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

[swo17]

Svengali is available on DVD or for instant viewing on Netflix.

[knives]

Awesome, does anyone know which of the 500 DVDs is the best? I hope there's at least one copy that goes above Alpha video bad.

[matrixschmatrix]

Have you seen Svengali? It's fantastic if just for his creepy hypno-stare (oh, and this shot).

Jesus, that looks like the love child of Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible and Dr. Caligari

[Gropius]

Guys, you really need to see more European films

I'm still hoping that a few more German titles will be creeping on to my list before the deadline (although that may be at the expense of French and Japanese ones).

[Saturnome]

Wow, the Svengali clip was great. There's a lot of references to Svengali in old cartoons that make me think that he was a well-known character back then, but somehow got forgotten. I never considered the film before, but that clip changed things.

Also I hate to say this but I feel uncomfortable to send a top 50 right now. I had an important job between February and July that fully stopped me, and I'm struggling to make a list of 50 films. I have only seen the animated films in the spotlights so I'll give a priority to this, but I'm also missing a huge load of the "canon". Is it legal to send a list if I haven't seen Bringing Up Baby?

[knives]

Naturally, we had a discussion about it a while back that basically ended on the note of interesting, but flawed. I figure if you can at least give your lowest rated film a C you're in the clear. Percentile wise I suppose that means as love as you've seen about 200.

[zedz]

Hmm- as I recall, you're a purist on what comprises a 'silent' movie

Yeah, I don't count them if they were actually designed, recorded and released as sound films , like those Chaplins to which swo playfully alluded.

. . . so I'm not sure I could guess what those 11 are- obviously the Murnaus and I would guess some Ozu, but a lot of my guesses beyond that- L'Age d'Or, City Lights, etc.- have synchronized soundtracks of some kind.

Those are indeed all sound films, but, to the best of my recollection, the following (in length-of-title order) aren't:
Earth
Limite
City Girl
Happiness
Dragnet Girl
Children's Party
Salt for Svanetia
I Was Born, But. . .
La Cartomancienne
Flunky, Work Hard
A Story of Floating Weeds
Japanese Girls at the Harbour

Which is actually twelve! I'd also long assumed that the soundtrack I'd seen Mor'Vran with was a later addition, but imdb insists it had a soundtrack on first release.

[Gropius]

There's a lot of references to Svengali in old cartoons that make me think that he was a well-known character back then, but somehow got forgotten.

He originally appeared in George du Maurier's novel Trilby (1894), which was one of the bestsellers of its day (along with Stoker's Dracula), ensuring a popular cultural afterlife well into the mid-twentieth century.

[zedz]

Thanks for the tip on Svengali. Weirdly, I have in my possession a DVD of this which I definitely never consciously acquired: never bought, never borrowed or was lent, it just turned up one day in the house and got swallowed up. Looks like it's time to finally watch it.

[domino harvey]

Anyone who's been through all fifty hours of the special features on the Jazz Singer has seen that Svengali scene in one of the old movietone "remembering the classics of early sound cinema" one-reelers. I immediately picked up my copy after first seeing that scene. Guess I need to give it a spin too. Ah, these threads get so communal near the end!

[Mr Sausage]

Yeah, I just set Svengali to the top of my rental list after watching that clip.

[swo17]

Also I hate to say this but I feel uncomfortable to send a top 50 right now. I had an important job between February and July that fully stopped me, and I'm struggling to make a list of 50 films. I have only seen the animated films in the spotlights so I'll give a priority to this, but I'm also missing a huge load of the "canon". Is it legal to send a list if I haven't seen Bringing Up Baby?

Remember, you still have until the end of the month, and with an average runtime of maybe 70 minutes, you can still fit in ~575 viewings of '30s films if you don't let work/sleep/family get in the way. Anyway, though I would personally say don't miss Bringing Up Baby (it's a definite top 10 title for me) there is no litmus test that must be passed for your list to be considered--no number of films you have to watch, no films so important that they must be on your list, and no films so trivial that they can't appear on it. That being said, if after all the viewing you can manage, you are still having trouble coming up with 50 titles you at least really like or admire*, leaving you to have to fill out your list with well-known films that you don't particularly care for, you might consider sitting this round of voting out, if only so that the final results can avoid just reiterating the canon. Though again, everyone's list counts equally, and I won't be interrogating anyone about whether they really watched enough films for me to take their lists seriously. Basically, if you personally feel you have a unique take on '30s cinema that deserves to be considered, feel free to submit a list. And even if you don't end up doing so, please do continue to give recommendations for films you love that others might not have considered.

*Giving films toward the bottom of your list a "C" as knives suggests seems like it's setting the bar a bit too low to me--I wouldn't give anything on my present list lower than a B+.

[movielocke]

So, Stage Door, Twentieth Century, and Top Hat are all coming up on my Netflix queue- any advice about which one I should prioritize? Also, if I watch all three in a row, will I turn gay?

Stage Door

Animal Crackers is by far my favorite Marx Brothers film, just to throw another wrench in the "we all agree" gears

My favorite is Night at the Opera

[swo17]

I should perhaps have mentioned this earlier so people could have more time to buy it, but I can't recommend this UK release of Tod Slaughter films enough. These are three of his best films, but more importantly, the transfers are a huge improvement over the Alpha and other releases available in the U.S., especially for the best film in the set, The Face at the Window. This is just the kind of delightfully macabre, winkingly amateurish confection that #50 slots on your list were made for. (Though feel free of course to place it higher than that!)

[knives]

*Giving films toward the bottom of your list a "C" as knives suggests seems like it's setting the bar a bit too low to me--I wouldn't give anything on my present list lower than a B+.

I wouldn't give anything less than an A-, seriously Rapt just kicked Le Bete Humaine off my list, but as a general rule of thumb that's what I go with which is more based around that percentile thing I mentioned. I'm also assuming that this means that I won't be able to get a guiding hand on DVDs for Svengali.

[Saturnome]

I'm okay then, I'm not going as low as C. But there's more than a few B (films I like but don't really mind not owning on DVD/Blu) at the bottom.

you can still fit in ~575 viewings of '30s films if you don't let work/sleep/family get in the way.

I work and watch films in the same room these days, I'll go crazy!
I think that if I put an effort, I can manage to watch ~45 films until the final day. I think it's all about choosing carefully what are going to be these 45 films, since there's quite a lot of films I feel stupid for not having seen.

Basically, if you personally feel you have a unique take on '30s cinema that deserves to be considered, feel free to submit a list.

I'm a junkie for animated films, but curiously I don't have a lot of them in my top right now (maybe 5) and I'm pretty sure I have seen everything there is to watch in that category. It's one thing to love Donald Duck like I do, especially his 30s shorts, but as for choosing one that is more worthy than the others, I just can't. I look at my list right now and it's not really full of wild choices, but that I don't mind.

[knives]

Then do like me and go with The Old Mill which is my highest rated animated.

[Saturnome]

My highest (and it's very, very high) is Le Roman de Renard. I love everything about it but mostly the absolutely stellar animation and the lively characters (and I love love love the french old-village way of speaking the characters got, somewhat like Pagnol, though not necessarily south French).

The Old Mill is a great film, but mostly from a technical point of view. I can't say I care for it as much as I care for Music Land, for another Silly Symphony exemple.

[knives]

I agree it's a love on a technical level, but if only from an historical perspective I can't leave it off as we wouldn't have any of the movies without it. Also I must admit that I can't help but head bang when it comes on.

[sinemadelisikiz]

I'm with knives on The Old Mill. That's certainly my favorite Silly Symphony, but as far as animated shorts go, I'm doing everything in my power not to fill my list with Fleischer. Those pre-code Bimbo shorts are wonderfully surreal and I can't stop watching them, with Swing You Sinners! probably being my favorite at this point and Minnie the Moocher and Bimbo's Initiation close behind.

I saw Svengali via Netflix instant, so I'm of no help in finding a decent DVD (it would be great if those of you with DVDs could report back on the quality though). I'm really glad people are interested in checking it out. I was thinking about making it my spotlight film a while ago, but I just assumed everyone was aware of it.

[matrixschmatrix]

It's funny, I feel like I've been running desperately to get up to a reasonable number of candidates from which to submit a list, but I think largely as a result the list I submit will be more canonical than what I would have submitted if I just stuck to whatever I happened to have watched going in- I went out of my way to watch a lot of stuff that's on the canon for this, and while quite a lot of it didn't do anything for me, I think most of it struck me as being stuff that was canonical for pretty good reason. As much as I loved It's a Gift, I liked The Rules of the Game more- not because it's the better respected movie or whatever, but because it genuinely seems like an amazing work to me.

I figure anything that fits that criterion goes on, and anything that doesn't stays off- I'm up to (I think) 45 movies that I feel confident as great movies regardless of the decade, after watching about 75 specifically for this and having come in with probably no more than 20 or 30. That may not really be a wide enough field, overall- it means I'm only cutting one of every two movies from the era that I've seen- but I feel like I can submit a list in good faith, since everything on my list will be a movie I can stand by and recommend. (Plus, I'm going to try to watch at least another 30 or 40 this month, and racking up shorts is pretty easy.)

[knives]

Don't forget Happiness, Journey's End, nor my two spotlights in that case.

[myrnaloyisdope]

I've got Betty Boop's Snow White hovering around my top ten. Cab Calloway's St. James Infirmary is one of the greatest things ever recording and melded with some really clever and trippy animation makes the short among my very favorite films of any kind.

On the subject of top actors, well lots of Grant, Hepburn, Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins and Sylvia Sidney and bunch of Dietrich/Von Sternbergs. Only two Myrna Loy films are definite, The Thin Man and Love Me Tonight and I'm not sure what else there is.

In regards to the earlier Mitchell Leisen discussion, I thought I'd mention the pseudo-Leisen, The Eagle and The Hawk, which Leisen co-directed with Stuart Walker, but according to Leisen's account he directed the film as Walker was ill and died shortly after. It's a fantastic film, with a surprisingly cynical take on war heroism, as Fredric March plays a WWI pilot who becomes increasing distraught as his gunners keep getting killed in combat and he keeps getting medals for it. March takes to drink and becomes increasingly self-destructive as he finds himself increasingly honored at the expense of the lives of others. Cary Grant plays March's rival who ends up becoming a gunner in March's plane. Carol Lombard appears briefly as a prostitute who March confides in during a brief furlough. It feels like something may have been cut out of the film during that section, which wouldn't be surprising giving the implications. It's nicely directed and proves Leisen to be pretty adept, despite it being essentially Leisen's first film.

Also Domino, I saw you mentioned you are voting for two Cukors, including Holiday of course, what's the other one? I'm voting for What Price Hollywood?, which is one of Cukor's most visually interesting works, with some really interesting editing and montage and a dynamite performance Lowell Sherman doing the Norman Maine part in what is a sort of dry run for A Star Is Born.

[matrixschmatrix]

Haha, wow, the Public Enemy is hardcore- it's funny watching some of the major Cagney stuff backwards, because Angels With Dirty Faces is pretty clearly a response to this. Here, the message isn't "don't be a gangster", it's "be the best gangster"-psycho though Cagney's Tom is, there isn't any sense that it's his nasty behavior that he's being punished for, and his brother only becomes likable once he's on Tom's side. There's no other side to root for, no meaningful sense of law and order, and no question of redemption for anyone- Tom becomes the hero by default, because he's tough and scrappy and totally without a conscience.

God, I love the pre-Code era.

[knives]

I love this one too. That ending is still so shocking and as much as the film is joyously bad it seems to make being a gangster more off putting than Angel's ending. In fact there are so many scenes of pure horror throughout, when they go back to that Englishman, that it manages to be more frightful than most real horror features. I can't remember if it's this one or Little Caesar, but there's this great shoot out scene by a wall that for me says everything about the genre possible. It's probably my favorite gangster film and it's a real misfortune I likely won't be voting for it. The tightness I'm going through on just 300 films makes me truly worried when we do get to horror though. I've already got a thousand on that (even if 600 are less than crap).