1938 - SUEZ, impressive production with the usual Hollywood distortions about history.

Darryl F. Zanuck's big production about the construction of the Suez Canal gets the usual Hollywood treatment.  Impressive special effects, some good looking leading performers a very contrived romance and a screenplay that has nothing to do with the actual building of the canal.  A lot of thought must have gone into putting this historically inaccurate mess of a film together.

Tryone Power is Ferdinand de Lesseps who is in love with Countess Eugenie de Montijo played by Loretta Young.  The problem is that Napoleon III is also in love with the Countess.  What's a girl to do marry the good looking but poor de Lesseps or settle down with the rich emperor of France?  Well one thing leads to another and the heartbroken de Lesseps moves to Egypt and to get over his broken heart decides what the heck I might as well build the Suez Canal.  One way of dealing with a relationship problem.

 

A lot of the film is spent on the financing of the canal build which I can assure you does not exactly make for stimulating action film making.  Everything leads up to a big and still awesome special effects scene where a sandstorm almost destroys all the work on the canal.  Even in 1938, Hollywood could whip up a spectuacular set piece like this.  

 

Well in spite of this spectular production this film is mighty turgid and was somewhat of a challenge to sit through.  Watching a film about the building of the Suez Canal isn't exactly exciting and sticking a romantic love triangle just make the whole film seem sillier.

The film was written by Phillip Dunne and Julien Josephson, the running time is 104 minutes. 

1938 - THE GREAT WALTZ, you have to see it to believe it.

MGM who made their money with middle brow musicals, dramas, and comedies would occasionally decide that what the movie going public wanted was high brow classical entertainment.  The Great Waltz certainly fits this description.  It's an indescribable musical drama about the life of Johann Strauss II a composer known as "The Waltz King."  One quick look at his Wikipedia page shows that not one scene in this film dramatizes the life of Strauss.  In MGM's favor they do announce with a title card at the beginning of the film that this will not be based on the life of Strauss.

MGM spared no expense making this film, the sets are elaborate, the writers are some of the best, the cinematography is at a high caliber.  Oscar Hammerstein of Rogers and Hammerstein fame was hired to add lyrics to the Strauss compositions like they needed lyrics.  Film composer Dimitri Tiomkin rearranged the Strauss waltzes like that needed to be done as well.  The director was Julien Duvivier one of the masters of French cinema.  Duvivier was a man of intelligence and taste so it's rather amazing to see him involved in something like.  The production was so big that Victor Fleming and Josef von Sternberg filmed scenes for the movie although they are uncredited.

 

In order to give the film some class MGM hired a couple of European actors Fernand Gravet and most importantly Miliza Korjus a soprano from Poland.  Since no one could pronounce Korjus name the MGM publicity department hilariously trumped in their advertising that Korjus rhymed with "gorgeous."  Korjus sings and sings and sings trilling her way through one Strauss composition after another, it's exhausting.

 

For all the silliness of this film and it is a very silly love triangle story,  there is a certain amount of style in many of the scenes.  One suspects Duvivier did what he could to at least film a few good scenes in this hodge podge of Viennese waltz madness.

The film was written by a could of decent writers,  Samuel Hoffenstein and Walter Reisch but there was only so much they could do with this gooey mess of drama and high brow music.  Unsurprisingly the film did not make money. The running time is 104 minutes.

1938 - THE BIG BROADCAST OF 1938, or what passes for entertainment in 1938

 Even at 90 minutes this film was a chore to sit through.  Paramount had done a few of these "Big Broadcast" films where they mixed radio personalities with their contract players.  They usually had to stick some kind of a plot in these films, in this case it's a race between two ocean liners, The S.S. Colossal and the S.S. Gigantic.

W. C. Fields gets top billing in the cast, this was Fields last picture for Paramount.  Apparently Fields was somewhat of a challenge to work with on this film.  There are a number of what I would call strange acts in this film.  Shep Fields and his Rippling Rhythm Orchestra.  Metropolitan Opera Singer Kristen Flagstad belting out Brunnhilde’s Battle Cry.  The grating Martha Raye performing "Mama, That Moon is Here Again." Probably the best song is "Thanks for the Memory" sung by Bob Hope and Shirley Ross.  In fact this was Bob Hope's first appearance on film I believe,  he has that easy going charm and humor that carried him through a long career.

 

The finale of this film features a supposedly big production number called “The Waltz Lives On," which isn't much of a big production number.  Really in the 1930's only Warner Brother's studios and Busby Berkley could pull something like this off.  The number comes off as second rate, in fact the whole movie is sort of second rate.

 

The film was written by a whole lot of writers, never a good sign,  Frederick Hazlitt Brennan, Russel Crouse, Walter DeLeon, Ken Englund, Howard Lindsay and Francis Martin.  

The running time is 91 minutes. 

1938 - HOLIDAY - very good 30's comedy

 Cary Grant is the "free spirit" who falls in love with rich Manhattan socialite Julia Seton.  While being introduced to her family he meets her unconventional sister Linda and finds that she is actually more simpatico to his beliefs and lifestyle.

 Holiday was directed by George Cukor and in addition to Cary Grant, the film stars Katharine Hepburn as Linda Seton.  The film also has a very good supporting cast, Edward Everett Horton, Jean Dixon and Lew Ayers.  Cukor had previously directed Grant and Hepburn in a film called Sylvia Scarlett which was about cross dressing of all things and not a success unsurprisingly.  However Cukor was one of Hollywood's finest directors when it came to working with actors and he had a very successful collaboration with Hepburn on nine films during their careers.

Holiday was written by Philip Barry who wasn't above skewering the upper class.  The play was adapted by a couple of good screenwriters, Sidney Buchman and Donald Ogden Stewart.  The film has some witty dialog and makes it's points about the "idle rich" in an entertaining fashion.

 

Katharine Hepburn is definitely a unique personality and performer but I've always found her to be a little over the top.  Grant is excellent and was always a very good comedian.  He started his career in vaudeville and was something of an acrobat.  In this film he does some amazing back flips, lets see some leading men try that today.

The film runs 95 minutes. 

1938 - YOU AND ME, Fritz Lang's very strange musical

Well here is one for the movie books.  The director of M, Fury and Metropolis attempts to direct a sort of musical with music by Kurt Weill.  This is a very strange film and it is also a very mixed bag of a film.

Lang's film involves ex-convicts working in a department store attempting to go straight.  The film's message is literally "crime does not pay."  A point driven home by Sylvia Sidney literally  while she is giving a lecture on a blackboard to a group of criminals which says "crime does not pay."

Fritz Lang directs George Raft and Sylvia Sidney 

Lang is at his peak deploying all of his visual noir camera angles throughout the film.  Just to make it interesting Lang also integrates these strange Kurt Weill songs throughout the picture which reminds me of the German Expressionist period in theater. 

The film was not a success when it was released to put it mildly.  However viewed now one has to admit it is a rather unique and weird film from one of the cinema's greatest directors.  Certainly worth a look.

90 minutes, screenplay by Virginia Van Upp.

1938 - A YANK AT OXFORD, making them the way MGM likes them.

A Yank At Oxford holds the distinction of being the first MGM film to be filmed in England instead of some studio set in Hollywood.  This is MGM at it's most typical, a good production and utter blandness in story content.  After all the studio didn't want to upset it's American or British audiences.

Robert Taylor is the cocky American student who excels at athletics.  He ends up getting a scholarship to study at Oxford and runs into the usual cultural differences that result when you mix the British and those darn Yanks together.  Honestly you could write this film in your sleep and considering the six writers I believe I counted in the titles they probably did.

The film if it has any interest at all is seeing Vivian Leigh in an early role before her breakout performance in Gone With The Wind.   

An empty film kind of a waste of time.

102 minutes, written by Roland Pertwee, John Monk Saunders, Leon Gordon, Sidney Gilliat, Michael Hogan, Angus MacPhail, John Paddy Carstairs, Malcolm Stuart Boylan, Walter Ferris, George Seligman Oppenheimer, Frank Wead and F. Scott Fitzgerald (huh).

1938 - TOO MUCH JOHNSON, the lost Orson Welles sort of silent film comedy.

Not a whole lot to say about this one.  Probably for Orson Welles fans only.  Welles was interested in doing a farce and had the idea to stage silent movie like scenes in between or during acts of the play Too Much Johnson.

Welles filmed for 10 days and edited the film.  Apparently the entire film part of the play was to run around 30 minutes.  Due to a number of reasons, most of which involved money, the film sequences were never shown with the play.   Too Much Johnson was not a theatrical success.  However the idea of merging film and theater while not a new one was another typically audacious one from Welles.

Young Welles directs Too Much Johnson

Welles lifelong friend actor Joseph Cotton was certainly game during the film sequences.  Running around, climbing up on rooftops, zipping down fire escapes.  He certainly went beyond the call of duty when it came to performing for Welles.

Too Much Johnson is proof that Orson Welles was exposed to filming and editing 3 years before Citizen Kane came out.  Welles always portrayed himself has a self taught filmmaker who just magically stepped on a sound stage and produced a masterpiece like Kane.  Finally, it should be noted that this edited version of Too Much Johnson is quite delightful.  Welles was apparently a great admirer of silent films.

66 minutes (edited down around 30 minutes)

1938 - ALEXANDER'S RAGTIME BAND, unending Irving Berlin musical.

A big budget musical drama from 20th Century Fox, a studio not known for their skill in making musicals.  Alexander's Ragtime Band really shows how popular taste in film has changed since the late 30's when this was released.

The film his directed by Henry King in the most pedestrian fashion possible.  King was a good reliable studio director throughout his career but getting a handle on this film seemed beyond his reach.  The musical numbers are strictly lock the camera down and let the actors perform like they were on the stage.

As the leader of Alexander's Ragtime Band, Tyrone Power announces, "I love ragtime music," and does he ever.  The film has a lot of Irving Berlin's songs.  Berlin wrote around 1500 songs during his lifetime and I think they performed almost everyone of them in this film.

The dramatic elements in this story are by the numbers, Tyrone Power's Aunt wants him to have a career in classic music, he wants to play ragtime music.  Power meets Alice Faye, who Don Ameche is in love with.  Faye becomes a famous Broadway star, Power and Ameche join the army and fight in World War I.  Who will Alice Faye choose, third credit name Don Ameche or first credit name Tyrone Power?

Alexander's Ragtime Band is an opportunity to see Alice Faye who was a very popular star in the 1930's and 40's.  Faye was what you would call a "full figured gal."  She was a pretty good vocalist.  Tyrone Power was one of Fox's biggest stars.  A pretty boy who it turned out actually had some talent.

Alexander's Ragtime Band was a big hit when it was released but is fairly unwatchable today.

106 minutes, written by Kathryn Scola and Lamar Trotti. 

1938 - THE CITADEL, medical drama is a typical high gloss MGM film.

The Citadel was an extremely influential book written by Dr. A. J. Cronin.  A criticism and attack of the greed and incompetence in the British medical and health care institutions,  Cronin's book helped establish the National Health Service.

The film is the story of a idealistic young doctor who has to choose between making money or dedicating his life to caring for the less fortunate.  As is the case with MGM, the studio that hated Franklin Roosevelt and his new deal programs, by the time this book went through the production meat grinder the film was a very mild attack on corrupt doctors and poor medical care. 

The Citadel has one of those corny "aw ha" moments with Robert Donat's character  Dr. Andrew Manson, walking the streets of London at night deciding what has future should be.  Manson conveniently ends up at the London Bridge as a magnificent sunrise comes blazing up behind him.  Thanks to the light, the good doctor has seen finally seen the light.

This is almost an all British production with the exception of the director King Vidor now deep in the glossy studio phase of his career and Rosalind Russel playing a school teacher who marries Donat.

Besides Robert Donat, the cast is probably the most interesting thing about the film since it's a group of some of England's best actors.  Rex Harrison, Ralph Richardson, Emlyn Williams, Francis L. Sullivan, Felix Alymer and Cecil Parker.

Vidor directs Russell

The Citadel was the kind of film MGM just couldn't do well.  Hard hitting attacks on corrupt institutions were not their bag.  MGM was always more at ease with their Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland musical film clones.

110 minutes, written by Ian Dalrymple, Frank Wead and Elizabeth Hill.

1938 - OLYMPIA, Leni Riefenstahl's film on the 1936 Olympic games

The Nazi's favorite filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl created this documentary from her photographed record of the 1936 Olympic games.  Olympia is considered a classic in the documentary film form, and although a very long film it still has parts that hold up pretty well watching the film today.

Rifenstahl stuck hundred's of cameras everywhere to get some amazing shots of the athletes competing. She spent almost two years editing the miles of film footage she got back. The finished film was split into two parts.

The film is somewhat unnerving to watch with Hitler in the stadium and all the thousands of good little Germans "heiling" him with their creepy Nazi salutes.

Part One,  The Festival of Nations contains a brilliant prologue and opening to the Olympic games and consumes almost thirty minutes of running time.  The Festival of Nations primarily focuses on track and field competition and gets pretty tiresome.

Riefenstahl frequently photographs the athletes very closely and uses lots of slow motion tricks to keep it interesting but it's a pretty long slog for much of the film.  Towards the end of the film, Riefenstahl sharpens the focus of the film with a pole vaulting competition that goes into the night.  The Festival of Nations concludes with a marathon running race which is very well filmed.

Part 2:  The Festival of Beauty, is a little shorter than part one, and has more variety in the athletic events which makes it easier to watch.  The sailing sequences and most entertainingly, the horse competition events which are hilarious.  The horses frequently throw their riders and appear to have a lot more common sense about jumping dangerous parts of the Olympic track then the people riding them.  Olympia ends with the famous diving/flying sequence which is primarily achieved through editing.

In spite of the dated aspects and somewhat repetitious nature of some of the athletic events,  Olympia is still an impressive film.

126 minutes for The Festival of Nations.

100 minutes for The Festival of Beauty.