Treasure Island Directed by Victor Fleming
1934/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
Second or third viewing
Capt. Alexander Smollett: When there’s treasure in the hold, there’s fire in the fo’c’sle.
Old Billy Bones (Lionel Barrymore) turns up at the inn run by Jim Hawkins’s (Jackie Cooper) mother with a mysterious chest. Soon other unsavory characters turn up in search of Billy. Upon Billy’s untimely death, Jim discovers a treasure map in the chest. Gentlemen of the town hire a ship to search for the treasure. Before they know it, unscrupulous but loveable Long John Silver (Wallace Beery) has signed on as cook and brought aboard his pirate cronies as crew. Long John and Jim become fast friends and the adventure begins.
This movie was a ton of fun and I’m sure immensely popular with boys when it came out. I thought the style foreshadowed The Wizard of Oz, also directed by Fleming, in its storybook exaggeration and charm. The pirates are deliciously vile! I think those who enjoyed The Adventures of Robin Hood would like this.
Manhattan Melodrama Directed by W. S. Van Dyke
1934/USA
Cosmopolitan Productions for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
First Viewing
James W. ‘Jim’ Wade: I’m going to clean out every rotten spot I can find in this city, and, Blackie, I don’t want to find you in any of them.
Blackie and Jim were childhood buddies. Both were rescued from a tragic steamship fire and then raised together by a man who was trampled to death at a political rally. Blackie (Clark Gable) grows up to be a gambler and tough while Jim (William Powell) grows up a lawyer and idealistic politico. Blackie’s main squeeze is Eleanor (Myrna Loy) but he eventually loses her to Jim who is the marrying kind. Jim becomes District Attorney and friendship and crime-fighting come into conflict. I think we all know where this is going!
I thought the script really let down the actors, who were fine. There were just one too many coincidences and everybody was a tad too noble for me to bear. But what do I know? This won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in 1934.
This was the movie that bank robber John Dillinger had just seen before he was gunned down in front of Chicago’s Biograph Theater on July 22, 1934.
It’s a Gift Directed by Norman Z. McLeod
1934/USA
Paramount Pictures
#81 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
Second viewing
W.C. Fields plays Harold Bisonette (that’s Biso-NAY when his wife’s around). The hen-pecked Bisonette owns a corner grocery but dreams of moving to California and running an orange ranch. His uncle dies and leaves him the money to move his family West, much to their disgust. The orange grove turns out to be a bust but there is always a happy ending in a W.C. Fields movie.
Harry Payne Bosterly: You’re drunk! Harold: And you’re crazy. But I’ll be sober tomorrow and you’ll be crazy for the rest of your life.
I have been trying to figure out why Fields just isn’t funny to me. I think he lets each of his gags run on too long and telegraphs them too obviously. Also much of the humor relies on destruction, irritating noises, etc., which I find more annoying than comic. Finally this movie has a scene of food humor toward the end. I can’t help it, I just find anything involving making a mess with food more disgusting than anything else.
This is one of the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. The only reason I can find is that W.C. Fields is a name everybody has probably heard of. I now have seen this film twice and that’s more than enough for one lifetime.
Make Way for Tomorrow Directed by Leo McCarey
1937/USA
Paramount Pictures
#109 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
First Viewing
I watched this as a companion piece to Ozu’s Tokyo Story, with which it is thematically linked. Â Both films deal with relations between parents and their adult children. Â This film confronts the issue more directly as the children are faced with having to care for their parents in old age. Â It is also one of the few films to portray married love in the sunset of life. Â Although it is a more sentimental story, it is also an excellent film.
The children are stunned at the news that the parents have to leave their home in two days.
Lucy and Barkley Cooper have been happily married for 50 years when the bank forecloses on their home. Since none of their five children is willing to take both of them, Lucy (Beulah Bondi) settles with a son in New York City and Bark (Victor Moore) settles with a daughter 300 miles away in the country. Â Things don’t work out well for anyone concerned, as the parents disrupt their children’s’ established routines and the couple pine for each other. Â They are allowed a second honeymoon in New York City before being again separated, perhaps forever.
Mr. Horton, Hotel Manager: Have you any children? Pa: Five of them. Mr. Horton, Hotel manager: Really! I’ll bet they’ve brought you a lot of pleasure! Pa: [Ironically] I bet you haven’t any children.
This is a really heartbreaking film. I think I felt the saddest that the couple, who so clearly loved and needed each other, had to be separated. The children meant well but every one of them put their own needs first. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to listen to “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” again without getting tears in my eyes. Â Beulah Bondi and Victor Moore do an excellent job of portraying characters 20 years older than their actual age without once going over the top.
A fond farewell
I kept thinking about what a difference social security could have made in this couple’s life. Â After all, these people were basically healthy and able to care for themselves. Â They just had no steady income and no prospect of finding employment. Â Social Security was enacted in 1935 and implemented in 1937. Â The film historian who presented a video essay on the Criterion DVD said that the film makes a powerful argument for old age insurance without ever mentioning it. Â I agree.
The Scarlet Pimpernel Directed by Harold Young
1934/UK
London Film Productions
Second Viewing
Percy Blakeney: They seek him here, they seek him there, / Those Frenchies seek him everywhere. / Is he in heaven? Or is he in hell? / That damned elusive Pimpernel!
During the French Reign of Terror, the mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel saves French aristocrats from the guillotine and spirits them away to England. Leslie Howard plays the gallant Pimpernel and his alter ego the foppish Sir Percy Blakeley. Merle Oberon is the French-born Lady Blakeley, who adores the Pimpernel but disdains her husband and is easy prey to the evil French Ambassador Chauvelin (Raymond Massey).
Sir Percy shows Chauvelin how to tie his cravat.
This is my favorite ever performance by Howard. He is just wonderful in both the guises he plays. I especially like him as the fop. Raymond Massey is always good and the story is suspenseful and romantic. Recommended.
The Private Life of Don Juan Directed by Alexander Korda
UK, 1934
London Film Productions
First viewing
Lobby card featuring Merle Oberon and Douglas Fairbanks
Don Juan: “All girls are different. All wives are alike.”
An aging Douglas Fairbanks plays an aging Don Juan in this pleasant comedy. Don Juan is tiring after 20 years in the saddle and when an imposter is killed in a duel happily attends his own funeral. The only problem is that when he wants to reclaim his identity, no one will believe him. Merle Oberon is top-billed as a fiery Spanish dancer although Benita Hume has the bigger part as a woman plotting to keep the Don as her own. I loved the Spanish flavored score. Fairbanks looks pretty tired but carries the film with his humor. He was a very good sport! This was his last film. He would die in 1939 at age 56.
Excerpts – scenes of Merle Oberon with Douglas Fairbanks
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.
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
