1931 Poll 2.0

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

I gotcha: so close, so far.

[rischka]

arzner double feature -- honor among lovers and working girls





i enjoyed frederic march's office and claudette colbert's apartment





sadly the smartest character in our first feature keeps stubbornly sacrificing herself for men who don't deserve her





working girls was more fun. two sisters (mae and june) come to the big city and have adventures





mostly involving men. apparently it was common for the boss to make a pass and then fire you immediately if you didn't go along





the ending is messed up and it's a bit ramshackle but with enough talented actors and comic dialogues for an overall enjoyable experience

[rischka]

i have a link for working girls gonna put it in the secret place

[rischka]

girls just wanna have fun double feature



millie (d. john francis dillon) with party girls - helen twelvetrees, lilyan tashman and a very young joan blondell



followed by ariane (d. paul czinner) w czinner's wife elisabeth bergner in the lead role (german version)





women pushing boundaries briefly here ! ! altho eventually settling for status quo

[Holdrüholoheuho]

Him and His Sister (Martin Frič, Karel Lamač)

another of the many "Vlasta Burian fooling around" films


this time HIM (brother VB) is accompanied by HIS SISTER Anny "fooling around" Ondra (who was moonwalking before it was cool)




expect silly dialogues...



... and don't expect anything from the plot

[Holdrüholoheuho]

watched "A Bronx Morning" (Jay Leyda) and "A Day in Santa Fe" (James Hughes, Lynn Riggs)
and i am mildly disturbed by the attitude toward COMMITING NUISANCE in Santa Fe in 1931

[rischka]

faubourg montmartre was really good



little bit harder edge than most american pre-codes

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

I've watched two movies for the 1931 poll so far, and they may be my two new favourite movies of 1931 (quite the feat!), each deeply lesbian, and deeply about being lesbian in oppressive cishet-normative worlds, but in different ways. Whereas Madchen in Uniform takes place in a schematic all-female world, a girls' school tragically informed by the nascent fascist forces outside its walls, Dorothy Arzner's Working Girls was adapted from an all-female cast play into a co-ed movie about lesbians ('sisters', 'nieces and aunts') navigating a world where they have to 'work for' (i.e. date, fuck, marry) men to get by. But when you come home at night, you know what really matters: the girls, whom you playfully whip in bed ("Oh, shut up, you nut, and get undressed—we gotta work tomorrow!") Respectively, my new favourite non-USA movie of '31 and my new favourite USA movie of '31. Stills from Working Girls:

[Angel]

A House Divided
Behind Office Doors
Berlin-Alexanderplatz - Die Geschichte Franz Biberkopfs (Berlin-Alexanderplatz)
City Streets
Der Kongreß tanzt (Congress Dances)
Der Mörder Dimitri Karamasoff (The Murderer Dimitri Karamazov)
Die andere Seite (The Other Side)
Five Star Final
Frankenstein
Kameradschaft (Comradeship)
Marius
Odna (Alone)
Other Men's Women
Over the Hill
Safe in Hell
Terra madre (Mother Earth)
The Smiling Lieutenant
The Struggle
Wer nimmt die Liebe ernst...? (Who Takes Love Seriously?)
Ze soboty na nedeli (From Saturday to Sunday)

Deliberately excluded (IMDb/Lbxd/TSPDT/S&S top 500)
City Lights
Limite
M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder
Mädchen in Uniform
Tabu: A Story of the South Seas

Wanted
En natt
Ginga
Præsten i Vejlby
Seed

[sally]

the theft of the mona lisa - géza von bolváry

i'm not exactly sure what point was being made here, but i approve:

[Holdrüholoheuho]

Pigs Are Always Pigs AKA Pupky Station (Khanan Shmain)

пупки́ (pupki) ... nominative/accusative plural of пупо́к (pupók) = navel, belly button
→ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%BF%D ... 0%BA%D0%B8

so, "Pupky" train station (the playground of this movie) is a sort of "navel of the world" = a spot on the periphery that overestimates its importance; i.e. pupek světa (Czech), pępek świata (Polish), пуп земли (Russian, "to think the world revolves around one, to think one is the center of the world, to think everything is about oneself")
→ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%BF%D ... B8#Russian

An opportunity occurs at the "Pupky" station: two illegal passengers — guinea pigs — have to be disembarked from one of the trains since animals cannot be transported in a general carriage. The head of the station Pryvychkin tries to help the animals, but the situation is beyond his control. The audit committee sets out to investigate the unpleasant incident...

to avoid making excessive spoilers, i just want to say that i would (if they would listen to me) wholeheartedly recommend this movie to all the MAGA fascists because the plot revolves around the issue of tariffs (and their application on specific goods).



it's a Ukrainian satire on Soviet bureaucracy.
i must admit that as a staunch "Russophobe" (a person taking great delight in ridiculing Soviet & Post-Soviet imperialism), i genuinely enjoyed this film and found it incredibly funny.






the film was released with a contemporary (electronic music) soundtrack that some purists might (eventually) find annoying but i enjoyed it too.
besides, it's a copy from the German archives and is accompanied by a weird bureaucratic announcement that however reinforces the whole amusement.
the announcement says...

Due to special permission of the Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, the Reich Film Archives demonstrates a foreign film that is prohibited for public screenings in Germany. It is strictly forbidden to tell unauthorized people about this screening and the movie's content.

so, please, don't tell anyone anything irresponsibly disclosed in this post!!

Pigs Are Always Pigs (Pupky Station), a silent comedy produced at the Ukrainfilm Odesa Film Studio in 1930 by director Khanan Shmain, was long considered lost. Last year, the Russian film scholar Piotr Bagrov discovered the film in the Bundescarchiv German Federal Archives. The director of the Bundesarchiv contacted Mr. Ivan Kozlenko, the director on the Oleksander Dovzhenko National Film Archive in Kyiv in February 2015 with the offer to transfer the seven reels of film, both positive and negative prints, that were in their collection to Ukraine. It was arranged for the film to be sent by diplomatic post. Pigs arrived in Ukraine on August 22. The return of Pigs is the third great triumph toward reaching the goal of enriching our film archives with the rarest exemplars of early Ukrainian cinema.

[Holdrüholoheuho]

if the previous (Ukrainian) film (viz the previous post ↑↑) was already immensely funny, this (Georgian) one is simply mind-blowing!
it's far ABOVE THE CLASS CONTRADICTIONS! far ABOVE THE BOLSHEVIK TEMPO!





if i lived in 1931 and been a filmmaker, i would love to make this film!
superficially, it's silly propaganda.
but through this thin-shell scheme radiates pure uninhibited anarchy (everyone is mad).





Out of the Way! (Stones Fall Here) AKA Khabarda (Mikheil Chiaureli)

When the communists decide to renovate the city and try to demolish a badly positioned church,




the religious citizens decide to fight for what is holy to them.

it's a genuine work of art


rich of diverse perspectives




there are words pleasantly misspelled






it illuminates the depth of the human psyche

[ofrene]

City Lights
Dishonored
M
Street Scene
Tabu: A Story of the South Seas

À Nous la Liberté
La Chienne
Limite
Mädchen in Uniform
The Smiling Lieutenant

[rischka]

enjoying the theft of the mona lisa quite a bit and i'll watch that wild georgian film as well. thx jiri!! and sally!! ♥ ♥



not sure it entirely made sense but it's shot in a wonderful way. and willi forst ♥



i fell asleep so i'm watching it again

[rischka]

this movie is hilarious

[sally]

lesbian

of course it's a misunderstanding, but in maurice elvey's sally in our alley the chap comes back from the war, thinks his girl is now in an abusive relationship with another woman and he doesn't bat an eyelid, just says 'you've changed' in the least sensational way ever. 30's were wild.

also possibly the most british film i've ever seen, rigid, stagey, horrible acting mingled with the most ridiculous sleaze (sausages and fish-vagina jokes abound) and scripted by alma reville, so there's all this phlegmatic feminist psychology thrown in....truly bizarre unpleasant awkward film that i feel very patriotic about.

[Holdrüholoheuho]

stagey, horrible acting mingled with the most ridiculous sleaze (sausages and fish-vagina jokes abound)

"hot sausage" & "purity of our sausages guaranteed"

[greennui]

Dance Pretty Lady 1931 Directed by Anthony Asquith





Shadow on the Mountains 1931 Directed by Arthur Elton

[karl]

Would like to have seen more, but I'm on the road.

City Lights (Chaplin)
M (Lang)
Tabu (Murnau)
David Golder (Duvivier)

La Chienne (Renoir)
Alone (Kozintsev & Trauberg)
Frankenstein (Whale)
À Nous la Liberté (Clair)

The Congress Dances (Charell)
The Upright Sinner (Kortner)
Mädchen in Uniform (Sagan & Frolich)
The Captain from Köpenick (Oswald)

Marius (Korda)
Jirokichi the Rat (Itō)
Emil and the Detectives (Lamprecht)
Safe in Hell (King)

The Public Enemy (Wellman)
The Unknown Singer (Tourjansky)
Tokyo Chorus (Ozu)
Resurrection (Blasetti)

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

I won't have time to get to another, so:

Working Girls (Dorothy Arzner)
Madchen in Uniform (Leontine Sagan)
The Smiling Lieutenant (Ernst Lubitsch)
Dracula (Tod Browning)
Little Caesar (Mervyn LeRoy)

Night Nurse (William A. Wellman)
Safe in Hell (William A. Wellman)
Der Kongress tanzt (Eric Charell)
Goldie (Benjamin Stoloff)
The Grand Dame (Arthur Hurley)

Mata Hari (George Fitzmaurice)
Monkey Business (Norman Z. McLeod)
City Streets (Rouben Mamoulian)
Guilty Hands (W.S. Van Dyke)
Gun Smoke (Edward Sloman)

Platinum Blonde (Frank Capra)
Resurrectio (Alessandro Blasetti)
Hot News Margie (Alfred J. Goulding)
Intimate Interviews: Bela Lugosi (Grace Elliott)
The Pajama Party (Hal Roach)

[sally]

ariane - paul czinner

okay, czinner is entering my pantheon of absolutely top fave directors. he gets compared to ophüls, but he's lighter, more delicate, less moribund...more mizoguchi, more bauer...and the exact opposite of naruse, czinner is so polite that he lets everyone exit the frame, and pauses a beat too long on empty rooms - to signal emptiness, escape, abandonment, whatever...he's all bressonian gestures, lubitsch doors, and the rattle of cutlery, foregrounding background chatter (asmr in 1931)...i am so impressed...

had to pause this movie every so often to breathe, and sigh, and remark how exquisite and subtle and great bergner is....

[Lencho of the Apes]

Oooh, and it's widely available! I'll try to squeeze it in.

[rischka]

fun seeing women exercise their freedom however briefly

[rischka]

dishonored - sternberg
a nous la liberte - clair
comradeship - pabst
threepenny opera - pabst
city lights - chaplin
the murderer dimitri karamazov - engels/otsep
the captain from kopenick - oswald
out of the way! - chiaureli
the elf-king - iribe
tabu - murnau
the smiling lieutenant - lubitsch
M - lang
from saturday to sunday - machaty
bad girl - borzage
the last flight - dieterle
rich and strange - hitchcock
faubourg montmartre - bernard
ariane - czinner
monkey business - mcleod
the congress dances - charell

[rischka]

and very cool that i discovered a number of new films that i enjoyed a lot after how many years we've been doing this!!! ♥♥♥

you guys can never leave

[sally]

i've still got films to watch that i downloaded over 15 years ago, we'll never really scratch the surface - plenty of discoveries to be made! and even the films that do get remembered don't often get the viewers they deserve (i'm gonna stop reading letterboxd reviews)

anyway, i tried watching another 31 (terra madre, blasetti's peasant elegy to patriarchal fascism) but it was such a horrible insult to the atmosphere of ariane i'm still wafting around in, that i've decided i'm done for now


final ballot:

limite - mário peixoto
dracula - tod browning
the elf king - marie-louise iribe
from saturday to sunday - gustav machatý
fauberg montmartre - raymond bernard
the congress dances - erik charell
the neighbour's wife and mine - heinosuke gosho
ariane - paul czinner
safe in hell - william a. wellman
rich and strange - alfred hitchcock
out of the way! - mikheil chiaureli
m - fritz lang
the man in search of his murderer - robert siodmak
resurrection - alessandro blasetti
daphnis and chloe - orestis laskos
tabu - f. w. murnau
the smiling lieutenant - ernst lubitsch
the lady and the beard - yasujirō ozu
cape forlorn - e. a. dupont
pigs will be pigs - khanan shmain

[Holdrüholoheuho]

i had all the good intentions to watch...

I'll Be Alone After Midnight (Jacques de Baroncelli)

... but i (more or less) just slept through it

[Holdrüholoheuho]

https://kinometer.com/?list=545

Out of the Way! (Stones Fall Here) (Mikheil Chiaureli, 1931, 63m)
Pigs Are Always Pigs (Khanan Shmain, 1931, 58m)
Magic Myxies (Mary Field, F. Percy Smith, 1931, 10m)
Tree Games (Émile Malespine, 1931, 5m)
The Erl King (Marie-Louise Iribe, 1931, 46m)
In Adam’s Dress And a Bit in Eve’s Too (Jaakko Korhonen, 1931, 104m)
M (Fritz Lang, 1931, 117m)
The Smiling Lieutenant (Ernst Lubitsch, 1931, 93m)
Sally in Our Alley (Maurice Elvey, 1931, 74m)

Faubourg Montmartre (Raymond Bernard, 1931, 94m)
The Wizard of Athens (Ahilleas Madras, 1931, 48m)
Surf and Seaweed (Ralph Steiner, 1931, 13m)
Labor on the Douro River (Manoel de Oliveira, 1931, 20m)
The Disaster in Oaxaca (Sergei Eisenstein, 1931, 12m)
Europa (Franciszka Themerson, Stefan Themerson, 1931, 12m)
The Light Penetrates the Dark (Otakar Vávra, František Pilát, 1931, 4m)
The Prague Castle (Alexander Hammid, 1931, 11m)
A Bronx Morning (Jay Leyda, 1931, 11m)