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.