1935 Poll

[...]

S'funny cuz I liked Wedding Night for pretty much all the reasons mentioned, but found them more condemnatory, in a way, than letting Cooper's character off the hook. It's like an inversion of movies like The Awful Truth, where the high society types blithely wreak havoc on the lowlifes for their own amusement without consequence. Here twatty Cooper blunders into a situation he has no awareness of, overpromises out of some sense of "artistic romance" and ends up getting the girl he was dallying with, who wanted to escape a drab reality of a life of drudgery, killed. Bellamy's character is not far removed from his "humorous" ones in his own pig-headed "old fashioned" ways, which kinda opens up how his other characters read once you get past the yuks. Oh, and as Kasman once ferreted out back at Mubi, Wedding Night is also referenced by Ozu in Late Spring, so I'm gonna throw that out there as an appeal to authority for the movie being good. If Ozu liked it, it must be okay. Heh. http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/ozus-cinephilia

[sally]

yeah i did wonder for a while if it might be doing that - esp as his actual wife wasn't portrayed as a dreadful harridan, but when it segued into saint innocence territory i got so mad i threw the whole lot out the window. (couple of the 1935 third reich films already made me itch in that regard so i'm primed) not sure how many movies i need to watch about idiot mens pov

[...]

Yeah, can't argue with that. That's pretty much how it seems to go, always put the dumbass in the center and show everything from their POV as a way for them to grow or something.

[Lencho of the Apes]

Just as a quick sidebar, it seemed curious to me how many 1935ers featured a sudden, drastic shift in scale: the most prominent example is the little people in bride Of Frankenstein, but there's also a scene in Gold Diggers Of 35 where the camera pulls back from the vast lush meadow that Dick Powell and chorus girl are frolicking in to reveal that it really is only a thing the size of a saucer on somebody's dinner table, and there's even a scene in Ptooey's The New Gulliver in which the Lilliputians have tiny people of their own, who are as small in relation to them as they are in relation to Gulliver.

My first thought was that it might be popular fallout from Bohr's theory of atomic structure, but his idea was published in 1913, and the genre-defining subatomic world proto-sciencefiction novel came out in 1922, so the timelines don't match up well at all...

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Ladies Crave Excitement (Mascot) — A colourful, wise-cracking behind-the-screens look at newsreel journalists, covering (and collaborating with) a career woman heiress aviatrix. A mixed bag storytelling-wise, but never less than an exemplary time capsule of American fads and fashions circa 1935, which for this viewer at least is all I need. And talk about a slam-bang opening: it opens with sirens, cars racing past the lens, until one comes by with the title card adorning its side! Directed by Nick Grinde, perhaps the best unknown filmmaker in the world, with Joseph H. Lewis as supervising editor.

[sally]

okay my cold has rendered me completely braindead (sorry greg! although now i come to think of it there's only one vidor that i've had sympathy for and that's 100% for john gilbert in bardelys) but i don't understand a single thing i've watched today (in sorry-for-myself bed with the uk version of viktor und viktoria and the french remous (filename Whirlpool.aka.Remous.1935.DVDRip.x264-HANDJOB which is VERY confusing because as far as i could see his hands & mouth worked fine)

i reckon i can be baffled at a few more before the deadline but by then i might not even understand what a film is

onwards

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

okay my cold has rendered me completely braindead (sorry greg! although now i come to think of it there's only one vidor that i've had sympathy for and that's 100% for john gilbert in bardelys) but i don't understand a single thing i've watched today (in sorry-for-myself bed with the uk version of viktor und viktoria and the french remous (filename Whirlpool.aka.Remous.1935.DVDRip.x264-HANDJOB which is VERY confusing because as far as i could see his hands & mouth worked fine)

i reckon i can be baffled at a few more before the deadline but by then i might not even understand what a film is

onwards

Hope you feel better soon!

Yeah, a great many of my files end with that phrase (my fav source has a conglomerate of that name, and they put their monogram in file names) and I really wish this was not so. Speaks to the boys' club so much of that world is... though I of course am forever grateful to them for the gifts of the content itself.

[---]

It's because a common dvd ripping software is called handbrake and a rip or "job" using that software, well, y'all can do the math

Unclear to me if it's supposed to be a sexual pun or is just wildly oblivious, who can say in this crazy cockimamie world

[Lencho of the Apes]

You can always change the name of a file to suit your preferences; mine always end up as Year Country Title (and .srt at the end, when necessary, because without that they stop working.)

"His hands and mouth worked fine" points exactly toward the biggest problem I had with the movie, which was that it couldn't decide if it was modern + sophisticated or a thing steeped in C19 norms and moralities.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Not really possible with respect to seeding, and understandably frowned upon in the communities too as original names are essential identifiers; otherwise I'd rename them all for sure.

[Lencho of the Apes]

Oh yeah. I'm not involved at that end of things. Never mind...

[sally]

oooh, it's a program? i always just assumed the sexual guilt side of it! as in contrast to the more 'fruitful' way of sourcing films through dvd or (madness! impossibility!) watching them in a cinema. well, mystery over.

"His hands and mouth worked fine" points exactly toward the biggest problem I had with the movie, which was that it couldn't decide if it was modern + sophisticated or a thing steeped in C19 norms and moralities.

i've only seen two gréville - menaces... (i enjoy swooning big time in a tragic way for von stroheim) and this. looking at what else he's done (first result that pops up is some dreadful-looking uk 'beat' film) he also did another for '35 - princess tam tam starring josephine baker, which from the plot description i just can't face right now, tho evelyn's seen it. so not sure if the wavering is intentional to this film or further. but there was a cringe in places. (françoise rosay - oooh, tunnels!)

anyway speaking of our erich, just watched the crime of dr crespi - poverty row horror film about a DIRECTOR! (of a hospital) who puts a victim into SUSPENDED ANIMATION! woooo. swoon. sigh. would have worked better as a silent. i miss silents.

[rischka]

(first result that pops up is some dreadful-looking uk 'beat' film)

hey i love 'beat girl' also brief ecstasy is good like a proto-'brief encounter'

https://twitter.com/rbgscfz/status/1005641121643442177

[sally]

okay i could go for that (not the beat one, that's a whole period of british cinema that's too excruciating for me, unless stanley baker is in it)

but arrrrgh i just found TWO more anton walbrook 1935's with subs so bye for 4 hours. i don't care if they're awful

[rischka]

Trying to get through justin of Marseilles but I keep getting distracted by the news!

[sally]

me too. my twitter is getting horribly filled with retweets of people reporting politically motivated physical assaults just for wearing the wrong badge or having the wrong poster in your window. (and guess what, it's always just one side) not good. also never sat round with a room of people in tears livestreaming a supreme court decision before. worrying times.

anyway, was it on here we had the post your glitch thread?



also, there is an irish film from 1935, a little bit epstein in that there's sea and sorrow. not amazing but am a sucker for exactly these things

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNvc9mA20TA

[rischka]

the post your glitch thread was jiri. i miss him

[karl]

An Inn in Tokyo

The 39 Steps
The Downfall of Osen
Sazen Tange and the Pot
Happiness
Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts
The Girl in the Rumor
Poppy (Mizoguchi)
La Kermesse héroïque
Wife, Be Like a Rose!
Crime and Punishment (Chenal)
Toni
Cigalon (Pagnol)
The Three-Cornered Hat (Camerini)
I'll Give a Million
Suburban Cabaret (Hochbaum)
A Hero of Tokyo
Remous
Black Fury (Curtiz)
Okoto and Sasuke (Shimazu)

[pabs]

Fun fact:

The actor who plays Horace Hardwick in Top Hat also starred as Ruggles in the original Ruggles of Red Gap (1923), a now lost silent film.

[pabs]

I think I might have a record number of films that I specifically watched for one of these year polls that failed to make my final list:

FAIL Top Hat
FAIL Remous/Whirlpool
FAIL The Informer
FAIL The 39 Steps

[sally]

looking forward to see what manages to make your list then!

i watched 2 today that will definitely make my list (probably, i mean i've watched so far 60 for the poll so some will have to go i guess) - l'equipage/flight into darkness has classic written all over it, not sure why i've not heard much about this nth iteration of love-triangle-war-drama before, has my favourite shot of 35, moving from a piano through a window to a man silhouetted in fog. cried buckets.

but omg anton walbrook, i'm a different pool of mess there. the gypsy baron was...well. i have no idea, i was too busy licking the screen.

[brian d]

i've been trying to catch up on my african films challenge so no time for much else. so i saw a measly one film for this month.

happiness (medvedkin)
carnival in flanders (feyder)
amphitryon (schünzel)
sazen tange and the pot worth one million ryo (yamanaka)
vibration of granada (val del omar)
the 39 steps (hitchcock)
janitzio (navarro)
aerograd (dovzhenko)
la bandera (duvivier)
listopad (vávra)
les berceaux (kirsanoff)
bride of frankenstein (whale)
hayseed romance (lamont)
the youth of maxim (kozintsev/trauberg)*
rustic chivalry (rey)
the students of the rector (leitão de barros)

[dominicano1970]

The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (Hathaway)

La bandera (Duvivier)
Bride of Frankenstein (Whale)
Burden of Life (Gosho)
Captain Blood (Curtiz)
Carnival in Flanders (Feyder)
The Crusades (DeMille)
The Devil Is a Woman (Von Sternberg)
Divine (Ophüls)
Flight Into Darkness (Litvak)
Hands Across the Table (Leisen)
An Inn in Tokyo (Ozu)
Mutiny on the Bounty (Lloyd)
A Night at the Opera (Wood)
Ruggles of Red Gap (McCarey)
Steamboat Round the Bend (Ford)
The 39 Steps (Hitchcock)
Toni (Renoir)
Top Hat (Sandrich)
Wife! Be Like a Rose! (Naruse)

[sally]

guys, you're all posting lists now, but the deadline is tuesday isn't it? i still have time for one more film on monday night? but which one??? argh.

[liquidnature]

The 39 Steps (Hitchcock)
Mazurka (Forst)
Top Hat (Sandrich)
Das Mädchen vom Moorhof / The Girl from the Marsh Croft (Sirk)
Gai dimanche! / Fun Sunday (Berr)

[rischka]

Fun fact:

The actor who plays Horace Hardwick in Top Hat also starred as Ruggles in the original Ruggles of Red Gap (1923), a now lost silent film.

you mean EDWARD EVERETT HORTON

[mesnalty]

Very confusing that Charlie Ruggles is in Ruggles of Red Gap but he doesn't play Ruggles

[rischka]

sazen tange and the pot worth a million ryo - yamanaka
an inn in tokyo - ozu
the 39 steps - hitch
steamboat round the bend - ford
ruggles of red gap - mccarey
bride of frankenstein - whale
top hat - sandrich
the good fairy - wyler
sylvia scarlett - cukor
captain blood - curtiz
suburban cabaret - hochbaum
toni - renoir
girl from the marsh croft - sirk
happiness - medvedkin
the girl in the rumor - naruse
three sisters with maiden hearts - naruse
black sheep - dwan
the student of prague - robison
the scoundrel - hecht
mad love - freund

still gonna watch that james whale on youtube

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Very confusing that Charlie Ruggles is in Ruggles of Red Gap but he doesn't play Ruggles

Yes! I never tire of doing a double-take about that; must have been a joke on set.

[pabs]

Fun fact:

The actor who plays Horace Hardwick in Top Hat also starred as Ruggles in the original Ruggles of Red Gap (1923), a now lost silent film.

you mean EDWARD EVERETT HORTON

Aye.