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

[Mr Sausage]

Spoiler

I've felt that he was telling a rashomon truth. There are elements of actuality present, but it is skewed into fiction by his misogynistic bias. She never was the villain he claimed to be and her motivations are intensely more complex than he is able to recognize. She did no awful things except in the fiction that his mind produced. She was always the girl at the beginning of the flashback and at the end of the movie, but he was too blinded by jealousy to notice. We don't know her story, just a version of it warped by emotion. By the way it's appropriate that we should disagree on interpretation for this film considering how much of it is about interpreting fiction and life.

Spoiler

It's more than misogynistic bias, if that's even a motivator. There is a much larger motivator: Pasquale is clearly trying to make Concha sound as awful as possible in order to convince his would-be rival to stay away. His distortions are, in large part, deliberate, tho' also a kind of catharsis for his injured feelings. It's a combination of bitterness, melancholy, and deception.

I think I actually would have preferred to find out at the end that she is as bad as Pasquale says, and then watch her gleefully come out ahead at the expense of everyone, becoming almost a literal devil. It would be a delightfully perverse ending, and of course Bad Concha is plain more interesting than every other character so it's hard not to root for her.

[knives]

I should have brought that up and am glad you did. Just an other amazing element of the weaving of fiction I suppose.

[sinemadelisikiz]

The thing with von Sternberg is that Dietrich was always just that, Dietrich. Nothing as simple as a man could change her being and it was always the others that got burned. She's as resilient to forced change as possible and endlessly adaptable.

Spoiler

It's interesting that you mention this, because in quite a few of these films the exact opposite happens. At the end of Morocco she becomes one of the many women who follow their loved ones through the desert, even though earlier she resisted any such attachment. In Dishonored she's ultimately executed for helping her rival agent/lover escape. In these films at least, men are her downfall. Though, on the other hand, The Blue Angel . . .

Thanks for the lovely convo, it's so fun to talk about these films, but the opportunity rarely arises.

Likewise! I enjoy hearing different interpretations of favorites.

[knives]

Spoiler

While Blue Angel is definitely the most literal example of what I was talking about, and the quote by von Sternberg I essentially ripped off was said about it, but in the other films I think that's still true. What you're talking about is what I mean by adaptable. She finds herself in love during Morocco so she figures that the best way to deal with this is by staying with the loved one to protect him. Dishonored is if nothing else the most extreme example of what I'm talking about. Again she finds herself in love, but this doesn't weaken her. She's just adapting and that adaptation says that there's a new enemy. Also, and I don't remember the particulars, but wasn't this also a case of where she was forced into being a spy rather than doing it solely as a patriotic duty?

That said you are right that that adaptability doesn't always aid her when it comes to love. Monogamy crushes the free spirit and makes life far more difficult than it needs to be. For that I suppose Blonde Venus is the most extreme example as the usual ending is right at the start and we get to see how love chains the free spirit. She needs to be herself or else she's not a person anymore. Jumping back to The Devil is a Woman, I suppose that makes it the actual happiest ending since The Blue Angel for her character as she gets to make the choice and determine her own fate.

[sinemadelisikiz]

Spoiler

I guess it just depends on whether you see this as her adapting or being broken, though its a subtle distinction. In Morocco, I certainly saw the latter. I find something about that image of her heading off into the distance, heels and all, to be kind of beautifully tragic. These women didn't march out into the desert to protect their men, but instead because they were helplessly attached and willing to lose all autonomy. I think that it's impossible to say that "no man could change her being", because that's essentially what has happened if she's willing to do that. It could be argued that it was her choice, naturally, but it plays like she's been defeated and finally succumbed to Cooper. In quite a few films from this era, love and commitment are a cage for women in ways that they aren't for men, because men don't have to sacrifice as much independence (though I'm sure there are examples of the opposite, to be fair).
But you're right that the ending of The Devil is a Woman is the opposite of this, and she does decide her own (as well as Antonio's) fate. Maybe that's why I like it so much.

[Perkins Cobb]

Spoiler

This thread is starting to resemble my FBI file.

[knives]

Watch a few von Sternberg's and they will no longer be redacted.

[knives]

Who would have thought that a movie featuring the two best Barrymores would be absolutely stolen by Wallace Beery? for the most part Dinner at Eight is an average film with some of the more likable flourishes of Cukor, but it's only with Beery that the film leaps into life. as something close to great. Every aspect is perfectly okay and fun, but it could do with a little more craziness.

[Murdoch]

I'm not much of a Capra fan, You Can't Take It With You is pleasant enough and I enjoy the bits with Ann Miller, and It Happened One Night I found fairly forgettable. So imagine my shock at seeing The Bitter Tea of General Yen, which is almost like anti-Capra in how it strips away Stanwyck's idealism instead of reinforcing it. The film feels like a worthy companion to Sternberg's Shanghai Express, except Dietrich's suave and sexy Lily is replaced by Stanwyck's fish-out-of-water missionary. In a decade marred by racial stereotyping it's a relief to catch a film like this where a "minority" lead (yes, I know it's just Nils Asther) is given depth and intelligence that doesn't conform to some stereotypical image of the enlightened Confucius-spouting Easterner. The ending especially struck me as atypical for Capra

Spoiler

with Stanwyck floating on a boat, still uncertain about Yen, her fiance now not even a thought in her head as she rolls over her relationship with Yen in her head - it's a far cry from the sunniness of It's a Wonderful Life, You Can't Take..., et al. And this dream which at first seems incredibly racist, but then undercuts that racism by revealing Yen as the romantic hero, creates this complex romance between the leads.

And the film is just gorgeous, definite top ten for me, right alongside the von Sternberg.

[Cold Bishop]

Have you seen American Madness? It's probably my favorite Capra of the decade alongside General Yen.

[knives]

That will likely be my highest rated Capra too for just those very reasons (though I love the films you mentioned too). I think it still very strongly conforms to Capra's personality as shown in the other movies, but the story more naturally highlights the darkness of his personality.

[Murdoch]

American Madness is also great, I like the sense of anarchy that the film has, of society just falling in on itself, it's like the meaner brother to It's a Wonderful Life. I find Capra's pessimistic side more endearing than his optimism, probably because I'm more of a pessimist. And while his other films generally have a sense of redemption to them, this one leaves Stanwyck in a state of uncertainty, not even giving her a reunion with her fiancé. I also enjoyed his other Stanwyck collaboration The Miracle Woman, although to a lesser degree than AM or Yen, for how Capra tears apart the evangelist market, plus Stanwyck is always lovely to look at.

[knives]

I think you aren't giving his, for lack of a better word, pessimistic showing in his other work enough credit. It's a Wonderful Life end on a false high note. Mr. Potter still has all the money and is free to try to bring down Stewart once again. It's mostly just delaying the inevitable. In fact the main reason I love the movie, though it also causes me a hard time to rewatch, is because of how much it's happy ending isn't happy in the least. American Madness though is superb and will come close to making my list. The misfortunes of nearly 300 films I guess.

[Murdoch]

I sort of agree on Wonderful Life, while I think Potter pitching in at the end is just an empty gesture and he will continue to dominate the finances of the town, I also think the film was more concerned with Bailey triumphing over his own doubts and while he may not run Potter out of town or anything, he's found a reason to live. Although I always thought it more sad than anything else how Bailey winds up stuck in the very town he hated, I still feel the film ends on a fairly hopeful note for George if not for the town. Although all this belongs in the 40s thread, really.

[knives]

Or a Christmas thread. Suppose it's best to say Capra has depths people just tend to forget about.

[Murdoch]

=; Not if "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas" isn't eligible (oh here we go again...)

[matrixschmatrix]

Since this seems to be the way to go, I thought I would mention some of the movies on my provisional list that haven't come up yet, as far as I know. Apologies if they (and the things I have to say about them) are obvious.

The Petrified Forest

I went in to this not expecting to like it very much- I'd heard it was very much a Big Important Questions play slapped on the screen without much alteration- but while that's true, it doesn't feel problematically stagey and it features some of the best performances of the era. I'd never seen Leslie Howard before, and I'd never liked Bette Davis, but I came out a fan of both- and the Bogart performance is interestingly nuanced, and it's one of his few performances that's neither the gangster character he got stuck with for years afterwards nor the classic Bogart.

Some of the movie comes off as a little clunky- Howard's references to Eliot feel a little labored, and the actual writing sets everyone up as types almost as badly as the Breakfast Club- but as an actor's film I think I'd take this one over Casablanca, and the actors bring nuance and depth to the characters.

City Lights and Modern Times

These are clearly going undiscussed because everyone's already seen them, but they're still worth talking about. These two are my favorite Chaplins, hands down- I think in the 30s, he had honed his combination of melodrama, social pleading, and comedy to as fine a point as anyone ever would. Chaplin manages to take some of the oldest tropes of slapstick and reinvent them in a way that underscores his ideas about the class system- the capricious, silly, drunk millionaire in City Lights is obviously a figure that dates back long before the invention of movies, but Chaplin uses him to underscore both the absurdity of the idea that wealth is derived from merit and the cruel imbalance of power that millionaires in a depression create- the idea that such a man would choose to share his wealth is so absurd that the police assume that any such story is an obvious lie, and that a poor man like the tramp is automatically a thief.

Likewise, in Modern Times, the wacky perverse machine- and the sort of farcical destruction that the machine engenders- are both familiar from the earliest, crudest Mack Sennett shorts. Chaplin's use of it, however, showing the way his character is stripped of his dignity while his bosses are unable to distinguish between man and machine, and the way his character himself becomes a robot gone haywire- that adds meaning and pathos to the still-virtuoso set pieces, such that they are as funny as the best slapstick while still carrying a secret punch in the gut.

A lot has been made of Chaplin's dramatic power- and the ending of City Lights, in particular, is a masterpiece of melodrama- but to me, his beautifully integrated social critiques are the greatest signifier of his genius. Though both City Lights and Modern Times still feel like a succession of bits more than narrative films sometimes (Modern Times moreso, though never as much as say The Gold Rush or the Great Dictator) both movies hold together on their thematic coherence, and I'm not sure either has a single true dead spot.

The Most Dangerous Game

I actually prefer this to King Kong. It lacks Kong's grandeur- which is in a sense a strength, as time has been harsher on grandeur than on most other qualities- but it shares Kong's sense of a sort of disturbingly sexualized high adventure, and bests it with the characterization of the villain- Leslie Banks is in the territory of Lorre in Mad Love here, a rich, fully developed madman who is both genuinely frightening and fun to spend time with.

It's lean, tight movie, it avoids shading into supporting the Savage Man stuff that man hunting man is prone to as a genre, and unlike Kong, it doesn't wander around aimlessly- as much as the actual menaces verge on the goofy at times ('scary' dogs in movies generally do) the movie gets across both the primitive, sexual appeal of hunting and killing and the inhuman distortion that comes with cultivating a love for it.

[swo17]

I'd never seen Leslie Howard before, and I'd never liked Bette Davis, but I came out a fan of both

You might try to check them both out in Of Human Bondage as well. And Howard's Pygmalion (in which he both co-directed and starred) is probably a must see for the project.

[matrixschmatrix]

I've actually seen Pygmalion- I've seen few Howard things at this point, as I watched The Petrified Forest a while ago- but I'll make sure to check out Of Human Bondage.

edit: Is there a good release of Of Human Bondage anywhere?

[swo17]

Bondage is only available in PD transfers that, among other things, look squished. (If you can watch this on a computer program that allows you to adjust the screen resolution until proportions look normal, that would be ideal.) It's also available for instant viewing on Netflix and the PQ there is as good as or better than I've seen it anywhere else. I quite like the film though it doesn't look like it will be making my list.

[knives]

It's Love I'm After is an other great pairing for them with the same director as Petrified Forest, though it's Eric Blore who owns the show.

[PillowRock]

The Petrified Forest
the actual writing sets everyone up as types almost as badly as the Breakfast Club

I wouldn't say quite "everyone". Especially within the context of the time period the black member of Bogart's gang, while not a very big role, struck me as being wonderfully not a stock type. I loved his interactions with the black chauffer character.

[matrixschmatrix]

Oh, I'd forgotten about that, but yeah, that is absolutely a highlight- that's one of the best black characters I can think of from that era of Hollywood. I was disappointed it wasn't discussed more in the commentary, since it seems fairly surprising- his discussion with the chauffeur shows a more nuanced view of race relations than Driving Miss Daisy had fifty years later, in an era when most of the time no one would let a black person have a decent character lest it piss off the south.

I'm also reminded of how touched I was by the character development in the rich woman- there's a strong strain of proto-feminism, recognizing how trapped even a wealthy woman can be in that kind of a marriage, which is an interesting twist on the readily typed rich bitch and henpecked husband combo.

Actually, now that I think of it, a lot of why the movie works so well is that it plays off of the types people are given- they're very much grounded in type, but your expectations based on those types (the brutish gangster, the rich bitch, the sunny ingenue, the idiot ex footballer, etc.) are thwarted without being simply reversed- it's more an exploration and a deepening of those roles than an explosion of them. I still attribute a lot of that to the performances, but the more I think about it the more I think it was aided by rather than in spite of the writing.

[masterofoneinchpunch]

I've been sidetracked a bit trying to get through a bunch of slapstick shorts from the 10's to the 30's, as my current schedule doesn't afford me much opportunity to watch features (nothing like watching a film in 20 minute chunks over the span of a week). As it stands the only 30's stuff I've been watching is Laurel and Hardy shorts from the massive UK box and while I generally enjoy them, the best ones seem to be the one's with a bit of malevolence towards others and escalating levels of violence and destruction. ...

I've been going over many 30s shorts as well (I won't get to the Laurel and Hardy anytime soon since I've started with the Stan Laurel pre-team shorts from the 20s; I have already gone through all the Stooges 30s Columbia shorts, the couple of Keaton from Columbia, and a whole bunch of others) and I'm almost done with the Buster Keaton Educational shorts. I wrote the following a while back and I recommend this short:

Grand Slam Opera (1936: Buster Keaton/Charles Lamont)
Keaton’s career certainly did not end after his firing by MGM and his “comeback” in the 1950s was also erroneous (though his work was not always in front of the camera). Like LL Cool J he’s been there for years. Luckily a wealth of material has come out for Buster and two releases have made me quite happy. His Columbia shorts came out in the Buster Keaton - 65th Anniversary Collection by Sony and later Kino released his earlier shorts of the 1930s Lost Keaton: Sixteen Comedy Shorts 1934-1937 (though Kino has released a couple of the Educational shorts in The Art of Buster Keaton set). I noticed a particular pattern on reviews on these films: while these are not as good as his silent shorts they range from mediocre to good. I agree with that summation.

A common tactic with some reviewers/critics is to overstate the lows of a particular favorite actor or director to make their highs seem even bigger. I had read many reviews where people mentioned that his shorts with Columbia and Educational were maligned, without giving a source on who maligned them. It made me wonder if these comments were overstated. Well I found one: Edward McPherson’s book “Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat” states on the Educational “…despite what the diehards tell you, are really just for diehards.” and on Columbia “…the dreary two-reelers…”*

Educational Pictures was a low budget studio by the time of the 1930s and would soon close after Keaton left them. Unfortunately many of their earlier prints were lost due to a nitrate fire at the Educational studios and I do wonder if the studio would have been thought better of if many of these still existed (I am a little weak of knowledge on this studio though I have seen several more shorts since I originally wrote this).

There are two Educational shorts I highly recommend for fans of Keaton: One Run Elmer (which I need to do a review for because I feel it is completely underrated) and this one which tends to get the highest recommendations from reviewers (those doing the .org 30s list should take a look at these two). There is a good reason for that. This films works on many different levels as it is a parody, a very active comedy, an ineffective wannabe relationship, a comment on silent comedy in the radio age and much more in a 20 minute time period.

Buster plays Elmer Butts an individual who is sent off on a railroad in song by a mob who does not want to see him back. This is parodying the Broadway musical Forty-Five Minutes From Broadway (got this bit of information from IMDB review by theowinthrop). He goes to New York(?) to live and hopefully make it. He auditions for a radio show called Colonel Crow’s (parodying Major Edward Bowes "Amateur Hour" and it reminds you a bit of The Gong Show) doing a vaudeville balancing act that, of course, makes no sense on the radio. He is quickly dismissed just like his advances on the girl (Diana Lewis) he likes and happens to run into everywhere. What will he do?

There are a couple of awesome physical gags. He does a parody dance of Fred Astaire (Fred Aslare(sp?) is the name used here) where he sprinkles sand and dances above his beloveds head like Astaire in Top Hat. Like Astaire he uses the whole room dancing on top of practically everything until a crashing end. Later he does a medley dance of practically every ethnic style from Irish to Russian. It is a sequence done so quickly and so well you recognize that he is still in excellent shape even after several years of alcohol abuse.

* Of course I noticed a huge gaffe already in this book: “Le Roi des Champs-Elysees took twelve days to shoot; Buster played two roles – the film ends with him breaking into a smile, a closing gimmick Keaton had been avoiding his whole life.” The gaffe is that he has tons of smiles in the Arbuckle shorts where Keaton experimented with personality. This is the type of statement that makes you wonder how much effort the writer went into Keaton’s career besides the obvious silent period. Unfortunate since it does not make me want to buy the book (I was reading through Google books).

---------------------------------

Honestly I won't be putting many shorts in the top 50 though (no Three Stooges). There are so many excellent feature length films.

[Murdoch]

Anyone else a fan of Mary Ellen Bute's work? There's a few available on that ever-helpful Unseen Cinema box like Dada and Synchromy No. 2. While she's no Fishinger, her work is captivating and worth a look, Rhythm in Light will make my list (sorry, couldn't find it online).