1935 Poll

[nrh]

^missed that when it screened during cozarinsky's argentine film series at moma, but here's his blurb -

“This is the work of a cinephile—something most unusual in the mid-1930s—the first film of a director who would never again prove so free and inventive. The shadow of a certain European ‘poetic’ cinema of ports and prostitutes, and (to this writer) of Tay Garnett’s Her Man, achieves real charm out of amateurish acting, rough editing and non-mixed sound. A curiosity, perhaps, but one not easily forgotten“ (

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Look Up and Laugh — English musical comedy starring Depression morale booster Gracie Fields, my first time encountering her. Here she saves small local market stallholders from big business. Not much at first, but it grows quite likable and amusing thanks to its communal sentiments and parish-pump endearments. (Also notable for featuring a young Vivien Leigh, though I don't much care for Leigh myself.)

[Angel]

A deep cut for the hispanophones: Escala En La Ciudad - Alberto de Zavalia, Argentina/1935.

Adjacent to: Her Man, The Salvation Hunters, G. Dulac, J. Renoir, E. Ulmer. I'm not completely sure whether it's avant/experimental or outsider/naive, but it works as artfilm, and works beautifully. I'm going to try to do subs for this one, but I doubt they'll be ready before 10/1.

It sounds irresistible!

Can't say the same about the other Spanish-language movies that I've seen, including Fox's Angelina o el honor de un brigadier based on Jardiel Poncela and directed by Louis King (Henry's brother), which is awfully stagy.

[---]

The Murder Man (1935) ⁠— Recommended to bure420 and other big-time fans of Jimmy Stewart.

i've been meaning to catch it for a long time. will get to it before this poll ends!

[sally]

okay i'm definitely watching this.

i just had my 35 tale of two luise ullrichs - first in the horrendous blonde purity theme of waschneck's regine where i discovered that the limit of stuff i should care about all dissolves at the feet of anton walbrook (even as creepy paedo he's divinely delicious) and second in hochbaum's similar ending but so much more human vorstadtvariete. i love hochbaum.

(and anton walbrook....wistful sigh)

[rischka]

forgot i have that hochbaum too! currently in the middle of dalu (the big road). was confused that imdb characterized it as 'silent' and also a 'musical' but now i understand..

[sally]

have you got to the naked guys yet?

also, since you mentioned dalu - i'm using letterboxd so what apart from dalu & a severe young man is 35 on imdb and not letterboxd that i've missed and need to watch. anything?

[liquidnature]

anton walbrook

not sure who pulled off the stache better in '35, walbrook, or donat in the 39 steps, both look super dope.

[rischka]

have you got to the naked guys yet?

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Air Hawks (Columbia) — The Letterboxd description convinced me I needed to see this one: "An air delivery service is menaced by a mad scientist with a death ray machine that blows up planes in mid-flight." And the result definitely satisfies that promise. To be sure, it's awkward and talky in places as B films typically are, but there are more than enough genre mashup pleasures — death ray lair architecture, grisly plane explosions, expressionistic newspaper headline montages, modern women's fashions, crosscutting dramatics, etc. — to make this highly recommendable. And oh my sweet lonesome Ralph Bellamy. (Link is where the heart is.)

[Angel]

Dalu (The Big Road)

Captain Blood
Darò un milione (I'll Give a Million)
'G' Men
Jinsei no onimotsu (Burden of Life)
L'équipage (Flight Into Darkness)
Mazurka
Mutiny on the Bounty
Remous (Whirlpool)
Ruggles of Red Gap
Steamboat Round the Bend
Tange Sazen yowa: Hyakuman ryô no tsubo (Sazen Tange and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo)
The 39 Steps
The Crusades
The Ghost Goes West
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer
The Wedding Night
Tôkyô no yado (An Inn in Tokyo)
Tsuma yo bara no yô ni (Wife! Be Like a Rose!)
Xin nü xing (New Women)

Deliberately excluded (IMDb/TSPDT/S&S top 500)
A Night at the Opera
Bride of Frankenstein
Top Hat

To see before the deadline
Amphitryon
Black Fury
Cigalon
Escala en la ciudad
Krestyane

Wanted
Ah, Wilderness!
Baccara
Bonne chance!
Die ewige Maske
Fanfare d'amour
Fengyun ernu
Hanamuko no negoto
One More Spring
Pepo
Remember Last Night?
The Scoundrel
Vidas rotas

[Lencho of the Apes]

A few minutes after waking up this morning, I realized A Severe Young Man was an AIP rock and roll movie: in the last reel, Professor Grundy...akev has an epiphany and realizes "Hey, these young people are ALL RIGHT!"

[Lencho of the Apes]

Remember Last Night?

This one's not hard to find; I've put a thing in the place.

[liquidnature]

Air Hawks

This looks so up my alley. Will catch it at some point.

[jww342]

1. Sazen Tange and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo (Sadao Yamanaka, 1935)
The Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935)
Top Hat (Mark Sandrich, 1935)
Wife! Be Like A Rose! (Mikio Naruse, 1935)
Five Men in a Circus (Mikio Naruse, 1935)
The Groom Talks In His Sleep (Heinosuke Gosho, 1935)
Mad Love (Karl Freund, 1935)
Janitzio (Carlos Navarro, 1935)
The Dressel Family (Fernando de Fuentes, 1935)
Composition in Blue (Oskar Fischinger, 1935)
Song of China (Fei Mu & Lo Ming-Yau, 1935)
The Raven (Lew Landers, 1935)

[liquidnature]

1. Sazen Tange and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo (Sadao Yamanaka, 1935)
The Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935)
Top Hat (Mark Sandrich, 1935)
Wife! Be Like A Rose! (Mikio Naruse, 1935)
Five Men in a Circus (Mikio Naruse, 1935)
The Groom Talks In His Sleep (Heinosuke Gosho, 1935)
Janitzio (Carlos Navarro, 1935)
The Dressel Family (Fernando de Fuentes, 1935)
Composition in Blue (Oskar Fischinger, 1935)
Song of China (Fei Mu & Lo Ming-Yau, 1935)

Welcome to forum, jww! You have fine taste, judging by your letterboxd.

[jww342]

Welcome to forum, jww! You have fine taste, judging by your letterboxd.

Thanks liquidnature! I've actually read through much of the discussion on this site before but never joined until now. I'll check out your Letterboxd too

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Welcome to forum, jww! You have fine taste, judging by your letterboxd.

Thanks liquidnature! I've actually read through much of the discussion on this site before but never joined until now. I'll check out your Letterboxd too

Oh awesome, great to have you ! I've found a lot of neat stuff through following your wide-ranging viewings/lists on Letterboxd (and your readings on GR as well).

[jww342]

Oh awesome, great to have you ! I've found a lot of neat stuff through following your wide-ranging viewings/lists on Letterboxd (and your readings on GR as well).

Thanks! I have learned a lot from your posts on those sites as well!

[Lencho of the Apes]

James! I was slow to recognize you -- welcome aboard!

[jww342]

James! I was slow to recognize you -- welcome aboard!

Thanks Lencho!

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

I might be the only one for whom this is interesting, but... My viewing for the poll has taught me of another big feature of American cinema in 1935, along with the post-Code makeover, and that is that 1935 is the year when Poverty Row B series westerns really come into their own.

1935 brings the founding/consolidation of the biggest and brightest Poverty Row studio, Republic, and Republic gets going with John Wayne westerns (graduating from cheap Lone Star) and the first Gene Autry pictures, which introduce the figure of the singing cowboy that will come to be a mainstay of the B series western. Warner Bros. follows a few months later by introducing their own singing cowboy, Dick Foran. This same year also sees the introduction of the long-running Hopalong Cassidy series, produced by Harry Sherman and released through Paramount. Johnny Mack Brown, my favourite, gets his start as a series western star this year too! All in all, a very important, and productive, year for Poverty Row's western front.

Most of the ones I've watched thus far have little to recommend them to anyone but the diehard '30s western enthusiast, but I can put in a good general word for Branded a Coward, a touching and occasionally arty mystery western in which Johnny Mack Brown heals from trauma, and the interesting first Gene Autry picture Tumbling Tumbleweeds. Two others I recall liking are Bar 20 Rides Again, the third Hopalong Cassidy with an awesome Napoleonic villian, and Westward Ho, the first John Wayne Republic western (and Republic's first film, period.)

[liquidnature]

^ so neat, thanks Evelyn. Added some of those to my watchlist.

Is there anything better than the 1930s?

Watching Top Hat right now, I could live inside this movie. Just 3 of her films in, all watched this year, I am developing a major crush on Ginger Rodgers.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Ginger is the best, indeed! So expressive, funny, and endearing.

[sally]

seriously. fuck the wedding night. vile.

[karl]

It's been a few years, but remember rather liking it, or at least finding Anna Sten cute. What was it prompted the fury?

[sally]

It's been a few years, but remember rather liking it, or at least finding Anna Sten cute. What was it prompted the fury?

well, aside from the polish/japanese caricatures, i'm at that station in life where i just luurve films about immature retrograde men who fall in uber-creepy 'love' with the next young doe-eyed innocent slave that comes along just because she does all the cooking & cleaning and sits and listens to him adoringly, rather than the guy actually working at a relationship he's already in with an actual woman. and then the film totally cops out of having him be that lame by killing her off - thereby entering the realm of the 'saintly suffering woman' cypher film which along with mazurka (also this year, and what almost blasphemy to force the vivacious pola negri of all women into those postures) can just fuck off and work out their virgin/madonna complexes without forcing me to sit through them.

appreciate that's probably not the angle you had on the film. the snow scenes were nice.

[rischka]

It's been a few years, but remember rather liking it, or at least finding Anna Sten cute. What was it prompted the fury?

well, aside from the polish/japanese caricatures, i'm at that station in life where i just luurve films about immature retrograde men who fall in uber-creepy 'love' with the next young doe-eyed innocent slave that comes along just because she does all the cooking & cleaning and sits and listens to him adoringly, rather than the guy actually working at a relationship he's already in with an actual woman. and then the film totally cops out of having him be that lame by killing her off - thereby entering the realm of the 'saintly suffering woman' cypher film which along with mazurka (also this year, and what almost blasphemy to force the vivacious pola negri of all women into those postures) can just fuck off and work out their virgin/madonna complexes without forcing me to sit through them.

appreciate that's probably not the angle you had on the film. the snow scenes were nice.

agree about mazurka, will avoid this one

[sally]

well i may have overreacted a bit - i'm poorly (foreign germs!) and it feels like there's an elephant sitting on my head.

which i assume is the reason i need help from you guys. i just watched a 1935 chinese movie called scenes of city life. (and liked it, sound design was ace) and i go to log it on letterboxd and there's two 1935 chinese movies called scenes of city life - here & here and there's two different imdb pages as well - here & here

which film have i just watched? (the file name is dushi fengguang but not sure if that's definitive) anyone know what's going on?

[sally]

aha, one is a war drama also called children of troubled times (fengyun ernu). definitely didn't watch that. letterboxd & imdb need to sort their pages out.