Gulliver’s Travels Directed by Dave Fleischer
Written by Edmond Seward, Dan Gordon et al base on the immortal tale by Jonathan Swift
1939/USA
Fleischer Studios
First viewing/Netflix rental
[box] [repeated line] Gabby: There’s a giant on the beach![/box]
The creators of Popeye and Betty Boop are worthy competitors to Disney in the feature animated film department.
The story is very loosely based on the Lilliputian episode in Swift’s novel. Gulliver washes up on a beach where he is discovered by town crier Gabby. But Gabby can’t get a word in edgewise to report his discovery because the King of Lilliput and the King of Blefiscu are too busy arguing about what song should be sung at the wedding of their son and daughter. The argument escalates to war and the King of Lilliput finally hears when he understands that having a giant as an ally might be a very good thing. Gulliver is more inclined to be a peace maker though.
I enjoyed this. The songs are catchy and the animation, particularly the roto-scoped animation in the Gulliver scenes, is striking. It’s not quite up with Disney’s work of the same period but almost. I got the Blu-Ray edition as a rental and the restoration looks beautiful.
Gulliver’s Travels was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Original Song (Faithful Forever) and Best Original Score (Victor Young).
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex
Directed by Michael Curtiz
Written by Norman Reilly Raine and Aeneas MacKenzie based on the play by Maxwell Anderson
1939/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/Netflix rental
[box] Queen Elizabeth I: To be a Queen is to be less than human, to put pride before desire, to search Men’s hearts for tenderness, and find only ambition. To cry out in the dark for one unselfish voice, to hear only the dry rustle of papers of state. To turn to one’s beloved with stars for eyes and have him see behind me only the shadow of the executioner’s block. A queen has no hour for love, time presses, and events crowd upon her, and her shell, an empty glittering husk, she must give up all the a woman holds most dear.[/box]
The quote, picture, and clip probably say more about the quality of this fictionalized costume drama than my feeble words can do.
Queen Elizabeth I (Bette Davis) is many years older than her favorite Robert Devereaux, the Earl of Essex (Errol Flynn). Theirs is a schizophrenic relationship. They love each other dearly but he wants to wear the pants in the family, something a monarch cannot allow. Essex also presents a threat due to his popularity with the mob. After Essex, who commands an army, disobeys orders one time too many, Elizabeth must make a painful decision. With Olivia de Havilland and Nanette Fabray (in her screen debut) as ladies-in-waiting, Vincent Price as Sir Walter Raleigh, Donald Crisp as Sir Francis Drake, and Alan Hale as an Irish rebel leader.
This currently ranks as my least favorite Bette Davis performance of all time. She was at least 30 years younger than the royal character she was portraying and must have felt that hamming it up would make her more believable. This also has many, many of the kind of “I love you – I hate you” lines that make me cringe. I found the whole thing to verge on camp. The film has a relatively high IMDb user rating so your mileage may vary.
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex was nominated for Academy Awards in the following categories: Best Color Cinematography; Best Art Direction; Best Sound Recording; Best Special Effects; and Best Music, Scoring (Erich Wolfgang Korngold).
Nights of Cabiria (“Le Notti di Cabiria”)
Directed by Federico Fellini Written by Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli and Pier Paolo Pasolini based on a novel by Maria Molinari
1957/Italy/France
Dino de Laurentis Cinematografica/ Les Films Marceau
Repeat viewing; Criterion Collection DVD
#337 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
IMDb users say 8.3/10; I say 10/10
<i>Maria ‘Cabiria’ Ceccarelli: There’s another girl, my friend Wanda, she lives there too, but I don’t bother with the others. The others all sleep under the arches in Caracalla. Mind you, I have my own house with water, electricity, bottled gas, I’ve got everything, even a thermometer. See this one here? She never ever slept under an arch. Well, maybe once… or twice. Of course, my house is nothing like this. But I like it.<i>
Right before Fellini got deep into Fellini-esque territory, he made this heartfelt masterpiece. I love Giulietta Masina and this film.
Cabiria (Masina) is a prostitute with a weakness for the wrong guys. Despite supporting what seems to be a series of freeloaders, she has managed to buy her own little house and amass a small nest egg. Things begin to go wrong when her latest boyfriend snatches her purse and pushes her in the river where she is only just saved from drowning. She wonders why since she always gave him whatever he wanted. (Favorite line from her rant: “Go back to selling balloons!”).
Cabiria pulls herself together and goes back to trading insults with her friends and plying her trade. One night, she heads for the Via Veneto, usually off limits for such as herself, where she chances a meeting with a famous movie star who takes her home. She can’t believe her luck but ends up locked in a bathroom when the star’s lover appears to patch up a quarrel.
An encounter with a man distributing alms to the poor and the sight of a once well-off prostitute reduced to living in a cave inspires Cabiria to join friends on a pilgrimage to a holy site. One of their group seeks a miracle cure but Cabiria prays only that the Virgin help her to change her life. Later she takes the stage in a hypnotist’s show. While under, she reveals her essential purity and dreams of marriage. It looks like her prayers may have been answered when she meets an accountant afterwards who says he wants to marry her and doesn’t care about her past.
Everyone should see this movie so I won’t give away the ending. Suffice it to say that it is among the most moving in film history.
This is a movie about hope and survival. Maybe a bit like post-war Italy? Cabiria makes more than her fair share of mistakes and takes many more than her fair share of lumps but always comes out smiling. She is played with incredible delicacy by Giulietta Masina, who must have one of the greatest faces of any actress ever and who moves with the grace of Chaplin. (Her mambo is outstanding!) I love the combination of comedy and pathos and the ever-present social satire Fellini weaves in throughout. Add to that the Nino Rota score and you certainly have a classic for the ages.
Nights of Cabiria won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Masina won the award for Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival. Cabiria later became a New York dime-a-dance girl when the story was remade as the Broadway musical Sweet Charity and its 1969 screen adaptation directed by Bob Fosse and starring Shirley MacLaine.
Tarzan Finds a Son! Directed by Richard Thorpe
Written by Cyril Hume based on the characters created by Edgar Rice Burroughs
1939/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing/Netflix rental
[box] Jane: What’s the matter?
Tarzan: People![/box]
This is tolerable but a big step down from the previous film in the series, Tarzan and His Mate.
A plane mysteriously crashes in a special corner of the African jungle. All aboard are killed but a baby, who is miraculously uninjured. Cheeta finds the boy and takes him home to Tarzan and Jane. At Tarzan’s suggestion, they name him Boy. Several years later, an expedition arrives searching for the wreckage and any trace of the passengers. It turns out Boy stood to inherit a large fortune. They figure out the identity of Tarzan and Jane’s child quickly but most of the party stand to profit from Boy’s demise. The rest of the story is a good guys v. bad guys adventure.
This is not terrible but it does lack a lot of the charm of the earlier film. There are some nice jungle conveniences a la Gilligan’s Island. Otherwise, it is a routine action film with elephants saving the day.
Intermezzo: A Love Story Directed by Gregory Ratoff
Written by George O’Neill, Gösta Stevens and Gustaf Molander
1939/USA Selznick International Pictures
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
[box] Anita Hoffman: I have been an intermezzo in his life.[/box]
This little melodrama of adulterous love introduced the utterly radiant Ingrid Bergman to America.
Violin virtuoso Holger (Leslie Howard) comes home to his loving family after a world tour culminating in the retirement of his accompanist. He soon meets brilliant and beautiful young pianist Anita (Ingrid Bergman) who is giving his eight-year-old daughter lessons. Holger is captivated first by Anita’s playing and then by her person and they fall in love. Anita is plagued with moral scruples but cannot resist the attraction.
Well, one can immediately see why Bergman became a great big star! She is fabulous. The movie is ok but why oh why do they always have to toss a child under a car to bring a man to his senses?
Golden Boy Directed by Rouben Mamoulian
Written by Lewis Meltzer, Daniel Taradash, Sara Y. Mason and Victor Heerman from a play by Clifford Odets
1939/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation
First viewing/Netflix rental
[box] Joe Bonaparte: [Last Lines] Poppa, I’ve come home.[/box]
This is worth seeing if only for the very young William Holden and an amazing performance by Lee J. Cobb — oh, wait! there’s Barbara Stanwyck too.
Joe Bonaparte (Holden) is the light of his father’s (Cobb) life. Joe is a fine violinist and Poppa has bought him a rare Italian violin for his 21st birthday. But Joe is sick of the ribbing he takes from the guys and anxious to make money. It turns out that he is also a fabulous boxer. He seeks out manager Tom Moody and Moody reluctantly substitutes Joe for an ailing fighter. He wins the fight and Moody takes over his management. But Joe still has ties to home and his music. Moody sends out his girlfriend Lorna (Stanwyck) to seduce him back into training. She is more successful than Moody intended, hooking Joe into the bargain. When gangster Eddie Fuseli (Joseph Calleia) tries to buy Joe, Moody resists but Joe, thinking he has been spurned by Lorna, goes along for the opportunity for a championship fight. Has Joe sold his soul into the bargain?
When you are dealing with a Clifford Odets screenplay you know you are in for some very literate dialogue and heaping helpings of social consciousness. Other than that, this is a fairly predictable boxing movie. But the acting pulls this above the ordinary. Lee J. Cobb, only seven years older than Holden, absolutely disappears into the character of his just-off-the-boat Italian father. It is truly wonderful to behold. And then Holden is extraordinarily gorgeous with his mop of curly hair and Stanwyck is her very able self. I enjoyed it.
Victor Young received an Academy Award nomination for his beautiful original score.
Daybreak (Le jour se leve) Directed by Marcel Carné
Written by Jacques Viot and Jacques Prévert
1939/France
Productions Sigma
First viewing/Netflix rental
#134 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
[box] M. Valentin: You’re the type women fall in love with . . . I’m the type that interests them.[/box]
This has many fantastic elements but the story didn’t hang together well for me on this first viewing.
The story is told as a series of flashbacks as François (Jean Gabin) sits in his bachelor apartment waiting out the police and contemplating the events leading him to fire a fatal shot. François works as a sandblaster in a filthy factory. (Why in American films do the characters so frequently have no visible means of support?) One day Françoise (Jacqueline Laurent) comes in to deliver flowers to a foreman’s wife and François is instantly in love with the young beauty. It seems to him a match made in heaven because they are both orphans named after St. Francis. He starts seeing her but it soon appears that there is another man in her life.
François follows her to a rendezvous with Valentin (the superb Jules Berry) a middle-aged dog trainer with a silver tongue. At the bar, Valentin’s ex-assistant and mistress Clara (Arletty) strikes up a conversation with François. The two begin an on-again-off-again tryst but François continues to see and pine for Françoise. Valentin shows up to try to break up the relationship, claiming to be the girl’s father. Things take their inevitable course until Valentin ends up in Francois’s apartment with a bullet in his gut.
The acting in this, with the exception of the ingenue’s, is absolutely outstanding. Gabin is at his intense working class hero best and Jules Berry makes a very interesting, even mesmerizing, villain. Likewise, the film is exquisitely shot. I loved the touch of the ringing alarm clock at the end. However, I never did fully understand the nature of Françoise’s relationship with Valentin and I had a hard time buying into Francois’s desperation for some reason. While I could understand why this is a key work of French poetic realism (and another great 1930’s French proto-noir), I didn’t love it. Maybe it will take me more than one viewing.
Daybreak was remade as The Long Night in 1947 by director Anatole Litvak with Henry Fonda, Barbara Bel Geddes, Vincent Price and Ann Dvorak. I’d like to see that sometime.
Clip – Gabin brooding (no subtitles, but little dialogue either)
Jesse James Directed by Henry King
Written by Nunnally Johnson
1939/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
First viewing/Netflix rental
[box] Engineer: What you aimin’ to do, pardner?
Jesse Woodson James: I ain’t aimin’ to do nuthin’. I’m doin’ it. I’m holdin’ up this train.
Engineer: The whole train?[/box]
I didn’t know what to expect but I found this to be a solid and enjoyable western.
This is a highly fictionalized account of the criminal career of Jesse James (Tyrone Power) and his brother Frank (Henry Fonda). As such it emphasizes the folk hero aspect of their exploits. The story takes place in the aftermath of the Civil War. Rapacious railroad companies have hired armed thugs to bilk farmers out of their land at unconscionable prices. Jesse and Frank fight with the men who try to take their mother’s farm. The railroad agents organize a posse to arrest the brothers for attempted murder and frighten the mother (Jane Darwell) into a premature death.
Many local men are in the same boat and Jesse and Frank easily organize a gang to take revenge by holding up trains. The communities believe that this is simple justice and support the boys. But as Jesse’s wife (Nancy Kelly) predicts, he soon descends into common criminality. With Brian Donlevy as a particularly evil railroad man, Donald Meek as the railroad president, Randolph Scott as a local lawman, Henry Hull as Jesse’s father-in-law and crusading editor, and John Carradine as the coward Robert Ford.
This kept my interest throughout despite the seemingly obligatory love triangle sub-plot. This features one of Tyrone Powers’ better performances and all the character actors are first-rate. It was interesting to see Henry Fonda be a robber after his more noble 1939 performances. He steals all the scenes he is in.
Two horses were actually blindfolded and forced to go over a cliff during an escape scene. The incident led the American Humane Association to begin overseeing the use of animals in films and eventually to its certification: “No animals were harmed in the making of this motion picture.”
Clips – Confronation between Frank and Jesse James – comparison of scenes between this film and The True Story of Jesse James (1957, dir. Nicholas Ray)
The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle Directed by H.C. Potter
Written by Richard Sherman, Oscar Hammerstein II, and Dorothy Yost
1939/USA
RKO Radio Pictures
First viewing/Netflix rental
[box]Opening credits: In a fabulous and beloved era, near enough to be warmly remembered, two bright and shining stars, VERNON and IRENE CASTLE, whirled across the horizon with the hearts of all who loved to dance. This is their story.[/box]
Given my lukewarm reaction to some of the later Astaire-Rogers films, I was very pleasantly surprised with this one.
This is a biopic on which Irene Castle was a consultant and a kind of tribute to her late husband Vernon. At the start, Vernon Castle (Fred Astaire) is a slapstick comedian on the vaudeville circuit. He meets Irene (Ginger Rogers) when they both attempt to rescue the same stray dog from drowning. Irene takes Vernon home to dry off and then “entertains” him with a very bad comedy song of her own. Vernon hightails it out of there as fast as possible, but not before revealing that he is a superb dancer.
When she sees Vernon on stage, Irene is appalled and tells him so. That is enough to hook Vernon. He starts rehearsing a ballroom dance act with Irene and they rapidly fall in love and marry. But vaudeville producers believe that no one will pay to see a man dance with his wife. With the help of manager Maggie Sutton (the wonderful Edna May Oliver) the Castles get work in Paris where they introduce Europe to American ragtime and become major pop culture icons. Their married bliss is interrupted when the accentless British Vernon feels compelled to enlist in the Canadian Flying Corps at the outbreak of World War I. Walter Brennan plays a sort of nanny and constant companion to Irene.
The story is sweet and sentimental, without the snappy dialogue usual to Astaire-Rogers films. It is nonetheless absolutely charming. What hooked me, though, was the beautiful dancing. The score is made up of old-fashioned tunes and Astaire and Rogers are just divine with this more sedate material.
This was Astaire and Rogers last film together at RKO. They would not be paired again until ten years later in The Barkeleys of Broadway when Rogers stepped in to replace an ailing Judy Garland..
The Little Princess Directed by Walter Lang
Written by Ethel Hill and Walter Ferris based on the novel by Frances Hogson Burnett
1939/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
[box] [last lines] Sara Crewe: Your Majesty. My Dad.[/box] Shirley Temple Black died today. She gave a lot of people a lot of pleasure through a very dark time and went on to be the U.S. representative to the UN and U.S. Ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia. She was 85. May she rest in peace. Her obituary can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/12/arts/shirley-temple-black-screen-star-dies-at-85.html?_r=0
Oddly enough, one of her movies was next up for me to watch. I remember this made me cry as a child. It seems more calculated now but there are still some nice moments.
The year is 1899. The place is London. Captain Crewe is called up for duty in the Boer War and puts his daughter Sara (Temple) into a snobby boarding school for girls. The Captain comes from a very good family and owns a diamond mine so the irrepressible Sara is catered to by the stern headmistress (Mary Nash). Everyone takes to calling her “The Little Princess.” Then her father turns up in the roster of the dead and the headmistress discovers his property was confiscated by the Boers. Sara, now an orphan, becomes a kind of scullery maid and lives in Dickensian conditions in the attic of the school. Sara refuses to believe that her father is really dead and continues to search for him among the wounded. With Arthur Treacher as an ex-music hall performer, Cesar Romero as an Indian servant, and Anita Louise and Richard Greene as the obligatory young lovers. This is quite OK. I was surprised to find it had been shot in color since I think the only times I had seen it before were on our old black and white TV. I think Mary Nash was the standout She was particularly good in Sara’s dream sequence.
I’ve been a classic movie fan for many years. My original mission was to see as many movies as I could get my hands on for every year from 1929 to 1970. I have completed that mission.
I then carried on with my chronological journey and and stopped midway through 1978. You can find my reviews of 1934-1978 films and “Top 10” lists for the 1929-1936 and 1944-77 films I saw here. For the past several months I have circled back to view the pre-Code films that were never reviewed here.
I’m a retired Foreign Service Officer living in Indio, California. When I’m not watching movies, I’m probably traveling, watching birds, knitting, or reading.
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