Amph 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die: Now Disc. "Heat" (1995)

Next: "Vampyr" (1931)

Germany; B & W; 83 min.;

Language: German/English/French/Danish

Directed by: Carl Dreyer

Produced by: Carl Dreyer, Julian West

Written by: Carl Dreyer, Christen Jul, from the story "Carmilla" by Sheridan Le Fanu

Music by: Wolfgang Zeller

Photography by: Rudolph Mate, Louis Nee

Cast: Julian West, Maurice Schutz, Rena Mandel

Unfortunately, never seen this film. It's a very famous one, though. It was financed by a Dutch cinephile, Baron Nicholas de Gunzberg, who plays the lead male role under the pseudonym, Julian West. The book says that no summary does it justice.

Adapted from the other main source of the Dracula myth, "Carmilla."

 

Next: "Love Me Tonight" (1932)

USA; B & W; 104 min.;

Language: English

Directed by: Rouben Mamoulian

Produced by: Rouben Mamoulian

Written by: Samuel Hoffenstein, Waldemar Young, George Marion, Jr.

Music by: Rogers & Hart

Photography by: Victor Milner

Cast: Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Charles Ruggles, C. Aubrey Smith, Charles Butterworth, Myrna Loy

Early Paramount pictures are among the most difficult to see, and this one is no exception. The book praises it highly (it's a musical comedy.) The first use of the famous "Isn't it Romantic."
Haven't seen it--yet.

 

Interesting cast. Not necessarily 'good,' but interesting.

 

Next: "Bondu Saved from Drowning" (1932) ("Bondu Sauve des Eaux")

France ; B & W; 90 min.;

Language: French

Directed by: Jean Renoir

Produced by: Jean Gehret, Michel Simon

Written by: Jean Renoir, Albert Valentin from a play by Rene Fauchois

Music by: Leo Daniderff, Raphael, Johan Strauss

Photography by: Marcel Lucien

Cast: Michel Simon, Charles Granval, Marcelle Hainia

Haven't seen this one myself, though I have seen the Hollywood remake "Down and Out in Beverly Hills."

A well-to-do and kindly bourgeois saves a tramp from a suicide attempt, and tries to change his life (and by doing that, him). An old trope, really (see "Huckleberry Finn" and the silly judge that wants to reform Huck's drunken father), but apparently Simon gives a terrific performance in the title role.

 

Next: "I Am A Fugitive From a Chain Gang" (1932)

USA; B & W; 93 min.;

Language: English

Directed by: Mervyn LeRoy

Produced by: Hal B. Wallis

Written by: Howard J. Green

Music by: Leo F. Forbstein, Bernhard Kein

Photography by: Sol Polito

Cast: Paul Muni, Glenda Farrell, Helen Vinson

In parallel to their gangster pictures and proletariat musicals, Warner's also featured a series of social protest pictures of which this is probably the most famous. The book says it is dated but still powerful and referenced today (they cite "O Brother, Where Art Thou"). A down on his luck WWI veteran is railroaded into a life of crime.

 

Dated and not helped by a hokey ending. Still resonates. And the film stirred public protest against the penal system and caused vital reforms. Based on autobiographical writing of chain-gang escapee Robert E. Burns.

Director Mervyn LeRoy puts no soap opera-ry qualities into it.

 

Next: "Trouble in Paradise" (1932)

USA; B & W; 93 min.;

Language: English

Directed by: Ernst Lubitsch

Produced by: Ernst Lubitsch

Written by: Grover Jones, from a play

Music by: Frank Harling

Photography by: Victor Milner

Cast: Miriam Hopkins, Herbert Marshall, Kay Francis, Charles Ruggles, C. Aubrey Smith, Everett Edward Horton

Another early Paramount, which means I haven't seen this one (Damn.) But it's a very famous film. Marshall and Hopkins are a pair of crooks and con artists on the Riviera. They encounter heiress Kay Francis, and Marshall, in the process of fleecing her, falls in love with her, to the chargin of Hopkins. This sounds a lot like "Les Liasions Dangereuses", but I couldn't say how it turns out. Anyway, I want to see this one.

 

Next: "Scarface: Shame of a Nation" (1932)

USA; B & W; 93 min.;

Language: English

Directed by: Howard Hawks

Produced by: Howard Hawks, Howard Hughes

Written by: Ben Hecht, Fred Pasley, Seton I. Miller, John Lee Mahin, W. R. Burnett

Music by: Sheldon Brooks, W. C. Handy

Photography by: Lee Garmes

Cast: Paul Muni, Ann Dvorak, George Raft, Osgoode Perkins, Boris Karloff

A film made before the Production Code was strictly enforced in 1934, this is a movie where nearly everybody is cynical, corrupt or both. Paul Muni is over-the-top in the early 30's manner, but the film is still very interesting.

The books says as long as Muni sticks to business, he does well; but when his feelings come into it, chaos ensues. Supposedly Hecht based the story on the (incestuous) Borgias; the books spectulates that Muni's feelings for his sister may be complicated by a 'repressed homosexual bond' with his best friend, Raft. I have to admit this never occured to me.

Anyway, it's worth seeing.

 

A great film minus one or two badly conceived comic scenes. Muni's performance is over-the-top. Not the best offering on 30s crime films.

 

It's a great film; Karloff's death in the bowling alley is a stunner as is the atmospheric riff on the St. Valentine's Day massacre.

Muni is violent, overt, brutal, everything he needs to be. Raft is also very good. The story . . . it's classic and timeless, in my opinion.

 

And they do it without a single **** in the dialogue, which is more than you can say of the remake.

Next: "Shanghai Express" (1932)

USA; B & W; 84 min.

Language: English/French/German/Cantonese

Directed by: Josef von Sternberg

Screenplay: Jules Furthman

Photography: Lee Garmes

Music: Franke Harling

Cast: Marlene Dietrich, Colin Clive, Anna May Wong, Warner Oland, Eugene Palette

Another Paramount picture which I haven't seen; in fact, of the Sternberg/Dietrich pictures (there are 7), I've only seen the first "The Blue Angel."

Anybody seen this?

 

Next: "Freaks" (1932)

USA; B & W; 64 min.

Language: English

Directed by: Tod Browning

Produced by: Tod Browning

Screenplay: Tod Robins from his novel "Spurs"

Photography: Merritt B. Gersted

Cast: Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova

A beautiful trapeze artist conspires with her lover, the circus strong man to defraud a circus midget of his inherited fortune. She marries the midget, whom she despises, and intends to poison him. At the wedding meal, she insults the circus freaks who attend, calling them 'dirty' and 'slimy.' When she tries to poison her husband, they exact a terrible revenge.

Browning used genuine circus freaks in this movie. You are warned.

 

One of the original cult classics. Early in Tod Browning's life he spent in circuses. He intended the film to out-horror Whale's Frankenstein and found it's mark but that success continually banned the film for it's "shocking exploitiveness". Despite the fact the freaks are portrayed as good.

This is my very favorite horror classic.

 

I was able to catch it on TCM before/after (?) they showed Lynch's The Elephant Man sometime during the end of October a few years ago.

This film is haunting and sad, but admirably authentic for its use of real-life "freaks." Whenever I think of this movie, the first image that comes to my mind is one from the final scene of the film in which Tom Thumb (?) is being held close and consoled by his similarly dwarfish female companion. "I still love you... I still love you...," she tells him softly.

A film definitely worth checking out before you die.

 

And who can forget the freak chorus, "We accept you, one of us! Gobble Gobble!"

One scene is simply striking brilliant actually and that is the scene in the woods, with the freaks in the woods. Looks like a piece of art straight out of a children's storybook.

 

Next: "Me and My Gal" (1932)

USA; B & W; 79 min.

Language: English

Directed by: Raoul Walsh

Screenplay: Philip Klein, Barry Conners, Arthur Kober

Photography: Arthur C. Miller

Cast: Spencer Tracy, Joan Bennett et al.

Never seen this one, but I've heard of it; when Tracy costarred with Bennett in the first "Father of the Bride" in the 50's, he called her attention to this film and pointing to Elizabeth Taylor (who played their daughter) said: "And look what came of it!" The book says it is a very good-natured comedy with a lot of Irish working-class joie de vivre. And Walsh is very underrated.

Note: Zombi, you may not recognize Bennett in this; she started out as a blonde.

 

I want to see this one. And Walsh is very underrated and quite a prolific filmmaker that has done just about every genre imaginable.

 

Next: "Zero de Conduite" (1933)

France; 41 m.; B & W;

Language: French

Directed by: Jean Vigo

Produced by: Jean Vigo, Jacques-Louis Nounez

Screenplay: Jean Vigo

Music: Maurice Jaubert

Photography: Boris Kaufman

Cast: Robert le Flon; Du Verron; Delphin

The book describes it as a "surrealistic manifesto" and describes the contents: 'full-frontal nudity; scatalogical and body-obsessed humour; antireligious blasphemy; insistent homoeroticism.'
And it's not youth v. age; the teachers, too, are 'twisted, secretly wild at heart.'

 

Haven't seen this one yet, but Vigo's L'Atalante was brilliant and I believe that one and this one were all he managed before he died, at an incredibly young age.

Sad.

 

Next: "42nd Street" (1933)

USA; 89 m.; B & W;

Language: English

Directed by: Lloyd Bacon

Produced by: Hal B. Wallis; Darryl F. Zanuck

Screenplay: Rian James, James Seymour

Music: Harry Warren

Photography: Sol Polito

Cast: Warner Baxter, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell, Bebe Daniels, Ginger Rogers, Una Merkel

The prototype proletariat musical of Warner Brothers. It has the standard plot: The star's injured, and a newcomer (Keeler) goes on her place. Busby Berkeley, he of the geometric insanity, did the choreography. It's a lot of fun if you don't expect sophistication.

 

Next: "Footlight Parade" (1933)

USA; 104 m.; B & W;

Language: English

Directed by: Lloyd Bacon

Produced by: Robert Lord

Screenplay: Manuel Seff, James Seymour

Music: Harry Warren, Gus Kahn, Walter Donaldson, Al Dubin, Irving Kahal

Photography: George Barnes

Cast: James Cagney, Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell

The same year as "42nd Street", using the same director, and some of the same cast, this is a stronger movie, with striking choreography.

 

Next: "Goldiggers of 1933" (1933)

USA; 96 m.; B & W;

Language: English

Directed by: Mervin LeRoy

Produced by: Robert Lord, Jack L. Warner, Raymond Griffith

Screenplay: David Boehm, Erwin S. Gelsey

Music: Harry Warren

Photography: Sol Polito

Cast: Warren William, Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell, ALine McMahon, Guy Kibbee, Ned Sparks, Ginger Rogers

Yet another Warner's musical, with the usual suspects, and a great number: "Remember My Forgotten Man", which is about the fate of the common man in the Depression.

 

Next: "She Done Him Wrong" (1933)

USA; 66 m.; B & W;

Language: English

Directed by: Lowell Sherman

Produced by: William LeBaron

Screenplay: Mae West, Harry Thew, John Bright, from West's play "Diamond Lil"

Music: Ralph Rainger

Photography: Charles Moore

Cast: Mae West, Cary Grant, Owen Moore, Gilbert Roland, Rochelle Hudson

Beset with sound and the Depression, the studios turned to stage performers for help. West, with her broad double entendres, was a natural, even if she did encourage the Production Code, instituted the next year. The film is very low-rent, as is the cast. Cary Grant is not 'Cary Grant' at this point. He's just a good-looking extra. Don't expect too much, but you should see her at least once. She can't act, but it scarcely matters.

 

Next: "Duck Soup" (1933)

USA; 70 m.; B & W;

Language: English

Directed by: Leo McCarey

Produced by: Herman J. Mankiewicz

Screenplay: Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby

Music: Bert Kalmar, John Liepold, Harry Ruby

Photography: Henry Sharp

Cast: The Marx Brothers, Margaret Dumont, Louis Calhern

Generally regarded as the Brother's best film, it was their last for Paramount, who then released them because it flopped. They went on to MGM, and generally diminishing returns. ? You know it's a Paramount because there's no saccharine singing couple. Groucho is President of Freedonia...oh, who cares about the plot. McCarey was an excellent comedy director, and Mankieciwz, the producer, later wrote "Citizen Kane."

 

One of my favorite of the Marx brothers and one of the most anarchic.
The premise of making Groucho the head of a nation is inspired. Make
him an authority figure so he can mock authority from inside the government.
I love his big introduction where the huge ceremony is taking place and he's
in bed eating crackers. I love it when the boys start hurling debris at
Margaret Dumont at the end. A classic. And the mirror scene
is in a class by itself. Highly recommended for any Marx brothers fan.