1930 - BILLY THE KID, early sound western from King Vidor

This is an early sound western from one of the legendary silent film directors, King Vidor.  Billy the Kid was filmed in 70 mm and in 35 mm.  Unfortunately no 70mm print seems to exist so film buffs will just have to live with the 35 mm version.

The film had extensive location photography in Utah, New Mexico and the Grand Canyon so you can get somewhat of a feel for the landscape even if it is only in 35mm.  Vidor directed a couple of good action scenes and when the film is outdoors it's visually fairly impressive to look at.  As with all early "talkie" films the acting and dialog is kind of shall we say stilted.  It would take a few more years for sound recording to improve and for actors and writers to develop a new understated way of writing dialog and performing.

 

Unsurprisingly this is not the true story of Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett. Hollywood has been spinning fantasy's about their story for almost as long as there has been movies.  Still for an old movie King Vidor did a fairly good job with the story, it must have been a challenge dealing with sound cameras on these western locations.

 

 The film was written by Laurence Stallings and Charles MacArthur, the running time is 95 minutes.

1930 - MEN WITHOUT WOMEN, an early John Ford film.

This John Ford film exists as one of those hybrid sound/silent pictures that Hollywood was making as they made the transition to sound films.

Men Without Women is based on an original story from Ford and the writer James Kevin McGuinness.   The film is about a submarine trapped on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and efforts of the Navy to rescue the men inside. 

 

With the exception of a lengthy scene set in a bar, the film looks like it was photographed on one or two sets which probably made Fox studios happy.  The acting is typical of an early 30's movie with some of the actors emoting all over the place like they were in a stage play.

 

If the film is notable at all, its probably because it has a couple of people who were associated with John Ford as his career began to take off.  Joseph August was the cameraman and Dudley Nichols was the screenwriter.  Both of these men made significant contributions to Ford's films in the 1930's and 40's.

The running time is 77 minutes.

1930 - THE BLOOD OF A POET

The poet Jean Cocteau shot this avant-garde film on a rather small budget but he got some interesting visual ideas and effects across.

 

As with any artist,  try getting a straight answer about what the film is saying is virtually impossible especially when you read the interviews with Cocteau. 

 Just sit back and enjoy the interesting visuals and afterwards try to put some meaning to what you have just witnessed.

The film was written by Cocteau who was smart enough not to push it with this fascinationg weirdness,  it only runs 55 minutes.

1937 - THE SPANISH EARTH, well meaning but boring documentary on the Spanish Civil War

A documentary about the Spanish Civil War which was considered to be the first big stand against the rise of fascism in Europe during the 1930's.

The film was directed by Joris Ivens a left leaning documentary filmmaker.  Ernest Hemingway who had logged a lot of time partying and watching bullfights in Spain wrote and spoke the narration.  Another good liberal Marc Blietzstein composed the score.  The end result is this boring film. 

The Spanish Earth was probably shot as a silent film.  The film crew was apparently not allowed where the actual fighting was going on.  There are lots of shots of soldiers and recruits training.  During the film, Hemingway even says that the cameras couldn't get very close.  So Ivens shoots a lot of film of the Spanish people, farming which is not exactly exciting  wartime footage.

The scenes of war that Ivens supposedly captured seem very suspect and the explosions filmed were clearly edited in, since the shots don't match.

Joris Ivens directs safely from his hotel room.

The whole things comes off as a patronizing tribute to "the little people,"  if there's one thing that rich famous white liberals know, it's what's best for the simple people.

52 minutes.

1930 - MOROCCO, more with Dietrich and von Sternberg

Dragging myself across the finish line for the Dietrich/Von Sternberg series.  Morocco finds Dietrich playing torch singer Amy Jolly,  a woman with a past.  She meets and falls in love with French foreign legion guy Gary Cooper.  Apparently they have an affair although it's kind of tough to tell.

Also mixed up in this romp is Adolph Menjou as the wealthy artist Monsieur La Bessiere.  Dietrich starts sleeping with him after Gary Cooper gets called up for duty to go fight Arabs in the desert somewhere. 

Dietrich was a very closeted bisexual in her personal life, this is the film where she performs in a man's tuxedo and kisses a woman on the lips after the performance, pretty hot stuff for 1930.

Since this is a Josef von Sternberg fiilm,  the photography looks really great and not just of Dietrich.  Von Sternberg knew how to play with light and shadows for some very interesting effects. Actually Dietrich in this one isn't really the heavily made up blond that she ended up looking like for von Sternberg, in some ways she almost looks a little more human in Morocco.

 Josef von Sternberg did 8 films with Dietrich and apparently most of the films were  unsurprisingly not that financially successful.  The films are heavy on pictorial effects, especially when it came to Marlene Dietrich but mighty  light on plot and entertainment value at times. 

92 minutes

1930 - PEOPLE ON SUNDAY slice of life study of Berlin in 1929

Two couples hang out on a Sunday in Berlin.  This was filmed on location with non professional actors and a very small crew.  The film is noted for the participation of the behind the camera talent.  Billy Wilder wrote the screenplay, Robert Siodmak directed, Edgar G, Ulmer and Fred Zinneman also worked on the film. 

Probably the most important collaborator was the famous cinematographer Eugene Schuffian who had worked with notable directors such as Fritz Lang, Max Ophuls, Robert Rossen and Georges Franju to name a few.  People On Sunday looks very good. 

The film is a fascinating look at Berlin right before Hitler came to power.  Much of it has a strong documentary feel to it.  The film also has some interesting observations about male and female relationships probably due to the writer  Billy Wilder. 

People On Sunday has a lot of charm and holds up very well probably thanks to the talented group of people working behind the camera who wanted to make something a little more interesting than just another drama.

73 minutes written by Billy Wilder, Robert Siodmak and Curt Siodmak. 

1930 - STURME UBER DEM MONT BLANC or Storm Over Mt Blanc

David Lean almost drown some of his cast shooting the big storm scene in Ryan's Daughter.  But when it came to putting actors in peril, Lean looked like a pussycat compared to what the director Arnold Fanck did to his cast in Sturme uber dem Mont Blanc.

Fanck is so intent on his vision of portraying heroic German men and women pitted against the forces of nature that he risked their lives at times to get the most spectacular mountain climbing photographic compositions that he could achieve.  

Once again future director Leni Riefenstahl stars for Fanck.  She's part of a love triangle between a scientist living on Mt. Blanc and a musician who are both infatuated with her.  The last third of the film has Leni trying to rescue the scientist who is slowing freezing to death on Mt. Blanc during a big storm  after losing his gloves.  The dramatic elements to the film are pretty weak and the love story is not really developed very well, but the film is really about Fanck demonstrating his skill capturing the beauty and danger of living and climbing on a mountain.  

Riefenstahl's has kind of an interesting character in a film that's pretty weak on character development.  When the film starts, she is shown in an observatory apparently working as some kind of astronomer.  She tells her leading man that she is not your stay at home and bake cookies for her husband type of woman.  Of course that all changes later and any attempt at her being an early feminist ends when the love triangle plot kicks in.

Arnold Fanck and his film team photographed some of the most incredible images of Mt. Blanc and the surrounding area that I have every seen.  Fanck had a very strong visual sense throughout the film   photographing landslides and snow storms in incredibly dramatic ways.  Even in the scenes in the observatory where Riefenstahl works, Fanck makes the telescope seem like a very powerful and forbidding instrument. 

If Franck had to risk the lives of a few actors and stuntmen in an avalanche or snowstorm, so be it.  The morale of the story seems to be, don't go outside in a snowstorm and lose your mittens.  

This film is a pretty impressive achievement in film making.

1930 - THE KING OF JAZZ starring the King of Jazz

By 1930 sound was here to stay. Early sound films virtually had no camera movement in them. As the novelty of people actually talking in movies wore off the studios hit on the idea of filming musical revues with popular Broadway and Vaudeville performers. A camera would be set up as if an audience were watching a play and it was deadly dull to watch as a film.

Coming in at the end of the "all singing all dancing all talking" film fad. Paul Whiteman "The King of Jazz," filmed his orchestra at Universal. Whiteman insisted on prerecording the music before filming started. He apparently realized that he would get better results with the sound quality that way. He also performed a highly abridged version of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue which had he had commissioned for his orchestra in 1924.

This film is kind of a mess. Paul Whiteman actually seems to have pretty good camera presence. He is certainly more interesting than the colorless announcer who plagues the film. The Whiteman Orchestra is fun to watch (although they don't seem to be particularly jazzy) and some of the big production numbers are pretty over the top. Bing Crosby and the Rhythm Boys sing a couple of songs and it's easy to see why they were a successful act. Bing was apparently a big partier and gave Whiteman a lot of problems while he was in the band.

The problem with the film isn't so much the primitive film technique. The problem is the now forgotten vaudeville acts and comedy relief that are interspersed throughout the film. It appears they are forgotten for a pretty good reason, their acts are major endurance contest to and they really kill this film. If a viewer can tough it out, you will get to hear The Rhapsody in Blue performed as it was originally presented and before symphonic orchestras got their hands on it and drained the life out of it.

1930 - DeMille's amazing sex musical MADAM SATAN

 A wife discovers her husband is cheating on her with a night club singer. She decides to humiliate him by dressing up as a character at a masquerade party known as Madam Satan.

 

The masquerade party happens to be on a dirigible which gets struck by lightening. The dirigible races out of control and breaks in two. The partiers in full costume, parachute out of the dirigible to save their lives and that's the normal stuff in this film.

Here is an excellent example of DeMille the filmmaker indulging his fantasies and fetishes in the very public forum of a film musical. The women are basically dressed in lingerie or strange bizarre costumes throughout the film. The musical numbers are dadaist in their conception and execution. The "Cats on the Catwalk" production number with the costumed party people hopping their way up a catwalk dressed as pussycats is a very very strange thing to see. Then there is the electric man production number (see above picture). Apparently this goofball doing his so called dance routine as a bolt of electricity was a major influence on Agnes DeMille who went on to choreograph Oklahoma.

It's easy to use the word "heightened reality" but is seems to fit a film like this.

I've seen a lot of DeMille films, but I've never seen a film like this one. A stunning film.

 116 minutes. Written by Jean MacPherson DeMille's mistress.

1930 - EARTH, they make you watch films like this in film school .

Alexander Dovzhenko's 1930 film on farm collectivism was criticized by the Communist controlled Soviet government for being rigidly and excessively formalist. The Commies may be attempting godless destroyers of our democratic way of life, but as it turns out they were apparently pretty decent film critics.

 

 A story of a farming community that gets a government sponsored tractor to help increase it's output. The film contains endless shots of apples growing on trees, apples glistening in the rain, apples falling out of trees laying on the ground and then there's the series of wheat growing in the field scenes and after that the series of sunflowers growing in the fields. 

 

 With it's meticulous technique in photography and editing, this was hardly going to be a film that the hard working Ukrainian farmers would go to see at their local multiplex. 

 

Oleksandr Dovzhenko aka Alexander Dovzhenko must have been aware that his highly formalist film would have little audience appeal because he included a nude scene towards the end. To little to late.

 Written by Oleksandr Dovzhenko, the running time is 76 minutes.

1930 - CITY GIRL F.W. Murnau's American Period

Farm boy from Minnesota travels to Chicago. While in the Windy City he meets and falls in love with a waitress working at a diner. They impulsively get married, return to the farm where they are not well received by the farm boy's Christian Fundamentalist father. That's basically the story.

The director F.W. Murnau had filmed The Last Laugh in Germany. American film executive William Fox whose studio would later become 20th Century Fox, considered The Last Laugh the best film ever made. Fox brought Murnau over to Hollywood for two purposes, he let Murnau make any film of his choosing and he wanted him to teach his studio directors how to make better films.

 

City Girl contains scenes of strong lyrical beauty with beautiful shots of the farm fields and the couple running through them. It also has very emotional performances from a cast that actually look like people who would live on a farm. The composition and photography in each scene using light, shadow and set design is very impressive in the city and farm scenes.

Murnau's first American film Sunrise, is now considered one of the greatest films ever made, unfortunately it did not do very well with the audience which was overwhelmed with it's stunning technique. City Girl was Murnau's third American film and it got caught up in the transitional mess from silent to sound films. Fox screwed around with it, reedited it and released it in a version not approved by the director.

Still the film has a strong sense of atmosphere for the period and place and it's a very good film.

 

Written by  Marion Orth and Berthold Viertel, the running time is 89 minutes.