1940 poll

[sally]

thanks angel for the greville

also i didn't realise that the latvian (& very lovely, esp if you've a thing for sea/coastal stories like me) zvejnieka dēls/the fisherman's son by the variously spelled lapenieks/liepnieks is 1940. i'll have it up tomorrow.

[rischka]

yay! not sure how many i'll have time for but all are much appreciated and will certainly get to them eventually!! i watched the ophuls about the end of the hapsburgs



they are portrayed very sympathetically franz ferdinand even had an early plan for a european union and it's suggested that some in vienna wanted him 'out of the way.' it's more the story of his romance with a czech countess who isn't considered suitable -- but he marries her anyway and they die together. the end

there's a tacked on propaganda bit rallying the war effort but france was shortly overrun by the nazis who banned the film and ophuls was forced to flee to hollywood. it's not a bad film but i hoped for more from ophuls. dunno if it will make my list. i will have to see :ugeek:

[sally]

watched the apparently less problematic of the two 1940 michael curtiz errol flynn civil war films - virginia city. the most terrifying thing aside from bogart's pencil thin mustache was miriam hopkins attempting to dance. brrrr. i may come round on errol though, he's alright with a big hat on. won't judge how insane curtiz is though until i've watched santa fe trail.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Today I watched one 1940 flick I'll probably vote for: Fox's inaugural Good Neighbor Policy musical, Down Argentine Way. No claim to universality in appreciation here — it features exoticized representations of Argentina and it probably implicitly celebrates its own function as US cultural imperialism via communications technology hegemony, so yuck!— but it aligns with my academic interests and it's very pretty and gay. As per Charlotte Greenwood's bestiary, the film features "wonderful horses... and wonderful men."

[rischka]

is carmen miranda in that one?? YES!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCXWu7HfmXw

she's kind of great. but like, she was brazilian

[MatiasAlbertotti]

she's kind of great. but like, she was brazilian

Don't worry about that, we all look the same down here in the south Patroncita.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

is carmen miranda in that one??
she's kind of great. but like, she was brazilian

Yup, this was her Hollywood debut! To the film's partial credit, before her performances we see nightclub signs specifically calling Carmen Miranda a "Brazilian sensation," so the idea is just that she's touring Argentina at the time. But obviously these aren't distinctions Hollywood actually cared to make or succeeded in making; they just wanted to give the appearance of being culturally sensitive while subsuming specific identities into the 'South American way'.

[rischka]

thx, i think i've only seen her in the gang's all here so i may have to check this one

[sally]

menaces was heartbreaking, mainly for von stroheim. i never realised what lovely eyes he had. i'm depressed now. gonna have to break out one of the rom coms

[sally]

also, if you can buy melvyn douglas as a communist (which is hard) then 'he stayed for breakfast' is a neat little comedy. who is this alexander hall that can handle the screwball pacing?

[mesnalty]

Just watched the two Mary Ellen Bute/Norman McLaren collabs from 1940, Tarantella and Spook Sport (both easily found online), which both somehow feel more alive to me than other shorts in the same vein, including McLaren's own 1940 offering, Dots.

[flip]

alexander hall! i've seen four and three were pretty unremarkable, but good girls go to paris from 1939 is a great screwball

[rischka]

hey what about here comes mr jordan. i'm a sucker for a good film blanc



enjoyed menaces... as well. harlequin stroheim, lovely shots and poetic dialogues. i've seen another good greville too: brief ecstasy from 1937

[Lencho of the Apes]

jordan

'41 at imdb.

[...]

Just watched the two Mary Ellen Bute/Norman McLaren collabs from 1940, Tarantella and Spook Sport (both easily found online), which both somehow feel more alive to me than other shorts in the same vein, including McLaren's own 1940 offering, Dots.

Yeah, that fits my experience of them too and holds for most of McLaren's later solo work as well that I've seen.

[flip]

here comes mr jordan was hall's only best picture-nominated film, but it's one i haven't seen yet, so now i have two hall films to add to my watchlist!

[...]

Okay Flip, I admit you were right about Spring Parade, it is the best Durbin film and even the haters (still want that tongue sticking out smilie) should enjoy it. It's got that feeling of Lubitsch's mythical European kingdom down pat, even though it's set in Austria. Durbin as a unsophisticated, but genuine mountain girl has a bit of a Pippi Longstocking air to it at times with her references to that's how we do it in her home town. But why didn't you warn me it takes a Koster turn in tone about 2/3rds of the way in? The light and frolicksome is put under some serious threat with the state police and Cummings' Corporal getting snotty with Durbin's Ilonka.

I guess setting a movie in Austria in 1940 could have been an indication that there might be something darker underlying the light,but it does still work. It resolves happily enough of course, but this time the suggestion things could have gone very differently stays in the air a bit. That it comes close to veering out of control due to Ilonka's own innocent enough, though also foolish enough actions makes the potential threat seem worse, but the resolution more welcome than it might otherwise deserve to be. Pretty funny throughout, even when Cummings is being a dick, and the supporting cast of studio mainstays are great as they usually are.

[karl]

OPERETTE (Willi Forst)

One of these musical frivolities Forst specialized in, the sort of thing that generally charms me at first before beginning to wear out its welcome in the second half. The director/star obviously had a lot of fun making it, even though one would assume that 1940 was not really a fun time to be doing anything in Austria. Unfortunately the melodrama eventually takes over and that does the film no favors, because every character in the film is a bit silly. Karl says 7/10.

They had onstage nudity in these performances in 19th century Austria, or at least Forst thinks they did:

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Immense Durbin fan here. Glad to have compatriots in this. Excited to use the poll as an occasion for first-time watches of both It's a Date and Spring Parade.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Me as I try to marathon through my mammoth watchlist of 1940 goodies. Stay hydrated, champs!

[sally]

cheers evelyn!



i started off with a very reasonable watchlist of around 30 1940 films, but i've managed to whittle it down to a merely impossible 77.

but if you don't want to die of sadness i'd skip the buster keaton shorts from this year.

[Curtis, baby]

Just watched the two Mary Ellen Bute/Norman McLaren collabs from 1940, Tarantella and Spook Sport (both easily found online), which both somehow feel more alive to me than other shorts in the same vein, including McLaren's own 1940 offering, Dots.

Tarantella doesn't have McLaren listed as a director on imdb or letterboxd. McLaren also has one other solo short from 1940 according to imdb and letterboxd, Loops, and another according to just letterboxd, Boogie Doodle. Anyway, I watched them all (except Tarantella, I'm arachnophobic as a motherfucker, and based on the intro it just did NOT seem like it would be a pleasant experience), and mostly agree. Spook Sport was more interesting than Dots, Boogie Doodle, or Loops. Although, to be fair, I didn't find it ravingly enjoyable - just a solid 3/5. But it at least had a little something. The McLaren solo shorts were interesting ideas carried out as perfunctorily as possible.

[Lencho of the Apes]

The Blue Bird - Walter Lang (Fox Studios, USA)

It's sentimental hokum, it's kitschy AF, but it snuck up on me and maybe even hit home just a little bit, so I can't let it go completely unappreciated here among us during this game sequence. Not pictured: the most blatant Maxfield Parrish pastiche I've ever seen on film.

3 blu 1.JPG (74.16 KiB) Viewed 7623 times

3 blu 2.JPG (96.67 KiB) Viewed 7623 times

3 blu 3.JPG (83.16 KiB) Viewed 7623 times

[mesnalty]

Yeah, McLaren didn't co-direct Tarantella, but he did do the animation, I think.

[Curtis, baby]

Yeah, McLaren didn't co-direct Tarantella, but he did do the animation, I think.

Ah, gotcha. Makes sense.

But one thing I just remembered that doesn't make sense. How can Boogie Doodle be 1940 on letterboxd and 1948 and imdb. That's ridiculous. 8 years?! Cmon. And wiki seems to indicate it was definitely 1940, or maybe 1941, but not 1948. Why the hell does imdb say 1948?! Does anyone know?

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

i started off with a very reasonable watchlist of around 30 1940 films, but i've managed to whittle it down to a merely impossible 77.

Lol! Glad I'm not the only one so afflicted.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Mclaren has one more 1940 entry that I know of, but it's on neither IMDB nor Letterboxd. It's called Chaplin; it's a very short answer to the question "Can McLaren move like Chaplin?"

You can watch it here, though the soundtrack is the uploader's addition to a would-be soundtrack-less film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OpNMofTzEI

The film is worth remembering, to my mind, as an illustration of just how iconic Chaplin's image was. You could conjure up an entire persona with just a few squiggly lines. Surely a large part of what made him so globally popular has to do with how globally legible he was.

[Lencho of the Apes]

[rischka]

watching kinda fun film with stroheim and lorre and norwegian ballet star zorina as a trio of con artists



zorina falls in love with a mark and goes straight but stroheim keeps trying to lure her back in



i was an adventuress, d. gregory ratoff, by whom i've seen nothing else, tho it seems he directed the notorious song of russia which moved robert taylor to testify to HUAC

[arkheia]

His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks)

The Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin)
Arise, My Love (Mitchell Leisen)
The Bank Dick (Edward F. Cline)
The Shop Around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch)
Fantasia (Disney)
Nobuko (Hiroshi Shimizu)
The Sea Hawk (Michael Curtiz)

I've fallen down a 1940 Japanese cinema rabbit hole and here's what I've dug up so far:

There's a lost Mizoguchi film, A Woman of Osaka/Naniwa Onna, which was his first collaboration with Kinuyo Tanaka.

煉瓦女工 (Renga jokô, also translated as Women's Brick Factory or The Brick Factory Girl) looks intriguing. It's based on a short story by Nozawa Fumiko, and tells "a story about female factory workers, was banned for its proletarian sentiments" (Alexander Jakoby). The film was made in 1940 but suppressed until 1946. Film scholar Kenji Iwamoto calls it a pioneer in Japanese Neo-realism. A 35mm print was screened at the Cinémathèque française this past October but no trace of it online.

Kinema Junpo's top 10 for the year. Not sure which of these I'll get around to seeing but a good reference to start with.

1. Kojima No Haru (1940) - online, no subs
2. The Story of Tank Commander Nishizumi (1940)
3. Matasaburo On the Wind (1940) - online, no subs
4. A Woman of Osaka (1940) - lost
5. Yokudo banri (1940) (dir. Bunjin Kurata)
6. Okumura Ioko (1940)
7. Rekishi: Dai Ichi-Bu - Doran Boshin (1940) (dir. Tomu Uchida)
8. Moyuru ozora (1940) (dir. Yutaka Abe) - online, no subs
9. Fufu nisei (1940) (dir. Akira Nobuchi)
10. Mokuseki (1940) - online, no subs

Also on my to-watch list:

King of the Royal Mounted
Tuition
The Post Master
Una Romantica Avventura

And I'm interested in tracking down Unelma karjamajalla (Teuvo Tulio) and Frau nach Maß (Helmut Käutner) but neither seems to be online...