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John M. Stahl’s superior melodrama is a focus point for the study of African-Americans in Hollywood. Businesswoman Claudette Colbert a housekeeper Louise Beavers raise their daughters together for a story that expresses the racial divide in simple terms. Determined to pass for white, Beavers’ daughter Fredi Washington rejects her mother outright. The tale of motherly sacrifice is in some ways more honest than later ‘social justice’ films about race, yet it sticks closely to Hollywood’s segregationist rules.

Imitation of Life

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1167

1934 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 110 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date January 10, 2023 / 39.95

Starring: Claudette Colbert, Warren William, Louise Beavers, Fredi Washington, Rochelle Hudson, Ned Sparks, Juanita Quigley, Alan Hale, Henry Armetta, Hattie McDaniel, Paul Porcasi, Teru Shimada, Madame Sul-Te-Wan, Jane Withers, Dorothy Black.

Cinematography: Merrit Gerstad

Costumes: Travis Banton

Art Director: Charles D. Hall

Film Editor: Philip Cahn, Maurice Wright

Original Music: Heinz Roemheld...

Howard Hawks’ early sound picture is a worthy prison drama — with top performances from Walter Huston and Boris Karloff, both just as their film careers began to take off. Huston shows the screen how a stage actor can take command: his Da-turned warden character is corrupt yet retains his air of authority. Karloff’s convict seethes with raw menace, and Hawks uses him better than anyone except James Whale. That ‘other’ Code, the Production Code, found this show to be unbearably tense — even though all the brutality happens off-screen, violence is soaked into every scene.

The Criminal Code

Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1930 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 97 min. / Street Date March 22, 2021 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £15.99

Starring: Walter Huston, Phillips Holmes, Constance Cummings, Boris Karloff, DeWitt Jennings, Mary Doran, Ethel Wales, Clark Marshall, Arthur Hoyt, John St. Polis, Paul Porcasi, Andy Devine.

Cinematography: James Wong Howe, Ted Tetzlaff

Film Editor: Edward Curtis...

This amazing Busby Berkeley extravaganza is the best choice to impress newbies to pre-Code musical madness: it is absolutely irresistible. James Cagney’s nervy, terminally excitable stage producer makes the tale of Chester Kent accessible to viewers otherwise allergic to musicals — he’s as electric here as he is in his gangster movies. Remastered in HD, the fantastic, kaleidoscopic visuals will wow anybody — we really expect Porky Pig to pop up and stutter, “N-n-n-o CGI, Folks!”

Footlight Parade

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1933 / B&w / 1:37 flat Academy / 104 min. / Street Date July 16, 2019 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: James Cagney, Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell, Frank McHugh, Ruth Donnelly, Guy Kibbee, Hugh Herbert.

Cinematography: George Barnes

Art Directors: Anton Grot, Jack Okey Film Editor: George Amy

Original Music: Sammy Fain, Irving Kahal Harry Warren, Al Dubin

Written by Manuel Seff, James Seymour

Produced by Robert Lord

Directed by Lloyd Bacon

Our...

Delirious silver-screen glamour never disappoints! Marlene Dietrich’s six Paramount pictures for Josef von Sternberg arrive in a beautifully annotated disc set. The most creative director-muse relationship of the 1930s created an all-conquering German siren-goddess, a screen icon vom kopf bis fuss.

Dietrich & von Sternberg in Hollywood

Blu-ray

Morocco, Dishonored, Shanghai Express, Blonde Venus, The Scarlet Empress, The Devil is a Woman

The Criterion Collection 930

1930-1035 / B&W / 1:19 Movietone (2), 1:37 flat Academy (3) / 542 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date July 3, 2018 / 124.95

Starring: Marlene Dietrich, Gary Cooper, Victor McLaglen, Clive Brook, Herbert Marshall, Cary Grant, Sam Jaffe, Lionel Atwill, Cesar Romero.

Directed by Josef von Sternberg

Dietrich & von Sternberg in Hollywood assembles a package we’ve long desired, a quality set of the duo’s highly artistic Paramount pictures from the first half of the 1930s. The Scarlet Empress arrived in a sub-par Criterion disc early in 2001, and three more...

Gary Cooper movies on TCM: Cooper at his best and at his weakest Gary Cooper is Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” star today, Aug. 30, '15. Unfortunately, TCM isn't showing any Cooper movie premiere – despite the fact that most of his Paramount movies of the '20s and '30s remain unavailable. This evening's features are Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Sergeant York (1941), and Love in the Afternoon (1957). Mr. Deeds Goes to Town solidified Gary Cooper's stardom and helped to make Jean Arthur Columbia's top female star. The film is a tad overlong and, like every Frank Capra movie, it's also highly sentimental. What saves it from the Hell of Good Intentions is the acting of the two leads – Cooper and Arthur are both excellent – and of several supporting players. Directed by Howard Hawks, the jingoistic, pro-war Sergeant York was a huge box office hit, eventually earning Academy Award nominations in several categories,...

Ingrid Bergman ca. early 1940s. Ingrid Bergman movies on TCM: From the artificial 'Gaslight' to the magisterial 'Autumn Sonata' Two days ago, Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” series highlighted the film career of Greta Garbo. Today, Aug. 28, '15, TCM is focusing on another Swedish actress, three-time Academy Award winner Ingrid Bergman, who would have turned 100 years old tomorrow. TCM has likely aired most of Bergman's Hollywood films, and at least some of her early Swedish work. As a result, today's only premiere is Fielder Cook's little-seen and little-remembered From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (1973), about two bored kids (Sally Prager, Johnny Doran) who run away from home and end up at New York City's Metropolitan Museum. Obviously, this is no A Night at the Museum – and that's a major plus. Bergman plays an elderly art lover who takes an interest in them; her...

Jean Arthur films on TCM include three Frank Capra classics Five Jean Arthur films will be shown this evening, Monday, January 5, 2015, on Turner Classic Movies, including three directed by Frank Capra, the man who helped to turn Arthur into a major Hollywood star. They are the following: Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, You Can't Take It with You, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; George Stevens' The More the Merrier; and Frank Borzage's History Is Made at Night. One the most effective performers of the studio era, Jean Arthur -- whose film career began inauspiciously in 1923 -- was Columbia Pictures' biggest female star from the mid-'30s to the mid-'40s, when Rita Hayworth came to prominence and, coincidentally, Arthur's Columbia contract expired. Today, she's best known for her trio of films directed by Frank Capra, Columbia's top director of the 1930s. Jean Arthur-Frank Capra...

Ramon Novarro and Greta Garbo in ‘Mata Hari’: The wrath of the censors (See previous post: "Ramon Novarro in One of the Best Silent Movies.") George Fitzmaurice’s romantic spy melodrama Mata Hari (1931) was well received by critics and enthusiastically embraced by moviegoers. The Greta Garbo / Ramon Novarro combo — the first time Novarro took second billing since becoming a star — turned Mata Hari into a major worldwide blockbuster, with $2.22 million in worldwide rentals. The film became Garbo’s biggest international success to date, and Novarro’s highest-grossing picture after Ben-Hur. (Photo: Ramon Novarro and Greta Garbo in Mata Hari.) Among MGM’s 1932 releases — Mata Hari opened on December 31, 1931 — only W.S. Van Dyke’s Tarzan, the Ape Man, featuring Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan, and Edmund Goulding’s all-star Best Picture Academy Award winner Grand Hotel (also with Garbo, in addition to Joan Crawford, John Barrymore, Wallace Beery, and...