1935 - THE GOOD FAIRY, good 1930's romantic comedy

An early film from William Wyler who was entering his best period as a director.  Margaret Sullivan a rather unconventional actress is an orphan who gets a job at one of those opulent movie theaters which don't exist anymore. She ends up getting involved with three men. A waiter, the theater owner and a morose attorney. 

Wyler was a great director who could work in about any genre and what this film also has going for it is a screenplay by the legendary Preston Sturges.  This film is loaded with his weird characters and goofy situations.

 

If you are a fan of classic Hollywood actors, seeing Frank Morgan, the Wizard of Oz himself and classy British actor Herbert Marshall act like complete fools makes this film a lot of fun.  Margaret Sullivan didn't do a lot of films but she was an excellent performer and managed to play the naive orphan without looking like an idiot.

 

This is a very well made and still very entertaining comedy from as they used to say "the golden age of Hollywood."  Wyler 's direction is very smooth when it comes to moving the story along and working with actors always his strong points throughout his career. A high recommendation for this one.

The running time is 98 minutes. 

1935 - CAPTAIN BLOOD, large scale, dated but entertaining swashbuckler

Warner Brothers pulled together this entertaining swashbuckling pirate film with a large budget.  Michael Curtiz directed and one of Warner's best screenwriters Casey Robinson adapted the book the film was based on.  The photography is excellent, the special effects and model work for 1935 were at a very high standard.  The composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold was a master at writing large scale symphonic scores and he provided a very entertaining one for this film.  The film really couldn't miss.

Warner Brothers took a big chance with the cast. Errol Flynn essentially an unknown actor at the time was chosen as the title character.  Olivia de Havilland hadn't even turned twenty yet and was cast as the female lead and love interest for Flynn.  But both of these performers were soon to become mainstays at the studio and were very popular with the movie going public during the 1930's and 40's.

 

Captain Blood is mostly entertaining with lots of colorful characters and interesting locations.  The action never lets up with sword fights and everyone's favorite pirate movie scene two ships blasting at each other with their cannons.  It's true swashbuckling film making. 

 

Probably the worst thing to say about this film is that it is very dated even for a film set in the 1600's.  A lot of the plot has to do with the character Peter Blood being forced into slavery by the King of England, escaping and becoming a pirate fighting against the English.  By the end of the film the screenwriter has had to spend a lot of time juicing the plot to get Captain Blood back fighting on the side of the English and become a true English patriot again.  All fairly ludicrous stuff but that's Hollywood story telling after all.

The film runs 119 minutes.

1935 - THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII - entertaining 1930's epic

This tale of the ancient Roman Empire has it all, volcanoes erupting, gladiators, Christians being led to the slaughter and the typical epic cast of thousands.  It also has special appearances by Pontius Pilate and Jesus himself although he is never actually called that.

 The story concerns a blacksmith in Pompeii played by Preston Foster.  Foster's wife and child are injured by a runaway chariot of course.  Unable to pay for a doctor they die.  The grieving Foster decides to become a gladiator to gain as much wealth as possible.  Along the way he adopts an orphan boy who he raises as his son. How does Jesus fit into all of this?  Well Foster and his son travel to Judea to see the most important man in the world.  Thinking the man is Pontius Pilate, played by a curly haired Basil Rathbone (the best performance in the film). They encounter Jesus who performs a miracle on Foster's adopted son who has been injured and almost dies.

It's back to Pompeii where Foster is arranging one of those big gladiator showdowns in the local amphitheater.  A Christian sect has been captured and is about to become fodder for a bunch of blood thirsty gladiators.  Foster's adopted son has secretly become a Christian and he ends up in the amphitheater as well.  Just as things are about to get really bad, Mount Vesuvius erupts and brings the film to a rousing climax of death and destruction. It's a lot of story to be told in 90 minutes.

 

The filmmakers are Merian C. Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack, the men behind the original King Kong.  Cooper and Schoedsack had been explorers in the 1920's and got into show biz where their films were what would be called high adventure.  Besides King Kong, they filmed She, Mighty Joe Young and The Most Dangerous Game.  No drawing room comedies for these guys.

 

The special effects were by stop motion animator Willis O'Brien and Vernon Walker and expert at creating optical effects. In the case Walker expertly blending actors with O'Brien's stop motion effects. 

This is a very entertaining 1930's film. Between the story and the big action finale you really can't go wrong.  Cooper and Schoedsack were always about putting on a good show.

The screenplay was by Ruth Rose, the running time is 96 minutes.

1935 - THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, the classic horror comedy

The classic Universal Horror film.  Directed by James Whale who probably didn't do one thing wrong throughout the film.  The Bride of Frankenstein combines horror and comedy so assuredly that you can only wonder how they got it all right for this film.

The stylized studio sets, the casting of Karloff as the monster the moody black and white photography and the acting create a one of a kind horror film that probably hasn't been topped since it came out in 1935.  

Whale edited the film down from ninety to seventy five minutes so there isn't a wasted moment in the entire picture. A brilliant film.

75 minutes, written by William Hurlbut.

1935 - CHARLIE CHAN IN EGYPT, enjoyable throwback to a different time

No one would mistake this film for a piece of cinematic art but it does have it's pleasures.  Chinese detective Charlie Chan is on the trail of some Egyptian artifacts stolen from a tomb that is being excavated.  He gets involved in a couple of murders and wraps the whole thing up in under 90 minutes.

Usually these Chan films had the participation of  his "#1 or #2" sons but Chan is on his own with help from the black actor Stepin Fetchit !  Seen today the Stepin Fetchit character is pretty intense as he promotes some of the worse stereotypes of black Americans.  However Charlie Chan does not treat him in a condescending manner which is apparently left to the white people in the cast to take up the patronizing slack on the one black character in the film.

The mystery is a convoluted mess to put it mildly.  However I have to give the writers credit for devising weird ways to kill some of the characters off.  Nobody gets the best of mild mannered Charlie Chan who is always two steps ahead of the local police in solving the crime.  

The film is poorly directed and has to rely on Warner Oland ( a Swedish American actor) to pull the picture through.  The film is also notable for an early appearance of 40's sex symbol Rita Hayworth.

73 minutes written by Robert Ellis and Helen Logan.

1935 - THE CALL OF THE WILD, a story about a dog is a movie about Clark Gable

William Wellman's film of Jack London's story of adventure and survival in the Alaskan wilderness told from the point of view of a dog named Buck got a major redo and was turned into a story about Clark Gable and Loretta Young falling in love in the wilderness while searching for gold.

Gable teams up with Jackie Oakie an actor usually playing comedy relief.  For a third credited actor Oakie isn't too obnoxious and actually plays off of Gable pretty well.   Clark Gable had the manly man act down pretty well by 1935.  In this film he has an affair with Loretta Young whose husband supposedly died on the trail looking for gold.

 

 In real life Young and Gable actually did have an affair (she claimed date rape) which resulted in a child.  Young then went through a series of maneuvers which had her putting her birth child up for adoption and then adopting the kid herself.

Back to the film.  The Call of the Wild is another well produced Daryl F. Zanuck production.  A lot of it was filmed on location in the Mount Baker National Forest near Seattle Washington.   Zanuck never had a problem shooting on location if it benefited the film.  Macho director William Wellman directed the film and it zips along for a quick 90 minutes.

Bottom line, charismatic Hollywood stars, classy production and on location photography add up to an entertaining film.

89 minutes, written by Gene Fowler and Leonard Praskins.

1935 - STEAMBOAT ROUND THE BEND, entertaining John Ford comedy

Ford directs the "Garrison Keller" of his day Will Rogers in this comedy about life in the rural south.  Rogers was not a trained actor but had been a performer on Broadway for years with the Ziegfeld Follies where he developed his cracker barrel philosopher shtick.

Rogers eventually ended up in Hollywood working with John Ford who apparently got along well with Rogers allowing him to actually improvise a lot of his dialog.

Steamboat Round the Bend is not The Searchers this is strictly a commercial entertainment but a very good one.  There is still the expected sloppy sentimentality and corn ball humor Ford liked to stick into his films but it plays pretty well in this film.  Rogers plays a con man selling a line of snake oil up and down the river on an old steamboat.

The film reaches it's climax with a steamboat race which is still pretty exciting and fun to watch.

82 minutes written by Ben Lucien Burman, Lamar Trotti and Dudley Nichols.

1935 - GOLDDIGGERS OF 1935, Busby Berkley

Busby Berkley directs an entire film for the first time instead of just the musical numbers.

The two musical sequences in this film are the major reason to watch this.  Otherwise the film is mostly a  corny 1930's comedy.  Dick Powell the crooner of choice for Berkley, seems a little less of a simp in this film.  Gloria Stuart who was old Rose in Titanic is his love interest, she can't sing or dance and is as stiff as a board.

The two spectacular production numbers have songs by Harry Warren and Al Dubin, "The Words Are in My Heart" and "The Lullaby of Broadway."  This is obviously where Berkley poured all of creative energy into this film.  The odd of idea of moving pianos with beautiful women playing them is too bizarre to comment on during "The Words Are in My Heart" number.

But even more impressive is the self contained story wrapped into "The Lullaby of Broadway."  In this sequence there is an amazing tap off between dozens of men and women that ends with the death of one of the lead performers.  

Busby Berkley was a unique talent working in a very specialized niche of filmmaking.  He was fortunate enough to be working at Warner Brother's studio which allowed him to experiment  with  complex geometric patterns using actual people as his props.

98 minutes, written by Manuel Seff and Peter Milne.

1935 - THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN, or she sure enjoys screwing with guy's minds.

Von Sternberg's final film with his "Barbie Doll" Marlene Dietrich is incredibly beautiful to look at from a visual approach.  However the very thin story is another matter  Even at 75 minutes there seems like an awful lot of padding in the running time of the film.

The story is told in a rather sophisticated flashback style.   Lionel Atwill who looks like Von Sternberg, is a Spanish army officer who is infatuated with Dietrich a man eater if there ever was one.  Into this mix is Cesar Romero playing a Spanish revolutionary also nuts over Dietrich.  The film generally seems to be about Dietrich screwing with both of these guys for most of the running time.

John Dos Passos a writer known for his social criticism of American life in his books and novels somehow got mixed up in this thing but I have to believe that the overriding influence in the story and screenplay was that of Von Sternberg.

 

Von Sternberg not only took directorial credit but also cinematography credit as well for The Devil Is a Woman.  It's certainly one of the most beautiful black and white films I have ever seen.  As usual Von Sternberg really pours it on with his photography of Dietrich, she is almost a creature from another planet.

The film was unsurprisingly a financial failure.  Audiences probably didn't know what to make of a  Dietrich/Von Sternberg collaboration which was another film in his strange Marlene Dietrich fetish film series.  Lionel Atwill's complete obsession with Dietrich is clearly a representation of that relationship.

 

The complete weirdness of The Devil Is a Woman is probably a film of interest more for film buffs and scholars than the "average" film goer.  It understandably ended Von Sternberg's working relationship with Dietrich.

75 minutes.

1935 - CHINA SEAS, mash up of Dinner At Eight and Grand Hotel on a boat

From the Cadillac of film studios.  MGM sure pumped out a lot of stuff like this.   The very manly Clark Gable, is the manly captain of a ship sailing in the China Seas.  1930's sex bomb Jean Harlow plays a character named China Doll.  Wallace Berry is the passenger with funny business on his mind. American Rosalind Russell plays a very proper English woman named Sybil, who is involved with manly Clark in a love triangle with at times bra less Jean Harlow, and so it goes.

The screenwriter Jules Furthman was a go guy for making this pack of cliches interesting. The director Tay Garnett a very underrated film maker is skilled enough to keep this interesting and succeeds most of the time.  

The film has a lot going on.  There's a hurricane scene where a steamroller of all things, on the deck of the ship getting lose and rolling around flattening a few coolies.  Almost immediately after that pirates attack the ship but manly Clark Gable gets the upper hand with some kind of a cannon he just happens to have on board his ship. 

Have to give Tay Garnett credit, he slips in as much sex and sadism as he can get away.  During the typhoon scene, Harlow in an already tight gown gets soaked with water which leaves little left to the imagination.  Manly Clark Gable is tortured by some kind of gizmo called a "Chinese boot" something apparently invented for this film.  Garnett also isn't afraid to have a few bodies flying across the screen when manly Clark Gable starts blasting the pirates with his cannon.

A lot of MGM's reputation as the classy prestige studio rests on  films like Ben Hur, Mutiny On The Bounty, and Romeo and Juliet.  However films like China Seas is what the audiences came to watch and MGM knew it.

90 quick minutes.

1935 - THE 39 STEPS, Hitchcock's masterpiece of entertainment

Kicking the quality level back up after the last 5 posts with this classic comedy/thriller from Alfred Hitchcock. 

Not much I can add re-watching this film.  Robert Donat, as Hanney the man on the run from spies and the police is perfect.  Madeline Carroll, now considered the first of Hitchock's "cool blonds" matches him almost as well.  Hitchcock was always labeled as a director who didn't like working with actors to get performances, but it's pretty clear he was in sync with Donat and Carroll.  They set the standard for this kind of thriller for years to come. 

One of the things Hitchcock liked about The 39 Steps was how fast paced the film was.  It certainly rushes along from one clever situation to another, the political rally, the encounter with the head of the enemy spy ring, and in one of his cleverest touches the character Mr. Memory. 

Hitchcock's visual inventiveness is on display throughout the film but never at the expense of the actors or the story.

This film is considered a classic for very good reason

1935 - THE CASE OF THE CURIOUS BRIDE, Warren William IS Perry Mason

This is a fast moving comedy/mystery directed by Warner Brother's best studio director Michael Curtiz.  The film is known for the odd out of focus dissolves between scenes that run throughout the film and a strange gourmet food motif subplot that almost overshadows the murder mystery.

Ace criminal lawyer Perry Mason is also a master chef and he probably spends the first twenty minutes of the film preparing his dinner.  Perry Mason takes the case of an ex girlfriend/mistress who is accused of murdering her husband.  Mason races around trying to solve the mystery, not so much to keep his client out of the electric chair but to wrap things up before his vacation begins.

 

Warren William plays Perry Mason as a very smooth operator who isn't above bending and breaking the law to beat the police and district attorney.  In fact the level of dishonesty throughout the entire legal system is incredibly cynical.  The criminals have more of an ethical code than the court system.

 

As usual in murder mysteries the fun isn't the murder plot,  it's watching the protagonist figure things out in an entertaining way.   Michael Curtiz was a director who knew how to pace a film, and he races through this plot pausing only long enough for another weird food joke. 

A stylish, entertaining and very strange mystery film.