Tag Archives: 1930s

La Bête Humaine (1938)

Posted on November 26, 2013 | 6 comments

La Bête Humaine 
Directed by Jean Renoir
Written by Jean Renoir and Denise Leblond (both uncredited) from the novel by Emile Zola
1938/France
Paris Film
Repeat viewing

 

[box] Jacques Lantier: I can’t go on. I can’t go on.[/box]

This adaptation of Emile Zola’s novel may be my least favorite of Jean Renoir’s films.  It is great filmmaking nonetheless.

Jacques Lantier (Jean Gabin) is a highly competent train driver, who is a little in love with the steam engine that he has named “Lison”.  He travels the rails with a down-to-earth stoker, Pecquex (Julien Carette).  Poor Jacques suffers mightily from terrifying blackouts ending in homicidal fits. These he attributes to hereditary “alcohol poisoning” with which he has been cursed by generations of his alcoholic ancestors.

Roubaud (the excellent Fernand Ledoux) is the stationmaster at one of the stops on Jacques’ route.  He dotes on his young beautiful wife Séverine (Simone Simon) but is pathologically jealous and abusive toward her.  He gets the idea (probably well-founded) that Séverine has had an affair with railroad boss Grandmorin and decides to make his wife an accomplice in his murder to “bind her to him”.

The two execute the plan on a train and Jacques witnesses them returning to their compartment.  Séverine uses her feminine charms to secure Jacques’ silence and their relationship rapidly develops into something more, ending in tragedy for all concerned. With Renoir as a fall guy.

While I find that La Bête Humaine lacks the humanism I love in Renoir’s films, it grew on me quite a bit on this viewing.  Previously I thought that the entire plot hinged on the “alcohol poisoning” construct which kind of lets everyone off the hook.  This time I saw the film as more of a Double Indemnity-type story, something I doubt Zola intended but could have been on Renoir’s mind.  Certainly Séverine is a classic femme fatale.  Simone Simon, already looking like a kitten well before Cat People, portrays her to perfection.

Gabin brought Zola’s novel to Renoir because he wanted to drive a train, and the railroad scenes are the true glory of the picture.   They are dynamic and beautifully shot.  Needless to say, for me Gabin can do no wrong as an actor.

La Bête Humaine was reportedly the most financially successful of Renoir’s 1930’s films. Fritz Lang modernized and remade the story in 1954 as Human Desire with Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsv1hECXClo

Trailer

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Jezebel (1938)

Posted on November 23, 2013 | 9 comments

Jezebel
Directed by William Wyler
Written by Clements Ripley, Abem Finkel and John Huston from the play by Owen Davis
1938/USA
Warner Bros
Repeat viewing
#120 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

 

[box] Aunt Belle: Child, you’re out of your mind. You know you can’t wear red to the Olympus Ball.

Julie Marsden: Can’t I? I’m goin’ to. This is 1852, dumplin’. 1852, not the Dark Ages.[/box]

William Wyler was some director and this is a polished well-acted drama.

Neither her aunt (Faye Bainter) nor her guardian can make headstrong Julie Marsden (Bette Davis) behave according to the rules of antebellum New Orleans society.  Julie is determined to win the same battle with her fiance Pres Dillard..  In a fit of pique after Pres refuses to leave an important business meeting to go to a fitting with her, Julie decides to wear a red dress to a ball.  This is simply something not done by unmarried girls, who traditionally dress in virginal white.  Julie loses the battle of the sexes and the story follows the many bad consequences of her stubbornness.  With George Brent as a rival beau, Donald Crisp as a doctor, and Spring Byington as a society matron.

This role suited Bette Davis perfectly.  She is magnificent as the haughty, catty Julie. William Wyler, with whom she was having an affair at the time, made her look radiantly lovely as well.  The rest of the cast is excellent, with the possible exception of Margaret Lindsay who gets on my nerves for some reason.  The production was lavish and expensive and Wyler sets off the beautiful surroundings with a fluid moving camera.  The ball scene is particularly notable.

I never can make sense of the ending.  Why would anyone trust Julie to return her husband?  I certainly wouldn’t.

Bette Davis and Faye Bainter were awarded with Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress Oscars.  Jezebel was nominated in the categories of Best Picture, Best Cinematography, and Best Music (Scoring).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQ_amZoT7HE

Trailer

 

 

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Child Bride (1938)

Posted on November 19, 2013 | 4 comments

Child Bride Child Bride Poster
Directed by Harry Revier
Written by Harry Revier
1938/USA
Produced by Lloyd and Ralph Friedgen
First viewing

[box] Tagline: A THROBBING DRAMA OF SHACKLED YOUTH![/box]

This exploitation film is not a barrel of laughs.  In fact, it’s sort of icky.

Billed as an anti-child marriage message film, this is the sad story of little Jennie, played by 12-year-old Shirley Mills.  She loves to go to school where her teacher crusades against the underage marriages so prevalent in her backwoods community.  Jennie has an innocent friendship with young Freddie but has been cautioned by teacher that she should no longer skinny-dip with him.  (So Freddie turns his head during the creepy skinny dipping scene.)

Jennie’s father is a drunk and her mother had been having an affair with her father’s partner Jake.  While Ira is beating his wife for her infidelity, Jake seizes the opportunity to murder Ira and threaten the mother with pinning the blame on her.  Jake uses this leverage to force mom to consent to his marriage to poor Jennie.  Will teacher’s DA boyfriend persuade the government to change the marriage age laws before Jennie is deflowered? With little person Angelo Rositto (Freaks, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome) as the instrument of vegence.

Child-Bride-Still

 

The trailer for this movie, which I will not embed here, makes it pretty clear that the main draw was the skinny dipping and a few topless scenes with Shirley Mills.  The trailer has a couple of clips of women being whipped which do not appear in the film as well, just to make it abundantly clear what kind of audience it was trying to attract.  While the content is pretty tame by today’s standards, that doesn’t make the movie any less vile.

 

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You Can’t Take It with You (1938)

Posted on November 19, 2013 | 5 comments

You Can’t Take It with You
Directed by Frank Capra
Written by Robert Riskin based on the play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart
1938/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation
First viewing

[box] Tony Kirby: …It takes courage. You know everybody’s afraid to live.

Alice Sycamore: You ought to hear Grandpa on that subject. You know he says most people nowadays are run by fear. Fear of what they eat, fear of what they drink, fear of their jobs, their future, fear of their health. They’re scared to save money, and they’re scared to spend it. You know what his pet aversion is? The people who commercialize on fear, you know they scare you to death so they can sell you something you don’t need.[/box]

My usual technique of Capra watching – pretending the whole thing is a fairy tale – didn’t really work with this one.

A.P. Kirby (Edward Albert) is a munitions dealer who has grand plans to buy up all his rivals (with a little assistance from the U.S. Congress).  His plan depends on his ability to buy up all the property surrounding his chief rival’s factory for some reason.  Martin Vanderhof (Lionel Barrymore) stands in Kirby’s way since he cannot be persuaded to sell his house for any amount of money.  Vanderhof is a free spirit and prefers to live as a “lily of the field”.  He and his household are devoted to doing solely what they love to do, from ballet dancing to painting to illegal fireworks manufacture.

Vanderhof’s granddaughter Alice (Jean Arthur) is secretary to Kirby’s son Tony (James Stewart).  The two are madly in love and want to marry.  However, Tony’s parents look down on Alice and she won’t marry without their approval.  She invites the parents over for dinner to meet her family.  Every possible aspect of the event goes wrong.  With Spring Byington as Alice’s mother, Ann Miller as her sister and Mischa Auer as a Russian dancing instructor.

My high school’s theater arts class put on the Kauffman and Hart play and I am quite sure it was not so preachy as this movie is.  There is a strong anti-big business message and quite a bit of folksy home-spun philosophy coming out of the lips of Grandpa Vanderhof. It’s not that I disagree with any of it but it sure does weigh the comedy down.  The acting cannot be faulted, however.  I thought Edward Arnold was particularly good.

You Can’t Take It with You won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director. It was Oscar-nominated in the categories of Best Supporting Actress (Spring Byington); Best Writing, Screenplay; Best Cinematography; Best Sound, Recording; and Best Film Editing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WY9RAroTS0

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Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)

Posted on November 18, 2013 | 4 comments

Angels with Dirty FacesAngels with Dirty Faces Poster
Directed by Michael Curtiz
Written by John Wexley and Warren Duff from a story by Rowland Brown
1938/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing
#122 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Rocky Sullivan: ‘Morning, gentlemen. Nice day for a murder.

James Cagney is charismatic as a tough career criminal with a tiny spark of humanity deep within.

Rocky Sullivan (Cagney) and Jerry Connelly (Pat O’Brien) grew up together on the mean streets of New York.  When they are caught in a petty theft, Jerry escapes and Rocky goes to the reformatory where he learns the ropes.  Finally, Rocky takes the rap for a crime committed by lawyer Jim Frazier (Humphrey Bogart) on the condition that Frazier will hold the $100,000 proceeds and hand it over when he gets out of jail.

Angels With Dirty Faces 2

Rocky goes back to his old neighborhood when he gets out of jail and looks up his old buddy Jerry, who is now a priest.  Jerry has been trying to straighten out a gang of teenagers (the Dead End Kids).  Rocky can get through to the kids but this unfortunately causes them to idolize him and his gangster ways.

When Rocky looks up Frazier to try to get his money back, Frazier is none too pleased to see him. As a consequence, many people end up dead.  Jerry gives Rocky a last chance to do the right thing.  With Ann Sheridan as Rocky’s girl and George Bancroft as a gang boss.

Angels With Dirty Faces 1

This film is worth seeing for Cagney’s exceptional performance.  He is a bundle of energy and makes Rocky a multi-dimensional character.  He is so good and basically likeable that the rest of the movie suffers by comparison.  Father Jerry is supposed to be the good guy here but Pat O’Brien takes a preachy tone that wouldn’t make anyone try to emulate him. Bogart is great but doesn’t have much of a part and the Dead End Kids have less to do and with less effect than in Dead End.  I had been looking forward to seeing this for quite a while and was somewhat disappointed.  Cagney’s performance is unmissable, however.

Cagney, Curtiz, and story writer Rowland Brown all received Oscar nominations for their work in Angels with Dirty Faces.

Trailer

 

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The Lady Vanishes (1938)

Posted on November 17, 2013 | 6 comments

The Lady Vanishes
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Written by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder based on a story by Ethel Lina White
1938/UK
Gainsborough Pictures
Repeat viewing
#127 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Miss Froy: I never think you should judge any country by its politics. After all, we English are quite honest by nature, aren’t we?[/box]

I simply love this movie and would rank it in Hitchcock’s top five pictures.

The story opens at a mountain inn in 1938 Mandrika, a fictitious European country where a varied group of tourists is stranded following an avalanche.  Iris Henderson i(Margaret Lockwood) is a spoiled young woman who feels she has done everything and so might as well get married to a “blue-blooded check chaser” back home in England.  Gilbert (Michael Redgrave) is an itinerant musicologist who irritates Iris mightily by conducting loud folk music sessions directly overhead.

The elderly Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty), a governess and music teacher, is also returning to England.  Before the train departs the next day, Iris returns Miss Froy’s glasses to her and is struck on the head by a falling planter.  Dazed, Iris gets on the train assisted by the kindly old lady.  When she awakens from her sleep, Miss Froy is gone and no one will admit she was ever on the train.  Iris’s only ally is Gilbert, who is willing to play along even if he doesn’t believe her.  Before long, the two are enmeshed in a dangerous game of hide and seek.  With Naughton Wayne and Basil Radford as cricket enthusiasts, Cecil Parker and Linden Travers as an adulterous couple, and Paul Lukas as a sinister brain surgeon.

This film has a delightfully tight script that enchants me every time with its naughty humor and sly political commentary on the appeasement policies of the British government.  I also love Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood together.  They equal Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll (The 39 Steps) as playful antagonists.  The supporting cast is also great.  Hitchcock perfectly captures the setting of a moving train on a small budget.   Highly recommended.

The Criterion Collection DVD comes with an excellent commentary by film historian Bruce Eder.

Three Reasons to Watch – The Criterion Collection

 

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Bringing Up Baby (1938)

Posted on November 16, 2013 | 8 comments

Bringing Up Baby
Directed by Howard Hawks
Written by Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde
1938/USA
RKO Radio Pictures
Repeat viewing
#124 of 1001 Films You Must See Before You Die

[box] David Huxley: Now it isn’t that I don’t like you, Susan, because, after all, in moments of quiet, I’m strangely drawn toward you, but – well, there haven’t been any quiet moments.[/box]

I enjoyed this quintessential screw-ball comedy even more than before.

David (Cary Grant), a very square paleontologist, is engaged to his assistant who is also all-dinosaur all the time.  While he is trying to get a donation for his museum, he runs into Susan (Katharine Hepburn), who is some kind of nut.  Susan falls head over heels in love with David and uses all her considerable powers to detour him from his wedding.  Her best ploy involves a prolonged chase after her missing pet leopard, Baby.  With May Robson as Susan’s aunt, Charlie Ruggles as a big-game hunter, Barry Fitzgerald as a dipsomaniac gardener, and Asta as George.

On previous viewings, I found Katharine Hepburn’s character manipulative and irritating. This time, however, I was able to relax and see Susan as David’s rescuer and accept all the scrapes she gets him into as part of the inspired silliness of the thing. Grant is just great. He is a master of prat-falls and so good at looking ridiculous in all his strange get-ups.  All the character actors are at their goofy best.  Truly a must-see.

The DVD I rented included a good commentary by Peter Bogdanovich.  One of the things I learned is that Hawks based his characterizations on Hepburn’s relationship with the bespectacled John Ford.  Hepburn was apparently the only person that could get away with ribbing Ford on the set.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-EkAb1h2OM

Trailer

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Café Metropole (1937)

Posted on October 27, 2013 | 3 comments

Café Metropole
Directed by Edward H. Griffith
Written by Jacques Deval from an original story by Gregory Ratoff
1937/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
First viewing

 

[box] Monsieur Victor Lobard: That’s the trouble with a flawless plan! There’s always a flaw in it![/box]

Russian raconteur Monsieur Victor (Adolphe Menjou) owns a nightclub in Paris and is deeply in debt.  He gambles the last francs he can get his hands on at baccarat and wins big.  Unfortunately, the loser is American Alexander Brown (Tyrone Power) who writes a bad check before declaring himself penniless.  Victor blackmails Alexander into masquerading as a Russian prince and wooing American heiress Laura Ridgeway (Loretta Young).  Despite Alexis’s terrible Russian accent, Laura is immediately smitten. With Charles Winniger as Laura’s father, Helen Westley as her aunt, and Gregory Ratoff as a waiter.

I enjoyed this comedy, chiefly for its script and the performances by Menjou and various character actors.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_Qz0gnA9rY

Bill “Bojangles” Robinson in a scene deleted from the film (lost for 60 years)

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Bulldog Drummond at Bay (1937)

Posted on October 18, 2013 | Leave a comment

Bulldog Drummond at Bay
Directed by Norman Lee
Written by Patrick Kriwan and James Parrish
1937/UK
Associated British Picture Corporation
First viewing

[box] “Demobilised officer, … finding peace incredibly tedious, would welcome diversion. Legitimate, if possible; but crime, if of a comparatively humorous description, no objection. Excitement essential.”  — Advertisement placed in The Times by Drummond in the novel Bulldog Drummond[/box]

This entry comes from the U.K. and features an entirely different cast than the 1937 Paramount pictures.  I thought this might mean a weaker film, but no, it’s the best since the first one with Ray Milland!

This time Bulldog (John Lodge) is on the trail of an evil foreign arms broker who has been bilking a World Peace organization into backing his nefarious deeds.  The broker has kidnapped the inventor of a top-secret weapon and is torturing him to get the plans. Tennie the butler and the long-engaged Phyllis have left the scene but Algie is still along and more twitish than ever.

I think the only other movie I’ve seen John Lodge in was The Scarlet Empress where I was not impressed with his performance.  Here, though, he has just the right mixture of savoir faire and daring to make an excellent Drummond.  I liked the leading lady a lot, too.   Well worth seeing if you are in to this kind of mindless entertainment.

 

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Maytime (1937)

Posted on October 18, 2013 | 2 comments

MaytimeMaytime poster
Directed  by Robert Z. Leonard
Written by Noel Langley based on an operetta by Rida Johnson Young
1937/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing

Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart
Though our paths may sever
To life’s last faint ember
Will you remember?
Springtime, lovetime, May
Springtime, lovetime, May — Lyric by Rida Johnson Young

I enjoyed 1937’s beautiful and romantic Jeanette Mac Donald/Nelson Eddy entry.

As the story opens elderly reclusive Miss Morrison (Mac Donald) is visiting a May Day celebration.  There she meets a young couple who are quarreling because the girl wants to pursue a career as an opera singer in New York while the boy wants her to stay home and marry.  Comforting the girl, Miss Morrison decides to break her silence about her own story.

Segue to Paris decades earlier, when Miss Morrison, then Marcia Mornay, was a budding prima donna.  Marcia dazzles Emperor Napoleon with her singing at a ball and her manager, Nicolai Nazaroff (John Barrymore), manages to convince an eminent composer to write an opera especially for her.  In gratitude, Marcia accepts Nazaroff’s proposal of marriage.  That same night, unable to sleep, Marcia takes a carriage ride through Paris. The carriage has an accident.  While she is waiting for another ride, she goes into a café where Paul Allison (Nelson Eddy) is singing.  Paul is a struggling voice student.  He falls in love with Marcia at first sight.

Marcia feebly tries to fend Paul off but when they go to a May Day festival they confess their love.  Marcia, however, feels obligated to Nazaroff and marries him.  I will stop my summary here but suffice it to say that this operetta has a rather operatic ending.

Maytime 1

Jeanette MacDonald demonstrates her range as an actress in this film.  She is unrecognizable but very touching in her performance as old Miss Morrison.  I kept looking to see if it was really her.  Impressive.  Her voice is also at its height.  This is also a very beautiful film to look at.  The old-fashioned look of Belle-Epoque Paris is gorgeous.

John Barrymore is a bit of a let-down and I have some problems with the “choose love over career” message but overall I can recommend this film.

Per the IMDb, the producers filmed MacDonald and Eddy in Act II of Puccini’s Tosca.  The footage is apparently lost.  I would give anything to see this.  Obviously, however, the plot line of Tosca stabbing Scarpia wouldn’t have worked well in Maytime!   The fake “Czarita” opera love scene was substituted.

Maytime was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Sound, Recording and Best Music, Score.

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