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

[swo17]

It's almost hard to believe that Lucy and Barkley aren't a real couple, with a real lifetime of 50 years spent together

This is why it's so jarring for me to see Moore or Bondi in other films!

[PillowRock]

It's almost hard to believe that Lucy and Barkley aren't a real couple, with a real lifetime of 50 years spent together

This is why it's so jarring for me to see Moore or Bondi in other films!

Because I've been seeing it so often for so many years ..... make that "decades" ...... now, for me Bondi always fits in as Jimmy Stewart's mother.

[matrixschmatrix]

Wow, The Mask of Fu Manchu was pretty much as I expected it to be for most of the running time- horribly racist, and horribly sexist, but in a sort of goofy way that didn't really seem that worrying. Myrna Loy and Boris Karloff seem to be having a good time, the English people are self righteous as hell about their government backing them in plundering foreign historical sites, and Nayland Smith acts like an asshole. Par for the course.

Then the end comes, and

Spoiler

Nayland mows down a few hundred helpless people with the ray gun. And then everyone has a jolly laugh at the Asian Stepin Fetchit guy on the way home! Good times, good times.

It's weird, I haven't really seen virulent anti-Asian racism before. As I said, I read the books, but they're very British, and the racism in them is very much British colonial racism- it's bizarre to see that come out of an American production. The whole thing is kind of shameful, but it does put the Charlie Chan movies in a very different light.

[knives]

Are the Charlie Chan movies any good by the way? Also you have to admit Karloff's fuck whitey speech at the end is pretty fun.

[matrixschmatrix]

They're programmers, they feel like a decent detective TV show but I haven't seen anything that was remarkable enough to be particularly memorable. They're pretty funny, though.

Karloff's whole performance is pretty fun, and given how crappy the British were I was rooting for him, but yeah, that's a cool speech. It's amazing that they tried to cut the racist elements out, it'd be like cutting the sex out of a porn.

[knives]

It's amazing that they tried to cut the racist elements out, it'd be like cutting the sex out of a porn.

They did.

[domino harvey]

Charlie Chan in Paris has a great Apache Dance sequence

[Mr Sausage]

Are the Charlie Chan movies any good by the way? Also you have to admit Karloff's fuck whitey speech at the end is pretty fun.

I prefer the Mr. Motos. More action/adventury, with fantastic stunt work, and of course the always strange Peter Lorre. Plus the series sometimes plays with and shows-up racial stereotypes (in one of them, Moto puts on 'Ah-So' mannerisms whenever the villains are around in order to fool them, and then drops out of it when they leave, shooting them a condescending glance. Moto is fooling people through their own racism and at the same time showing the caricature to have no basis in reality). If I were doing a List, I'd probably put the second one, Thank You, Mr. Moto on my List, not so much from any consideration of greatness, but because it's pretty damn entertaining.

[swo17]

Well, I have two lists in now, so I guess this is the part where I get to be all coy about how the results are turning out so far even though they will surely look nothing like this by the time all the lists are in. Let's see, there is only a top 10 of films common between the two lists. Half of them come from one country that is not the U.S. There are only three American films ranking for now, only one of which is actually set in America. The #1 film right now is not terribly surprising but the #2 certainly is, other than the fact that it's featured in the spotlight section.

[knives]

Please be Stolen Death. In all honesty I doubt anything I have left will go onto the list (I'm really just dicking around if I'm actually watching the three Price's of the decade). I'll give it an other week before I turn mine in.

[matrixschmatrix]

Haha, I'm going to be watching shit until the last day- given that I just watched a top ten candidate (Make Way for Tomorrow) I don't think I can safely lock things down at all right now.

[swo17]

My list of films left to see has consistently hovered at around sixty for the past two months. I should probably get it out of my head that I have time to see every single film anyone mentions in this thread. Actually, what I should do is take next week off from work... :-k

[reno dakota]

I have the same problem, swo. I've had about 40 films on my to-watch list for weeks now, but the more I watch, the more I find to add. And then there are still at least 15 that I need to re-watch before voting. #-o It looks like it's going to come down to the wire for me, too.

[matrixschmatrix]

My big problem is that I keep putting off big movies, the movies that seem like they will require a lot of focus and brainpower, in favor of silly trifles- meaning that I'm specifically excluding the ones that seem likely to be list contenders. I've still got contenders from Lang, Renoir, Hawks, Ford, and Ozu, and I sit here watching silly stuff like Fu Manchu.

[knives]

I find the silly stuff to be greater typically [/shrugs]. Any hoot I just go into these things with an opinion of whatever may come. I never go in looking to be stimulated intellectually though if it's a natural role out than I'll be even happier with a film. Having fun is the first rule for me and the elements that make a work great should just come natural. You know this already though, so let me just say don't be intimidated it's all in fun anyway.

[domino harvey]

But Hawks is fun

[matrixschmatrix]

Yeah, the line for me isn't so much between fun and heavy as it is between movies I feel ok with watching while I mess around on the internet and movies I feel like I need to sit and watch properly- I'm really antsy, and watching something without a fidget can be a little daunting.

Actually, one way I tend to recognize great movies is that I stop feeling the need to distract myself from them- but it's not entirely a fair scale, since with silent and foreign movies you can't really look away in the first place.

[Tommaso]

The #1 film right now is not terribly surprising but the #2 certainly is, other than the fact that it's featured in the spotlight section.

If it is what I think I'll do my best to keep it at #2

Seriously, in the next two weeks I plan at least to watch those spotlight films that I haven't yet seen, and perhaps a few others to round off my personal knowledge of some directors, especially from France. But it will be completely impossible to watch everything that I actually thought I could watch at the beginning of this list-making.

[Murdoch]

Right now I just have one spot to fill, I keep dropping off films in the hopes of being satisfied. I'll probably just watch a few more and be done with it, although I've been really lazy these past few weeks.

Oh, and everyone see Duvivier's Au Bonheur des Dames now!

[swo17]

I've still got contenders from Lang, Renoir, Hawks, Ford, and Ozu, and I sit here watching silly stuff like Fu Manchu.

Many of the so-called masters made their fair share of silly stuff as well--Renoir's Boudu and M. Lange to an extent, Hawks' screwballs, Ozu's I Was Born But, Ford's Steamboat Round the Bend, Carné's Drôle de drame, Yamanaka's Tange Sazen, everything by Vigo, and many of Lang's films are ridiculous pulp (but in a good way). Perhaps silly isn't always the right word here, but these films are I think intended to be very funny or otherwise entertaining, and are often a whole lot more than just that.

[reno dakota]

Oh, and everyone see Duvivier's Au Bonheur des Dames now!

Yes! And watch Liebelei and Ich bei Tag und du bei Nacht while you're at it. All three are in my top ten at the moment.

[Shrew]

Still lots left that I'll never finish in time, but at least I feel that I've gone through most of the big stuff my library has to offer (save for semi-canonical classics I can't muster up excitement for, like Captains Courageous) and can now focus on the movies I actually own--as well as the digital ones I don't technically own.

Of which I just watched my first Gremillon, Gueule d'amour. I enjoyed the the first hour fine, save Gabin's ridiculous pants, but couldn't quite understand what the big deal was. But that last half-hour left me floored. Matrix complained of Port of Shadows's overly constructed sense of doom, and this would be a logical counterexample of poetic-realism, fueled more by psychological character faults and blockages than fate. I still prefer Port, personally, because I think it's world is for more fleshed out, and to me its aura of doomed fate feels not so much a construct of plot but of atmosphere, like the fog surrounding the port. Plus that wonderful score. But Gueule will definitely make my list too, if slightly lower.

I'm eager to find more Gremillon, but that's easier said than done. Could someone perhaps point me toward La Petite Lise? All I've found is a dead dead torrent. Any other suggestions along the Gremillon line would be appreciated too.

In an entirely different vein: Harold Lloyd. I checked out Movie Crazy and was pleasantly surprised if not entirely besotted. Lloyd's sound comedy is like some weird fraternal twin of his silent comedy--almost alike yet entirely different. The character behind the glasses isn't much changed, but here he relies far less on stunts and physical comedy, instead playing with words and expression which while handled ablely drag down the pacing of the films. Of the physcial comedy there is, Movie Crazy is practically a W.C. Fields film with a fresher face--except that bravura last fight sequence which is all Lloyd--content to pile on the injury on the insult until it's hero is more bruise than man. There's only so much of that I can take, and it gets to me with Fields too.

I do want to praise that fight scene though, which is ludicrously fun, and the camera that is surprisingly agile for a comedy of early sound. The way it swings over the set piece for that fight, rising up to reveal the crew at work is surprising for a comedy of any era really. Though the fight plays a bit odd silent. At times it adds to the comedy, and at others it drags without some sort of musical accompaniment, which goes for the whole film too.

Then there's the romance, which is where things really seem bizarro. I always thought romance was a point where Lloyd shined in comparison with Keaton, whose women are usually props, and Chaplin, who boils the whole in buttery sentiment. But in sound Lloyd comes off as so milquetoast it's like watching Everett Edward Horton play the romantic lead, only completely straight. It makes for fine comedy but ludicrous romance. Fortunately Constance Cummings is entertaining enough of her own accord to carry the segments along, and she really shines throughout.

But for an even weirder disparity, see The Cat's Paw, where Una Merkel's brassiness bounces off Lloyd and rattles around the film like a shrill bell. I suppose the sheer impossibility of these romantic set-ups could be construed as comedic, but to me it comes off as a bit creepy, and more than a bit annoying.

The Cat's Paw itself isn't a great film and it almost entirely avoids physical comedy, but it's fascinating to me as a Chinese Studies major. Lloyd's Welcome Danger was the target of a major boycott over its depiction of Chinatowns when it opened in Shanghai, and I wonder if this was Lloyd's odd attempt at reconciliation. It goes to great lengths to present the Chinese as noble, enlightened orientals, who have nearly entirely assimilated Lloyd's returning missionary, who endlessly quotes some fictional sage. Of course, it's also got a bit Fu Manchu terror, with a slate of hugely muscled Chinese guards who come out of nowhere near film's end, all in support of Lloyd's violent scheme to rid the town of corruption, which is oddly presented as equally rational and barbaric. But then this too turns out to be a bit of race-baiting. It's poorly paced and often poorly thought through, but also at times surprisingly funny. Worth a look, especially for anyone into race or cultural studies, or just as an oddity.

Haven't seen The Milky Way, though McCarey and a shorter running time with hopefully better pacing intrigues me. Thoughts?

[matrixschmatrix]

I was thinking of watching The Milky Way in the near future- it's certainly in the middle of a hell of a streak on McCarey's part. Discounting his chunk of Six of a Kind, he did Duck Soup, Belle of the Nineties (which I haven't seen, but I've heard good things about), Ruggles of Red Gap, The Milky Way, Make Way for Tomorrow, and then The Awful Truth, all in a row. Given that company, I'm hoping he pulled something more worthwhile out of Lloyd than you normally get in his talkies.

I know it's possible, as Preston Sturges did it more than a decade later.

[knives]

I actually prefer the Lloyd talkies to his silent pictures for reasons I've outlined before. He has the great sense of verbal comedy, but I actually find, Never Weaken being the exception, his stunts to be not as good as Keaton's. Just take a look at Feet First which at it's basest is a remake of Safety Last. The humour is essentially the same, but with the benefit of sound it hits it's mark much harder and absolutely slays me.

[matrixschmatrix]

Rereading your post, Shrew- The Cat's Paw is absolutely a fascinating cultural/racial studies artifact. It would be interesting to round up some of the stuff that seems really shocking at this point, The Cat's Paw and Fu Manchu and Sanders of the River (and even Gone With the Wind, really) and get an idea of how the people being depicted felt about them- in the commentary for Fu Manchu, the guy suggests that the progressive Karloff just scoffed at the idea that anyone would take anything about it seriously, and I wonder if that was a common justification for the crazier racist fantasies.