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

[knives]

She also worked with Norman McLaren on his best film of the decade Spook Sport.

[sinemadelisikiz]

Speaking of the Unseen Cinema set, does anyone else find Tomatos Another Day hilarious? Maybe its because I've seen my fair share of awkward early sound films, but that short ridicules their weaknesses so perfectly. I've watched it quite a few times since my first viewing and it still makes me laugh. Although, the person I watched it with had no idea why I found it funny, so maybe it's just me.

[Murdoch]

The McLaren may chart for me, I've been pretty lazy with his 30s stuff though, the only other one I watched is Camera Makes Whoopee which I liked but not as much.

And, yeah, Tomatos Another Day is hilarious.

[swo17]

Thanks for the Bute recommendations, those were really cool. I think I liked Synchromy 2 the most though, partly for the choice of song and partly because it was less clear what exactly I was looking at more of the time. Really lovely stuff.

Also, I'm not sure I get this:

Tomatos Another Day

Cigarette life?

[sinemadelisikiz]

Spoiler

A slurred "It's a great life!" At least that's what I heard.

[Wu.Qinghua]

I'm rambling through Yiddish 30s cinema at the moment and accidentally stumbled across this little gem:

Uncle Moses (Sidney Goldin, USA 1932)

'UM' is a lovely little 'Yiddish Godfather' movie, set in the sweatshops and tenement houses of New York's Lower East Side. It's basically canned theater, but I do love the setting and the narrative as well as the Maurice Schwartz' multifaceted performance of a sleazy and ruthless, but also paternalistic and sentimental Jewish immigrant clothing manufacturer, who's running a sweatshop, making his Polish 'landsleyt' work fourteen hour-shifts. The movie is set firmly in the depression era, dramatising Jewish immigrant experiences ('living between two worlds') as well as, beyond tragic love and family life, housing conditions, labour strife, unionizing and strike-breaking in the early 30s. This is one of my major discoveries in this whole endeavour and I hope badly, it won't end up orphaned. The film has been released on an utterly atrocious DVD by 'The National Center for Jewish Film' (R0), but it's well worth checking it out, if you could rent it etc. Btw, Hoberman offers a concise summary in his monograph on Yiddish film (Bridge of Light).

[Cold Bishop]

Have you seen Tevya? It inspired Fiddler on the Roof, but don't hold that against it... it might possibly be the greatest of the extant Yiddish films.

[knives]

Are any of these Yiddish films available on DVD?

[Wu.Qinghua]

Have you seen Tevya? It inspired Fiddler on the Roof, but don't hold that against it... it might possibly be the greatest of the extant Yiddish films.

I haven't seen Tevya yet, but I hope to get it pretty soon, that is, maybe tomorrow ...

Are any of these Yiddish films available on DVD?

I am no expert in Jewish films, but the 'National Center for Jewish Film' at Brandeis University (link) has released quite a few on DVD in the US. Unfortunately, the NCJF seems to cater mainly for public institutions. They sell DVDs for home use, but I found them to be very pricey. I've had a look at some of their discs over the last weeks and haven't been overwhelmed by picture quality, to say the least. And I had major problems to get "Uncle Sam" and some other DVDs going. I reckon, they messed up the authoring or something else. Therefore I suggest not to buy those discs, but, if possible, to borrow them from a public library.

[swo17]

It's a bit corny in parts, but I still can't shake Our Daily Bread from my mind. Few of course can make corniness as endearing as Vidor, and the wide-eyed optimism of the film's protagonists at times walks a fine line, but something just seems so...holy about the idea of a small commune of people working together to live purely off the land, especially the way it's shot and presented here. (There are several breathtaking scenes, particularly an extended sequence at the end that I'll leave you all to discover for yourselves.) But the film also explores the difficulties of sustaining such a system when not everyone is on board. And it may even serve as an allegory for every man's internal struggle to waylay his inner demons and achieve his most noble aspirations.

[Wu.Qinghua]

Komsomol / Song of Heroes (Joris Ivens, SSSR 1933)

I gave Vertov's 'Entuziazm' another spin this afternoon, and - though I do appreciate it and will most probably place it in the lower regions of my list - I found it not fully satisfactory. Only then I remembered, that Joris Ivens made a thematically similar film on industrialization and discipline at work, when he visited the Soviet Union in the early 30s. I had seen this 'documentary' repeatedly within the last years and mistakenly recalled it being a tad boring, just to find out today, that on the contrary, 'Komsomol' is a rather stirring representation of Magnitogorsk and its workforce, of the construction of its steel plants and blast furnaces as well as of the enthusiasm, with which many people contributed to the industrial development of the Soviet Union not only in times of depression. As of today, I'll rate 'Komsomol' as one of the most fascinating 'documentaries' on industrial affairs. And with its mixture of traditional music, industrial noise and Hanns Eisler's rousing compositions, I also consider it to be more successful than 'Entuziazm' in regard of sound. As by now, this is the second of Ivens' films in my Top 10. :-k

Btw, Komsomol' is to be found in the Dutch 'Joris Ivens Wereldcineast' box set, which imho is a true treasure chest and features additional optional English subtitles. (Afaik, Facets will release this set in the US).

[knives]

So I got to watching the other Les Misérables adaptation of the decade and am leaving it much more positively than I could ever anticipate. If just for time this isn't anywhere near the adaptation that Bernard's film is, but the other qualities nearly match. I was especially surprised with the two leads who on paper should really have been reversed and even now I'm far more excited at the idea of a Laughton played Jean Valjean. Physically they never do look right, but they play their scenes so well that I was convinced all the same. March especially is far better than he has any right to be. During the early parts when he's ragged I blocked out every other portrayal of the character and he become Valjean for me.

That's not to say actors are the only surprisingly good aspect to appear as a mistake. Lipscomb predictably takes a weed whacker to the story, but in a way that highlights Valjean and Javert as almost separated twins. Actually the opening seems to want to make the audience see Javert as a what if child for Valjean which is the mist bizarre in a positive way interpretation of their relationship I've ever encountered. It's probably the easiest way to slim down the story, but I can't insult the film for it when considering how much they do with that idea.

The direction too is surprisingly good going for a proto-noir look in most of the scenes (though sadly the third act is shot and generally dealt with in a much more plain manner). Scenes are dark and frightening turning the story into a piece of horror often. Everything in the visuals tries pushing the dark corners of the story where the script can not for an appropriately nasty and vicious look. This one point leads to the sole moment that without a doubt is better than Bernard's version. The sequence with the priest gets it's full emotional potential exposed hereby having it feel like it shouldn't. His kindness becomes shocking and special in this world so that I was feeling just what Valjean was. You need to believe in the vileness of man for his sweetness to truly matter. That scene gets all of that done elegantly.

Sadly those positive qualities aren't always present and the film comes close to drowning in the third act where the usual changes in POV come across poorly and lead to new uninteresting protagonists. If not for Laughton occasionally popping up this whole section would be a wash (that said Carradine's cameo is great fun). The film simply doesn't have the length to support the third act of the story and this extra time would have been better spent on the lead relationship.

[knives]

Borzage's version of Farewell to Arms is available on Hulu regular.

Edit: Warning though. Even by PD standards the transfers shit.

I'm tempted to put this on my list just for the POV sequence and this is with the film being the weakest Borzage I've ever seen.

[Tommaso]

Sorry, I've been reading these discussions for the last few weeks or so, but didn't have the time and energy to take part in them. Lots of great recommendations, of course, but I'll let them stand as they are, apart from saying: those infatuated with all those Sternbergs should not forget to watch Dishonoured, which has among the most visually striking first 20 minutes in all Sternberg (afterwards it gets a little less exciting).

On to more current things:

I'll rate 'Komsomol' as one of the most fascinating 'documentaries' on industrial affairs. And with its mixture of traditional music, industrial noise and Hanns Eisler's rousing compositions, I also consider it to be more successful than 'Entuziazm' in regard of sound.

Thanks, I'll try to check it out. But the mentioning of Vertov and Ivens reminds me that just recently the backchannels have seen the appearance of a largely unknown film by Lev Kuleshov called Forty Hearts. Made in 1930, this is still silent and might thus perhaps be a little less exciting or 'new' than these other two films, but it's an enchanting filmic documentary on the industrialization, more specifically, electrification of the Soviet Union, the title referring apparently to the number of power stations (I have to guess here, as I can't read the Russian intertitles). Quite an amazing mix of documentary footage and animation (in parts), and all edited in Kuleshov's usual striking montage style.

Talking about industrial films, I found Gropius' post from a while ago quite interesting:

I think one of the things that makes the 30s a fascinating decade is the parallel development of the industrial/social documentary and the frothy studio musical, two apparently diametrically-opposed genres which exploited the possibilities of sound in often similar ways. They also share an emphasis on structures (whether the staging of dance numbers or the processes of heavy industry) that subsume and transcend the individual (most obviously in the case of Berkeley).

Actually I never thought about this before, but it's a very convincing point, and might explain why I love both genres so much (and, only apparently unrelated, also the films by Peter Greenaway); now what does that say about me...
However, the musical comparison is basically true only for the glossy American musicals, and indeed most obviously with Berkeley. The dancing in the Astaire/Rogers films is often much more individualized (exceptions like the big stage scene in Top Hat notwithstanding), and if you take a look at the earlier Lubitsch musicals, they are a totally different affair, of course.

[Wu.Qinghua]

I have to admit, that I've been struggling with Las Hurdes. Land Without Bread (Luis Bunuel, Spain 1933) for a long time. I perfectly understood, that Bunuel et al. describe everyday living in a poor rural region in Western Spain and stage a scathing attack against several hegemonic institutions of Western society (Catholic church, education system, private property), but I had major problems to grasp the third layer of the movie, that is, its status as a parody of ethnographic travelogues as well as a critique of the conventions of documentary film production and consumption.
Well, I attribute my problems at least in part to the German DVD edition and my small screen. It's hard to believe, but I missed the smoke in the goat sequence, for example. Well, in the end, I had to read a few texts to come to grips with the film. In case, anyone else is also wondering why 'LH' is one of the few non-fiction films, that made the Top 100 last time, I'd recommend Jeffrey Ruoff's article (An Ethnographic Surrealist Film. Luis Bunuel's Land Without Bread), which has been published in 'Visual Anthropology' in 1998 and can be found on the internet (link). I found it very helpful ...

[matrixschmatrix]

I'm rewatching Tabu, and though the image seems much nicer (this is the first time I've watched the MoC, which looks significantly better than the Milestone) I think my impressions haven't changed much.

For the whole opening reel of the movie, it's hard to get past the feeling of condescending Noble Savage mythos in action- though obviously I have no idea of what life was really like for South Pacific islanders, it feels very much like a lot of other depictions of 'beautiful, simple' people, who are essentially all children. Murnau obviously admires them physically- the camera is practically leering at the men as they hunt fish- and likes what he sees as they hunt and play, but he seems to be denying them full humanity. The score in this section doesn't help, since it remains relentlessly zany-blooper-reel cheerful, even during what seems to be a fairly vicious fight: the implication is that nothing these people do is to be taken seriously.

Fortunately, it develops more complexity as it develops- the ritual in the second reel seems more culturally specific than what we've seen so far (and isn't played for 'my God those heathens!' value the way they generally are in Kong and what have you), and both the characterization of the leads and in the complexity of the 'civilization bad, savage good' dichotomy its arguing get more nuanced as we focus more and more on Reri and The Boy. It reminds me of City Girl, in that respect- we know without question where Murnau's sympathies lay, but he has the honesty to remember that cruelty and abuse are magnified by the environments he dislikes, not created by them.

Beyond the melodrama around the central couple, Tabu is well observed in showing how the outsiders destroy the native civilization, not through war but through economics- though while the exploitation comes through clearly, the idea that a fully capable, skilled native man becomes a tool rather than a member of a society as soon as a dollar price is attached to his labor is weakened by the simplified version of native culture we have seen. Certainly, the Noble Savage stuff could be a lot worse- we don't have the appalling narrative adopted by everything from the Last Samurai to Avatar to Dances With Wolves, where a white guy is our entry point and tour guide through a foreign culture (how else could we possibly be expected to understand them???), and becomes better at everything they do than they are.

Murnau works in fairy tales and parables nearly all the time, and there's no question that this is meant to be one- character names like "The Boy" are always a dead giveaway there- so I recognize that a lot of what I actually object to isn't so much the somewhat abstracted, simplistic culture we're seeing, as the way that Murnau is using the natives there as generic 'non-civilized' people. But I should probably make more allowance for the eyes a man from his era would have had then I am doing, as compared to other work from the era (the aforementioned Kong, Sanders of the River, etc etc) this is off the charts on the progressive scale. And however much I object, this movie is still going to be in my top 50 (though significantly below City Girl, which to me is a much more successful movie.) Many of the elements that hurt the characterization of the natives do so by reducing them to beautiful pictures- and my god, are the pictures beautiful. Though this is the one movie of Murnau's that seems to cry out for color, I don't care- a movie this good looking is going to be in the top 50 of any decade, ever, and the two part finale- which beautifully synthesizes the callousness of capitalism and the harshness that we've seen in native life, and demonstrates the somber, cold nastiness of the colonialists, coming from a native- overcomes some of the postcard-blandness near the opening.

[Gropius]

Actually I never thought about this before, but it's a very convincing point, and might explain why I love both genres so much (and, only apparently unrelated, also the films by Peter Greenaway); now what does that say about me...
However, the musical comparison is basically true only for the glossy American musicals, and indeed most obviously with Berkeley. The dancing in the Astaire/Rogers films is often much more individualized (exceptions like the big stage scene in Top Hat notwithstanding), and if you take a look at the earlier Lubitsch musicals, they are a totally different affair, of course.

Yes, I was generalising a bit about musicals: I suppose what I meant was films in which the artifice of the whole visual/theatrical machinery, including sets, costumes, etc, seems to exceed the importance of the characters and their narrative travails (and Lubitsch's musicals, while more restrained than Berkeley, still fit this description, I think: Paramount generally seemed to have the most luscious sets of all the major studios,* whereas Warner had that schizoid mix of functional plainness and grand finales).

Since you seem to have a marginally better general knowledge of the decade, perhaps you could recommend some other 30s titles that might appeal to a fellow Greenaway enthusiast. (I have a weakness for aesthetically lavish spectacle: The Scarlet Empress is my certain number 1, and the extraordinary Dieterle/Reinhardt Midsummer Night's Dream will be hovering somewhere in the top 10.) One that I still intend to check out before the deadline, on the strength of your recommendation earlier in the thread, is Willi Forst's Maskerade, which sounds great.

*This leads me to thinking that perhaps the greatest unsung name of the era may have been that of Hans Dreier, art director at Paramount, who contributed to the visual aesthetic of the productions of Sternberg, Lubitsch, Leisen, Mamoulian, and others.

[Lighthouse]

Anybody here who likes Max Ophüls?

Liebelei is one of his masterpieces and as good and as important as Letter From an Unknown Woman and his last 4 masterpieces he made in France.
And maybe the best German film of the 30s.

[tojoed]

"Liebelei" and "Signora di Tutti" are both on my list.

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

"Liebelei" and "Signora di Tutti" are both on my list.

me too occupying middle-ground with Sans Lendemain shoring them up

[tojoed]

I haven't seen "Sans Lendemain", so I couldn't include it. Is it available anywhere?

I see that IMDB says"1940", is that right?

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

I haven't seen "Sans Lendemain", so I couldn't include it. Is it available anywhere?

I see that IMDB says"1940", is that right?

In all the filmographies of Ophuls i have seen it is given as 1939 also the Gaumont release specifies 1939 on the cover
http://www.amazon.fr/Sans-lendemain-Edw ... 820&sr=8-1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
If you still want to give it a crack despite its possible ineligibilty due to rulings vis IMDB listings PM me and I can send you a copy with eng subs if you like.

[swo17]

The date given on IMDb is the relevant date for determining eligibility, even when it's clearly wrong.

Sans Lendemain will not be eligible until the 1940s list. On the bright side, this means you can include another film in your 1930s list.

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

The date given on IMDb is the relevant date for determining eligibility, even when it's clearly wrong.

Sans Lendemain will not be eligible until the 1940s list. On the bright side, this means you can include another film in your 1930s list.

Another casualty of the 1940-45 war I suppose...or the 1942-45 for some

[knives]

"Liebelei" and "Signora di Tutti" are both on my list.

I was originally going to have the later on my list until I realized I can't remember a single thing about it beyond liking it when MOC first released it. I would just feel wrong placing it with that knowledge when All Quiet on the Western Front won't be making my list even though I can remember every second despite only having seen it once ten years ago.