Daily Archives: May 25, 2013

Curly Top (1935)

Posted on May 25, 2013 | 2 comments

Curly TopCurly Top Poster
Directed by Irving Cummings
1935/USA
Fox Film Corporation
Repeat viewing

 

 

Reynolds: My word, miss. You *are* a package.

This is the kind of movie that gives Shirley Temple a bad name in some circles.  Elizabeth Blair (Shirley Temple) and her grown-up sister Mary (Rochelle Hudson) are orphans living in an asylum.  One day when the trustees are visiting the home, a new, immensely wealthy, handsome young trustee Edward Morgan (John Boles) espies Elizabeth singing “Animal Crackers” to her fellow orphans and it is love at first sight.  He brings the sisters to his Southhampton summer home where everyone, including the servants, goes gaga over the little moptop and Morgan falls in love with Mary.

Curly Top 1

I’m proud to be a Shirley Temple fan but this one is not good.  She is almost too cute and nothing rings true.  The songs are OK, though Boles has a couple of numbers that I could have lived without as well.

“Animal Crackers”

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Posted in 1935, Movie Reviews

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The Wedding Night (1935)

Posted on May 25, 2013 | 4 comments

The Wedding Nightwedding night poster
Directed by King Vidor
1935/USA
Howard Productions
First viewing

 

I’m about ten films away from finishing up 1935.  Running into a film like this one that I had never heard of makes me glad that I stick with it until the end.  This romantic drama really impressed me.

Gary Cooper plays Tony Barrett a hard-drinking washed-up novelist who can’t even get an advance on his next book. He and his wife Dora move to his family farmhouse in Connecticut where they can live for free.  Their neighbors are a community of very traditional Poles.  One of these buys some of Tony’s acreage and Dora, who decides she doesn’t like country life, moves back to New York.  Tony remains behind and finds inspiration for his next book in Anya (Anna Sten), the daughter of his neighbors.  He also gradually falls in love with her.  But she has a strict Polish upbringing and is promised in marriage to a local boy.  With Ralph Bellamy (complete with Polish accent!) as the loutish fiance.

the wedding night 1

This is a very mature and realistic sort of romance and the performances are terrific.  It’s refreshingly different from the all too familiar plotlines of other films of the period.  I think Cooper’s performance equals or betters anything he ever did.  The movie is also beautiful to look at with cinematography by Gregg Toland and many Polish folkloric details.  Highly recommended.

King Vidor won the award for best director at the 1935 Venice Film Festival for this film, which was nominated for the Mussolini Cup.

To watch clips on TCM:  http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/290368/Wedding-Night-The-Movie-Clip-Give-Another-Pig-.html

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Posted in 1935

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