The Usual Choices
The Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale)
The Informer (John Ford)
Mutiny on the Bounty (Frank Lloyd)
A Night at the Opera (Sam Wood)
The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock)
But how about...
David Copperfield (George Cukor)
How many times have the Yanks taken a British piece of popular art and fouled it up? Countless, right? And how many times have the Yanks taken a piece of British popular art and created a masterpiece even better than what the Poms could've come up with? Can't count those either, can you? Well, this is one of those rarities: total Hollywood production line with absolute respect for its source and pouring enormous talent into the whole enterprise. Helmed by George Cukor at his most inspired, DC is a marvel of business, filmmaking skill & design and cooperative art. Dickens has never been better, and more lovingly, interpreted.
...and what about...
If You Could Only Cook (William A. Seiter)
One of the lesser-known 30's rom-coms, and one of the greatest. Jean Arthur is at her tough (but soft) wisecracking best and Herbert Marshall returns to his absolute charming persona of Trouble in Paradise (without the larceny). The Great Depression bred quite a few of these times-are-tough-but-so-what supremely-endearing movies, as if adversity was wholly responsible for both humour and humanity. There are some crooks and some big-time financiers and a touch of New-Deal-is-good, but all of that is secondary to the two leads sparking off each other and inevitably falling in love. How did Hollywood ever forget how to make these? As good as this, I mean.
...not to mention...
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (Henry Hathaway)
While I acknowledge the abhorrence of British Colonialism (sheer arrogance; class system on a global footing; glorification of war; kedgeree), I just can't help but love the utter bullshit of the Boy's Own derring-do adventurism. This Hollywood film version (along with Gunga Din, Stanley & Livingstone and Rhodes of Africa) is, of course, totally gung-ho, lacking in truth, and a greatly exciting movie, full of admirable men who disobey orders for noble reasons and indigenous people who apparently have no personality whatsoever other than nasty. Death-defying, pipe-smoking and fans of pig-sticking, these versions of all-conquering Pommies are fun to hang out with for 90 minutes.
Unfortunate trivia: this was Adolf Hitler's favourite movie. I wonder why?
...and one personal unmentionable...
Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl)
I planned to exclude foreign films from this site to have a chance at achieving completeness. But this film is ignored at our own peril. Every positive review raves about its technical achievements (aerial photography; long focus; moving cameras etc.) and individual scenes (the crucifix-shadow of the plane above the clouds; ranks of soldiers marching down steps in perfect unison). The greatest propaganda film ever made? Who cares? (Do we care about the greatest snuff movie ever made?) It was made to increase the popularity of the Third Reich. Ban it? No, but don't merely go on about its artistic achievement; focus on its evil intent instead. Study, but shudder: lest we forget.
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| "Madam, I can assure you that if I'd known we were going to be eating crayfish, I would've worn my bib too." |
#01 A+ David Copperfield (Cukor)
#02 A+ The 39 Steps (Hitchcock)
#03 A Mutiny on the Bounty (Lloyd)
#04 A If You Could Only Cook (Seiter)
#05 A The Bride of Frankenstein (Whale)
#06 A- Mad Love (Freund)
#07 A- A Night at the Opera (Wood)
#08 A- The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (Hathaway)
#09 A- The Good Fairy (Wyler)
#10 A- Les Miserables (Boleslawski)
Overflow: More A-/B+ Films
#11 A- The Whole Town's Talking (Ford)
#12 A- A Tale of Two Cities (Conway)
#13 A- The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Walker)
#14 A- Crime and Punishment (von Sternberg)
#15 B+ Captain Blood (Curtiz)
#16 B+ Ruggles of Red Gap (McCarey)
#17 B+ Man on the Flying Trapeze (Bruckman)
#18 B+ China Seas (Garnett)
#19 B+ Whipsaw (Wood)
#20 B+ Werewolf of London (Walker)
#21 B+ Star of Midnight (Roberts)
#22 B+ Hands Across the Table (Leisen)
Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
> B A Midsummer Night's Dream [Jimmy Cagney & Mickey Rooney nearly make it pretty good]
> B G Men [Cagney as an FBI agent financed by a nice gangster...wha?]
> B The Black Room [merely OK Karloff Bavarian-castle horror]
> B Dangerous [Bette Davis showstopper...and nothing else]
> B The Informer [too self-consciously Arty for my taste]
> B Top Hat [not much of a 30's musical guy I'm afraid]
> B Ah, Wilderness! [aka The Andy Hardy Series, Year Zero]
> B The Passing of the Third Floor Back [the original mysterious-stranger-improving-unhappy-people's-lives story]
> B The Clairvoyant [should've been a creepy chiller rather than a soapy melodrama]
> B The Little Colonel [it's a Shirley Temple movie]
> B- Annie Oakley [Annie Oakley as goody-two-shoes; Buffalo Bill as Colonel Sanders; Sitting Bull as comic relief]
> B- Alice Adams [soppy ending; Kate's father is a goob]
> B- Charlie Chan in Paris [Charlie #7, slightly bolstered by a spiffing showdown in the sewers]
> B- Charlie Chan in Shanghai [Charlie #9, searching for something new, but settling for what's worked before]
> B- Sanders of the River [you get to see Paul Robeson...uncomfortably]
> B- The Ghost Goes West [shoulda kept going]
> B- The Murder Man [twist ending is more stupid than surprising]
> B- Black Fury [aka The Battle of the Bad Middle-European Accents]
> C Barbary Coast [boring, regardless of Eddie G]
> C She [quite silly and Randolph Scott is quite awful]
> C Tovarich [peculiar screwball comedy that should have been left on the 1935 stage]
> D The Last Days of Pompeii [you have to wade through a lot of shite to get to the big explosion]
> D Clive of India [better a history of the curry powder than this blatant lie about an absolute bastard]
> D The Crime of Dr Crespi [a prime example of good material (Poe!) handled ineptly (some guy)]
"Ah!..Sweet Mystery of Life...": 1935 Films I Apparently Still Need to See
After Office Hours (Leonard); Bordertown (Mayo); Boys Will Be Boys (Beaudine); The Bride Comes Home (Ruggles); Bulldog Jack (Forde); The Call of the Wild (Wellman); The Casino Murder Case (Marin); The Crusades (De Mille); Dante's Inferno (Lachman); Doubting Thomas (Butler); Dr. Socrates (Dieterle); Four Hours to Kill (Leisen); Front Page Woman (Curtiz); The Gilded Lily (Ruggles); The Glass Key (Tuttle); The Little Colonel (Butler); Mark of the Vampire (Browning); Mary Burns Fugitive (Howard); Midshipman Easy (Reed); Party Wire (Kenton); Peter Ibbetson (Hathaway); The Phantom Light (Powell); Public Hero No. 1 (Ruben); The Raven (Friedlander / Landers); Red Salute (Lanfield); Remember Last Night? (Whale); The Scoundrel (Hecht; MacArthur); Steamboat Round the Bend (Ford); The Tunnel (Elvey); The Wedding Night (Vidor); Woman Wanted (Seitz)
Best Performances of 1935
James Cagney in A Midsummer Night's Dream
Bette Davis in Dangerous
Clark Gable in Mutiny on the Bounty
Greta Garbo in Anna Karenina
Katharine Hepburn in Alice Adams
Charles Laughton in Mutiny on the Bounty
Victor McLaglen in The Informer
But how about...
Boris Karloff in The Bride of Frankenstein
Quite possibly the most overlooked great actor in movies, Boris reached the peak of his craft as his beloved monster in this classic. While still frightening and full of rage, the creature's absolute passion for life and compassion for others is pushed way out front in this sequel. With a minimum of language and significant physical restrictions, Boris still communicates wide emotion through tone, gesture, stance, hesitation and even humour. No long, showy monologues; no melodramatics - Boris demonstrates how less genuinely is more. It is a performance that the 70's greats (Nicholson, Pacino, De Niro etc) really should have taken a lesson from and stopped shouting so much.
...and what about...
Margaret Sullavan in The Good Fairy
Along with Jean Arthur, my favourite of all the 30's era comediennes. That husky coo of a voice she has, in conjunction with amusing inflection and spot-on timing makes her a joy to watch in any of her comedies (and, to my mind, only one drama: Three Comrades). In TGF, Margaret somehow combines a childlike naivety with pure scheming, little white lies, an understanding of sex and a desire to do a good deed. For this to work, she needs the straightest of straight men to bounce off (enter Herbert Marshall), the sheerest of plots that she can skim over and blustery support (Frank Morgan; Reginald Owen) to counteract her softness. Other than the masterpiece The Shop Around the Corner, this is Margaret's greatest performance and a comedic jewel.
...not to mention...
Peter Lorre in Mad Love
A chrome-dome Peter Lorre who is in lust with a stage actress; her boyfriend is a pianist who has his hands amputated; genius surgeon Lorre gives him the hands of a murderer; etc. etc. Completely nutty from beginning to end, Lorre is just a wonder to behold as he increasingly sinks and drowns in madness. Soft-spoken when we first meet, his final pure-cosplay appearance is the most outlandish, surprising and memorable reveal in the history of movies. And Lorre rides it for all its worth, crashing through camp, ham and caricature right into a work of performing art. By far, his greatest horror role.
...and one personal unmentionable...
W.C. Fields in David Copperfield
Hmm. W.C. Fields as Mr Micawber? Let' see...trying to avoid paying his bills? Check. The father of a large, bawling family? Check (alcohol is responsible for so many mistakes). Top hat, cane and spats? Check (gives that air of faux worldliness so important to the Fields persona). Cheek to cheek hugging of a boy-child whilst smiling in close-up? WHAT? W.C. FIELDS?? The ultimate sourpuss cynic who once said "I like children if they're parboiled"? The man whose nemesis was an infant called Baby Leroy (W.C. once put gin in the baby's bottle, kicked him up the bum and reputedly went for the kid with an icepick)? Who the hell did the casting for this one?
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| "YOU! You're the one who kept tapping me on the head with a spoon at the breakfast bar!" |
#01 The Marx Brothers (A Night at the Opera)
#02 Edna May Oliver (David Copperfield)
#03 Boris Karloff (The Bride of Frankenstein)
#04 Margaret Sullavan (The Good Fairy)
#05 Jean Arthur (If You Could Only Cook)
#06 Charles Laughton (Mutiny on the Bounty)
#07 Peter Lorre (Mad Love)
#08 James Cagney (A Midsummer Night's Dream)
#09 Ernest Thesiger (The Bride of Frankenstein)
#10 Mickey Rooney (A Midsummer Night's Dream)
Overflow: More List-Worthy Performances
#11 Peter Lorre (Crime and Punishment)
#12 Charles Laughton (Les Miserables)
#13 Edward G. Robinson (The Whole Town's Talking)
#14 Bette Davis (Dangerous)
#15 Roland Young (David Copperfield)
#16 Robert Donat (The 39 Steps)
#17 Claude Rains (The Mystery of Edwin Drood)
#18 Myrna Loy & Spencer Tracy (Whipsaw)
#18 Basil Rathbone (David Copperfield)
#19 William Powell (Star of Midnight)
Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
> Katherine Hepburn in Alice Adams [too cutesy for Kate to be convincing]
> Greta Garbo in Anna Karenina [I get the giggles every time she looks pained]
> Victor McLaglen in The Informer [he was drunk]
And so...onto the annual awards (with a nod of appreciation to Danny Peary)...
The Alternate Oscars for 1935 are:
FILM of the YEAR
GOLD: David Copperfield (George Cukor)
SILVER: The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock)
BRONZE: Mutiny on the Bounty (Frank Lloyd)
LEAD ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Boris Karloff (The Bride of Frankenstein)
SILVER: Charles Laughton (Mutiny on the Bounty)
BRONZE: Peter Lorre (Mad Love)
LEAD ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Margaret Sullavan (The Good Fairy)
SILVER: Jean Arthur (If Only You Could Cook)
BRONZE: Bette Davis (Dangerous)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Ernest Thesiger (The Bride of Frankenstein)
SILVER: Charles Laughton (Les Miserables)
BRONZE: Roland Young (David Copperfield)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Edna May Oliver (David Copperfield)
SILVER: Peggy Ashcroft (The 39 Steps)
BRONZE: Elsa Lanchester (The Bride of Frankenstein)
ENSEMBLE or PARTNERSHIP: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: The Marx Brothers (A Night at the Opera)
SILVER: Myrna Loy & Spencer Tracy (Whipsaw)
BRONZE: Eric Linden & Lionel Barrymore & Wallace Beery & Aline MacMahon & Spring Byington & Mickey Rooney & Frank Albertson & Bonita Granville (Ah, Wilderness!)
JUVENILE: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Mickey Rooney (A Midsummer Night's Dream)
SILVER: Shirley Temple (The Little Colonel)
BRONZE: Freddie Bartholomew (David Copperfield)
The Alternate Razzies for 1935 are:
CRAP FILM of the YEAR
The Last Days of Pompeii (Ernest B. Schoedsack; Merian C. Cooper)
CRAP MALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Randolph Scott (She)
CRAP FEMALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Frances Drake (Mad Love)
The Special Awards for 1935 are:
DIRECTORS HALL OF FAME: THIS YEAR'S INDUCTEES
[at least three A-List films in their oeuvre; awarded in the year of their greatest film]
> George Cukor :: Henry Hathaway :: Frank Lloyd
CAN YOU SPOT?...BEST CAMEO or FLEETING APPEARANCE of 1935
> That's Lucille Ball as the platinum-blonde Flower Shop assistant in Top Hat
NEAR-MISS CASTING of 1935: LUCKILY FOR US...
> Bela Lugosi missed out on the Ernest Thesiger role in The Bride of Frankenstein
NEAR-MISS CASTING of 1935: UNLUCKILY FOR US...
> Joel McCrea missed out on the Randolph Scott role in She
BLOCKBUSTER!: TOP 3 HIGHEST-GROSSING MOVIES of 1935
> $$$ Mutiny on the Bounty distributed by MGM
> $$ Top Hat distributed by RKO
> $ David Copperfield distributed by MGM
THE BEST OSCAR DECISION OF 1935
> They gave Bette Davis a Best Actress Oscar for Dangerous to make up for not giving her one last year for Of Human Bondage
THE WORST OSCAR DECISION OF 1935
> Victor McLaglen won Best Actor for The Informer
BEST DID-YOU-KNOW TRIVIA of 1935
> In Top Hat, Ginger Rogers danced so hard (and so often, with multiple retakes called for, mainly by perfectionist Fred Astaire) that her shoes were occasionally coated on the inside with blood.
MOST INTERESTING BEHIND-THE-SCENES / BACKSTORY of 1935
> The movies The Little Colonel and The Littlest Rebel were more than just another two items in the ongoing Shirley Temple franchise. The 7YO child star was partnered with tapdance master Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, and they consequently became America's first onscreen interracial dance couple (at least in a mainstream movie, anyway). Their most enduring partnership display was the staircase tap dancing scene in The Little Colonel. As sweet & charming as this scene is (Shirley is clearly enjoying herself and Bill is obviously impressed with the little girl), it was still removed from prints before being shown in the Deep South states to avoid causing the KKK to rise up (and people not spending their money to go and see it). A good (if hardly in-depth) documentary about Bill Robinson can be found HERE.
BEST ONE-LINER of 1935
> "We have ways to make men talk."
Douglas Dumbrille as Mohammed Kahn in The Lives of a Bengal Lancer
FADE OUT / SCENE ENDS: GOODBYE & THANKS...
> WILL ROGERS (1879-1935) ACTOR First Film 1918 / Final Film 1935
[Personal Fave Performance: Steamboat Round the Bend 1935]
BEST DID-YOU-KNOW TRIVIA of 1935
> In Top Hat, Ginger Rogers danced so hard (and so often, with multiple retakes called for, mainly by perfectionist Fred Astaire) that her shoes were occasionally coated on the inside with blood.
MOST INTERESTING BEHIND-THE-SCENES / BACKSTORY of 1935
> The movies The Little Colonel and The Littlest Rebel were more than just another two items in the ongoing Shirley Temple franchise. The 7YO child star was partnered with tapdance master Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, and they consequently became America's first onscreen interracial dance couple (at least in a mainstream movie, anyway). Their most enduring partnership display was the staircase tap dancing scene in The Little Colonel. As sweet & charming as this scene is (Shirley is clearly enjoying herself and Bill is obviously impressed with the little girl), it was still removed from prints before being shown in the Deep South states to avoid causing the KKK to rise up (and people not spending their money to go and see it). A good (if hardly in-depth) documentary about Bill Robinson can be found HERE.
BEST ONE-LINER of 1935
> "We have ways to make men talk."
Douglas Dumbrille as Mohammed Kahn in The Lives of a Bengal Lancer
FADE OUT / SCENE ENDS: GOODBYE & THANKS...
> WILL ROGERS (1879-1935) ACTOR First Film 1918 / Final Film 1935
[Personal Fave Performance: Steamboat Round the Bend 1935]
