1934

What else is there to say about this picture? There is not one single thing I would change. Of course, the leads are fabulous but every single character actor was the best possible that could have been found. The Academy has been stingy with comedies but this was too good to ignore.

A young skipper brings his new bride (Dita Parlo)aboard his small barge to live with his eccentric first mate (Michel Simon), a boy, and at least 10 untamed cats. We witness the couple's initial passion, the wife's boredom, the husband's jealousy, and then the cycle begins again. The slight plot is told in vivid images that insinuate themselves in the memory. Dita Parlo brings an enchanting sense of wonder to her character. The last of Jean Vigo's four films before his death at age 29 and a masterpiece.

An inventor mysteriously disappears and is blamed for the murder of his girlfriend and her possible paramour. His daughter (Margaret O'Sullivan) appeals to retired detective Nick Charles (William Powell). Charles would prefer to enjoy the high life with his rich, beautiful, and witty wife Nora (Myrna Loy) but she thinks it would be exciting for him to pursue the case.

I have seen this many times and I always forget who the murderer is. That is because the mystery is just a vehicle to showcase the fantastic repartee of Loy and Powell. They make the perfect married couple, playfully bickering but obviously in love. It is also the ideal escapist fare when one has, say, spent a whole day watching a manhunt in Boston and thinking about people who have lost their lives and limbs.

Fred Astaire plays Guy Holden a professional dancer living in London. He meets Mimi (Ginger Rogers) when she suffers a wardrobe malfunction at London customs. He isn't too helpful and she gives him the brushoff. She meets him again at an English seaside resort where she has gone to stage an en flagrante discovery so she can divorce her husband. A misunderstanding leads her to believe that Guy is the hired correspondent.

All this is just a good excuse for the dance numbers which are the point. The Night and Day ballroom number is so elegant and sublime that this movie would rank high with me even if that was all it contained. However, we have the almost equally delightful "The Continental" dance and a nice tap solo for Fred to "A Needle in a Haystack".

I find Alice Brady annoying but the always reliable Edward Everett Horton is along as Mimi's lawyer and Eric Rhodes is hilarious as the egotistical family man correspondent.

This excellent four-and-a-half hour adaptation of the Victor Hugo novel, noted as being the most complete rendering of the story, was released as three films. I watched one film a day over three days. Part One: "Une tempête sous un crâne" (Tempest in a Skull) covers Jean Valjean's release from prison and redemption in the encounter with the Bishop through the death of Fantine. Part Two: "Les Thénardier"(The Thenardiers) covers little Cosette's treatment at the hands of the Thenardiers and her rescue then flash forwards eight years to Paris to relate Cosette's romance with Marius and the Thenardiers' threats against Jean Valjean. Part Three: Liberté, liberté chérie (Freedom, dear Freedom) covers the Uprising of 1832 and the conflict at the barricades through the end of the novel. There is certainly enough plot to justify the long running time!

The production is very polished and beautiful. The highlight is Harry Baur's portrayal of Jean Valjean. He is a powerful, taciturn, and unassuming man, equally convincing as a convict and as a gentleman. Baur is one of those actors that can express a world of emotion with a glance and is superb. Charles Vanel plays Javert as a relentless enforcer of the law, there is no evil posturing here. The other performances are not quite up to these two but are quite adequate. The set design and costuming are lavish and evocative of 19th Century France. Finally, there is the fabulous score by Arthur Honegger. Very highly recommended.

Kihachi is the actor-manager of a traveling theater company that plays the backwaters of Japan. The shows they put on are comically bad but seem to entertain rural audiences. Kihachi aims to stay in the town where an old flame lives so he can visit with his illegitimate son, whom he has high hopes for but who thinks of the father as an "uncle". Kihachi's current mistress is consumed with jealousy and plots to have a young actress seduce the son to foil the father's plans.

That's about all there is to the plot but, this being an Ozu film, plot is not all that important. Instead, this is a character study focusing on how the different characters cope with relationships, failure, and aging. It is ultimately an examination of family love in real life as are all Ozu's films. This is arguably his best and most mature silent film. It was remade in 1959 as Floating Weeds, Ozu's first color film.

Leslie Howard plays Philip Carey, a club-footed medical student with the soul of an artist. He falls helplessly in love with Mildred (Bette Davis), a waitress with a heart of ice who treats him like dirt. She figures that she can always go to Philip for help when she is in trouble and she is right.

Bette Davis begged Warner Bros. to loan her to RKO so that she could play the meaty but unsympathetic role of Mildred. Her gamble paid off and the movie made her a star. Her performance is excellent and far less mannered than she would get in later roles. Leslie Howard is actually the central character and he acquits himself well as the rather weak young man.

During the French Reign of Terror, the mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel saves French aristocrats from the guillotine and spirits them away to England. Leslie Howard plays the gallant Pimpernel and his alter ego the foppish Sir Percy Blakeley. Merle Oberon is French-born Lady Blakeley, who is unaware of her husband's valor and is easy prey to the evil Chauvelin (Raymond Massey), who must find the Pimpernel at any cost.

This is my favorite ever performance by Howard. He is just wonderful in both the guises he plays and seems a man worthy of the love of a woman like Scarlet O'Hara. Raymond Massey is always good and the story is very entertaining. Recommended.

Old Billy Bones (Lionel Barrymore) turns up at the inn run by Jim Hawkins's (Jackie Cooper) mother with a mysterious chest. Soon other unsavory characters turn up in search of Billy. Upon Billy's untimely death, Jim discovers a treasure map in the chest. Gentlemen of the town hire a ship to search for the treasure. Before they know it, unscrupulous but loveable Long John Silver (Wallace Beery) has signed on as cook and brought aboard his pirate cronies as crew. Long John and Jim become fast friends and the adventure begins.

This movie was a ton of fun and I'm sure immensely popular with boys when it came out. I thought the style forshadowed The Wizard of Oz, also directed by Fleming in a lot of ways. The pirates are deliciously vile!

Bea Pullman (Claudette Colbert) is a young widow who carries on her husband's maple syrup business to support her daughter Jesse. Delilah Johnson arrives on her doorstep looking for work with her own daughter Peola and proves to be a godsend. Bea goes on to use Delilah's secret pancake recipe to climb to success first in the restaurant business and then as a pancake mix queen (under the Aunt Delilah label). Bea offers Delilah a share in the business but Delilah is not interested in money or in having her own home.

Peola (Fredi Washington) easily "passes" as white and struggles against her black identity, eventually disowning her own mother and breaking her heart. Bea has daughter troubles of her own when Jesse falls for Bea's beau, Stephen Archer (Warren William), world's richest fish scientist.

There is obviously quite a bit of stereotyping in this film. Poor Delilah seems to downright enjoy getting the short end of the stick in the eyes of the film makers. On the other hand, this is one of the few films from classic Hollywood to give black characters emotional lives of their own. And although Delilah is content to serve, Peola, while conflicted and full of self-loathing, is portrayed as a sophisticated complex woman. The performances of Louise Beavers and Fredi Washington are quite good and Claudette Colbert is sympathetic as Bea.

I used to own the VHS tape and just loved this movie to pieces. Unfortunately, it's not out on DVD. What's up with that????

150. La mujer del puerto ("The Woman of the Port") (1934, dir. Boytler)
Rating: B+
Finished: April 28, 2013
Review: ou just never know when you are going to find that special film! I had never heard of this one until I was gathering films for this exercise. Rosario (Andrea Palma) lives in poverty with her aging father and is in love with a neighbor who says he will marry her when he has more money. Her father dies and her lover proves unfaithful so Rosario becomes a prostitute on the docks in another town. One night she meets a client who defends her from a drunk and her fate takes an even more tragic turn. (I will not spoil the ending but I was shocked.)

The plot and acting in this are secondary to some exceptionally beautiful images. In terms of the story, the film is uneven with certain parts moving at a very leisurely pace and the final fifteen minutes unnaturally rushed. Some of the acting is a bit overdone. However, the composition of the shots and some of the editing are just masterful. There is a scene where Rosario is escorting her father's coffin through a group of carnival revelers that is breathtaking. The whole movie is bathed in gorgeous expressionist lighting. Well, well worth seeing.

Director Arcady Boytler was born in Moscow and directed silent films in the USSR and Europe before arriving in Mexico and meeting Sergei Eisenstein at the time of the filming of Qué viva Mexico! (1932). He made several other films during Mexico's Golden Age of cinema but it looks like this is the one that is most readily available on DVD.

Theater empresario and master manipulator Oscar Jaffe (John Barrymore) discovers lingerie model Mildred Plotkin (Carole Lombard), changes her name to Lily Garland and bullies her into stardom. They become lovers but his posturing and possessiveness finally drive her away to Hollywood. They meet again on the Twentieth Century Limited which is taking Oscar from Chicago to New York after a flop and Lily from Hollywood to New York where she has signed to work with another director. The fireworks continue on the train as Oscar seizes on Lily as his last chance to get the financing he needs to save his theater.

This early screwball comedy, written by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, is a lot of fun. Barrymore is especially good as the totally phony and ultra-flamboyant producer. Carole Lombard starts out sane and builds to a fever pitch of diva-itis after her character becomes a Hollywood star. Roscoe Karns and Walter Connelly are excellent as Oscar's assistants.

Sometimes this was a tad over the top for me but there were many moments that made me laugh out loud. I loved those crazy chalk marks on the floor and the whole concept of putting on the Passion Play on Broadway complete with camels and an ibis.

his is Josef von Sternberg's interpretation of the rise of Catherine the Great. Marlene Dietrich plays Catherine as a wide-eyed innocent for the first half of the movie (this was quite a stretch!) then as a sly dominatrix after she produces an heir to the throne. Sam Jaffe must have been told to throw caution to the wind in coming up with his imbecilic Grand Duke Peter. Finally, Louise Dresser plays Empress Elizabeth as a kind of Mid-Western fish wife having a very bad day.

My descriptions may lead you to believe that I did not enjoy the film but au contraire. By all objective measures it is very bad indeed but it is the kind of high camp that is endlessly watchable. The art design alone is simply so delirously over the top that it is not to be missed. The wedding banquet in particular is such a mixture of the pornographic and the sinister as to take ones breath away. And then there is the photography. Von Sternberg must have had Dietrich shot through every kind of sheer fabric he could get his hands on. It's as if he went completely off the rails in some kind of masochistic frenzy of adoration. It really cannot be adequately described but must be experienced.

Dr. Vitus Vendergast (Bela Lugosi) meets a newly-weds Peter (David Manners) and Joan on a train and hitches a ride with them to their ultimate destination. On the way, the car goes off the road, the driver is killed and the party is forced to take refuge in the creepy modernist castle of Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff).

This suits Vendergast just fine as he is on a mission to make Poelzig, his sworn enemy, suffer slowly. Poelzig left Vendergast to rot in prison for 15 years then told his wife he was dead and took her for his own.

The movie is basically a duel of wits between Vendergast and Poelzig, who also has plans to use Joan as the sacrifice in a Black Mass.

This is the kind of thing I just eat up. Sure it can be a little campy in places and Lugosi emotes furiously but that is part of the fun. The Expressionist cinematography and art direction are quite wonderful. Highly recommended.

TCM aired this movie for the first time Christmas Eve 2012 and I just had to watch. This is a lot of fun and Stan and Ollie are great as Stannie Dum and Ollie Dee in a world populated by all the characters from nursery rhymes. It's not specifically a holiday movie though Santa does put in an appearance.

Little Shirley (Shirley Temple) loves to spend time at the airport with her buddy Loop (James Dunn), a pilot who was the friend of her late father. Shirley's mother works as a maid in the house of some stuck-up rich people the Smythes, their horrible little girl (Jane Withers), and crotchety Uncle Ned. When Shirley's mother goes to Heaven also, there is a custody battle between Uncle Ned, Loop, and Mrs. Smythes sister who just so happens to be Loop's ex-fiance. If you don't know where this is going, you haven't seen enough Shirley Temple movies! With Jane Darwell as the family cook, sporting a great Irish brogue. This is the one with "The Good Ship Lollypop."

Well, I haven't seen a Shirley Temple movie in a long, long time and I thoroughly enjoyed this one. Shirley Temple and James Dunn make an outstanding pair. He really seems like he could be her Daddy. Jane Withers is awesomely bratty. I can imagine that this would not be good for small children with little Shirley being orphaned and all. Nothing great but good fun despite a little schmaltz.

Frank Capra made this pleasant comedy between It Happened One Night and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. Higginsville is a one-man town, all the business are owned by J.L. Higgins (Walter Connelly) and run by his various sons-in-law. Dan Brooks (Warner Baxter) is married to eldest daughter Margaret (Helen Vinson) and is reluctantly managing a paper box business but his passion is his race horse Broadway Bill. The youngest Higgins daughter, Alice (Myrna Loy), is a free spirit like Dan and is secretly in love with him. Dan, however, treats Alice like a kid. One fine day, Dan decides he can take no more of Higginsville and sets out with no money to enter Broadway Bill in an important Derby race with the support of faithful groom Whitey (Clarence Muse) and Alice. The rest of the picture follows their trials and tribulations on the way to the big race.

Although the ending is weak and the story is a bit sentimental, I enjoyed this a lot. Frank Capra seems to get good performances from all his actors. Warner Baxter, who is generally ultra intense is as relaxed as I have ever seen him and even funny at time. Myrna Loy is great as always. I was also pleased with the treatment of the character of the African-American groom. Although there is some stereotyping of course, he is portrayed as a real member of the team. It was so refreshing after a couple of Stepin Fetchin films in a row!

I read that Capra was not a big fan of this film because Warner Baxter was afraid of horses and Capra thought it showed. I didn't notice. Capra remade the story in 1950 as Riding High with Bing Crosby and Colleen Gray.

Engaging "women's picture"/courtroom drama. John Prentice (William Powell) is a high-powered defense attorney whose practice keeps him away from home most of the time. Evelyn Prentice (Myrna Loy) is his long-suffering but adoring wife. Their happy home is threatened when a beautiful client (Rosalind Russell) throws herself at John and an unsavory "poet" insinuates himself into Evelyn's life. With Una Merkel as Evelyn's wise-cracking friend and permanent house guest.

I thought this one was a whole lot of fun. It goes to show that Powell and Loy were the perfect screen couple even when the material gets more serious as here. I had never heard of the director but he certainly keeps things moving right along. I adore Una Merkel and she has a substantial supporting part here. This was Rosalind Russell's screen debut. She was still finding her way. I seem to always get annoyed at courtroom dramas and here neither the judge nor the attorneys ever seem to have heard of the concept "conflict of interest". The film was strong enough that the improbable ending and travesty of court procedure was fine by me.

Empress Elizabeth of Russia (Flora Robson) is determined that her indolent, debauched nephew Grand Duke Peter (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.) should wed a German princess. He resists this idea until he meets the lady in question (Elisabeth Bergner), who has loved him dearly since childhood. Upon their marriage, she is renamed Catherine. Sadly, Peter descends slowly into madness but Catherine stands by her man until his public humiliations become too much to bear. It is not giving too much away to say she goes on to become Catherine the Great but in this version the death of Peter is strictly against orders. All Catherine was ever looking for was a little love.

It is impossible to watch this film without comparing it to Josef von Sternberg's weird but wonderful The Scarlet Empress released the same year. That is definitely the superior of the two films primarily because Bergner cannot hold a candle to Marlene Dietrich.

However, if taken alone, The Rise of Catherine the Great is not half bad. Flora Robson is excellent as the randy but principled Elizabeth and, while Fairbanks, Jr. struck me as too bland at the beginning of the film, he really grew on me. Bergner, the wife of director Czinner, was a famous Austrian actress and this was her first English speaking role. She is competent but unfortunately her sometimes wide-eyed coquettishness and petite stature make her look like she's playing dress-up in those period costumes. Speaking of costumes, they and the sets are lavish and wonderful

Sugiko works as a waitress in a Tokyo tea room. It looks like the world is her oyster. She has just received a proposal from her boyfriend and an offer from a movie studio for work as an actress. Then a rich young man hits her with his car. She loses her boyfriend due to a misunderstanding but the driver is falling for her. Can true love conquer the objections of his snobbish aristocratic family?

Naruse really hit his stride in this, his final silent film. I liked the way I was kept off guard with where the plot was taking me. It all felt very fresh. The film is bracketed with shots of life on a busy downtown Tokyo Street, which were an enjoyable slice of history. It's a bit melodramatic but I would recommend it.

Bob and Jill Lawrence are vacationing with their daughter Betty in Switzerland when their friend Louis is murdered. Before dieing Louis passes them secret information. Betty is promptly kidnapped to prevent the Lawrences from going to the authorities with the information. Can the Lawrences rescue Betty? Can another assassination be prevented? With Leslie Banks and Edna Best as the Lawrences, Nova Philbeam as Betty, Pierre Fresnay as Louis, and Peter Lorre as the head of the kidnapping/spy ring.

This is OK early Hitchcock but I can understand why he wanted to remake it on a bigger budget in 1956. The suspense leaves something to be desired, though the Albert Hall scene is still classic. The picture is well worth seeing if only to catch Peter Lorre's performance. He makes a wonderfully jovial yet really creepy bad guy.

First, let me say that this is a really gorgeous film lensed by Gregg Toland and with wonderful authentic 19th Century Russian sets. There is a glorious scene of Russian Orthodox Easter in a church. I have never seen Anna Sten before and she is very beautiful and appealing in the love scenes. She overdoes it a bit after her fall but not too badly. Frederic March is good as always.

Something happened to this film between the first act and the second act. The early love scenes took their time and were a pleasure to watch. The later scenes were good too but seemed rushed or something – like this was clumsily edited for time.

Jane's (Maureen O'Hara) ex-fiancee Harry Holt returns to Africa in search of a treasure in ivory in the elephant's graveyard and in hopes of luring her back to England. She belongs heart and soul to Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller), however. Tarzan agrees to lead Harry and his no-good partner to the elephant's graveyard but balks at letting them take any ivory out.

The sequel is superior to the original in the case of the Tarzan series. It is certainly less offensive, although it does suffer from quite a lot of bwana-isms. The relationship between Tarzan and Jane (too include Cheeta) is quite charming. However, the film does suffer a certain sameness in the action. It is basically Tarzan wrestling a wild animal into submission over and over again.

This film came out in April 1934 before the Production Code began to be enforced. Clearly, we would not have been treated to a fairly lengthy scene of Jane's nude underwater bathing otherwise! Interestingly, Tarzan does not feel called upon to skinny dip.

John and Mary Sims (Tom Keane and Karen Morely) are about to be evicted when Mary's uncle offers them a farm which is about to be foreclosed on. Although they know nothing of farming, they move there. They meet a dispossessed Swedish farmer (John Qualen) who shows them the ropes. Then John gets the idea of starting a cooperative where tradesmen will work on the barter system. Before he knows it, he has an entire village on the land and the men are plowing the fields.

King Vidor made this film with his own money as a labor of love, having been captivated by the "back to the land" movement as a solution to the woes of the Great Depression. The acting is earnest, but not particularly great. Unfortunately, I could not watch the film without questioning most of the basic premises. If these people could make a go of it why were so many farmers losing their farms in the Depression? Of course it helped that the land was essentially free (somehow these people manage to get it for $1.85 at a foreclosure auction). The seed etc. was miraculously available free. Finally, these folks dam and divert a stream a couple of miles away to solve their drought problem. In real life, the farmers whose lands were naturally irrigated by the stream would have been there in a heartbeat with guns.

It was a pretty idea of course. And an interesting look at some thinking during the depression.