1937 - UN CARNET DU BAL aka Life Dances On.

This drama about a woman trying to make sense of her life after her husband dies is considered a film classic.  It's a part of the traditional French main stream film industry that was to be eviscerated by Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Godard and the rest of the "New Wave" gang looking to make a name for themselves by attacking traditional film directors in the 1950's and 60's.

However Julien Duvivier the director who was making films in the 1930's was a superb director and had an understanding of how to use the camera to tell a story.  You could probably put Duvivier's filmography next to any of the "New Wave" directors and it would more than hold it's own.

Duvivier spent some time in Hollywood during World War II where he had a mixed career.  The interesting Flesh and Fantasy and Lydia used the same episodic story telling structure as Un Carnet Du Bal.  However the ridiculous The Great Waltz which was supposedly based on the life of Johann Strauss II The Waltz King and probably one of the silliest films ever made about a composer.

  

Un Carnet Du Bal is one of his best films.  Duvivier and his writers fashioned a story that revolves around a woman remembering her coming out ball when she was sixteen years old where she was pursued by seven suitors.  She decides to find out what happened to each of these men and begins a journey to locate them.  From the beginning of the film with it's impressive memory waltz scene of her first dance to her final realization of the reality of her life, the film is actually quite a moving portrait of one woman.  

This is certainly a high point of 1930's French film making and cinema. 

The film was written by Julien Duvivier, Henri Jeanson, Yves Mirande, Jean Sarment, Pierre Wolff, and Bernard Zimmer.  The running time is 144 minutes.

1937 - ONE HUNDRED MEN AND A GIRL aka 100 MEN AND A GIRL

Deanna Durbin one of the big three child stars of the 30's and 40's the other two being Shirley Temple and Judy Garland, was a popular star of family friendly films.  She frequently played a little miss fix it up as she went about righting wrongs and solving problems for clueless adults.  One Hundred Men And A Girl was one of her most popular features. 

Durbin plays the daughter of out of work trombone player father Adolph Menjou.  Durbin also befriends famous conductor Leopold Stokowski playing himself.  She schemes to get her father and his out of work musician friends work.  After the musicians form an ad hoc symphony orchestra Durbin tricks Stokowki into conducting them.  Not much plot in this movie.  Stokowski was a fairly well known symphony conductor and is best remembered for appearing in Disney's Fantasia.  For a musician who wasn't a trained actor he actually gives a decent performance. 

 

Anyway Durbin races around town good deed doing and more importantly singing, singing singing.  Durbin was a lyrical soprano and her films have her warbling lots of audience friendly musical selections.  In this film she sings Mozart's "Alleluia", "A Heart That's Free", "It's Raining Sunbeams", and for good measure,  "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow." 

 

This film was made during the Depression and if it has one theme to it, it's don't give up hope.  When things are the darkest hope is personified by the perennially chipper Deanna.  This is the kind of take the family to a movie that won't remotely offend anyone.

This fluff of a film was written amazingly by three writers Charles Kenyon, Bruce Manning, and James Mulhauser.  The running time is a painless 85 minutes.    

1937 - A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS, odd Fred Astaire musical

Filmed during Fred Astaire's run of musicals at RKO during the 1930's,  A Damsel in Distress is one oddball film.  Usually in these RKO musicals Fred Astaire was teamed with Ginger Rogers.  Unfortunately the box office performance of the Astaire/Rogers series was starting to diminish.  The studio got it into their head that Astaire needed to be separated from Ginger Rogers and picked as his romantic lead Joan Fontaine a performer who couldn't sing or dance which was kind of a problem for a musical.

The story has Astaire as a musical comedy star performing in London where he falls in love with snooty Lady Alyce Marshmorton played by Fontaine who is very pretty but struggles to act.  Frankly the story in this film is really a big nothing even for a film like this.

  

What this film has going for it are some excellent musical numbers.  Astaire's dancing partners are none other than George Burns and his wife/partner Gracie Allen a couple of performers who started out in vaudeville and whose careers ran all the way to the dawn of television.  They were seasoned comedians who were actually fairly credible dancers while performing with Astaire.

 

The songs were by George and Ira Gershwin, the director was George Stevens.  The story may be weak but this is a top grade production with excellent numbers particularity a dance with Astaire, Burns and Allen using whisk brooms of all things and an amazing sequence in a fun house set.

The film was written by, P.G. Wodehouse, Ernest Pagano and S.K. Laauren, the running time is 98 minutes.

1937 - THE PRISONER OF ZENDA, good 1930's adventure/romance

Super producer David O. Selznick was probably at the height of his creative powers when he decided to take on this old warhorse of a story.  The Prisoner of Zenda is about duty, honor and saving the kingdom of Ruritania  from "Black Michael" the evil half brother of the future king.  The twist in this story is that an Englishman, Rudolf Rassendyll who just happens to be on vacation in Ruritania, is a dead ringer for the future King.  When the future King is kidnapped Rudolf Rassendyll saves the day by impersonating him since he is now The Prisoner of Zenda.  Rassendyll rescues the King, foils the evildoers and rides off into the sunset.

This is an enjoyable 1930's film that plays very well.  David O. Selznick wasn't a successful producer for nothing.  He spent lavishly on a good cast, hired one of the best cinematographers in Hollywood, James Wong Howe and had a number of good writers adapt the book into an entertaining piece of Hollywood hokum.  The film is a very good looking production with excellent sets and costumes.

 

The film's cast starts with Ronald Colman (of the mellow voice) in the dual role of Rudolph Rassendyll and the King.  The stunning Madeline Caroll is what else, a princess who Rasendyll falls in love with.  Raymond Massey is the evil half brother "Black" Michael, Mary Astor is his French mistress and probably the actor having the most fun, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is the witty villain Rupert of Hentau who gets all the best dialog.  

 

As was the way with Selznick who was somewhat of a perfectionist, he used three different directors during the film.  John Cromwell who filmed most of the story.  George Cukor who filmed the love scenes and W.S. Van Dyke who filmed the sword fight at the end.  Selznick also switched cinematographers during filming and dropped an epilogue that would have been a downer for the end of the film.

You can criticize the incredible plot of this film but you sure can't argue that this is a superb Hollywood production.

The film has a lot of writers as was the Selznick way.  Wells Roo, Donald Ogden Stewart, Ben Hecht, Sidney Howard and John L. Balderston.  The running time is 101 minutes.

1937 - EASY LIVING, an excellent Preston Sturges comedy

Preston Sturges wrote but didn't direct this film but his humor is all over it.  Easy Living has all of the Sturges touches which include the screwball characters, the slapstick humor and the amusing dialog.   

Easy Living starts with a rich banker throwing his wife's mink out the window of his townhouse to spite her.  The mink lands on top of a woman heading to work at a magazine called "The Boys Constant Companion," an amusing reference to "Boys Life" magazine that was published by the Boy Scouts of America for many years.  Since it's a comedy and one written by Sturges the whole  plot leads up to near collapse of the American banking system.

30's comedy legend Jean Arthur is the working woman who suddenly finds herself with a mink coat and the friendship of a rich banker played by another 30's staple actor Edward Arnold,  yelling his way through the film.  Arnold's son is played by Ray Milland in an early role and Luis Alberni plays some character named Louis Louis of the hotel Louis. You get the picture

 

The film was directed by Mitchell Leisen  who made some good films for Paramount and was the nemesis of then writer Billy Wilder who accused him of ruining his screenplays, a rather ridiculous charge.  The film is well paced and Leisen does bring a kind of elegant professional style to Easy Living.

 

Easy Living is definitely a high water mark for a 30's comedy and hold up very well during this recent viewing.

The running time is 88 minutes, a high recommedation.

1937 - WEE WILLIE WINKIE, one of John Ford's stranger films

There are many famous director actor collaborations.  Scorcese and DeNiro, Woody Allen and Mia Farrow, Woody Allen and Diane Keaton, John Ford and John Wayne.  But leave it to Darryl F. Zanuck at 20th Century Fox to team macho director John Ford with 30's child star Shirley Temple.  When a director was under contract to a film studio he frequently didn't have much say in what project he would be working on.

There are reportedly several versions of Ford's reaction to working with Shirley Temple, but you can be sure he wasn't exactly pleased about it.  Much to the surprise of everyone involved in this production including John Ford, he got along very well with Shirley Temple.  Wee Willie Winkie had a fairly large budget for a Shirley Temple film and Ford was able to infuse much of his style into this film.  While working with Shirley Temple, Ford discovered that for an eight year old girl, she was unusually talented and focused on her work.  She worked well with her co-star Victor McLaglen and didn't seem to have an issue with Ford's notorious abuse of actors.

 

Wee Willie Winkie is still a Shirley Temple film when all is said and done although a rather superior one.  Ford shows his mastery of action with one great battle scene.  The black and white photography is impressive and I have to say overall this is an entertaining film.  Darryl F. Zanuck's instincts in matching Ford and Temple paid off, the film is one of her better efforts and it was a successful money maker for the studio. If the film has a low point it's the subplot with the young lovers which the viewer has to endure.  Fortunately they aren't in much of the film.

The film was written by Julien Josephson, Ernest Pascal and  Mordaunt Shairp.  The running time is 100 minutes.

1937 - LOST HORIZON, Capra's Waterloo

 The director Frank Capra had been on an impressive run of critical and commercial films for Columbia pictures.  Tough guy studio head Harry Cohn who Capra had a beneficial but rather rocky relationship with OKed Capra's dream project, a film version of a successful novel called Lost Horizon.

Lost Horizon is a fantasy about a hidden valley which is a utopia for those lucky to be living in it.  The valley is ruled over by a mysterious Lama who lives in a monastery overlooking the valley.  Into this valley comes Ronald Coleman playing a diplomat named Robert Conway along with Conway's brother and some other survivors of a plane crash.  It seems that Conway has apparently been kidnapped and brought to the valley for some mysterious purpose.

The story clearly appealed to Capra's innate belief in the goodness of mankind and Capra's hope that people would eventually come together to create a better world.  Today these Capra themes seem rather quaint if not downright ridiculous, the world is a very complex place.

 

As this was Capra's dream project in spite of the large budget a small studio like Columbia pictures gave him, Capra's quest for perfection allowed the film to run way over schedule.  Capra's initial cut was 6 hours long which was totally unworkable.  Studio head Harry Cohn stepped in and began cutting it much to Capra's dismay. 

 

Capra had made some of his most best films under Cohn but the mess that Lost Horizon turned out to be seriously affected their working relationship.  Capra's longtime screenwriter Robert Riskin also fought with Capra during and after the production of the film about the tone and final outcome of the fim.

It would be nice to say that Lost Horizon turned out to be a commercially successful classic but audiences were rather indifferent to the final film and it took years for the film to break even.  The lesson learned here is that sometimes it's best to keep a dream project just that, a dream.  The film is in many ways an impressive achievement just not the classic everyone working on it hoped for.

The current running time is 132 minutes.

1937 - SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS, still an impressive animated film.

2 years in the making,  Disney's first full length animated feature is still very impressive.

Walt Disney worked with a lot of people to achieve this one of a kind film.  The film making skill behind this film is very impressive.  Particular attention is given to the color pallet, the design, music and the camera angles used throughout the film.

Probably the one area that dates the film a little bit are the characters of Snow White and Prince Charming.  They have sort of a 1930's look to them, but this is really just a minor whine.

As I indicated above this was a film that was created by a number of artists.  However Walt Disney had the final say on all the scenes that went into the picture.  At times having the animators completely change finished scenes because they didn't meet his high standards.

The film was written by Ted Sears, Richard Creedon, Otto Englander, Dick Rickard, Earl Hurd, Merrill De Maris, Dorothy Ann Blank and Webb Smith.  It runs a perfect 83 minutes.

1937 - KING SOLOMON'S MINES, version one with bonus musical numbers

The old H. Rider Haggard novel about adventurers in Africa searching for the lost diamond mines of King Solomon was filmed for the first time.  The cast is a rather interesting one.  Cedric Hardwicke is Alan Quartermain.   Anna Lee is the female lead.  Roland Young is Commander Good and Paul Robeson is the mysterious African native they pick up in darkest Africa.

The film is a little creaky but actually pretty entertaining.  You have lost diamond mines, native uprisings, 2nd unit African scenery and a volcano ready to blow.  A lot of stuff crammed into an 80 minute film.

Probably the most interesting aspect of the film is the actor Paul Robeson.  An African/American actor and singer, his left leaning political views in a very conservative and racist American during the 40's, 50's and 60's caused him to be persecuted by the United States Government.  Robeson was a noted singer with a strong bass voice.  He sings very improbably several times throughout the film.  At times it's like watching a strange hybrid of adventure film and musical film.

The film was directed by future Walt Disney studio director Robert Stevenson (Mary Poppins, That Darn Cat etc.).

The film was written by Michael Hogan, Roland Pertwee, Charles Bennett, Ralph Spence and A.R. Rawlinson.  The running time is  80 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.

1937 - THE EDGE OF THE WORLD, Michael Powell's film of life on an island

The end of a small community on a remote Scottish island as documented by Michael Powell in his first important film.  

The story is actually a pretty simple one, the young men are leaving the island frustrated by their inability to make a living on the island.  Slowly the people left on the island realize their way of life is no longer sustainable.  All this is filmed against some very impressive scenery. 

Powell's strong feeling for this remote and rugged island comes through in just about every scene.  Some of his compositions are as good as anything Robert Flaherty achieved with Man of Aran.  Filming Edge of the World must have been very challenging back in 1937.  

A very good film.

Written by Michael Powell, the running time is 81 minutes.

1937 - THE GOOD EARTH, MGM's super expensive production about very poor Chinese peasants

MGM's big production about Chinese peasants comes off like an extended soap opera with a bunch of occidentals wearing oriental makeup which is part of the problem.  The filmmakers worked hard to take the novel and make it acceptable to 1930's audiences.  They apparently made many changes to the book even though they claimed they were completely faithful. 

This is a typical MGM large scale production where every aspect of the production is carefully worked out and then dumbed down to appeal to middle class audiences. The farmer Wang Lung marries the slave O-Lan a very hard worker who he never appreciates until she dies.  They have a series of adventures as he becomes more successful and turns into a Chinese J.R. Ewing complete with a sexy mistress played by the dancer Tilly Losch another Caucasian.  The big climax comes at the end of the film with a locust attack on his fields which looks pretty impressive for 1930's special effects.

Realistically, for a 1937 film MGM wasn't about to risk a big production on oriental actors.  Paul Muni, who had started his career playing gangsters and somehow ended up as the go to actor for prestige film projects plays the simple humble farmer.  Muni comes off as a white guy playing a Chinese farmer as if he were some kind of simpleton.  Lousie Rainer is his wife who is virtually his slave.  Rainer was smart enough to keep her mouth closed and act most expressively with her eyes and face, she is very effective.

In keeping with the theme of complete offensiveness in its portrayal of Chinese culture, The Good Earth DVD includes a technicolor short called Hollywood Party where you get to see a bunch of Hollywood actors engage in some outrageous stereotypical oriental behavior.  A fitting inclusion to a somewhat offensive film about Chinese culture.

138 minutes, written by Talbot Jennings, Tess Slesinger and Claudine West.

2009 - LOGORAMA, 1937 - THE OLD MILL, 1933 - A NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN, three animated shorts

Three animated shorts made in three different styles.

Logorama is now up on YouTube.  It won a lot of awards and it's well made and clever.  Logorama takes all of the American advertising logos the filmmakers can think of and sticks them into a fast moving story about master criminal Ronald McDonald running amok.  I thought the whole was a little  slick.

This short was made by some French guys, and exactly why they felt they had to pick apart American advertising is a puzzle to me.  I find it hard to believe that Europeans aren't equally saturated with enough of their own advertising logos to satirize. 

The Old Mill is one of those Disney animated shorts that is easy to make fun of.  It has the usual bunch of frolicking cute Disney types of animals.   Probably more important as an example of the Disney animators and artists refining their skills with short cartoons before they transitioned into their 1940's features.  This cartoon looks great, with very careful attention paid to the color and the Disney artists getting more skilled with their multi-plane camera which created a pseudo 3D effect. 

Probably the outstanding animated short I viewed this weekend was A Night On Bald Mountain, animated by Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker.  Their amazing animation technique was called the pinscreen.  This demanding setup was literally a board full of about one million pins that were pushed in an out to create images with varying degrees of black and white contrast.  A Night On Bald Mountain took two years to complete

Alexeieff and Parker were artists in the pure sense.  With the exception of their commercials, all of their films were made only for themselves.  A Night On Bare Mountain is a very impressive "artistic achievement" in the best understanding of that over worked phrase.  Probably one of the best animated short films I have seen in a while.