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

[Steven H]

Peter Ibbetson - Easily one of the strangest films to emerge from Hollywood - more Cocteau than 'Hathaway' - and every time I watch it I get drunk on its oddity.

This one will be placing for me as well, zedz. I agree with you and the presentation on that Gary Cooper DVD set is flawless. I am probably not all that romantic of a person and I still find myself swept up in the moody strange unreality of Petter Ibbetson. It's interesting to watch The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (this one might place for me as well, heh), also from that Cooper set, and see a completely different side of Hathaway from the same year. I have not seen Mor'Vran or Rapt, I'll have to change that soon.

[domino harvey]

Stage Door too has no shortage of fans here, I wouldn't fret none about it placing

[swo17]

Unless of course I decide to go rogue.

[sinemadelisikiz]

Footlight Parade - My Busby Berkeley pick, even though it's an oddly lumpy, back-loaded musical. Although there are more spectacular individual numbers elsewhere, they tend to be stuck in drabber, sillier films, and I don't know if any moment can beat Cagney's entrance in the climactic number.

I decided to have a Berkeley marathon recently and Footlight Parade has to be my pick too. But after seeing so many of these films in a row, I would argue that they're all sort of "back-loaded" musicals, with all the big numbers after the plot is over and usually just one during the action of the film. Are there any other musicals besides Berkeley's that have this odd structure?

And if we're sharing personal favorites, I was kind of blown away by Murders in the Rue Morgue on the Bela Lugosi Universal set. I mean, the film is kind of ridiculous, with a heavily-browed Lugosi as a scientist who abducts women and injects them with gorilla blood to kinda prove evolution (I have to show this to my biologist friends...), but its simply gorgeous. It's not only the shadow-filled Universal horror beauty you get from scenes in his laboratory, but the few daylight scenes with Sidney Fox on that swing also have this mystical glow to them. I started off kind of half watching this one and within five minutes my eyes were glued. I'm tempted to watch it again on silent and see what I think, which wouldn't be inappropriate as it borrows a lot from German expressionism. I see that knives already mentioned this film in this thread, and he or she pretty much said everything I was going to via the whole look being very Caligari and Karl Freund being the real star here. Even though Black Cat is probably the best film in the Lugosi set, I'm just mad about this one. I hope people can give it a look.

I already know that availability will have a big impact on my list, which is pretty disappointing. Here's hoping I can remedy that in two months.

[zedz]

Footlight Parade - My Busby Berkeley pick, even though it's an oddly lumpy, back-loaded musical. Although there are more spectacular individual numbers elsewhere, they tend to be stuck in drabber, sillier films, and I don't know if any moment can beat Cagney's entrance in the climactic number.

I decided to have a Berkeley marathon recently and Footlight Parade has to be my pick too. But after seeing so many of these films in a row, I would argue that they're all sort of "back-loaded" musicals, with all the big numbers after the plot is over and usually just one during the action of the film. Are there any other musicals besides Berkeley's that have this odd structure?

Isn't Footlight Parade an even more extreme case than the others? At least they have one or more proper production number in the body of the film. As I recall, there's only one musical number early on in Footlight Parade, and it's not one of Busby's patented showstoppers, and the ones at the end really are bang up against one another and divorced from the plot.

I guess it's always hard to integrate numbers like Berkeley's into an ordinary narrative, which might partly account for the odd structure the films tend to have.

[sinemadelisikiz]

True, Sittin' on the Backyard Fence doesn't have the dazzling geometry of the final three numbers. But the imbalance is no worse than Dames where all three showstoppers are part of the final show, and the only other number is a rather lowkey "Powell sings to Keeler" affair. Golddiggers of 1935 similarly has its only big numbers as a frame for the rest of the film. As odd as this structure is, I don't think it detracts from the films any. Actually, the musical numbers tend to be a grand reward for sitting through the silly plot preceding it.

I guess it's always hard to integrate numbers like Berkeley's into an ordinary narrative, which might partly account for the odd structure the films tend to have.

Bingo.

[matrixschmatrix]

Footlight Parade - My Busby Berkeley pick, even though it's an oddly lumpy, back-loaded musical. Although there are more spectacular individual numbers elsewhere, they tend to be stuck in drabber, sillier films, and I don't know if any moment can beat Cagney's entrance in the climactic number.

I decided to have a Berkeley marathon recently and Footlight Parade has to be my pick too. But after seeing so many of these films in a row, I would argue that they're all sort of "back-loaded" musicals, with all the big numbers after the plot is over and usually just one during the action of the film. Are there any other musicals besides Berkeley's that have this odd structure?

Actually, one comes to mind- Scorsese's New York, New York, which has a few low-key, realistic musical numbers embedded into the plot, and explodes into a totally Hollywood, surreal series of them at the end. I always thought that came from An American In Paris- the idea of changing modes and restating the entire plot as a capper- but now that you mention it, it fits the Berkeley structure, too.

[the preacher]

Since I will limit myself to one film per director...

I believe you've mentioned doing this in past lists projects and I have to reiterate that I find it a little silly. Sure, it will end up working out this way for most directors anyway, but I've always thought that putting a director multiple times on my list is a way to signify just how much I love his/her work. I would think it unfortunate if your second favorite film from one of your favorite directors got left off in favor of a film you like less, just because it happens to be your favorite film from a lesser director. Furthermore, if everyone were to do this, the vote splitting would become unbearable and I wouldn't be able to tabulate the final list on my computer because my tears would short out the keyboard.

One film per director it's just a way to make it easier, 50 are very few films! I love the great masters as much as anyone but I can't list Hawks' entire filmography leaving out little gems like Naruse's Sincerity.
With this I am not saying you have no reason...

[swo17]

Surely there's some happy medium though between "one" and "entire filmography"?

[movielocke]

Stage Door - A great old-fashioned comedy / drama, very lithely executed. Sheer enjoyment.

Footlight Parade - My Busby Berkeley pick, even though it's an oddly lumpy, back-loaded musical. Although there are more spectacular individual numbers elsewhere, they tend to be stuck in drabber, sillier films, and I don't know if any moment can beat Cagney's entrance in the climactic number.

I absolutely agree on Stage Door, it will be in my top ten actually. I pretty much agree with you on Footlight, though I prefer Golddiggers of 1933, however I don't think any Berkeley films will make my list just because none of them are strong enough, they're all entertaining films, but none I'd consider one of the fifty best of the decade.

[knives]

Been bothering myself with the London films that Criterion's posted and I suppose my best compliment is that none of them are as dull as I had feared. The best yet is shockingly one that Korda actually directed. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine saying that. Wedding Rehearsal is pretty wonderful though with a plot straight from Wodehouse, though the humour is distinctly Sturges. Before I hype anyone up for excitement the film does suffer in one pretty major way: it's got the worst of the early sound stiffness. With the exception of the worst filler gag in the whole film the thing plays out like masterpiece theater and you can painfully at times see people talking to their bushes (though the used the Airplane rear projection gag years before that film). That said the gags and performances are enough to lift it into very good territory (were Criterion to actually put it out in the physical medium I would be more than willing to buy it). Hell it's worth anyone's time just for the humour gotten out of the news, plague of starving baboons is the least of England's worries. Actually the more I think about it the more I enjoy it and I'd put it just a couple of spots below My Man Godfrey on that particular ladder.

I'm beginning to suspect that if I were to talk about all of the London films it would wind up just like what I have to say about The Scarlet Pimpernel. The film is competent and okay; enjoyable if not excessively memorable. As an adaptation it has everything good and all that is bad of the original book. It's not dumbed down or anything like that though I've always been repulsed by this reverse Robin Hood.Everything about it simply goes far enough and it would have entirely left my mind if it were not for the amazing jobs by Leslie Howard and Raymond Massey who do different sorts of hammy excellence to turn this into one of the better films of it's sort.

The only other one that's really stood out so far has been Things to Come and I'm sure everyone here has at least heard of it. Good enough of a film ruined by a last act so disconnected from everything else that it doesn't really matter. Though it is funny to see Michael Powell's Scottish fetish shine through a relatively okay piece of propaganda like The Lion Has Wings.

[matrixschmatrix]

Continuing my Renoir run, I've just finished La Bete Humaine- I have powerfully mixed feelings about it.

There were some really strong points- the movie was so gorgeous I literally had to pause it after the first few minutes to take it in, as I felt overwhelmed. That opening sequence in particular, with Lantier and Pecqueux running the train, perfectly in sync with one another and with their environment, is something I could watch over and over. Gabin, too, was astonishing- he reminded me a bit of Karloff's Frankenstein, someone who was fundamentally gentle and decent, whatever you saw him do.

What you actually do see him do, though, is fundamentally where the movie is hard to take for me- Renoir almost totally elided Zola's original explanation for Lantier's fits of madness (and rightfully so, as it's nonsense), but in it's place left almost nothing- there's never any sense that there's a murderous rage hiding in the man, and his attacks are somnabulistic, seeming entirely beyond his control- but if they're random, the climactic one certainly happens at a convenient moment for the plot, and if any explanation that they are inspired by something (lust, love, submerged anger) doesn't work terribly well, as he was in love and in lust with Severine long before his attack, and submerged anger makes no sense for his earlier attack on Flore. As it is, his murder seems like an almost unmotivated last minute twist, however it may have fit into the original story.

Severine's character makes sense, insofar as she's a pretty straightforward femme fatale, but she fits uneasily within Renoir. The archetype she inhabits is an almost totally unreal one, and putting that character- the manipulative, deceptive, nymphomanical woman with no soul- into a human context where her actions do have some background, where she has occasional bursts of sincerity, and in which she is intermittently horrified by murder- seem stranger, rather than more human. It's a misogynistic archetype, and Renoir doesn't seem to have it in him to let such a character make sense.

I enjoyed all of the performances, though- I was happy to see Jenny Helia again, as her scene in La Marseillaise made me an instant fan, and Julien Carette's character was a joy. I liked aspects of the characterization, too- particularly the sense of grim nothingness that followed both murders, that murder was something a character couldn't simply move on from. Overall, it's a movie that did nothing to diminish my love for Renoir- although it made me intensely curious to see Fritz Lang's version, as his all-encompassing cynicism seems a better fit for the material.

[Steven H]

I just made a double feature tonight of Midnight (Leisen, 1939) and Wyler's Dodsworth. While I loved Midnight (the cast was fantastic - Colbert, Barrymore, Ameche at their best) I was left pretty cold by Dodsworth. I found some of the imagery striking, and I get that this was an attempt at a complex approach to dealing with an adult relationship, but I found it dispassionate, staid, and ham-fisted for a film trying to approach "realism." I know this film has placed in the forum's 30s list for years, so maybe someone could spare a few lines on why they like it?

[myrnaloyisdope]

Glad to see Stage Door getting some love, it is probably my #2, behind Holiday, but I flip flop them pretty regularly. It's a film blistering with star power whilst being alternately very funny and very moving and also functioning as a wonderful meditation of theatre as life (and conversely life as theatre). I particularly love the final sequence which reinforces the circular nature of life, where some succeed and some fail, some get married and some pass away, yet life (and theatre) remain bigger than any individual.

[knives]

I'm so happy right now, the one P&P of the decade is absolutely brilliant and will have to make my list. It might be in my top five of either man's work. For the most part The Spy in Black is just a great deal of fun. It's not trying to be propaganda (despite the great opportunity to be) or a really big statement like some of their films. Rather it's content to let fun go insane so to speak. A big part of this is the acting which is some of the best I've ever seen in a P&P. Naturally Conrad Veidt is completely amazing and manages to command every scene he's in, but it's a tougher than usual job for him here with even the smallest part giving the right physical throw to be memorable. I especially love the clerk at the beginning with the sleepy eye.
The plot gives a strange presentation of espionage antics with the occasional Das Boot like element thrown in for good measure. It's all done in that bizarre way that P&P do so excellently. I'm actually extra relieved that the German representation is fairly neutral with both heroes and villains hailing from the country, something I never thought would happen in a 1939 film, but the just goes to prove their commitment to entertainment.
Oddly enough in all of this I'm most heavily reminded of 'I Know Where I'm Going' which is utterly bizarre as the two films have nothing in common as far as content and mood go. Maybe it is in tone I'm getting my deja vu as both films manage to make entertainment feel so important. In both cases there's none too much special in the story, but certain way things are emphasized makes me deeply compassionate and worried for the characters. This is all the while acknowledging that there is no reason for such a personal reaction as it winds up as all fun and games. At least that's the best excuse I can make for this connection.

[Tommaso]

Yes, only one P&P for this decade, but what about Powell without Pressburger? Sure, his early quota quickies are not at all significant, but The Edge of the World will figure very high on my list for sure. This impressed me even more than Flaherty's "Man of Aran". It's such a stunning evocation of the life, traditions and hardships of the people on that forlorn Scottish island, all packed into a well-written narrative and already having visual qualities that are the equal of Powell's 40s work in every way. Of all his films, it's perhaps the closest to "I know where I'm going!"

Vice versa, have a look at Pressburger without Powell, i.e. his early work as a scriptwriter in Germany. Very little is available, but Emil und die Detektive (Gerhard Lamprecht, 1931) is; I think we discussed it before in this thread, so this is just a reminder about how great this little film (ostensibly made as a film for children and adolescents) actually is. Fritz Rasp in one of his very best roles, and lots of impressive imagery coming straight from Weimar style silent expressionism.

Equally stunning is the Pressburger-scripted Abschied, directed by Robert Siodmak in 1930; his first 'solo' film after "Menschen am Sonntag". It's a portrayal of the daily life and struggles going on in a shabby pension, and very little actually happens in this film. But it manages to make the viewer really care for those people, in a lyrical, melancholic and also strangely joyful way. I compared this once to Ozu, and still think so. Not in style, but in effect. In any case, both films demonstrate how excellent Pressburger was already at that very early stage of his career as a scriptwriter.

[knives]

I've definitely been curious about seeing the Pressburger alone titles especially since my favorite moment of this film seems so distinctly him just because it feels so unlike Powell. As to The Edge of the World though as much as I do enjoy it this film i just talked about gave me such a stronger reaction. I think it may be only third to The Red Shoes and The Small Back Room from what I've seen of them and it has to with the whole of Veidt's character. He plays it so well that I simply refuse to call him a villain and the shots of him from the back toward the end are simply the most powerful acting I've seen from him and he's probably my favorite German actor as is. His whole character just struck me in an intensely personal way and I have to thank Pressburger's writing immensely for that. In general I do think he gets the short end of the stick as the writer, but especially here the film simply would be god awful without him. so I'll definitely look for some of those solo efforts, but the line is already insanely long.

[the preacher]

No, it's not a Chinese movie, it's Shanghai recreated in a French studio: Mollenard directed by German Robert Siodmak. Great performances by Harry Baur (of course) and Gabrielle Dorziat, and lots of atmosphere. I hope I'm not alone on this!

[knives]

Did John Ford have a single sound film before 1939 that wasn't complete shit? I am truly stretching to find even one positive thing to say about The Plough and the Stars. Maybe the bit with the soldier witnessing the coffin and the rebel leader wheeling down are good, but that can't have compromised more than five minutes of the whole movie. Every other element no matter how tiny is worthless and I find it's standard of masculinity to be absurd.

On the other hand The Divorce of Lady X is an other superb screwball that is causing me to reevaluate the whole genre. I typically hate Olivier, but here he is as great as can be. He sort of acts and looks like a hyper drunk version of Crispin Glover and does this stressed comedy better than I could have ever imagined. It's also one of the few films to deal with the nastiness of the deception that seems so common in screwballs. That's not even getting into Merle Oberon who is insanely adorable here. Seriously if anyone were to give me a picture of her in that cape and pajamas it would instantly turn into my new avatar. All around just a great movie this is.

[reno dakota]

Did John Ford have a single sound film before 1939 that wasn't complete shit?

Pilgrimage (1933) is about as far from "complete shit" as you can get.

[knives]

Haven't seen it, should though. After about four films though I've become very wary of this faux Griffith Murnau mashup he seemed to be doing throughout the decade.

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

No, it's not a Chinese movie, it's Shanghai recreated in a French studio: Mollenard directed by German Robert Siodmak. Great performances by Harry Baur (of course) and Gabrielle Dorziat, and lots of atmosphere. I hope I'm not alone on this!

No you're not alone and it's coming from Gaumont a la demande in September.

[Tommaso]

Haven't seen it, should though. After about four films though I've become very wary of this faux Griffith Murnau mashup he seemed to be doing throughout the decade.

Wasn't the mashup rather in the late 20s, with films like "Four Sons" and "Hangman's House"? Granted, some of it may still be visible in The Informer and The Prisoner of Shark Island (both good films) or The Lost Patrol (plain awful), but I'd say Ford slowly came to his own in the 30s. Have a look at the very fine Steamboat around the bend, for instance, a touching and heart-felt semi-comedy with Will Rogers. I also have a liking for Mary of Scotland, a wholly conventional though well made costume drama made almost great by a ravishing Katharine Hepburn. And I second the recommendation for Pilgrimage. Might be his best film of the decade, with the exception of Stagecoach, which will be the only Ford on my list, though.

[A]

Have just read an hour of posts in this massive thread and must say there are really loads of invaluable information here.

I love the 30s myself, though I've only seen a few hundred films from this decade and reading through the other posts here, I feel like a total ignorant. Definitely need a lot of catching up to do.

Still, I'd like to post some of my my current Top 50 contenders that I think might be somewhat obscure/less popular but imo warrant attention for a 30s list - in case some of the films haven't been mentioned yet, and someone might be looking for even more recommendations! :-" Lol. I hope you'll excuse the barebones list, as I didn't want to go into detail on a film someone else might have already discussed in one of the posts in this thread.

And yes, I already have a suggestion for a "SPOTLIGHT" Film (available on the net with English subs): Sant Tukaram "Saint Tukaram" (Vishnupant Govind Damle, Sheikh Fattelal / India / 1936)

Bezucelná procházka "Aimless Walk" (Alexander Hackenschmied / Czechoslovakia / 1930)
Na Prazském hrade "The Prague Castle" (Alexander Hackenschmied / Czechoslovakia / 1930)
The Maltese Falcon (Roy Del Ruth / USA / 1931)
F.P.1 antwortet nicht "F.P.1 Doesn't Answer" (Karl Hartl / Germany / 1932)
Kuhle Wampe oder: Wem gehört die Welt? "To Whom Does the World Belong?" (Slatan Dudow / Germany / 1932)
Murders in the Rue Morgue (Robert Florey / USA / 1932)
Red Dust (Victor Fleming / USA)
White Zombie (Victor Halperin / USA / 1932)
Dezertir "Deserter" (Vsevolod Pudovkin / Soviet Union / 1933)
Ex-Lady (Robert Florey / USA / 1933)
Ganga Bruta (Humberto Mauro / Brazil / 1933)
Harry Warren: America's Foremost Composer (Ray McCarey / USA / 1933)
And She Learned About Dames (?? / USA / 1934)
Ein Walzer für dich "A Waltz for You" (Georg Zoch / Germany / 1934)
Waltzes from Vienna (Alfred Hitchcock / UK / 1934)
Listopad (Otakar Vávra / Czechoslovakia / 1935)
Sant Tukaram "Saint Tukaram" (Vishnupant Govind Damle, Sheikh Fattelal / India / 1936)
Suzy (George Fitzmaurice / USA / 1936)
¡Centinela, alerta! "Guard! Alert!" (Jean Grémillon, Luis Buñuel / Spain / 1937)
Die Stimme des Herzens "The Voice of the Heart" (Karl Heinz Martin / Germany / 1937)
Kon'yaku samba-garasu "The Trio's Engagement" (Yasujiro Shimazu / Japan / 1937)
Nothing Sacred (William A. Wellman / USA / 1937)
Young and Innocent (Alfred Hitchcock / UK / 1937)
La Marseillaise (Jean Renoir / France / 1938)

[Gregory]

Murders in the Rue Morgue (Robert Florey / USA / 1932)

Hell yes. One of the most interesting, effective horror films of the decade for me, with amazing, expressionistic cinematography from Freund. This is on the Universal Bela Lugosi Franchise Collection, for anyone who may have missed it. It's only an hour in length, so I hope everyone who can will watch it at least once.

Hitchcock's Waltzes from Vienna is probably the only extant film of his I haven't seen, as I never got around to buying the French DVD. Has it really been released nowhere else? Would anyone else give the film a strong recommendation?