charging' at the bullies. It really makes war seem like nothing more than a silly game that people should grow out of by the time they stop being students.

[Michael Kerpan]

Disagree that Star Athlete is even remotely a "generic propaganda piece". The propaganda angle is only the scantiest of frameworks -- and the whole interest here (of Shimizu and his audiences -- past and present) is in the series of incidents that happen to be hung on the framework. The film is essentially "plotless" -- it simply follows the group of students on their cross-country military training program. Shimizu, given a clunky assignment, uses the opportunity to make the kind of film he enjoyed making. He may not have been interested in the "story", but he was interested in the cinematic opportunities he was allowed to exercise, as a result of the story.

Not my favorite Shimizu film -- but a still very interesting one (in its aggressively aimless way)..

[knives]

I agree. I even admitted that there is nothing generic about the film. What helps it for me is that he throws away the plot as soon as he can. There's a lot to love there even if the comically oversized shadow of propaganda detracts.

[Michael Kerpan]

The most subversive anti-propaganda film of the 1930s was Kamei's Fighting Soldiers -- which showed both the suffering of the Chinese people and the terrible conditions experienced by Japan's (low-level) soldiers. Kamei was the only Japanese director who wound up in prison for violation of the so-called Peace Preservation Law. A masterpiece -- but it does not exist on video or DVD in subbed form (so far as I know). After the war, Kamei soon got into trouble with the Occupation censors -- for making a film attacking the Emperor for his responsibility for the war (which was censored and suppressed).

Tasaka's China front films (Five Scouts and Mud and Soldiers) are also notewortthy war (quasi-)documentaries -- but not as stunning as Kamei's film.