1931 - RICH AND STRANGE, early Hitchcock comedy/drama

Another interesting restoration of an early Hitchcock picture.  Rich and Strange continues to show Hitchcock's progress as a filmmaker.  His career really doesn't start to take off until 1934 with his film, The Man Who Knew Too Much.

This is a rather typical romantic comedy where the husband and wife on an ocean cruise fall in and then out of love with other people and finally get reunited.  The film contains plenty of Hitchcock's humor and amusing situations.  But I would rate this as a minor Hitchcock film.

There's nothing wrong with restoring Hitchcock's early films but I wish the BFI would lavish some attention on some of his really quirky films like The Secret Agent, Young and Innocent and Sabotage.  These are the some of the most interesting pictures from Hitchcock's British period.  Rich and Strange is enjoyable enough but it would nice to have decent copies of the above mentioned films.

Of interest in this film is the actor Elsie Randolph who plays a very annoying passenger on the ocean cruise.  Randolph shows up again in Frenzy the film Hitchcock made towards the end of his career.

The screenplay is by Hitchcock his wife Alma Reville and Val Valentine.  The running time is 83 minutes.

1931 - THE SEAS BENEATH - early John Ford Navy film

This early John Ford film doesn't have a lot of his special visual touches, it's mostly a straight up adventure story.  During World War 1 the US Navy deploys "mystery ships," essentially decoy ships used to lure German submarines out into the open so the Navy could engage and sink them.  

Ford and his favorite 1930's writer Dudey Nichols created a story about one of these ships that had a lot of Ford's favorite themes, the profession of arms, cornball navy humor and a stolid hero. The hero in this case is George O'Brien, an early version of the character John Wayne starting playing for Ford somewhat regularly in the 1940's through the 1960's. 

The Informer, Ford's breakthrough sound film is still 4 years away.  This film seems more like a straight up 30's adventure film filmed by a studio director.  However the film is impressive for the amount of on location photography that was incorporated into the story.  There are some exciting action scenes towards the end of the film that were actually filmed at sea with a battle between the "mystery ship" and the German submarine.  

This is a decent 30's action film with the usual somewhat poor film acting.  Directors and actors were still trying to figure out how to modulate their performances in early sound films.  Visually the scenes at sea are staged pretty well, the scenes on shore with the actors are somewhat an ordeal to sit through.  A good early 30's action film.

90 minutes

1931-DIRIGIBLE, Frank Capra action director

The writer Frank Wead (who was played by John Wayne in the Wings of Eagles) wrote this action/adventure story about a United States Navy blimp flying to the rescue of some arctic explorers trapped at the South Pole.  Frank Capra directed this film with a very high degree of talent and intelligence at the start of this best period.

 

Capra tells the story at a fairly brisk pace and for the most part moves things along from one exciting situation to another.  Capra's photographer, Joseph Walker who worked with Capra on almost all of  his famous Columbia films, photographed the film with lots of style, the scenes at Lakehurst with the navy men working with the blimps are very well lit and photographed.  The flying scenes with the blimps contain actual on location photography, combined with rear projection, models and miniatures.  It's all edited and blended together very effectively, at times the special effects still look very impressive.

 

Probably the most tiresome parts of Dirigible are the scenes with Fay Wray as the wife of the daredevil pilot who doesn't want him to fly anymore.  This type of character was already a cliche even in the early 1930's.   Capra didn't seem very comfortable with the dialog and situation, he must have been aware that this junk slowed down the picture.  These scenes are somewhat compensated by Fay Wray who is very easy to look at.  The fact that this type of female character still shows up in films today says a lot about the way Hollywood still views women.

 

It might have been interesting to see what type of action films Capra would have made, had he continued to work in this genre.  Instead Capra went on to make his social problem and humanitarian pictures, Mr Smith Goes To Washington, Mr Deeds Goes To Town, Meet John Doe and Lost Horizon.

Dirigible is a very impressive film for an early sound film.

100 minutes of no Capra corn.