You’re Telling Me! Directed by Erle C. Kenton
1934/USA
Paramount Pictures
First viewing
Sam Bisbee: Stand clear and keep your eye on the ball!
When he is not drinking liquor out of a jug, Samuel Bisbee (W.C. Fields) is an optometrist and inventor who embarrasses his long-suffering wife no end. His daughter is in love with the son of a society family (Buster Krabbe) but they are having none of Sam. Sam’s hopes are further dashed when he screws up the sales presentation of his puncture-proof tire. Luckily, Sam meets a princess who solves all his problems.
The plot, such as it is, only gets in the way of the gags. Chief among these is a reprise of Fields’s golf routine from his 1930 short “The Golf Specialist”. Fields is hit and miss with me and, unfortunately, this was a miss. I smiled a few times but I didn’t laugh.
Tarzan and His Mate Directed by Cedric Gibbons
1934/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
Second viewing
Tarzan: Good morning, I love you. Jane Parker: Good morning, I love you. You never forget, do you, Tarzan? Tarzan: Never forget… I love you.
Jane’s (Maureen O’Sullivan) 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.
I found this sequel far less offensive than the original Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), although it still suffers from some bwana-itis. The relationship between Tarzan and Jane, and theirs with Cheeta, is quite charming. However, the action palls too soon. 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 when he is swimming with her.
The Gay Divorcee Directed by Mark Sandrich
1934/USA
RKO Radio Pictures
Umpteenth viewing
Aunt Hortense: Be feminine and sweet. If you can blend the two.
Fred Astaire plays Guy Holden, an American dancer returning to 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 sham an adulterous affair so that her husband will discover it and divorcer her. A misunderstanding leads her to believe that Guy is the hired correspondent.
“The Continental”
All this is just a good excuse for the dance numbers which are the whole point. The “Night and Day” ballroom dance 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” number 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; Eric Blore shows why he was the most popular comic butler in Hollywood; and Eric Rhodes is hilarious as the egotistical family-man correspondent. I am crazy for Fred and Ginger. Lately, I have taken to watching Ginger’s face while they dance. She was quite an actress and puts her whole self into it.
The Scarlet Empress Directed by Josef von Sternberg
1934/USA
Paramount Pictures
Multiple viewings
Grand Duke Peter: I want to play with my toys!
The Scarlet Empress is Josef von Sternberg’s interpretation of the rise of Catherine the Great. The plot is basically the same as in the London Pictures production reviewed here previously but the characters are quite different. 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. Louise Dresser plays Empress Elizabeth as a kind of Mid-Western fish wife having a very bad day. Â Finally, there is the lantern-jawed, wooden John Lodge as Catherine’s erstwhile love interest.
Dietrich as the virginal Princess Sophia
My descriptionsmay lead you to believe that I did not enjoy the film but au contraire!  By all objective measures it is very bad indeed but this 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 table, alone, is a breathtaking mixture of the pornographic and the sinister.
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. My favorite costume is Catherine’s negliigee, which is a see-through black number over a hoop skirt topped off with a black feather bodice. Â The Scarlet Empress really cannot be adequately described; it must be experienced.
It was hard to select among the many bizaare images available from this film! Here we have an example of the decor when Peter uses a giant hand drill to spy on his Aunt Elizabeth’s bed chamber.
Although the film was not released until after the effective date of the enforcement of the Production Code on July 1, 1934, Joe Breen was clearly nowhere to be found when this hit the streets on September 15, 1934. Â It was condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency as “morally objectionable.”
Twentieth Century Directed by Howard Hawks
1934/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation
Second Viewing
Oscar Jaffe worms his way into Lily Garland’s Heart
Theater empresario and master manipulator Oscar Jaffe (John Barrymore) discovers lingerie model Mildred Plotka (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.
Oscar Jaffe: I’m offering you a last chance to become immortal. Lily Garland, aka Mildred Plotka: Then I’ve decided to stay mortal with responsible management.
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.
When we get the two characters emoting at full blast on the train, the histrionics can go straight over the top but, even in those scenes, there is the wry humor of the assistants to enjoy. Separately both Barrymore and Lombard are hilarious. I can imagine that John Barrymore had a grand time sending up theatrical producers. 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.
Street Without End (“Kagirinaki hodô”) Directed by Mikio Naruse
1934/Japan
Shochiku Company First Viewing
Hikaru: Don’t you see how I’m suffering?
Sugiko: I don’t think suffering is enough.
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 excellent nonetheless.
The complete film was available on YouTube as of May 23, 2020.
Maniac Directed by Dwain Esper
USA, 1934
Roadshow Attractions
First Viewing
Dr. Meirschultz admires his heart.
When he isn’t busy being a maniac, Dr. Meirschultz conducts experiments aimed at raising the dead. His idiot assistant, Don Maxwell, apparently owes the doctor plenty for taking him in after he flopped as an impersonator on the vaudeville circuit. When the doctor suggests that Maxwell shoot himself so that he can be an experimental subject, Maxwell shoots the doctor instead. He then makes himself up as the doctor and assumes his personality, becoming a maniac himself. In the meantime, we see various young women bare their breasts (I suspect this was the raison d’etre for the film), a man does a astoundingly bad tranformation to a monster, and Maxwell eats a “cat’s eyeball”. There are several “educational” intertitles with clinical descriptions of mental illnesses. Clearly, nobody planned to have this thing passed by the Hayes Office.
Buckley (after getting hypo of adrenaline): Oh! Stealing through my body! Creeping though my veins! Pouring in my blood! Oh, DARTS OF FIRE IN MY BRAIN! STABBING ME! I CAN’T STAND IT! I WON’T!
At 56 minutes, I had at least 5 LOL moments so I count this as a success on the bad movie front. I often wonder if the people involved really knew how bad these things were and were playing up the cheese factor. The acting is just so over the top here that it’s hard to think the actors weren’t trying for that effect!
The Rise of Catherine the Great Directed by Paul Czinner UK, 1934 London Films Production First viewing
Catherine: “I am a woman like your mother and your sisters. I know that it is a bad wife who leaves her husband because he has been cruel. But it is a good mother who will fight everyone to save her children. You are my children. I come to you as the mother of all Russia.”
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 her orders. All poor Catherine was ever looking for was a little love.
“Can anyone love someone like me?”
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.
A Story of Floating Weeds (“Ukikusa monogatari”) Directed by Yasujiro Ozu
Japan, 1934
Shochiku Company Second Viewing
Otaka (the mistress): “The world is like a lottery. You take your ups and downs.”
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 decides to stay in the mountain 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 also quite funny when it looks at the different members of the company, including some low humor aimed at a bed-wetting 9-year-old who ineptly plays the dog in the show. The film is ultimately an examination of the inevitably flawed expression of family love in real life as are all Ozu’s films. This is arguably his best and most mature silent film, though I personally prefer 1932’s I Was Born, But ….
Kihachi is irrascible and strikes several people, including women who do not fight back, which could be disturbing to modern viewers. The violence is not graphic or prolonged. This film was remade in 1959 as Floating Weeds, Ozu’s first color film.
3. The Mysterious Mr. Wong Directed by William Nigh
USA, 1934
Monogram Pictures
First Viewing
Mr. Wong: “A few hours with the rats will loosen his tongue to tell the truth!”
Mr. Wong with minion
Mr. Wong (Bela Lugosi) will stop at nothing to obtain the 12 golden coins of Confucius, which will allow him to rule the province of Keylat. A wisecracking reporter (Wallace Ford) blithely suffers one near-death experience after another to solve a series of murders in Chinatown in pursuit of him. Lugosi makes perhaps the most unconvincing Chinese person on record, but he does exude a certain campy menace. This was a Monogram Pictures B-picture and perfectly serviceable for the bottom of a double bill.
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.
Photographs and videos found in this blog, unless indicated, are not owned by me and are here only for the purpose of education and discussion. Media found here are not intended for any commercial purpose. Copyright infringement is not intended.
Written material belongs to me and is copyrighted by flickersintime.com
Directed by Howard Hawks
