1929 poll 2.0

[thoxans]

choose your favorite films from 1929 (according to imdb)

each person can vote for up to 20 films. do not feel compelled to fill the maximum allowable number. ballots can be formatted as follows:
- five tiers of four films each, 4/4/4/4/4; scored 5-4-3-2-1 pts/film/tier
- four tiers of five films each, 5/5/5/5; scored 4.5-3.5-2.5-1.5 pts/film/tier
- two tiers of ten films each, 10/10; scored 4-2 pts/film/tier
- no tiers, unranked; scored 3 pts/film

a tiered ballot can include less than 20 films, but in that case the total number of films must still be able to be factored by the number of tiers, so:
-- a five tier ballot can include only 20, 15, 10, or 5 films
-- a four tier ballot can include only 20, 16, 12, 8, or 4 films
-- a two tier ballot can include only 20, 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, or 2 films
*any number of films up to 20 that is not a multiple of five, four, or two cannot be tiered. apologies to enthusiasts of 19, 17, 13, 11, 9, 7, 3, and 1

users are urged to post their provisional lists as soon as possible, so that others can use them for recommendations. you may revise your lists at any point prior to the deadline. ballots posted by new members who have not participated in other parts of the forum will be considered on a case-by-case basis, and are not guaranteed inclusion on the final list

deadline for 1929 lists will be wednesday, june 30th, at approximately whatever time i feel like yo

[greennui]

The Way of Lost Souls (Paul Czinner)
Eternal Love (Ernst Lubitsch)
A Cottage on Dartmoor (Anthony Asquith)
Harbour Drift (Leo Mittler)
Erotikon (Gustav Machatý)
The Triumph of the Heart (Gustaf Molander)
Diary of a Lost Girl (G.W. Pabst)
Woman in the Moon (Fritz Lang)
Finis Terrae (Jean Epstein)
The Kingdom of Rye (Ivar Johansson)

Autumn Mists (Dimitri Kirsanoff)
Rain (Joris Ivens)
The Pearl (Henri d’Ursel)
Peach Skin (Jean Benoît-Lévy/Marie Epstein)
The Organist at St. Vitus’ Cathedral (Martin Fric)
Lucky Star (Frank Borzage)
Linda (Dorothy Davenport)
Mother Krause’s Journey to Happiness (Phil Jutzi)
The Lighthouse Keepers (Jean Grémillon)
The Dance of the Paroxysms (Jorge Brum do Canto)

[wba]

Great year!!!

Films seen: 40+


Final list


tier 1

01. Melodie des Herzens "Melody of the Heart" (Hanns Schwarz, Germany)
02. The Mysterious Island (Lucien Hubbard/Benjamin Christensen/Maurice Tourneur, USA)
03. Blackmail [sound version] (Alfred Hitchcock, UK)
04. The Manxman (Alfred Hitchcock, UK)
05. Der Kampf der Tertia "Fight of the Tertia" (Max Mack, Germany)


tier 2

06. Oblomok imperii "Fragment of an Empire" (Fridrikh Ermler, Soviet Union)
07. Spite Marriage (Edward Sedgwick, USA)
08. Die Frau, nach der man sich sehnt "The Woman One Longs For" (Kurt Bernhardt, Germany)
09. Blackmail [silent version] (Alfred Hitchcock, UK)
10. Asphalt (Joe May, Germany)


tier 3

11. Chemi bebia "My Grandmother" (Kote Mikaberidze, Soviet Union)
12. Goluboy ekspress "The Blue Express" (Ilya Trauberg, Soviet Union)
13. Liberty (Leo McCarey, USA)
14. Un chien andalou "An Andalusian Dog" (Luis Buñuel, France)
15. The Skeleton Dance (Walt Disney, USA)


tier 4

16. Our Modern Maidens (Jack Conway, USA)
17. Arsenal (Aleksandr Dovzhenko, Soviet Union)
18. Maman Colibri "Mother Hummingbird" (Julien Duvivier, France)
19. Big Business (James W. Horne/Leo McCarey, USA)
20. Le capitaine Fracasse "Captain Fracasse" (Alberto Cavalcanti/Henry Wulschleger, France)

[greennui]

Borzage's The River is 1929 on letterboxd but 1928 on imdb now. Would have been one of my top picks.

[wba]

Borzage's The River is 1929 on letterboxd but 1928 on imdb now. Would have been one of my top picks.

Yeah,these dates... Charles Vanel's DANS LA NUIT is 1929 on letterboxd but now 1930 on Imdb. Would have made my top tier.

[sally]

seen: 81 (is that all? poor show last time around)

current top 20

the lighthouse keepers (gremillon)
fräulein else
.
.
.
.
and then:
a cottage on dartmoor
finis terrae
arsenal
erotikon
lucky star
la femme et le pantin
mocny czlowiek
la merveilleuse vie de jeanne d'arc
captain fracasse
hjärtats triumf
the general line
the manxman
sangue mineiro
the gypsy charmer
asphalt
the new babylon
the adjutant of the czar (ivan doing comedy! well!)
les nouveaux messieurs
the living corpse

watchlist:
DESPAIR

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Very excited for this! I won't get to everything I want to, but I'll try to make some finds.

Five recommendations:
Brumes d’automne - Very interesting avant-garde film about sadness
Disque 957 - Interesting avant-garde film about the coming of sound
Black and Tan - Entertaining musical short starring Duke Ellington
Desert Nights - scruffy John Gilbert in the desert
The Hole in the Wall - Really nifty early Edward G. Robinson with neat set design and photography by Robert Florey

[sally]

Desert Nights - scruffy John Gilbert in the desert

oh look, a barely credible non-reason to post this!



1929 was truly a peak of visual art

[flip]

Lucky Star (Frank Borzage)
Two Penny Magic (Hans Richter)
Piccadilly (Ewald Andre Dupont)
Brumes D'Automne (Dimitri Kirsanoff)

Bulldog Drummond (F Richard Jones)
Arabesques (Germaine Dulac)
Man With a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov)
Applause (Rouben Mamoulian)

Big News (Gregory LaCava)
Pandora's Box (Georg Pabst)
Un Chien Andalou (Luis Bunuel)
Tokyo March (Kenji Mizoguchi)

Images d'Ostende (Henri Storck)
Liberty (Leo McCarey)
Nogent, Eldorado du Dimanche (Marcel Carne)
The Cocoanuts (Robert Florey and Joseph Santley)

Spite Marriage (Buster Keaton and Edward Sedgwick)
Skyscraper Symphony (Robert Florey)
The Iron Mask (Allan Dwan)
Fighting Friends (Yasujiro Ozu)

[flip]

Disque 957 - Interesting avant-garde film about the coming of sound

i just watched (and liked) this, though it's 1928 on imdb, 1929 on letterboxd, not sure whether to include it on my ballot...

[karl]

i'm quite sure THE RIVER and DANS LA NUIT were both 1929 when we last did this poll

the contenders for this outstanding year

Arsenal
The Strongest (Axel Lindblom & Alf Sjöberg)
Maman Colibri (Julien Duvivier)
Un Chien Andalou
Eternal Love
The Night Coachman (Giorgi Tasin) (pretty sure this was a '28 last time)
Turksib (Viktor Turin)
The Woman and the Puppet (Jacques de Baroncelli)
Dva-Buldi-Dva (Lev Kuleshov & Nina Agadzhanova)
The Sins of Love (Karel Lamač)
Heart's Triumph (Gustaf Molander)
Lucky Star
Spite Marriage
The Last Attraction (Ivan Pravov & Olga Preobrazhenskaya)
In Spring (Mikhail Kaufman)
Peau de pêche (Jean Benoît-Lévy & Marie Epstein)
The Virginian (Victor Fleming)
Hell's Heroes (William Wyler)
Thunderbolt
Piccadily
Finis Terrae
The Lighthouse Keepers


watchlist: oh plenty but i'm traveling again so dunno how many i can get to.

[sally]

please keep calling out the imdb/letterboxd discrepancies - things moving about all over the place

also can anyone get their hands on a copy of la divine croisière that doesn't have someone's head occupying the bottom half of the screen for the first half? (subs and decent image quality would be nice but will take without)

[greennui]

Finis Terrae (Jean Epstein)
Peau de pêche (Marie Epstein)

Has two other siblings ever dropped two seperate fine af films like this in one year?

[karl]

also can anyone get their hands on a copy of la divine croisière that doesn't have someone's head occupying the bottom half of the screen for the first half? (subs and decent image quality would be nice but will take without)

Alas I think that's the sole extant copy. But you rated the great Maman Colibri one star on Letterboxd, so maybe best to avoid another '29 Duvivier?

[karl]

Oh, and by the way, here's a 1929 for you all - the last great Swedish silent:

https://archive.org/details/den-sarkast ... lf-sjoberg

[flip]

Has two other siblings ever dropped two seperate fine af films like this in one year?

billy wilder's sabrina and w lee wilder's killers from space in 1954?

that's probably a joke, i haven't seen killers from space

[sally]

Alas I think that's the sole extant copy. But you rated the great Maman Colibri one star on Letterboxd, so maybe best to avoid another '29 Duvivier?

ah i can perhaps, maybe handle any amount of patronising misogyny (à la maman colibri) if there's sea-faring involved, and from that crappy copy it did look lush, maybe i'll attempt it.

(but then again i hated the strongest as well, might is right writ white in glorious arctic photography and real polar bear deaths - altho the other swedish 29 that's on netflix - artificial svensson, with yes you can see it garbo's brother, was much much worse)

anyway i have a gazillion others to watch so i'll stop griping

[greennui]

Thanks for the link, Karl!

The 1929 Swedish film to see apart from the Molander one is Kingdom of Rye. It premiered on the same day as the first Swedish sound film (Säg det i toner) and was a massive flop. Ingmar Bergman thought highly of it and named it as one of his three favourite Swedish silent films along with Phantom Carriage and Gösta Berlings Saga.

I lazily translated an article of him talking about it:

It's fascinating to watch these films in the borderland between silent film and sound film in the late 20's. One sees then that the art of film, if it had remained silent, was about to develop it's very own language, which it asserted with considerable force.

I'm thinking of Russian cinema or Murnau. His Last Laugh is a film that is made completely without subtitles. It is completely clear and completely enjoyable even today. Murnau was the one who came furthest in telling without text.

By the way, there is a Finnish film in cinemas now which is a completely silent film, Juha by Aki Kaurismäki. It is nice but it has an ironic touch that is completely unnecessary really. If he takes the bold step and makes a pure silent film, then I think he should be even bolder and not be ironic.

The Kingdom of Rye is a wonderfully told film. It is nicely played and well staged. Ivar Johansson, like so many of these directors, has been lost in the mists of time. He was inspired by Russian cinema and there are scenes in Kingdom of Rye that are magnificent. It is a film from this borderland in film history and it feels important to recognize Ivar Johansson. Much later he remade the same film with sound, but it is much weaker. The Kingdom of Rye from 1929 is a cool flick.

[nrh]

Has two other siblings ever dropped two seperate fine af films like this in one year?

the only example i can think of would be the mid '60s/early '70s period where chetan anand, vijay anand, and dev anand where all directing films at the same time, many of them considered classics.

and there is '79, the year lau kar-wing directed the classic sammo hung movie the odd couple and lau kar-leung directed both dirty ho and mad monkey kung fu.

[sally]

The 1929 Swedish film to see

yes, that is the problem

[sally]

has anyone seen any italian films from 29? am crazy about the early years but italy had sort of gone off the boil in the late 20's and am wondering what their last gasp silents looked like but can't seem to locate any

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Has two other siblings ever dropped two seperate fine af films like this in one year?

billy wilder's sabrina and w lee wilder's killers from space in 1954?

that's probably a joke, i haven't seen killers from space

Killers from Space is occasionally pretty fun! W. Lee Wilder's best directorial effort that I've seen

[karl]

Thanks for the link, Karl!

The 1929 Swedish film to see apart from the Molander one is Kingdom of Rye. It premiered on the same day as the first Swedish sound film (Säg det i toner) and was a massive flop. Ingmar Bergman thought highly of it and named it as one of his three favourite Swedish silent films along with Phantom Carriage and Gösta Berlings Saga.

I lazily translated an article of him talking about it:

It's fascinating to watch these films in the borderland between silent film and sound film in the late 20's. One sees then that the art of film, if it had remained silent, was about to develop it's very own language, which it asserted with considerable force.

I'm thinking of Russian cinema or Murnau. His Last Laugh is a film that is made completely without subtitles. It is completely clear and completely enjoyable even today. Murnau was the one who came furthest in telling without text.

By the way, there is a Finnish film in cinemas now which is a completely silent film, Juha by Aki Kaurismäki. It is nice but it has an ironic touch that is completely unnecessary really. If he takes the bold step and makes a pure silent film, then I think he should be even bolder and not be ironic.

The Kingdom of Rye is a wonderfully told film. It is nicely played and well staged. Ivar Johansson, like so many of these directors, has been lost in the mists of time. He was inspired by Russian cinema and there are scenes in Kingdom of Rye that are magnificent. It is a film from this borderland in film history and it feels important to recognize Ivar Johansson. Much later he remade the same film with sound, but it is much weaker. The Kingdom of Rye from 1929 is a cool flick.

Would love to see it. Have a translation of the intertitles handy?

[Searchlike]

i just watched (and liked) this, though it's 1928 on imdb, 1929 on letterboxd, not sure whether to include it on my ballot...

Just ran into the same problem when double-checking my 1975 ballot. Which should we go for? or ?

[karl]

has anyone seen any italian films from 29? am crazy about the early years but italy had sort of gone off the boil in the late 20's and am wondering what their last gasp silents looked like but can't seem to locate any

Camerini's RAILS is another once-was-1929-what's-now-some-other-imdb-year. The other sure one I know of is La grazia (Aldo De Benedetti), an adaptation of a play by Grazia Deledda, one of those now-obscure early Nobel winners. There's also a butchered Blasetti.

As for The Strongest and Maman Colibri - well, I like 'em. Could be I'm a sucker for patronizing misogyny and polar bear huntin.

[greennui]

has anyone seen any italian films from 29? am crazy about the early years but italy had sort of gone off the boil in the late 20's and am wondering what their last gasp silents looked like but can't seem to locate any

Has anyone seen any Italian films from the 20's?? Seems like a bit of a void decade.

Would love to see it. Have a translation of the intertitles handy?

Just noticed that no English subtitles are available...and someone already translated that interview on kg lol. Maybe it'll be the first subtitle project I'll embark on.

[greennui]

The only 1928 on letterboxd/1929 on imdb film I can find is good old Eveready Harton in Buried Treasure...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eveready_ ... d_Treasure

[sally]

has anyone seen any italian films from 29? am crazy about the early years but italy had sort of gone off the boil in the late 20's and am wondering what their last gasp silents looked like but can't seem to locate any

Camerini's RAILS is another once-was-1929-what's-now-some-other-imdb-year. The other sure one I know of is La grazia (Aldo De Benedetti), an adaptation of a play by Grazia Deledda, one of those now-obscure early Nobel winners. There's also a butchered Blasetti.

As for The Strongest and Maman Colibri - well, I like 'em. Could be I'm a sucker for patronizing misogyny and polar bear huntin.

i wonder why so few productions (made or survive)? a shame i guess. if anyone has la grazia shout, but i would have enjoyed the camerini

and i wouldn't want to put anyone off the strongest or maman colibri, i mean if anything they do look lovely.

and so did my first official 29 watch - the iron mask! bucklers well and truly swashed, great fun.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

If memory serves from my Italian cinema course, the Italian film industry died in the late 1910s and through into the 1920s. Very few productions, a lot of studio bankruptcies. Mostly because of disruption by the Great War, after which the American industry had conquered the world market. 1929 is, I think, the first year of revival, owing to the Fascists eventually responding to industry entreaties to support the re-birth of the national cinema.

[sally]

Has anyone seen any Italian films from the 20's?? Seems like a bit of a void decade.

can recommend:
cainà (1922) ♥
la casa sotto la neve (1922)
i promessi sposi (1922) http://www.giornatedelcinemamuto.it/the ... ssi-sposi/
i figli di nessuno (1921) (director definitely had some kind of complex about nuns, absolute dripping white phallic headscarf frenzy, for the time, wild)


have got lined up:
'a santanotte (1922)
la compagnia dei matti (1928)
l'innamorata (1920)
il gigante delle dolomiti (1927)
é piccerella (1922)

exists:
la nave (1921)

but thanks evelyn so pretty light pickings rather than just not much surviving....such a shame as it was so so strong...