Category Archives: 1934

Movies released in 1934 and reviewed hr\ere

The Merry Widow (1934)

The Merry Widow
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch
Written by Ernest Vajda and Samuel Raphaelson based on an operetta by Victor Leon and Leo Stein
1934/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Repeat viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Sonia: There’s a limit to every widow.[/box]

Nothing like setting the Lubitsch touch to beautiful music.

Sonia (Jeanette MacDonald) is a young widow, the wealthiest woman in Europe, and owns 52% of the Kingdom of Marshovia.  She has been in strict mourning for about a year. Roué Capt. Danilo (Maurice Chevalier) has been trying hard to get her to raise her veil for him, presumably because she is the only woman in Marshovia who hasn’t said yes to him yet. Sonia rejects his advances but secretly they stir something in her that causes her to cast off her widow’s weeds and travel to Paris looking for love.

Disaster would strike if Sonia were to take her money out of Marshovia.  So Capt. Danilo is dispatched to marry her and bring her home.  He has never seen Sonia’s face.  The mission is not announced to him before he is welcomed back to Maxim’s where he is greeted by hordes of enthusiastic former conquests.  Sonia is there and passes herself off as Fifi.  Danilo is enchanted and they flirt wildly but Sonia is looking for more than a fling. The bumpy road to the happy ending is all part of the fun.  With Edward Everett Horton as the Marshovian Ambassador and Una Merkle as the Queen of Marshovia.

I had seen this years ago and had very fond memories of it.  I was very glad to catch up with it again.  This is everything a Lubitsch picture should be – naughty, playful, inventive and fun.  Like the fizz on champagne!  Jeanette MacDonald shows that when paired with someone like Chevalier she was an accomplished comedienne and a very sexy lady. Highly recommended.

The Merry Widow won the Academy Award for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration.

Clip – The Merry Widow Waltz

Heat Lightning (1934)

Heat Lightning
Directed by Mervyn LeRoy
Written by Brown Holmes and Warren Duff from a play by Leon Abrams and George Abbott
1934/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/Amazon Instant

George: Want another barbequed sandwich?
Jeff: I can hear the warden ask if I have any last words before they turn on the heat and you ask if I want another barbequed sandwich?

Unbelievable amount of classic pre-Code plot packed into just 63 fun minutes!

Olga (Aline MacMahon) runs a gas station/cafe with her younger sister Myra (Ann Dvorak) in the middle of the Mohave Desert.  She has become a crack auto mechanic.  The sisters’ location seems to be designed to keep young Myra as far away from men as possible.  This strategy is not working well and Myra is itching to slip away to a dance in town with her new boyfriend, a cad.

Matters heat up quickly when a pair of bank robbers happen to drop in.  One of these is George (Preston Foster), from whom Olga was escaping when she moved to the desert. He thinks he still has a hold on her but she just wants him to go away.  Then a couple of rich divorcees (Glenda Farrell and Ruth Donnelly) arrive fresh from Reno with their chauffeur (Frank McHugh).  George has no intention of leaving the place without their jewelry.  Can’t a girl get any privacy?

This has every single trope one might expect from a pre-Code drama including oodles of snappy dialogue delivered by actors who know how.  Warner Bros. had the best character actors ever!  It’s so nice to see perennial  “best friend” MacMahon in the lead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7F-bQi-j3k

 

Fashions of 1934 (1934)

Fashions of 1934
Directed by William Dieterle
Written by F. Hugh Herbert and Carl Erickson; story by Harry Collins and Warren Duff
1934/USA
First National Pictures (Warner Bros.)
First viewing/Amazon Instant

 

[box] “A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.” ― Coco Chanel[/box]

Pre-Code heaven.

William Powell plays Sherwood Nash, a con artist.  His latest con involved bootlegging Paris designs and selling them for a song in New York.  He is assisted in this by photographer Snap (Frank McHugh) and dress designer Lynn Mason (Bette Davis).  Lynn has a yen for Sherwood but he is easily distracted.

Eventually, the three move on to Paris to continue their con.  Then they meet up with Joe Ward (Hugh Herbert) an ostrich feather importer.  Sherwood stages a show starring a fake Russian Countess in hopes of starting a fashion trend.  A couple of lavish Busby Berkeley production numbers ensue.

With Powell, Davis, snappy dialogue and gorgeous girls and clothes, what’s not to like?

Oh those ostrich plumes!  And very little else …  Busby Berkeley number

Favorite Films of 1934

I watched 53 films that were released in 1934.  A complete list can be found here:  http://www.imdb.com/list/fmXidXs5FOE/?publish=save.  These were my ten favorites.

Note:  I was unable to get a copy of The Merry Widow (1934), directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Jeanette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier for viewing this time around.  I loved the film when I saw it several years ago and am fairly confident it would have placed in the top five if I had seen it.

1. It Happened One Night (Frank Capra):The Academy got it right when it made this film the first to win all five major awards.  It has rarely been equalled and never bettered as a romantic comedy. (#86 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die)

It Happened One Night

2.  L’Atalante (Jean Vigo) – Vigo captures the intensity of young love in images and sound in this masterpiece.  (#83 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die)

L'Atalante

3.  The Thin Man (W. S. Van Dyke):  The mystery is just an excuse to showcase the fantastic repartee of Myrna Loy and William Powell, the best screen couple of all time.  (#87 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die)

The Third Man

4.  The Gay Divorcee (Mark Sandrich):  Add snappy dialogue to the elegance of Astaire and Rogers and you have a timeless entertainment.

The Gay Divorcee

5.  Les Misérables (Raymond Bernard):  Harry Bauer’s unforgettable performance as Jean Valjean is the highlight of this sumptuous and comprehensive adaptation of the Victor Hugo novel.

Les Miserables 6

6.  A Story of Floating Weeds (Yasujiro Ozu):  A look at what it means to be a father through the story of an actor who has always hidden his identity from his son.

A Story of Floating Weeds

7.  Of Human Bondage (John Cromwell):  This sad story of a cripple’s obsession with a manipulative tart made Bette Davis a star.  Leslie Howard is no slouch in it either. I didn’t imagine that this film would make my Top 10 list after I viewed it but now see that it was exceptional, one of the very best of the year.

Of-Human-Bondage

8.  The Scarlet Pimpernel (Harold Young):  Leslie Howard is fantastic as the foppish Sir Percy Blakeney and the daring Scarlet Pimpernel in this entertaining adventure.

Scarlet Pimpernel 9.  Treasure Island (Victor Fleming): Fun adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel with some of the vilest pirates around and a good performance by Jackie Cooper as the young hero.

Treasure Island 2

10.  Imitation of Life (John Stahl):  One of the first studio films to portray African-Americans as complex characters with emotional lives of their own, the performances of Louise Beavers and Fredi Washington are must-sees.

imitation-of-life-3

Honorable Mentions:  La mujer del puerto  and, as previously mentioned, The Merry Widow

My rankings of 1934 films on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list:

1.  It Happened One Night

2.  L’Atalante

3.  The Thin Man

15.  The Black Cat (after The Scarlet Empress)

37.  It’s a Gift (after Manhattan Melodrama)

39.  Judge Priest (after A Mother Should Be Loved)

I will review Triumph of the Will as part of my 1935 viewing.

La Mujer del Puerto (1934)

La Mujer del Puerto (“The Woman of the Port”) (1934)la-mujer-del-puerto DVD
Directed by Arcady Boytler and Raphael J. Sevilla
1934/Mexico
Eurindia Films

First viewing

 

 

You 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.)

La Mujer del Puerto 1

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.

Excerpts with song “Vendo Placer” (Pleasure I Sell) as background

Judge Priest (1934)

Judge Priest Judge Priest Poster
Directed by John Ford
1934/USA
Fox Film Corporation

First viewing
#85 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

 

Opening crawl: The figures in this story are familiar ghosts of my own boyhood. The War between the States was over, but its tragedies and comedies haunted every grown man’s mind, and the stories that were swapped took deep root in my memory.

This is essentially a love letter to a simpler time – in this case 1890’s Kentucky, where folks still remember the glories of the antebellum South vividly.  Judge Priest (Will Rogers) presides over the court in his small town dispensing justice and folksy wisdom.  His nephew returns to town, having just graduated from law school, and is courting a local belle.  His mother objects due to the girl’s lack of breeding; her father’s identity is unknown.  The nephew’s first client is a mysterious loner who is charged with assault for defending the girl’s honor.  Judge Priest is forced to recuse himself from the case, which enables him to assist his nephew at the trial.  With Hattie McDaniel as Judge Priest’s cook/maid and Stepin Fetchit as his errand boy.

Judge Priest 2

Well, I have to admit that this was much better than Doctor Bull, the 1933 Will Rogers/John Ford movie I saw.  There is a sort of small town charm to the storytelling.  On the other hand, there is also much too much of Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry, better known in his Stepin Fetchit persona.  His shtick just makes my skin crawl.  I can’t help it. Many people would also be offended by Hattie McDaniel’s character but that does not rub me so much the wrong way.

Setting the racial stereotyping questions aside, I do not understand why this pleasant but unremarkable film should be rated a “must see.” It is an introduction to Will Rogers, who I suppose is a major personality of early 20th Century American pop culture but not more than some others we don’t meet in our journey through The List.  Will Rogers worked with Stepin Fetchit many times so it may be hard to pick a decent Rogers film that doesn’t include that character.

Clip – Stepin Fetchit and Hattie McDaniel

Baby Take a Bow (1934)

Baby Take a Bowbaby-take-a-bow poster
Directed by Harry Lachman
1934/USA
Fox Film Corporation

Second viewing?

 

Trigger Stone: So you’re Eddie Ellison’s kid.
Shirley Ellison: I’m not a kid, I’m a girl, and today is my birthday.

Kay (Claire Trevor) is waiting for her sweetheart Eddie Ellison (James Dunn) to be released from Sing Sing.  Eddie goes straight and they marry and have an adorable little girl, Shirley (Shirley Temple), who they love dearly.  Fast forward to six years later and Eddie is working as a chauffeur for a wealthy family.  Fellow ex-con Trigger Stone shows up and wants Eddie to fence some stolen property.  Eddie refuses.  A valuable pearl necklace is stolen from Eddie’s employer and insurance inspector Welch, who has long had it in for Eddie, tries to pin the blame on him.  Shirley helps clear her father’s name.

Baby Take a Bow 2

Shirley is irresistible, to those of us who love her, in this film, released when she had just turned six years old.  James Dunn is her ideal Daddy and Claire Trevor turns in a good performance as her mother.  This is part prison film, part gangster film, and part musical.  It all works in that 1930’s studio alternative reality.  No masterpiece but I enjoyed it.

Clip “On a Account-a I Love You” starts at 3:14 – sorry about the colorization

We Live Again (1934)

We Live Again (AKA “Resurrection”)We Live Again Poster
Directed by Rouben Mamoulian
1934/USA
The Samuel Goldwyn Company

First viewing

Every man and every living creature has a sacred right to the gladness of springtime.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection

 The story is based on the novel Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy.  A noble household is quite attached to its servant girl Katusha (Anna Sten); the son, Prince Dmitri (Fredric March), and the girl grew up together.  One summer, the callow, idealistic Dmitri comes home from military training full of ideas about equality of the classes and falls chastely in love with Katusha.  But when he returns to the army Dmitri is quickly swept up in its decadent lifestyle and forgets about his ideals.  When he comes home again, he seduces and abandons Katusha who ends up pregnant, disgraced, and discharged from her position.  Years later, Dmitri sees Katusha again when she is on trial for murder, having previously descended into a life of prostitution.  He realizes the great wrong he has done and attempts to make amends.  With Joan Baxter as Dmitri’s fiance; C. Aubrey Smith as her father (did the man have time to sleep in 1934??), and Sam Jaffe as a revolutionary.

We Live Again 1

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.

 

The Scarlet Letter (1934)

The Scarlet LetterScarlet Letter Poster
Directed by Robert G. Vignola
1934/USA
Larry Darmour Productions

First Viewing

 

 

“It [the scarlet letter] had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by herself.” ― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

This poverty-row adaptation of the Nathaniel Hawthorne novel stars Colleen Moore as Hester Prynne, Hardie Albright as Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale, Henry B. Walthall as Roger Chillingworth, and Alan Hale as comic relief.  In 17th century Massachusetts, a woman whose husband was thought to be lost at sea is forced to wear a scarlet “A” on her breast as punishment for adultery that resulted in the birth of a child.  She refuses to reveal the father of the girl but her husband returns incognito, determined to hound both parties to the affair for the rest of his days.

Scarlet Letter 1

It is hard to find anything good to say about this movie.  The first strike against it is that the makers felt compelled to lighten the dark story of the novel with copious amounts of comic relief, mostly supplied by Alan Hale and William Kent as sort of a Mutt and Jeff team.  Their bits are really jarring and not all that funny.  All the beards look obviously fake.  Then you get the principals posturing as if they were making a silent movie.  Colleen Moore is the worst and also seems years too old for her part, though she would have only been 35 in 1934.  This was the last film Moore ever made.

Colleen_bobbed

 

Colleen Moore was a silent film star.  She is most famous for “flapper” roles such as in  classic Flaming Youth (1923), in which she played Patricia Fentriss. By 1927 she was the top box-office draw in the US.  She invested her motion picture earnings wisely and remained wealthy until her death in 1988 at age 88.

Excerpt – oh, those wacky Puritans!

Zouzou (1934)

ZouzouZouzou Poster
Directed by Marc Allégret
1934/France
Les Films H. Roussillon/Productions Arys

First viewing

 

Beautiful? It’s all a question of luck. I was born with good legs. As for the rest… beautiful, no. Amusing, yes. — Josephine Baker

Zouzou (Josephine Baker) and Jean (Jean Gabin) performed in the circus as “twins” as children and grew up as brother and sister.  Zouzou is in love with Jean.  When he is falsely arrested, she enters show business to get the money to defend him.  Will Jean see the light?

Zouzou 2

This is the French equivalent of a backstage musical and very charming, if not as polished as a Hollywood production.  I have read about Josephine Baker for years and was excited to be able to see her in something.  Jean Gabin is a major heart throb of mine and it was nice to see him in a different kind of role and singing a bit no less!

Jean Gabin sings “Viens Fifine”

Josephine Baker sings “Haiti”