NFR Project: 'Punch Drunks' (1934)

 

NFR Project: ‘Punch Drunks’

Dir: Lou Breslow

Scr: Jerry Howard, Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Jack Cluett

Pho: Henry Freulich

Ed: Robert Carlisle

Premiere: July 13, 1934

17:29

O how I have longed for this day. At last I get to praise that most misunderstood of American comedy ensembles – the Three Stooges.

Now, if you hate them and don’t find them funny, there’s not much I can do for you. I have debated their merits with all kinds of naysayers over the years, and all I can say is – their comedy is unclassifiable. You either laugh, or you don’t. So those lost souls who deny their talent must make their way forward without the blessings of the comic proclivities of Larry, Moe, and Curley.

It is crude physical comedy they specialize in, the slapstick stuff of eye-pokes, smacks, crashes, soakings, falls, and various physically impossible brushes with death. The basic premise in all their comedy is: these guys are idiots, and they are always going to pay the price for that. Something we can all identify with.

The trio started out as literal stooges – that is, ones who follow another without thinking. This they did this on stage in vaudeville, beginning in 1922, in support of the grouchy, alcoholic comedian Ted Healy. Tired of his abuse, they broke away on their own and soon landed a somewhat lucrative contract with Columbia to make short comic films, in 1934. They would continue to make shorts for the studio until 1957.

The premise was simple – throw the three of them into any kind of employment or other challenging situation, and watch them completely botch it, as they waste most of their energy fighting among themselves as their project goes south. Moe is the commanding and judgmental superego of the group; Curly is the freewheeling, childish id. Larry is . . . Larry – there to have his face smacked and his hair pulled as he scratches spasmodically on his violin.

Punch Drunks, their second short, is the only one they wrote the story for. It’s a neat little film: Moe is a fight promoter, and Curley is a waiter to turns into a boxing beast when Larry plays “Pop Goes the Weasel.” The three figure their fortune is made, but everything gets in the way of Larry rendering the necessary tune during Curley’s big championship bout. (Arthur Housman, a character actor known for playing drunks, serves here as the ring’s timekeeper.)

Curley gets in trademarks such as “Woob-oob-oob-oob-oob-oob-oob!” and “I’m a victim of soicumstances!” Moe frowns, stews, and lashes out. Larry is just Larry. Through 190 shorts and various changes in personnel, they persisted in their simple yucks for the delectation of generations of children, and the odd adult.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Tarzan and His Mate.

 

 

NFR Project: 'Our Daily Bread' (1934)

 

NFR Project: ‘Our Daily Bread’

Dir: King Vidor

Scr: King Vidor, Elizabeth Hill, Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Pho: Robert H. Planck

Ed: Lloyd Nosler

Premiere: Aug. 1, 1934

80 min.

The 1930s were a time of ideological upheaval. The Great Depression had made many lose faith in capitalism, and many saw Franklin Roosevelt’s ambitious social and economic plans as dictatorial in nature. Communism and even Fascism were touted as viable alternatives to American democracy. Society and the economy were broken, and everyone was looking for a viable path back to stability and success.

Into this situation strode director King Vidor [we have previously written about his silent hits The Big Parade (1925) and The Crowd (1928)]. Vidor was a big believer in the common man. He took the married couple, John and Mary, from The Crowd and reimagined them, without a child as in the previous film, trying to get by during hard times.

He resurrected them in order to make a controversial political point. An uncle gives them a deed to an abandoned farm, and they decide to move there and make a go of it. John is a good leader and organizer, but knows nothing about farming. Providentially, a car breaks down by the farm. In it are Chris (the always-dependable John Qualen) and his family. Chris knows how to farm, so John and Mary take him and his family in.

Soon all sorts of people are moving to the farm and staying, building makeshift shelters, trading skills with others, sharing food and resources . . . basically creating a little communist utopia in the midst of hard times. (The farmers debate what kind of government to have, and both democracy and socialism are rejected. In fact, Nazis who saw this film thought it articulated fascism quite eloquently.)

Temptation strikes John when an attractive but lazy city gal, Sally, comes to the farm and takes a hankering to him. The crops are dying due to a lack of rain, and John feels that all his work has come to nothing. He leaves with Sally but shortly comes to his senses, running back to the farm with an idea.

His plan: to dig a two-mile-long ditch to bring water to the crops. Time is of the essence; everyone pitches in.

What follows is a rousing closing sequence. Working like a many-handed machine, shuffing sideways in a closely choreographed bunch, men dig a trench, advancing steadily across the landscape in a beautifully timed and edited illustration of the efficacy of group effort. After frantic work on the ditch, they let the water into the channel, and finally it makes its way to the crops. Everyone jumps for joy, wallowing, prancing, and leaping the water, as the long overdue irrigation begins. We move to one final image, that of the successful harvest of the crops, as John, Mary, and Chris drive past the camera in an overflowing wagon. It’s the ultimate happy ending.

So was Vidor being subversive, or was he merely naïve? Perhaps a bit of both. This film takes a bright view of human nature, and posits a cooperative method of existence that one would hope could really come true and thrive. In Our Daily Bread, dreams of a just and equitable society come true.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Punch Drunks.

NFR Project: 'Little Miss Marker' (1934)

 

NFR Project: ‘Little Miss Marker’

Dir: Alexander Hall

Scr: William R. Lipman, Sam Hellman, Gladys Lehman

Pho: Alfred Gilke

Ed: William Shea

Premiere: June 1, 1934

80 min.

Phenomenon. That’s what Shirey Temple was. Here, acting rings around adults at the age of 5, she completely steals this film, in her first featured role. The resulting applause from all audiences meant that she became phenomenally popular, the biggest Hollywood box-office draw of the middle ‘30s.

The idea for the film comes from a Damon Runyon story. Runyon was a well-known journalist who began to write funny stories about the dem-dese-and-dose criminal world of New York, and is best known for being the source for the musical Guys and Dolls. Runyon’s tough-talking, language-mangling characters became archetypes of the urban American.

In this tale, a desperate gambler leaves his little daughter (Shirley, natch) as collateral for the money for a $20 bet. The cynical bookie who takes his “marker” is Sorrowful Jones (Adolf Menjou), who reluctantly takes in the child. He finds himself growing to love her, and wants to keep her despite the fact that the child’s father has killed himself and that she should be turned over to the police.

Menjou is delightful as the grumbling Jones, but it’s Shirley as Marky who steals the show. She delivers her lines with verve and clarity. She can sing, and she can dance a little, too. Most important of all, she is simply a sunny presence, a 1,000-watt light bulb of a person who can’t fail to cheer those around her.

In the depths of the Depression, movie viewers were looking for reasons to be cheery. This tale of redemption and eventual happiness, when the bums and crooks of Manhattan are turned into King Arthur’s knights, and even the hardest gangster, Big Steve (Charles Bickford) is transformed, finding nobility in taking care of Marky.

Temple had been performing in films since 1931, at the age of 3. This success meant she would make more than a dozen films over the next five years, capitalizing on her cuteness before she aged out of child roles. She was recognized worldwide, and took it all in stride, later becoming a respected diplomat.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Our Daily Bread.

NFR Project: 'It's a Gift' (1934)

 

NFR Project: ‘It’s a Gift’

Dir: Norman Z. McLeod

Scr: Jack Cunningham

Pho: Henry Sharp

Ed: N/A

Premiere: Nov. 17, 1934

68 min.

This, my favorite W.C. Fields film, is not based on his best-remembered persona – that of the cynical, drink-addled conman. It is a secondary but much more moving persona he resorts to in this feature – the put-upon, patiently suffering average American man.

Fields is the hapless Harold Bissonette (pronounced ‘Biss-oh-NAY’), a simple storekeeper who’s burdened with a contemptuous wife, oblivious children, and terrifying customers. He dreams of owning an orange ranch in California. When fate intervenes, sending him a windfall due to the death of Uncle Bean, he buys a site sight unseen, packs up the family, and heads West.

The film is really a collection of shorter sketches gathered together under a loose narrative, sketches which were time-tested for their effectiveness. Harold’s ineffectuality is evident from the beginning, when his daughter commandeers the bathroom mirror, forcing him into all manner of contortions to get shaved. His wife is at him constantly, and his young son is interested only in his roller skates. “Don’t you love me, Pop?” the kid queries. Fields makes as to hit him. “Don’t you strike that child!” his wife exclaims. “He's not gonna tell ME I don’t love him!” Fields replies.

Harold makes his way downstairs, where a brace of unruly customers confront him. An obnoxious man wants 10 pounds of kumquats. Fields struggles to fill his order, as -- “Look out! Here comes Mr. Muckle, the blind man!”  -- weaves his way to the store, shattering the glass doors, destroying a display of light bulbs, cantankerously complaining as Fields gets him a pack of chewing gum (Fields must yell into his ear trumpet; Muckle is a tad deaf as well). Even Fields’ familiar nemesis Baby LeRoy steps in and ruins his store.

The centerpiece of the film is the long sequence in which Fields tries to get to sleep on his back porch in the middle of the night. First his perch collapses; then the milkman comes along with his noisy bottles. A stray cocoanut clatters down the stairs. The gleefully malevolent Baby LaRoy drops objects on him. Two idiot women loudly debate what to get at the pharmacy. An insurance salesman briskly strides up – “Do you know a man name of Carl LaFong – Carl LaFong? Capital L, small A, capital F, small O, small N, small G?!” He proceeds to try to sell Fields a policy. “You can, by paying only five dollars a week, retire at 90 on a comfortable income!”

In short, the world is set up against the best efforts of Harold to live a peaceful life. (He gets a quick snort in now and then.) He never explodes; he simply and calmly mutters asides out of the corner of the mouth.

When Harold takes his family to California, it turns out that the orange ranch was a pig in a poke. The ranch house is a gutted shack; the oranges are the size of walnuts. His family turns and begins to walk away from him. He sits on his car: it collapses. It appears that Harold is doomed.

Then Fields, with wicked wit, turns the tables. It runs out that his property is valuable – it is needed to build grandstands for a new racetrack. Fields can name his price, and does. We cut to the view of a beautiful orange ranch. The wife and children are off to church in a chauffeured car. Fields contentedly plucks a large orange from a branch and squeezes it to make himself a healthy cocktail.

Fields’ depiction of his domestic imprisonment carries the sting of experience, making him an unlikely sympathetic character. We root for Mr. Bissonette because he is one of us, thwarted incessantly by the lunacy of those around him. The grand wish fulfillment of the denouement gives us a fairy-tale ending that only underlines everything that has gone before.

We leave Fields in peace, away from the insulting bustle and stupidity of the human race. It’s a place that can only be gotten to in the movies.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Little Miss Marker.

Character study: 'A Real Pain'

 

A Real Pain

Dir: Jesse Eisenberg

Scr: Jesse Eisenberg

Pho: Michal Dymek

Ed: Robert Nassau

Premiere: Nov. 1, 2024

90 min.

Jesse Eisenberg is a familiar face on screen. His nervous, stuttering persona has graced many movies, including The Social Network and Zombieland. However, he’s an aspiring screenwriter and director as well. A Real Pain is his most effective effort to date.

It’s the story of two cousins, the uptight Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin, whose character is a hodgepodge of strong feelings, earnestly expressed. They were raised together almost as brothers, so their reunion after what seems to have been a few years is a study in what changes and what does not change in people as they grow older.

The cousins are on a vacation together, if you can call it that. They are touring the concentration camps in Poland. This somber journey is punctuated by the incessant irritation of Eisenberg, who can’t handle the exuberant informality of Culkin’s character. It’s a movie full of quirky humor, that works despite the very serious backdrop to it all.

In the end, Eisenberg gives us no great revelations, no climactic incident. People are who they are, he seems to be saying, in many ways immutable. The grace that comes with accepting that is an aspect of growing up not often paid attention to. Eisenberg gives us an artfully crafted description of that.

For adults only: 'Anora'

 

For adults only: ‘Anora’

 

Anora

Dir: Sean Baker

Scr: Sean Baker

Pho: Drew Daniels

Ed: Sean Baker

Premiere: Oct. 18, 2024

139 min.

Sean Baker’s feature Anora is strictly for adults. Why? First, because it contains a lot of frankly sexual content. Secondly, and more important, it deals with grown-up reality, which will be much more a deal-breaker for potential viewers than the sex part.

Baker, best known for his The Florida Project (2017), makes movies about people dwelling at the edges of the American dream. Here he picks up the tale of a young stripper of the title, played most excellently by Mikey Madison. She works in New York, and because she can speak Russian, she is tapped to entertain Vanya, the wasted young son of a Russian oligarch.

The two get along, and soon Vanka is paying “Ani” for a week of pretending to be his girlfriend. Then he proposes marriage in Vegas. They get hitched . . . and soon the parents find out. It turns out that Vanya would like a green card, so that he doesn’t have to go home and work for his father. Vanya’s mother races to New York, insisting that the marriage be annulled.

Ani gets swept up in all this due to an ironic naivete that doesn’t travel well with the explicit sex work she specializes in. She is an expert at being desirable; marriage to a rich man could easily be seen as the ultimate goal of a woman in her profession. She gets what she dreamed of, but it quickly and shoddily falls apart. It’s only when the dreams are broken that we see begin to perceive Ani’s great and unexpected strengths.

This is a Cinderella story, albeit one that ends seemingly unhappily. It’s also a refutation of Pretty Woman, which I am always up for.

Whoever’s in power decided to not promote this film! Have you ever heard of it before today? I only saw it by sheer chance. The sexual content is almost all at the front of the movie, and it is so in your face that for a while I considered the idea that this was the wrong kind of film to watch. I can imagine it was a nightmare for marketers to try and think how to sell this film. But that’s because Baker tells real stories about believable people, interesting characters that go through life-changing experiences, for better and for worse.

So, if you are a mature and thoughtful adult, I highly recommend this comedy of manners for the 21^st century, which turns out far more poignantly than you might expect.

NFR Project: 'It Happened One Night' (1934)

 

NFR Project: ‘It Happened One Night’

Dir: Frank Capra

Scr: Robert Riskin

Pho: Joseph Walker

Ed: Gene Havlick

Premiere: Feb. 22, 1934

105 min.

One of the best of all American films, It Happened One Night is a perfect little movie that sparked an entire genre – the screwball comedy.

It was the work of one of the country’s most distinctive directors, Frank Capra. He had gotten his start in the silent era, writing gags for Mack Sennett before graduating to directing, contributing mightily to the reputation of silent comedian Harry Langdon. He kept plugging away through the early sound era, helming a variety of projects until he hit his stride with this unique “Capraesque” film.

The qualities of the essential Capra film – the glorification of anti-materialism, democratic values, common sense, harmless idiosyncrasy, and good humor – come in large part from Capra’s collaboration with screenwriter Robert Riskin, who penned eight of his films. This was their first work together. Riskin’s script is a classic. He develops his characters with ease, and soon has them bickering and cooing with each other – mostly bickering.

Claudette Colbert plays a spoiled rich girl, Ellen Andrews, who runs away from her father to be with the man she married, against her father’s wishes. She tries to make her way from Miami to New York without being picked up by her father’s agents. She runs into an impetuous reporter Peter Wanre, played by Clark Gable, who soon figures out who she is (her story is a front-page one) and determines to get her to New York in exchange for the exclusive story.

What follows is a modern version of The Taming of the Shrew, in which Gable teaches Colbert how to be a normal, everyday type of person . . . while Colbert consistently deflates Gable’s ego. Naturally, the two, reluctantly, fall for each other. Riskin skillfully plays with exasperation and attraction, keeping the duo and the audience up in the air and interested in seeing what happens next.

The screwball comedy would follow this pattern. One part of a romantic couple is too serious, or stuck up, to make the connection with the desired mate. That mate wears down their resistance through a series of increasingly outrageous experiences until the object of affection succumbs to both the mate and to a more forgiving (and daffy) style of life.

What Capra gives us, uniquely, is a vision of America that we like. It’s filled with nuts, spoilsports, visionaries, cynics, all entertaining. A great deal of the movie takes place on a cross-country bus ride, and in that bus is a cross-section of America. Capra even takes the time to film the communal singing of all three verses of “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze.” As the bus careens through the night, it sways with the passengers, who sing lustily together, in happiness and harmony despite their respective journeys. It’s a perfect little moment. We’re not so bad, us regular folks.

Colbert and Gable have great chemistry together, and the movie just feeds off that. Look for character actor Roscoe Karns as the unsavory Oscar Shapely, who hits on Colbert, then discovers her secret and has to be gotten out of the way by a tough-talking Gable. Walter Connolly is on hand as Colbert’s long-suffering father.

The film was the first, and only one of three, films to win all the major Oscar categories – Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Screenplay. It earned them. Capra has a way of bucking us up. Of making films that lift our spirits.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: It’s a Gift.

NFR Project: 'Imitation of Life' (1934)

 

NFR Project: ‘Imitation of Life’

Dir: John M. Stahl

Scr: William J. Hurlbut

Pho: Merritt B. Gerstad

Ed: Philip Cahn, Maurice Wright

Premiere: Nov. 26, 1934

111 min.

This film is a prime example of a “weepie”, or “woman’s picture” as it was called back then. A tear-jerking melodrama that goes for the good cry with relentless precision, it uses the fulcrum of race as a major plot point, only somewhat to its credit.

It’s derived from Fannie Hurst’s most popular novel, published in 1933. It was inspired by experiences during her friendship with Black writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. Undoubtedly the harsh and demeaning treatment suffered by Black people during the period were evident to even the most casual observer. Jim Crow was still in full force; there was nothing but theoretical equality of the races.

It's the story of two nominally independent women, each a widow with a daughter. Bea, played here by Claudette Colbert, has Jessie; Delilah (Louise Beavers), a Black woman looking to do homework, shows up mistakenly at her door one day. The two hit it off, and Delilah and her daughter Paola come to live with them.

Bea sells maple syrup, and inspired by Delilah’s special pancakes, opens a pancake restaurant on the local boardwalk. It proves a hit. A rough and sarcastic character, played by Ned Sparks, proposes the idea that they package and sell the pancake mix. Soon “Aunt Delilah’s Pancake Mix” has made them millions.

Now, so far, so good. Delilah is not portrayed as a clown or figure of fun, a new development in the portrayal of Black characters in mainstream film. However, she falls into another category of stereotype, the nurturing, humble, subservient Earth Mother Black mother. As written, she is a complete doormat, a kind and endlessly optimistic person, a saint. Beavers works wonders with her performance, crafting a three-dimensional character out of what she is given.

And he saintliness is soon tested. The children grow up, and they are all living together happily in a mansion (Delilah and Paola live in the basement) – or are they? Delilah’s daughter Paola is light-skinned, and is powerfully ashamed of her racial identity. Her mother counsels her to accept it, but Paola denies her mother’s existence, running away from college and seeking to “pass “ as white.

Paola is excellently played by Fredi Washington, a young actress who already had film experience – and experience of racial discrimination. In The Emperor Jones the year before, she was forced to darken her skin, lest her relationship with the much darker Paul Robeson be construed as miscegenation. “Do you know what it’s like to look white, and be Black” she cries at one point, insisting that her mother allow her to disown her. She runs away.

Naturally, this kills Delilah. Meekly, she succumbs to heartbreak. Her funeral is lavish; Paola comes to it and throws herself on the casket, begging for posthumous forgiveness. Everybody cries.

There is a second plot strand involving Bea’s daughter having a crush on her boyfriend, the dapper and gallant Steve (Warren William), but its intensity pales in comparison to the story of Delilah and Paola.

So, is this film a serious attempt to deal with race and perception? Or is it a cheap potboiler that exploits Black life just as mercilessly as all other attempts of the period to “understand” the Black person, as a Black person? You will have to decide for yourself.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: It Happened One Night.

NFR Project: 'Wild Boys of the Road' (1933)

 

NFR Project: ‘Wild Boys of the Road’

Dir: William Wellman

Scr: Earl Baldwin

Pho: Arthur L. Todd

Ed: Thomas Pratt

Premiere: Oct. 7, 1933

67 min.

There’s a lot to unpack here. This is another of the Warner Brothers’ gritty realistic productions so common from the studio in the 1930s. It was slated to be much more downheartening than it eventually became. It is also a movie that haunts my nightmares.

Wild Boys of the Road documents the true-life plight of hundreds of thousands of teenagers who left their homes during the Great Depression and went on the bum, looking for work. Two friends, Tommy (Frankie Darro) and Eddie (Edwin Phillips), hit the rails and start traveling across the country, looking for better times. They meet young Sally (Dorothy Coonan), dressed as a boy, and the three pal up and head for Chicago, where Sally’s aunt lives. That destination turns out to be a whorehouse, which is promptly raided. The three move on.

Disturbingly, a railroad worker (Ward Bond) rapes another young woman, and is pushed to his death by the hoboes. Later, the kids are leaving the train as it pulls into the yard. Eddie hits his head on a signpost, and falls over the tracks. While the others watch helplessly, the train severs his leg.

I was far too young when I saw this scene as a kid. Director Wellman surely knew how to stage the scene; the flurry of edits that conveys the horror of the moment is unforgettable. Again and again as a child, I ran over the seeming inevitability of doom.

A local doctor completes the amputation of Tommy’s leg, and the three continue. They wind up in New York City, where Eddie, trying to earn some money with which to start a job, falls in unknowingly with some gangsters and is arrested for robbery.

The pals go before a judge, and Eddie give a stirring speech about the unfairness of it all, and asks the judge to lock them up. In the original screenplay, the kids were sent to reform school, much as they would in real life. Somebody at Warner Brothers must have been convinced that that much realism would not be acceptable, so they rewrote the ending so that the judge decides to help them all.

Despite the imposed happy ending, the film is a blistering look at normal people’s lives and the struggles they faced.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Imitation of Life.

 

 

NFR Project: 'The Three Little Pigs' (1933)

 

NFR Project: ‘The Three Little Pigs’

Dir: Burt Gillett

Premiere: May 25, 1933

8 min.

This Disney color short subject was a big hit, has become a classic, and was originally antisemitic.

First, the good news. The animation studio’s developing understanding of the mechanics of making a cartoon film meant that the end result was immediately convincing in conveying the movements of its anthropomorphic characters, leading the audience directly into the fantasy of the film. Its ability to delineate character almost instantly meant that the viewer was hooked. There is something intensely compelling about top-notch Disney effort. It’s the gold standard, at least in America.

The story is an adaptation of the familiar fairy tale – one pig builds his house of straw, the second of sticks, the third of bricks. The first two cavort and play while their industrious, wise brother slaves away crafting his brick mansion. “Who’s afraid of the big, bad wolf?” the first two sing. Of course, the wolf is nearby.

The villain blows down the house of straw, and the house of sticks. The two brothers find refuge in their practical brother’s home. Now the bad news. The wolf dresses up like a Jewish peddler, complete with huge nose, whiskers, and Brooklyn accent, and knocks on the door. “I’m da Fuller Brush man!” he exclaims. “I’m woiking my way t’rew collitch!” Underneath his appearance, a snatch of klezmer-like background music plays.

Obviously, this was problematic, so Disney actually went back and changed that scene. In the new version, the Wolf appears as himself, clad only in spectacles (the soundtrack stays the same). It was one of those egregious prejudiced assumptions of the day, that found a place in mass media alongside similar depictions of Black people and Asian-Americans. This kind of corrective wouldn’t work for the feature-length, breathtakingly racist Song of the South (1946).

After a second unsuccessful attempt to enter, disguised as an orphaned sheep, the Wolf finally climbs down the chimney, where he lands in a boiling kettle laced with turpentine. Screeching and dragging his behind on the ground, he exits. The three pigs celebrate – then a knock is heard at the door! The first two pigs cower under the bed! Ah, but it was their industrious brother playing a trick on them.

The cartoon was so popular that it was billed above the feature in some cinemas. The success of the song “Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf?” made it into kind of a Depression-era anthem, right up there with “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” The Wolf was hard times; it knocked at the door but was ultimately vanquished, a form of wish-fulfillment desperately needed by audiences of the period.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Wild Boys of the Road.

 

 

NFR Project: 'State Fair' (1933)

 

NFR Project: ‘State Fair’

Dir: Henry King

Scr: Sonya Levin, Paul Green

Pho: Hal Mohr

Ed: Robert Bischoff

Premiere: Feb. 10, 1933

97 min.

My mother’s family loved this movie, as they were farmers from Iowa, exactly who this film is about. It was rare to see Hollywood tackle such a seemingly unglamorous subject. However, the novel on which the film was based was a best-seller, so the adaptation went forward.

The film plays as a kind of wish fulfillment. Here at the state fair, the grim realities of the Great Depression are not present. There is abundance, there are happy crowds. The carnival and the midway are places of exotic excitement. To farm-bound youngsters, the fair must have seemed magical.

This, the first of three film versions (Rodgers and Hammerstein created a musical version in 1945), is led by Will Rogers as the farm’s paterfamilias, Abel Frake. It’s difficult to realize just how popular the humorist Rogers was at the time. His stage appearances, newspaper columns, radio work, and finally film work made him a household name, a homespun sage who could take the mickey out of the rich and powerful.

Here, he plays himself, basically, laid-back and slyly witty. Louise Dresser ably plays his wife. Abel’s hog, Blue Boy, is in the running for the first prize at the fair. His wife’s pickles and mincemeat are in competition as well. Although the movie takes place during the run of the fair, the real subject of the film is relationships and heartbreak. The Frakes’ two nearly-grown children, played by Janet Gaynor and Norman Foster, meet and fall in love with potential partners (one encounter ends happily, the other does not). Their romantic excitement fills the film with energy.

At the end, prizes are won, hearts are broken and mended. Rarely would such a representative slice of American life be committed to film.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Three Little Pigs.

NFR Project: 'Sons of the Desert' (1933)

 

NFR Project: ‘Sons of the Desert’

Dir: William A. Seiter

Scr: Frank Craven, Byron Morgan

Pho: Kenneth Peach

Ed: Bert Jordan

Premiere: Dec. 29, 1933

64 min.

Laurel and Hardy’s best sound film is a compact gem. It moves away from the heavy slapstick of their earlier films and gives them an even more subtle humor, of attitude, reaction, and classic takes.

Here the boys are in their fully formed personas – Stan is the hapless idiot, Ollie the self-important, bossy, know-it-all partner who proves more stupid. Stan is lost in the complexities of the world, but it is Oliver who suffers the most as he tries to dominate and control the chaos around him.

They live next door to each other. Stan is dominated by his wife (their mailbox reads “Mrs. and Mr. Stan Laurel”), whereas Oliver preaches the gospel of self-reliance and male dominance. Both couples are childless – the boys are hardly capable of being father figures. The one film in which they have children, Brats (1930), the kids in question are themselves in miniature. In fact, Oliver, despite his boastful talk, behaves like a naughty boy when in person with his wife 

They belong to the fraternal organization the Sons of the Desert, and are called upon  to attend the group’s convention in Chicago. The boys swear to make the trip, but Stan starts crying when he thinks about telling his wife. Ollie tries to show him how to do it – only to be shot down hard by his own wife.

Ollie concocts a ridiculous scheme whereby he pretends to be ill and must take a trip to Honolulu with Stan to be cured. (A veterinarian is brought in to certify him.) The two escape to Chicago, hamming it up for newsreel cameras, drinking and partying – the great comic Charley Chase plays an obnoxious convention-goer – and having the time of their lives.

They return home only to find their wives out and the front-page headline reading that the boat from Hawaii sank. They hide desperately, trying to think of a way to lie their way out of trouble. Needless to say, after some adventures on a rainy rooftop, the two receive their comeuppance. Stan’s honesty is rewarded, while Ollie takes more blows to the head.

Sons of the Desert lets both Laurel and Hardy take their time on camera. Stan mistakenly eats a wax apple, and we watch him obliviously gag it down for several minutes. Normally, the joke would be over quickly, but Laurel stretches it out with grimaces, looks of confusion, and double takes, getting all the comic mileage out of it that he can. Oliver's gaze at the viewer, looking for commiseration, suspends time for a moment. 

It’s a world in which wives are formidable masters, where Stan enjoys eating wax fruit, and where Ollie turns to the camera and gazes at us in gentle torment. The duo would make more feature films, but none as consistently funny as this.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: State Fair.

NFR Project: 'Betty Boop in Snow-White' (1933)

 

NFR Project: ‘Betty Boop in Snow-White’

Dir: Dave Fleischer

Animation: Roland Crandall

Premiere: March 31, 1933

7 min.

Next to Disney, the Fleischer Studio was the premier animation studio of the silent and early sound eras. Formed in 1929 by brothers Dave and Max, they created challenging and adept cartoons that leaned into the surreal and macabre, sparking many a child’sfantasies and  nightmares.

Their technical innovations – combining live action with animation, rotoscoping, and layering planes of action to give a 3-D effect – were combined with whimsical characters and absurd situations. Their biggest success was Popeye the Sailor; the next most memorable was the nifty Betty Boop.

Betty Boop was a brunette flapper-girl with a high, squeaky Brooklyn accent, fun-loving and kind, and unbearably sexy in a cartoony way. She and her allies, Koko the Clown and Bimbo the mutt, had wild, wide-ranging adventures.

Here she is Snow White, four years before Disney’s feature film version. She comes in out of a cold winter landscape to the castle of the grotesque-looking queen, who’s just asked her magic mirror if she’s fairest of them all. (Bimbo lays out a pair of long underwear at her feet, and out of a pocket pops a little creature that looks like Mickey Mouse! – hmmmm.)

Soon the mirror changes its tune, the queen gets mad, turns into a witch, and orders Snow White’s execution. Betty’s pleas soften the hearts of Koko and Bimbo, and she escapes. Koko, in the voice of Cab Calloway, sings “St. James Infirmary” as the witch changes his into a spirit. Eventually, the witch becomes a dragon and pursues the trio. It takes Bimbo turning her inside out to resolve the conflict.

The film can be attributed most definitely to the work of its animator, Roland Crandall. It is his transmogrifying imagination that morphs and mutates the character and their surrounds, making a dream world that grabs you and pulls you in. It would be decades before animation would get as adventurous again.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Sons of the Desert.

NFR Project: 'She Done Him Wrong' (1933)

 

NFR Project: ‘She Done Him Wrong’

Dir: Lowell Sherman

Scr: Harvey F. Thew, John Bright

Pho: Charles Lang

Ed: Alexander Hall

Premiere: Jan. 27, 1933

66 min.

Mae West was, in the parlance of her time, a temptress and a vixen. In today’s world she would be seen as incredibly liberated – and would probably still cause as much of a fuss as she did in her heyday.

She was born in Brooklyn in 1893. Her father was a cop. She was a performer from her youth, but she rapidly developed an outlook and a persona that stood out. She had a snappy style, she was funny, and she could write. Soon she developed, produced, wrote, and directed the play Sex, which got her sent to jail for six days for corrupting the virtue of New York.

She thrived on the publicity, and kept it up. Her suggestive and bawdy plays were hits, especially 1928’s Diamond Lil. It was this property that was turned into She Done Him Wrong.

Her persona was rough and tumble, a woman who had seen the worst in men, and who deigned to overcome them and live life on her own terms, sexually frank, available only to those she wanted – the complete opposite of what the well-brought-up young lady was taught. She cracked wise out of the corner of her mouth, her double entendres ricocheting around the room.

In this film, she is the lady Lou, songstress at an 1890’s beer hall. (West belts out three sexy songs, quite provocatively, during the film.) She is queen of the joint, and she juggles the many men in her life without breaking a sweat. The plot, such as it is, concerns illegal activity around the place and the police effort to squelch it. Lou, dripping with diamonds, knows all the principals in these transactions, but manages to keep above the fray.

Now what could be wrong with such a story? It’s full of dirty jokes, for one, as many as West could get past the censors. (It is said that this film triggered the strict enforcement of the Production Code.) The first shot we see of Lou is the completely nude painting of her over the bar – a gentleman’s head blocks the pubic area. She is constantly putting the make on a young Cary Grant, who plays a social reformer. She is relentless.

Ultimately, no one could handle her sexual candor, and her films became more and more tame, controlled buy the studio. She was kicked off radio for a sexy “Adam & Eve” skit she performed with Charlie McCarthy. Her opportunities dried up, so she turned to writing and to llive appearances. She was still performing, and making suggestive comments, in her 80s.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Snow White.

For Halloween: The top 100 horror films

 Hello! Since I wrote my books about horror films, people ask me what my favorite horror films are. These are many and mostly weird. I like such oddball choices as Island of Lost Souls, The Tingler, Society, Vampire Circus, and Quatermass and the Pit. 

However, when it comes to a definitive list, I was definitely scratching my head. Finally, I created a Top Ten for each decade of the horror film. Put these lists all together, and you have what I consider to be a pretty comprehensive assemblage of 100 films you can explore to your heart's content. 

TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE 1920s

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920)

Destiny (1921)

Haxan: Witchcraft through the Ages (1922)

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)

Waxworks (1924)

The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

The Cat and the Canary (1927)

The Unknown (1927)

TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE 1930s

Dracula (1931)

Frankenstein (1931)

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)

M (1931)

The Mummy (1932)

Freaks (1932)

The Invisible Man (1933)

King Kong (1933)

Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Mad Love (1935)

 

TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE 1940s

The Wolf Man (1941)

Cat People (1942)

I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

The Seventh Victim (1943)

The Body Snatcher (1945)

Dead of Night (1945)

Hangover Square (1945)

Isle of the Dead (1945)

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

Bedlam (1946)

TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE 1950s

The Thing (from Another World) (1951)

It Came from Outer Space (1951)

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

Godzilla (1954)

Them! (1954)

Night of the Hunter (1955)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)

The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)

(The Horror of) Dracula (1958)

TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE 1960s

House of Usher (1960)

Jigoku (1960)

Peeping Tom (1960)

Psycho (1960)

The Innocents (1961)

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

Planet of the Vampires (1965)

Kill, Baby . . . Kill! (1966)

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

 

TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE 1970s

The Devils (1971)

The Exorcist (1973)

The Wicker Man (1973)

It’s Alive (1974)

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

Deep Red (1975)

Suspiria (1977)

Eraserhead (1977)

Halloween (1978)

Alien (1979)

 

TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE 1980s

Friday the 13^th (1980)

The Shining (1980)

The Howling (1981)

The Thing (1982)

Videodrome (1983)

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Aliens (1986)

Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn (1987)

Near Dark (1987)

They Live (1988)

 

TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE 1990s

It (1990)

Misery (1990)

The People Under the Stairs (1991)

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Candyman (1992)

In the Mouth of Madness (1994)

Scream (1996)

Cure (1997)

Funny Games (1997)

I Stand Alone (1998)

 

TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE OUGHTS

American Psycho (2000)

Battle Royale (2000)

The Cell (2000)

Audition (2001)

The Others (2001)

28 Days Later . . . (2002)

May (2002)

Shaun of the Dead (2004)

The Host (2006)

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

 

TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE TEENS

I Saw the Devil (2010)

John Dies at the End (2012)

We Are What We Are (2013)

What We Do in the Shadows (2014)

Crimson Peak (2015)

Green Room (2015)

Raw (2016)

Get Out (2017)

It Comes at Night (2017)

The Shape of Water (2017)

NFR Project: 'The Power and the Glory' (1933)

 

NFR Project: ‘The Power and the Glory’

Dir: William K. Howard

Scr: Preston Sturges

Pho: James Wong Howe

Ed: Paul Weatherwax

Premiere: Aug. 16, 1933

76 min.

The real story here is the debut of the brilliant screenwriter, Preston Sturges. He was destined to be the creator of screwball classics such as Christmas in July, Hail the Conquering Hero, and The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek. However, he got his start as a serious New York playwright.

He went to Hollywood to make money. He did, but he was unhappy with the group writing process of the time, in which draft after draft was tinkered with by successive waves of itinerant screenwriters on a studio’s payroll. Sturges wanted to be the sole author of a film. So, he sat down and dreamed up The Power and the Glory, and wrote out not a synopsis, as was common, but a complete shooting script.

The head of Fox Studios, Jesse Lasky, paid Sturges handsomely for the script and, for the first time, gave him a percentage of the film’s profits. The remarkable agreement they cemented allowed Sturges to attend the development and making of the film, giving him a valuable education in producing and directing.

The film is unique for its time in that it uses a number of non-chronological flashbacks to tell its story. The studio was so impressed with this device that they dubbed it “narratage” and put up a plaque recording this fact at the theater where the film premiered. Decades later, film critic Pauline Kael would make the argument that this device presaged and perhaps inspired Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane script, which certainly bears parallels with this film.

It's the story of a rich, mean dead guy (Spencer Tracy, who ages from his 20s to his 60s in the film, pretty convincingly). Everybody speaks badly of him after his funeral. His only defender is his childhood friend and business secretary, who walks us with reminiscence back through the hidden details of the tycoon’s life.

He starts off as an unambitious, happy-go-lucky track walker for the railroad. He falls in love, gets married, and his wife (Colleen Moore) urges him to educate himself and rise in the company. He becomes a designer and developer, rises higher and higher, finally becomes the head man. He grows hard and uncaring, all business.

Then he falls for a young socialite, leaves his wife, gets remarried. In a plot twist that wouldn’t be allowed later due to the Production Code, his adult son impregnates his wife. The tycoon finds out about it and kills himself.

This fairly turgid proceeding is innovative in the way in which it is told. However, the themes of ambition and betrayal are familiar melodramatic devices. Tracy shows off his range in the film, and Colleen Moore, a silent comedy star, handles the role of his wife ably. James Wong Howe’s beautiful cinematography helps too. Altogether, a rare example of mature movie art of a kind that soon would no longer be made.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: She Done Him Wrong.

NFR Project: 'King Kong' (1933)

 

NFR Project: ‘King Kong’

Dir: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack

Scr: James Creelman, Ruth Rose

Pho: Eddie Linden, Vernon Walker, J.O. Taylor

Ed: Ted Cheesman

Premiere: March 2, 1933

100 min.

“Listen, I’m going to make the greatest picture in the world! Something that nobody’s ever seen or heard of!” – Carl Denham, Kong’s captor

It makes the impossible plausible. It makes a towering monster out of an 18-inch figure. It still confounds first-time viewers with its bold storytelling and astonishing special effects. One of Hollywood’s best movies still stands the test of time.

The film’s premise can be attributed to a dream of Merian C. Cooper’s. Cooper, an adventurer and movie maker, had with his partner, cinematographer Ernest B. Schoedsack, made several outstanding silent-era documentaries. (One of them, Grass (1925), is also on the National Film Registry list.) Cooper dreamed of a giant ape on top of the Empire State Building, fighting with airplanes. From this titanic climax, the story wrote itself backwards to its beginning.

Daredevil documentary film producer Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) has a secret map, and a secret mission in mind. He’s going to make a new documentary on an unknown island, a film that will surpass anything ever seen. He hires a ship and crew, and prepares to head out to this undisclosed location.

One last-minute problem vexes him – he wants a beautiful girl to come along, to appear in the film. He can’t get any self-respective actress to sign on. Desperate, he searches the city streets, and finds a young, impoverished woman, Ann Darrow (Fay Wray). He convinces her that he is on the up and up, and she joins the expedition.

On they travel, exposing the developing relationship of Ann and Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot), the ship’s first mate. (We are unfortunately given a stereotyped Chinese cook.) Denham reiterates his movie as being about “Beauty and the Beast.” Finally, moving slowly through the fog, they hear the sound of breakers – only it’s not breakers, it’s the sound of drums.

They go ashore, finding a native village at the foot of an enormous wall that separates their peninsula from the rest of the island. There, the natives worship Kong. (Once again, racial stereotyping abounds, as these are bone-in-your-nose, gibberish-spouting Africans, led by the great character actor Noble Johnson, who does his best with the nonsense he has to recite.)

Of course, they want the white woman. No deal; the group returns to the ship. The natives, under cover of darkness, kidnap Ann. They open the enormous entrance set in the wall, tie her to two posts, and retreat to the top of the wall. A gong is rung, and out of the jungle comes . . . Kong.

It took a team of technicians and artists to create the effects that worked so wonderfully. Cooper and Schoedsack recruited the great stop-motion pioneer animator Willis H. O’Brien (already a known quantity due to his 1925 The Lost World, a dinosaur tale inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1912 novel) and his team, including Buzz Gibson and Marcel Delgado, to craft and operate miniatures in a convincing manner. By carefully positioning the elements to be animated, and moving them slowly, frame by frame, they could enliven their models on film and even endow them with personality.

But stop-motion was just the beginning of the production. Miniatures, matte painting, rear projection and more were combined with the aid of an optical printer. The resulting coordination of all the special and live footage so that it not only didn’t appear ludicrous, but absolutely swept the audience up with the illusion, was complete.

Any any rate, Kong makes his enormous appearance. He takes Ann and strides off into the jungle. The movie/ship’s crew go after her, equipped with rifles and special gas bombs. They run across various prehistoric creatures, and are massacred. Only Denham and Driscoll survive. Driscoll steals Ann back from Kong, and the two make it to the ship. Kong, enraged, smashes the wall and attacks everyone, killing many. Only Denham’s gas bombs get to him and put him to sleep.

We swing quickly to a marquee – “KING KONG Eighth Wonder of the World” – and the bustling Broadway crowd entering the theater. Backstage, Ann and Driscoll discuss their pending marriage. Kong is revealed, bound on a platform in steel chains. News photographers crowd forward, shooting off flashbulbs. Kong becomes enraged, breaks his chains, and goes berserk, searching for Ann.

The film’s climax shows him creating havoc across the city, grabbing Ann, and climbing the Empire State Building. There he staves off attacking Army planes for a time, but an excess of bullets leaves him bloody and weak. He plunges off the tower to his death. “So the planes got him,” a policeman says to Denham. “No, it was Beauty killed the Best,” he replies.

Kong can be interpreted in many ways – Kong as an outsized caricature of a Black man, Kong as Nature overpowering the modern world, Kong as a king made into a slave who regains his kingly crown only in the moments before his death. He is a noble creature, whatever other layers of meaning you choose to impose on him. You kind of love the big ape, and you are still rooting for him after all these years, though you know what his fate will be.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Power and the Glory.

NFR Project: 'The Invisible Man' (1933)

 NFR Project: ‘The Invisible Man’

Dir: James Whale

Scr: R.C. Sherriff

Pho: Arthur Edeson

Ed: Ted Kent

Premiere: Oct. 31, 1933

70 min.

In many ways, The Invisible Man is James Whale’s most audacious horror film, visually and otherwise. Despite the plaudits for Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, and The Old Dark House, there is something desperate and unsettling about its protagonist’s precipitous descent into homicidal madness that is more compelling than the rest; it is eerie, uncanny, downbeat.

Its bold visual palette includes extraordinary special effects that bring the story to convincing life. Special effects artist John P. Fulton came up with ingenious techniques to make it seem as though an invisible man was plausible. Scenes were shot against a dead-black background, the actor completely covered in black, only his clothing and accoutrements filmed as normal. When printed against a positive print of the background, the figure vanishes, making the disembodied objects come to life.

Whale was fortunate in that he hired the excellent playwright R.C. Sherriff to adapt H.G. Wells’s 1897 novel for the screen. Sherriff is best known for his World War I play Journey’s End, which Whale directed and which led to his hiring by Hollywood. Sherriff adhered closely to the original, and created a pithy, expressive, and sometimes even humorous script.

The actor chosen to play Jack Griffin, the rouge scientist, was the then-unknown Claude Rains. It was vital for the man playing Griffin to have a strong and articulate voice, given that most of his performance would be communicated verbally, without benefit of expression. Rains was the man for the job. Born a Cockney, he quickly trained himself out of his lower-class accent and became one of the supreme speakers of the English stage.

The movie starts off in England’s provinces. A man struggles through the drifts of a daunting snowstorm, finding his way to an isolated inn. The locals are all gathered in the bar, whiling away the time, when the man enters. His face is covered in bandages, his eyes obscured by dark glasses. He seems more mummy than man.

He requests a room, and privacy. He is conducting experiments frantically, trying to find “a way back.” When confronted by the locals, he loses his composure, angrily stripping off his clothes and tormenting them in his invisible form. We learn through efficient exposition that Griffin discovered the secret of invisibility – but that, unknowingly, he injected himself with monocaine – a substance that drives its users mad.

The film’s razor-sharp editing gives us tantalizing glimpses of the invisible Griffin even as we are being fed his backstory; we are up to speed when he goes frantic and starts threatening those around him. He begins to kill without concern. He dreams of ruling the world in his invisible state, he rants about his power, suffers delusions of grandeur. Those close to him attempt to dissuade him and bring him in, but he grows more bloodthirsty, killing the weaselly informant that sets the police on him.

Whale has fun with the provincial setting that opens the film, portraying the local inhabitants as not too bright. As the country becomes alerted to the fact that an invisible man exists, all manner of people volunteer their own foolproof methods for catching the invisible man. Eventually, the powers that be catch up with Griffin, leading to his death – before which he exclaims, “I meddled in things that man must leave alone,” which was to become the familiar refrain of the mad scientist.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: King Kong.

 

 

 

 

 

NFR Project: 'Gold Diggers of 1933'

 

NFR Project: ‘Gold Diggers of 1933’

Dir: Mervyn LeRoy, Busby Berkeley

Scr: Erwin S. Gelsey, James Seymour, Ben Markson, Daid Boehm

Pho: Sol Polito

Ed: George Amy

Premiere: May 27, 1933

90 min.

This third of the Busby Berkeley-involved musicals if 1933 is the most distinctive, in that it’s a musical that tries, however briefly, to deal with the problems of the Great Depression.

This particular plot is so familiar it has been parodied several times on stage (“Dames at Sea”) and on film (“Movie Movie”). Four young gal pals – the nice girl, Polly (Ruby Keeler); Joan Blondell, Aline MacMahon, ang Ginger Rogers – are trying to make it big on Broadway. Producer (the cigar-chomping Ned Sparks) has his show attached for lack of funds, and all of them are on the outs.

But wait! A young man’s voice can be heard from the next window in the apartment building, belting out a wonderful song. Eureka! From this material a great musical could be made. But where to get the money? Fortunately, songsmith Brad (Dick Powell) is rich, and he backs the show. This raises the ire of his protective older brother (Warren William), who tires to sabotage his burgeoning romance with Polly. Trickery and mistaken identity carry us through to opening night, which turns out to be a smash hit, and one that finds all of the principal couples together at last.

The distinctive musical numbers by the great choreographer Busby Berkeley are evenly spaced throughout the movie, starting with a vibrant rendition of coin-clad maidens chanting “We’re in the Money.” Once again, these are fantastic sequences that soon move beyond their stage-bound limitations and fly into sequences that could only be capture on film.

“Pettin’ in the Park” gives the filmmakers a chance to get a bunch off girls wet, then watch them disrobe in silhouette. “The Shadow Waltz” includes neon violins. Finally, “Remember My Forgotten Man” tries, in a sincere way, to talk to the fact that millions of men were out of work and in need. It’s a notably downbeat finale.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Invisible Man.

NFR Project: 'Footlight Parade' (1933)

 

NFR Project: ‘Footlight Parade’

Dir: Lloyd Bacon, Busby Berkeley

Scr: Manuel Seff, James Seymour, Robert Lord, Peter Milne

Pho: George Barnes

Ed: George Amy

Premiere: Oct. 21, 1933

102 min.

Another great Warner Brothers musical. It’s another backstage affair, the plot of which factors in the new appeal of talking pictures, and the assertion that stage entertainment is superior, as demonstrated in sequences that, ironically, could only be realized on film.

Jimmy Cagney gets away from his gangster persona here, playing a song-and-dance man trying to make out in a new economy, right in the middle of the Great Depression. Perhaps Broadway doesn’t want musicals, but movies could feature live-entertainment prologues to selected pictures (an actual practice that persisted for years). These he produces, with the help of his long-suffering secretary, played by Joan Blondell, a dance director played by Frank McHugh, and a couple of opportunistic money men (Guy Kibbee and Arthur Holl).

Into this mix gets tossed the juvenile romantic team. Dick Powell plays the handsome young tenor, and Ruby Keeler plays a prim secretary who decides to let her hair down and go on the stage again. All these forces come together when another production company keeps stealing all their ideas, and they must rehearse intensely in secret in order to take the theatrical world by storm – staging three premieres in one night, at three different theaters, to sign up the owner of a chain of movie theaters (Paul Porcasi).

This they do, and how. The song-writing team of Warren and Dubin, still hot from the success of 42^nd St., wrote “Honeymoon Hotel” and “Shanghai Lil,” while the team of composer Sammy Fain and lyricist Irving Kahal, wrote the rest.

The real catalyst for this genre-changing film is the four dance numbers staged by Busby Berkeley, also lauded after his work on 42^nd St. The inventive and visionary choreographer extended his work with intricate patterned dancing with extraordinary camera shots – from above, mainly, but below and through and around his dance corps. He shot carefully, using only one camera so that no one else could re-edit his work.

Each musical number quickly moves beyond the limitations of a stage show into a cloud cuckoo land of outright fantasy. In the first number, newlyweds Dick and Ruby check into the hotel of the titles, dancing in ensemble with a crowd of others who are all registered under the name of Smith (a nod to the obvious hanky-panky going on). Famed little person Billy Barty is here, as a strangely disturbing child.

“By a Waterfall” is easily the showstopper of the night. Again, Dick and Ruby cavort, this time on an elaborate soundstage woodland, pierced by streams and chutes of water. Before you know it, woman in dazzling swimsuits are diving, swimming, posing, floating in and out of intricate patterns.

The film’s closing number, “Shanghai Lil,” is noticeable primarily for its showcasing of Cagney’s singing and dancing talents. He’s quite good, and when his character is forced to take the leading man’s role at the last second, he jumps right in and deservedly gets the spotlight. (Ruby here is Shanghai Lil, another instance of Hollywood “yellowface”.)

Of course the kids triumph, the business is saved, and Cagney realizes what a fool he’s been and gets together with Joan Blondell. In the depths of the Depression, anything that was cheery, like this film, was a welcome respite from the harsh realities of daily life.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Gold Diggers of 1933.