Yearly Archives: 2013

Elephant Boy
Directed by Zoltan Korda and Robert J. Flaherty
Written by John Collier, Akos Tolnay, and Marcia De Silva from “Toomai of the Elephants” by Rudyard Kipling
1937/UK
London Film Productions
First viewing

[box] The torn boughs trailing o’er the tusks aslant,/ The saplings reeling in the path he trod,/ Declare his might — our lord the Elephant,/ Chief of the ways of God. — Rudyard Kipling, “The Elephant”[/box]

Sabu shines in his debut as an elephant minder.

Toomai’s (Sabu) father owns a huge and magnificent elephant which Toomai lovingly tends to and plays with.  There is a call from the local Great White Hunter for elephants to work on a hunting expedition.  Toomai’s father applies and the hunter is charmed by Toomai, who is crazy for hunting, and he joins the hunting party.  The other local workers tease Toomai and say he will only become a hunter when he sees the elephant dance. The mission of this particular outing is to round up wild elephants for domestication. However, there is not an elephant to be had.  How will Toomai save the day?

I’ve always had a soft spot for Sabu, especially after seeing a documentary of his life, and he is already a charmer here.  The film has many lovely documentary-like moments showing elephant behavior and “exotic” human activity as might be expected from Flaherty’s involvement.  Worth a watch.

Clip – intro

Broadway Melody of 1938
Directed by Roy Del Ruth
Written by Jack McGowan and Sid Silvers
1938/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing

[box] Betty Clayton: [singing] I don’t care what happens, let the whole world stop. As far as I’m concerned you’ll always be the top. ‘Cause you know you made me love you.[/box]

This MGM musical extravaganza is worth seeing just for Judy Garland’s numbers.  The performances by Eleanor Powell, Buddy Ebsen, and Sophie Tucker are gravy.

This has a pretty convoluted plot, though the plot is not what you watch for. Producer/songwriter Steve Raleigh (Robert Taylor) has financial backing from millionaire Herman Whipple to put on a show.  Whipple’s wife (Binnie Barnes) has agreed to the loan because she not-so-secretly has the hots for young Steve.  The trio go up to Saratoga to see the Whipple’s horse Stargazer race.  Stargazer comes up lame in the race and loses.

Stargazer’s ex-owner Sally Lee has been hanging around the stables.  She bums a ride in Stargazer’s boxcar on the train home.  There she is befriended by Sonny (George Murphy) and Pete (Buddy Ebsen) who have landed jobs tending the horse.  Sally tells them she plans to try to get work on Broadway when she arrives in New York and she demonstrates her dance moves.  Naturally, Steve walks in on this and knows he has found his leading lady.  It is also love at first sight.

To make a long story short, Sally reacquires Starbuck.  Mrs. Whipple gives an ultimatum that Steve has to choose between Sally and her husband’s money.  Can Starbuck win the race so that the show can go on?

The picture is worth a thousand words.  This little girl had the pipes of a star from day one.  Eleanor Powell and Buddy Ebsen are fantastic dancers and have ample opportunity to show their stuff.  I was really looking forward to seeing Sophie Tucker perform for the first time, but she is getting on and has been given the MGM treatment so I was a bit disappointed.  There were certainly none of the salty asides she is best known for.

The songs, other than “You Made Me Love You” and Tucker’s short demo of “Some of These Days” are nothing to write home about and the story is silly but I’m glad I saw it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhPG8EBGKpI

Clip – Judy Garland singing “Mr. Gable, You Made Me Love You”  (ah, chills …)

Bonus:  Sophie Tucker singing “Some of These Days” – 1911

Assassin of Youth
Directed by Elmer Clifton
Written by Elmer Clifton and Charles A. Browne
1937/USA
BCM Roadshow Productions
First viewing

[box] Tagline: MARIHUANA – a Puff – a Party – a Tragedy![/box]

What?!  An exploitation flick with a “plot” and “acting”?  Heresy, I say.

Joan Barry’s aunt dies and leaves her a fortune.  The catch is there is a morals clause in the will.  This should be no problem for the church-going Joan.  However, town slut and dope pusher Linda Clayton will inherit if Joan is excluded and Linda sets out to trick Joan at every turn.  In the meantime, ace reporter Jack Howard has been sent to town to do an article on this headline-worthy story and later an investigative piece on the marijuana plague ravaging its youth.

This is by far the “best” of the 30’s marijuana exposées I have seen thus far. Unfortunately, that also means there is the least camp and unintentional hilarity.  We do get a classic character performance by the town gossip who rides around town on a motor scooter looking exactly like Margaret Hamilton in her Miss Gulch costume.  The old codger who plays the soda fountain owner is also a hoot.  Anyone going for the advertised “orgies” would have been sorely disappointed.  There’s some brief flashing of garters during a jitterbug scene but that’s about it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhG-Ly2Drew

Trailer

The Dybbuk
Directed by Michal Waszynski
Written by S.A. Kacyzna and Andrzej Marek based on a play by Sholom Ansky
1937/Poland
Warszawskie Biuro Kinematograficzne Feniks
First viewing

dyb·buk [Sephardic Hebrew dee-book; Ashkenazic Hebrew, English dib-uhk] noun, plural dyb·buks, dyb·bu·kim [Sephardic Hebrew dee-boo-keem; Ashkenazic Hebrew dih-book-im] Jewish Folklore. a demon, or the soul of a dead person, that enters the body of a living person and directs the person’s conduct, exorcism being possible only by a religious ceremony.

It took me some time to get into this filmed Yiddish folk tale but, once I did, I found it richly rewarding.

As the story begins, two friends, Sender and Nisan, vow that if one has a male child and the other a female, their two children will marry.  A mysterious messenger warns that making a vow with regard to the future is a sin but they ignore him.  The friends go on to solemnize their vow with the village “wonder rabbi”.    Sender goes on to have a daughter, but his wife dies in childbirth.  Nisan has a son but he drowns on the day the child is born with the vow on his lips.

Later, Sender becomes a very wealthy man.  His daughter, Leah, is 18 and a beauty. Chanan, a poor Yeshiva student, arrives in their village and becomes a friend of the family. He and Leah are drawn to each other. Knowing that Sender is looking for a rich match for his daughter, Chanan begins to study the Kabbala and evoke evil spirits to win Leah.  He is unsuccessful and kills himself when Sender arranges a marriage with another.  On the day of the wedding, Leah, who is still in love with Chanan, goes to the cemetery ostensibly to visit her mother’s grave.  There, Chanan’s dybbuk takes possession of her body.  The wedding cannot take place and the “wonder rabbi” must be appealed to for an exorcism.

This took some time to get into because the culture depicted was very foreign to me and the beginning of the film had few subtitles and the ones that there were were often of the frustrating white-on-white variety.  However, I immediately appreciated the gorgeous solo and choral singing.  Later, as the story took shape I became involved in it, largely due to the acting of the two young lovers.  The wedding scene, with its many dances and songs, is a real treat as well.

This was a melancholy watch as I thought about how close this way of life, and indeed probably all the people involved with the film, were consigned to complete annihilation.   How lucky we are that this was preserved.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PHHqclQPsE

Clip – the Dance of Death

The Pearls of the Crown (“Les perles de la couronne”)
Directed by Sacha Guitry
Written by Sacha Guitry and Christian-Jacque
1937/France
Cineás
First viewing

[box] “The little I know I owe to my ignorance.” — Sacha Guitry[/box]

This long historical shaggy dog tail lacks some of the sparkle of The Story of a Cheat but is still amusing.

The narrator (Guitry) traces the history of the four perfectly matched pear-shaped pearls in the English crown from their origin in the court of Pope Clement VII through a complicated series of events that had them switch hands from Catherine de Medici to Mary Stuart to Elizabeth I to Queen Victoria.  A group of men then undertakes to discover what happened to three other pearls of the set that were “lost”.  These have an even more romantic and bizarre history.

Most of the French character actors from the classics appear somewhere or other in this multi-character extravaganza.  Some play several parts.  It’s a fun watch, if perhaps a little slow in places.

Clip – Sorry, no subtitles