1932 - CHANDAU THE MAGICIAN, is 1930's escapism at it's most entertaining.

Chandau the Magician (Edmund Lowe) has graduated from yoga school where he has mastered the powers of hypnotism, teleportation and some other rather dubious mental abilities.  His first order of business is to stop the evil Roxor (Bela Lugosi).  Roxor has kidnapped a scientist in order to have him build a weapon that will destroy cities.  Chandau must also rescue the scientist's pretty daughter from a slave auction in addition to romancing Egyptian Princess Nadji.  It goes without saying for a film set in the Middle East, every actor in the cast is played by white people.

Chandau the Magician could almost be the grandfather of Indiana Jones.  There's lots of action combined with fantasy elements and plenty of narrow escapes.  In fact you could probably argue that this film is in many ways more entertaining than that series.  It's also has a short running time something these present day overstuffed adventure epics on the streaming services constantly plague the viewer with.  These films never seem to know when to wrap it up.

 

This film has the benefit of some impressive behind the camera talent. The legendary Chinese cameraman James Wong Howe was responsible for the photography. Howe was one of the best black and white stylists in film.  The director was the famous production designer and special effects expert William Cameron Menzies. The film has an interesting look to it and for a film made in 1932 the special effects are still impressive. 

If you are looking for a visually sophisticated looking film with an amusingly naive story line you should enjoy this.  The film is action packed and fast moving even by today's ADHD standards of film making.  The film was co-directed by Marcel Varnel.  William Cameron Menzies was a great filmmaker in a lot of areas but working with actors was not one of his strong points.

The film was written by Barry Conners and Philip Klein. The running time is 71 minutes.

1932 - THE MUSIC BOX - the classic Laurel and Hardy short film

Laurel and Hardy were big stuff back in the early days of movies.  Their elaborate slapstick comedies aren't really something that you hear much about anymore.  Stan Laurel was the creative genius behind the team who along with producer Hal Roach developed the team's slow boil comedic approach.

The Music Box is a short film with Stan Laurel and his partner Oliver Hardy as two delivery men who are hired to transport a player piano to a home on a very high hill.  The comedic situations arise from these two having to carry the piano up some very steep stairs only to see it repeatedly come tumbling down to the bottom of the stairs and on to the street.  

 

Is it funny?  Well I guess so.  It's clearly based on the legend of Sisyphus who was doomed by the Greek gods to push a rock up a mountain for eternity only to see it constantly tumble down the same mountain.  Laurel and Hardy updated this old Greek legend with a player piano in a wooden crate which continually makes noise as if it is a Greek chorus commenting on their progress or lack or progress.

 

Obviously the humor is dated, this film was released 93 years ago.  However watching this piano constantly rolling down the steep stairs does produce a kind of anxiety in the viewer.  The Music Box is an interesting film almost like it was filmed by a dadaist,

The film was written by H. M. Walker, the running time is 30 minutes

1932 - F.P.1 ANTWORTET NICHT, or Floating Platform 1 Doesn't Answer.

This large scale science fiction picture from German studio UFA is a fairly fascinating and still reasonably watchable story.  It seems in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean a company has built a floating platform for want of a better term a runway in the middle of the ocean for airplanes to refuel before finishing their trip across the Atlantic.  Into this comes a saboteur determined to sink F.P.1.  

The film has a rather interesting cast with Peter Lorre in an early role as some kind of reporter.  Probably the most fascinating actor is a gentleman called  Hans Albers a leading actor in German cinema in the 1930's.  Albers was married to a Jewish woman and spent his career during the Nazi years skillfully avoiding being associated with the Nazi party, no small trick in those years.

 

Obviously the film suffers from 1030's special effects but for the most part the set design is rather interesting and if F.P.1 looks like its something they built and floated in a bathtub at times well that's the way it goes for an effects heavy film shot in the early 1930's.

 

The film runs 114 minutes and was written by Walter Reisch and Curt Siodmak two gentlemen who ended up working in Hollywood after the Nazi's came to power.

1932 - LOVE ME TONIGHT, outstanding film musical

This musical is one of the best film musicals I can recall seeing in a very long time.  The director Rouben Mamoulian used about every cinematic trick in the book,  The score is by Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart.  

 The story is certainly musical silly, Maurice Chevalier is a tailor who gets mistaken for a European nobleman.  He falls in love with a princess played by Jeanette MacDonald before she signed with MGM,  the studio that promptly sucked the sexiness out of her. 

The rest of the cast is a compendium of 1930's stars.  Myrna Loy, Charles Ruggles, Charles Butterworth and in a rare singing part C.Aubrey Smith of all actors.  Ernest Lubitsch was usually considered the master of the Paramount musical but I would have to say that Mamoulian and his production team easily topped him.

 

The screenplay was Samuel Hoffenstein George Marion Jr., and Waldemar Young.  The film runs 104 minutes. 

1932 - SCARFACE: The Shame of the Nation

This is a very violent 30's gangster film to put it mildly.  The film is based on the life of Al Capone and was written by the legendary screenwriter Ben Hecht, produced by Howard Hughes and directed by Howard Hawks.

Scarface is considered a classic in the gangster genre and it probably is a classic but be forewarned this is a very 1930's film with a definite 1930's vibe to it particularly in the acting and the overall pacing

I don't recall Howard Hawks directing a film like this one with lots of artsy photography and symbolism. It's very different from the style he developed later in his career.

Still, the film isn't dull, there is plenty of machine gun action and Paul Muni's performance as the sort of stupid but very violent gangster is interesting to see.

95 minutes.

1932 - THE MUMMY, accept no substitute

The Mummy movie.  This film featured the original production team from Todd Browning's version of Dracula.  This is a much superior film to that one, because of the involvement of Karl Freund the cinematographer of Dracula.

Freund was hired as the director on The Mummy.  He had been a noted cinematographer working on Lang's Metropolis and The Last Laugh.  Freund brought plenty of atmosphere using lighting effects and editing.  This film has a slow but creepy place.

Credit for the film should also go Universal's famous makeup artist Jack Pierce who created the rotting bandage makeup that Boris Karloff wore during the flashback and early scenes in the film.

A superior 30's horror film.

73 minutes.

1932 - THIRTEEN WOMEN, a fascinating film mixing hypnosis and horoscopes

Short and sweet.  This odd drama features American actor Myrna Loy during the odd part of her career where she was frequently cast as mysterious Asian women.  Loy plays a woman who was ostracized by her classmates at a girls boarding school.  Years later, Loy decides to have her revenge on 13 of her classmates through seduction, hypnosis and the power of suggestion which involves sending them horoscopes which predict their deaths.

Thirteen Women is barely and hour and zips along at a very fast pace.  The scheming Loy is fun to watch especially when she goes after goody two shoes Irene Dunne.  Unfortunately the dictates of a Hollywood studio film decree that all American actor Irene Dunne will come out on top.

59 minutes.

1932 - WHITE ZOMBIE, the possible first full length zombie film?

A Haitian planter falls in love with a woman about to marry another man.  The planter hires voodoo master Bela Lugosi to turn her into a zombie so he control her and that's about it for the plot of this film.

Poor acting, poor dialog, an overall sense of a cheap production.  Lugosi had a screen presence in film but was never much of an  actor.  Even with this eye rolling performance he has trouble staying focused since all he has to do is stare at zombies for most of the film.

On the positive side, there is an attempt to create a spooky atmosphere and the director Victor Haperin does try for some interesting photographic effects.

This film is frequently cited as one of the first full length zombie films and is apparently out in a new release that cleans up the picture quality about as well as possible.  Still, probably not worth actually purchasing.  However nice and short.

67 minutes

1932 - VAMPYR, classic vampire film is still pretty creepy looking

The great aesthetic of film,  Carl Theodor Dreyer makes a vampire film and it's a creepy slow moving artistic take on the horror genre.

Dreyer shot the film entirely on location as a silent film and added the soundtrack in post production.  Most of the cast was  made up of nonprofessional actors.  The cinematography was by Rudolph Mate who captured some very eerie images using light, smoke and shadows.

Even at 74 minutes, this is a very slow moving film.  The story is difficult to follow at times and you  have to pay fairly close attention to understand exactly what is going on.  In other words this is a European art film.

Nobody ever went to a Dreyer film expecting a slam bang action epic.  But this is an interesting film, primarily due to the mood and the creepy atmosphere that runs throughout Vampyr.

75 minutes

1932 - BLONDE VENUS, same as it always was

Marlene is a mom in this one.  She's married to a chemist who has radium poisoning of all things.  He needs $1500.00 to pay for a cure so Marlene decides to go back to work performing on the stage in order to raise the money. 

Marlene meets a rich guy while her husband is away getting cured and apparently has an affair with him.  It's hard to tell exactly what's happening with that since the production code was starting to rear it's ugly head around this time and no mention of this kind of hanky panky would be allowed in the movies.

As usual Von Sternberg carefully photographs Dietrich making sure the light hits her just right, this woman positively glows.  Marlene sings a couple of kind of racy songs and these musical interludes seem like they belong in an entirely different film. 

When all is said and done the whole idea of actually putting Dietrich in some kind of domestic drama is almost to ludicrous to comprehend.  The ideal Dietrich film would be 90 minutes of closeups of her with the key light beating down on her forehead.

93 minutes

1932 - NUMBER 17, very early interesting early sound film from Hitchcock.

Apparently Alfred Hitchcock was extremely dissatisfied with Number 17, but he was also a realist and made the best of the situation. The film is about a gang of thieves searching an abandoned house for a priceless necklace. 

British films in the early 1930's were notorious for having next to no production budget, and Number 17 looks really cheap with it's abandoned house set which is a series of empty rooms. However Hitchcock's inventive direction makes the film very entertaining.

There are a series of clever scenes, a couple hanging from a banister over a staircase, a fight scene  that's very well edited and much noirish camera work.  Hitchcock throws in lots of comedy relief with some sort of cockney character who is a really over the top after a while.

Towards the end of the film there is an exciting chase between a bus and a train.  The model work leaves a lot to be desired (always kind of a problem in a Hitchcock picture), but if you can overlook that aspect of the film, it's extremely well done and very exciting,  in some ways it reminds me of the finale to Strangers On A Train.

Number 17 was made three years before Hitchcock's breakout film The 39 Steps, but it has a lot of his famous weird camera angles, his montage editing effects and his mixture of suspense and humor all things he was to use repeatedly in his career.  Hitchcock was a very skilled filmmaker in his prime.

It's somewhat surprising this film isn't better known it certainly has a lot to recommend it.

64 minutes.

1932 - MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE, horror film looks great, has great atmosphere and is nice and short.

Short and sweet.  The Poe story is fleshed out even in this short film.  Lugosi still struggles to act playing a mad scientist doing some sort of god knows what,  weird experiments with and ape and women.

Weird lighting, strange sets and a guy running around in a gorilla suit, what more can you ask for?

The director was Robert Florey, who was an assistant to Chaplin and Von Sternberg, he was also a noted experimental filmmaker during the 1930's.  The cameraman was Karl Freund who had shot Metropolis and The Last Laugh.  The film certainly looks cool.

Well worth a look.

61 minutes.

1932 - THE MISTRESS OF ATLANTIS, pointless adventure fantasy.

Two soldiers from the French Foreign Legion wander around the Sahara desert where they end up in the lost city of Atlantis which is ruled by the queen of Atlantis (played by Brigitte Helm, from Metropolis).

Believe it or not G.W. Pabst filmed this thing in three different versions, English, French and German.  The film has a somewhat choppy storyline to put it mildly. I don't think Pabst got a handle on what he was attempting in this film which seems to be  some sort of romantic fatalism.  Probably filming in multiple languages didn't help.

Pabst photographed some of the film on location in the desert and these are the best scenes.  Once the French soldiers arrive in Atlantis the film spends a lot of time on them aimlessly wandering around for reasons never really explained.

Apparently one of the soldiers falls in love with Brigitte Helm but  since she is barely in the film it's difficult to see how that happens.  She probably has about 10 minutes of screen time and about 5 lines of dialog.  If the film is called The Mistress of Atlantis,  you might want to put more of the mistress in the actual film.

81 confused minutes.

1932 - THE BLUE LIGHT, Riefenstahl's story of romantic fatalism is one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen.

None of the stills on this post will do justice to The Blue Light one of the most beautiful black and white films I have seen.  The director/star Leni Riefenstahl had at her disposal some of the top German technicians working in their film business at that time.  This group managed to find a way to film subtle shades of gray throughout the film to achieve incredibly beautiful visual effects 

The Blue Light is a very simple story about a mountain girl who has discovered the secret of a mysterious source of glowing light from a mountain near her home.  The villagers in the small town beneath the mountain have already lost 4 men who have attempted to follow her to discover her secret.  They also believe she is a witch who has entranced these men to their death.  Admittedly the story is a little thin, but it does allow the filmmakers to stage some incredible mountain climbing scenes.

In this film, Riefenstahl is very carefully photographed to make her seem almost a creature from another dimension.  I suppose you could label this film a uber fascist fairy tale, with this emphasis on this pure untouched creature interacting with her rugged environment, that theme is strongly interwoven into the narrative.

Leni Riefenstahl will always be a controversial filmmaker.  Her association with Hitler and the Nazi party followed her to her death.  Her degree of involvement with the Nazi's has been subject to a lot of speculation, but if her naivety about the Nazis was as real as she claims, her association with them probably still made her a dangerous person since she helped to propagate their Aryan fantasy.  She always acted the role of the misunderstood artist her entire life.

The film has a strong Teutonic theme running throughout it.   It's possible Riefenstahl was attempting to create a myth much like Fritz Lang's Die Nibelung Saga.  Leni Riefenstahl always thought epic when she filmed, look at Olympia.

86 minutes.

Still an impressive film, one of the most beautiful I have seen.  The Blue Light shows how very talented filmmakers working with 1930's equipment and filming in black and white, can equal or even surpass a lot of films shot in color and widescreen.

1932 - SHANGHAI EXPRESS-Dietrich-Von Sternberg

Marlene Dietrich is iconic for a reason and the Shanghai Express shows why. She is carefully shot by photographer Lee Garmes and the director Josef Von Sternberg. Every camera angle has been planned for the maximum effect of presenting her when she is on screen which is almost the entire movie.

But this film is more than a portrait gallery of Dietrich. Marlene Dietrich actually could act, she has a sly sense of humor throughout the film. Clive Brook plays the traditional "stiff upper lip" British soldier in love with her and at first he seems pretty stiff but as the film goes on he becomes the emotional center of the film.

Jules Furthman who frequently worked with Howard Hawks was an expert at putting together stories with good dialog and this film has some amusing and memorable lines.

Josef Von Sternberg showed what a good filmmaker could do with an interesting story, strong actors and a strong visual sense.

80 minutes.

1932 - THE MASK OF FU MANCHU doesn't really encourage a lot of racial harmony

The legendary oriental criminal mastermind Dr. Fu Manchu wants the sword and mask of Genghis Kahn. With them he can rule Asia and slaughter the "white race." Sir Nyland Smith sort of an Indiana Jones as an old guy is trying to stop the " hideous yellow monster." And that about summons up this film's idea of racial harmony.

English actor Boris Kharloff plays Fu Manchu, American actor Myrna Loy plays his "ugly" daughter, and that about summons up this film's attitude when it came to casting Asian actors in the roles of Asian characters. 
  

The movie is a lot of fun, the story is a little weak but everything else is top grade quality, the black and white photography is very good. The sets and situations are fun, the torture chambers are particularly entertaining. Even the 1930's special effects are pretty decent. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, obviously got a lot of their inspiration from this movie.

The film runs under 90 minutes, MGM produced it so it looks very good.