NFR Project: 'Swing Time' (1936)

 

NFR Project: ‘Swing Time’

Dir: George Stevens

Scr: Howard Lindsay, Allan Scott, Dorothy Yost, Ben Holmes, Anthony Veiller, Rian James

Pho: David Abel

Ed: Henry Berman

Premiere: Aug. 27, 1936

103 min.

The sixth of 10 film collaborations between Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers is considered their best effort. Jerome Kerns and Dorothy Fields won as Oscar for the film’s song “The Way You Look Tonight,” and all the other numbers – “Pick Yourself Up,” “Waltz in Swing Time,” and “Never Gonna Dance” -- are painstakingly choreographed and executed. (“A Fine Romance” is a non-danced comic ballad.)

Supposedly the duo went through 47 takes of a passage in one of their numbers. Astaire was an obsessed perfectionist, and Rogers had an iron constitution. That they made their complex duets seem easy and effortless belies how much work went into them.

The movie is marred by the “Bojangles of Harlem” number Astaire performs. Ostensibly a tribute to the great Black tap dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, it features Astaire in blackface – a form of denigration no longer practiced.

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

NFR Project: 'Show Boat' (1936)

 

NFR Project: ‘Show Boat’

Dir: James Whale

Scr: Oscar Hammerstein II

Pho: John J. Mescall

Ed: Bernard W. Burton, Ted Kent

Premiere: May 17, 1936

113 min.

The director James Whale’s favorite film of his was quite unlike his usual output. Best known as a horror director, Whale’s assured foray into an epic musical theater production is a great adaptation of a stage classic to film.

Show Boat started a revolution in musical theater. Until it premiered, musicals were scattershot affairs – loose collections of sketches and songs, or light-hearted fluff and farce, or operettas set in imaginary European kingdoms. With the creation of Show Boat, a musical with three-dimensional characters and a serious plot, the musical grew up.

It didn’t hurt that some of America’s most enduring ballads are studded throughout the work. “Bill,” “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man of Mine,” “Make Believe,” “You Are Love,” and of course the iconic “Ol’ Man River – all are classics that continue to be performed today by jazz and cabaret artists. The songs all serve to advance the plot, and stand on their own as well, as all catchy tunes should.

The musical was adapted from a 1926 novel by the best-selling author Edna Ferber. It’s an epic story that plays out between 1887 and 1927, from the banks of the Mississippi to the theaters of New York City, encompassing the evolution of American music from old-time sentimental ballads through bluesy torch songs and on to jazzy standards. Kern had plenty of practice as a songsmith – he’d already been in the business for 20 years, and had cranked out 16 musicals between 1915 and 1920. Hammerstein was similarly experienced.

The story involves the steamboat Cotton Blossom, which serves as a floating, traveling theater along the banks of the Mississippi River. Its owners, Cap’n Andy and Parthy, have a daughter, Magnolia. When it revealed that the show’s leading lady, Julie, is of mixed race, she is forced to leave the show boat. Her role is taken over by Magnolia, who acts opposite the charming gambler Gaylord Ravenal.

Magnolia and Gaylord end up together and have a daughter, but, impoverished and ashamed, Gaylord leaves the two of them. Magnolia goes on to be a successful singer in a club thanks to the selfless sacrifice of Julie. Twenty years later, Magnolia and Gaylord are reunited at their daughter’s Broadway debut.

The musical was the first to deal with racism, and has been accused of a kind of racism itself. While the “n-word” is bandied about freely in the original script, later times have caused alternations to accommodate better sensibilities. It deals frankly with the scourges of the time: the segregation of black and white populations, the inability of a mixed-race person to be thought of as little better than an animal. No one had tried to seriously engage these thorny issues on stage before. Merely the act of having black and white performers on stage together was seen as the breaking of a taboo.

Whale recruited many of the show’s original performers to recreate their roles for the film. In particular, Charles Winninger’s definitive rendition of Cap’n Andy, Magnolia’s happy-go-lucky father is a treat. Though she is 20 years too old for the part, Irene Dunne does a meritable job as Magnolia, tenor Allan Jones proves himself to be a bit of an actor as Gaaylord Ravenal.

Of particular merit are the performances of Helen Morgan and Paul Robeson. Morgan, a well-known torch singer, was the original Julie, and her renditions of “Bill” and “Can’t Help . . .” are iconic – musically superior and heart-rending. And, of course, Robeson is purely and magnetically Robeson in the role he originated in the London production, a role no one else could play to satisfaction.

This became his signature song, one he would reprise with more hopeful lyrics throughout his career. It’s the best remembered song from a history-making production.

America’s systemic cultural racism of the time is on display here. The Black people in the film are depicted as simple-minded and none too ambitious; Magnolia does a blackface number that is interesting today only for its documentary value.

Yet Whale wrestles the cold, hard facts of segregation and racism, topics generally never covered in Hollywood film of the time. Show Boat represents the one-step-forward, two-steps-back struggle of Black people to be taken seriously as people.

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

NFR Project: 'Rose Hobart' (1936)

 

NFR Project: ‘Rose Hobart’

Created by Joseph Cornell

1936

19 min.

Joseph Cornell (1903-1972) was one of America’s most unique artists. Untrained and reclusive, he created art in his Queens basement. To be more precise, he created boxes – glassed-in assemblages of relatively small boxes composed of found objects and illustrations. They evoked yearning, melancholy, memory. They are still quite absorbing and alive as art works, utterly unlike anything else around.

Cornell would troll the second-hand stores, junk piles, used book shops, and random marketplaces of Manhattan for the small items he would collect and integrate into a visual piece. These are quiet, meditative works that summon up a comforting view, a Victorian wonder land where dolls, birds, keys, bones, pebbles, string, and maps conjoin in an exotic portrait of an imaginary universe.

Cornell made films as well. His first significant film was made without him ever touching a camera. He used to collect and show 16-millimeter films for his and his disabled brother’s amusement. He took a 1931 jungle melodrama, East of Borneo, and cut out everything irrelevant to him, retaining only footage highlighting the actress Rose Hobart, who plays the female lead in East of Borneo. This ode to the actress is Rose Hobart.

Cornell was an obsessive. Many times, he would idolize a woman from the movies, or from dance, or from history, and build boxes about her. He repeated this any times in his work. There is something voyeuristic, erotic, even masturbatory about the film. Cornell is engrossed in any view he can get of Hobart – in evening gowns, in plain dress, in men’s clothing, standing, sitting looking, reacting. Her place face, dark hair, and slender body obviously captivate the filmmaker.

He cut together footage of Hobart, rearranging the chronology of the film to suit himself. The result is a disconnected, non-narrative gem. We look, again and again, at Hobart’s face. The camera can’t tear itself away from her, and that gets us thinking about our complicity in looking. Hobart is objectified as an object of desire, but she is also elevated to the status of a wraithlike spirit, floating through the action like a dreamer.

Cornell accentuated the dreamlike feel of the film by slowing the projection of the film from 24 frames per second to 16 frames per second, by projecting it through a blue filter, and by adding Brazilian samba music in the background, which adds a kitschy counterpoint to the slow beauty of the film.

Cornell showed the film in 1936 at a gallery. Salvador Dali was in attendance, and he was so outraged by the film that he knocked the projector over halfway through the film. He claimed that Cornell had stolen his idea from his subconscious. As Cornell was shy and retiring, he took this interruption poorly, and did not show the film for decades after.

In 1968, Cornell donated the film to the Anthology Film Archives, which struck off black-and-white and purple-tinted copies. After that, the film became known in avant-garde circles. It is still a remarkable work of melancholic obsession.

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

NFR Project: 'Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor' (1936)

 

NFR Project: ‘Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor’

Dir: Dave Fleischer

Scr: Joe Stultz, Bill Turner, Jack Ward, Izzy Sparber

Animators: Willard Bowsky, Lillian Friedman, George Germanetti, Edward Nolan, Orestes Calpini

Premiere: Nov. 27, 1936

16:33

 

Mickey Mouse’s biggest competitor was a not-so-mild-mannered sailor.

Popeye was born on January 17, 1929, in E.C. Segar’s Thimble Theatre comic strip. Originally, he was one character among many, but he soon became the focus of the cartoon.

He was a rough, tough but tenderhearted, squinting salt with forearms as big as tree trunks and an odd growl of a voice. His adventures usually involve the wooing of his girlfriend, the rail-thin Olive Oyl, by the big bad bully, Bluto, which always culminated in fisticuffs. Popeye had a secret power – when up against the wall, he popped open and swallowed a can of spinach, which gave him super-strength. (He is often accompanied by hamburger-loving sidekick J. Wellington Wimpy.)

In 1933, animators and brothers Dave and Max Fleischer of Fleischer Studios concocted Popeye movie-house cartoons. (They were already noted for cartoons starring their characters Koko the Clown and Betty Boop.) These proved immensely popular.

Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor is twice as long as the usual Popeye cartoon, and it’s in stunning, vibrant Technicolor, a real plus in the days before color filmmaking became the norm. It was the first of three Popeye “features,” double-length color specials.

The Fleischers were noted for their craftsmanship. Max had invented the rotoscope in 1915, and they used it extensively to map out live-action motion onto drawn characters. This made their movements believable. Added to this was their use of a multi-plane camera. In essence, this meant shooting layers of drawn and constructed landscapes together, to provide an illusion of depth, against and among which the characters would move.

All these tricks were employed and the result is a breathtaking comic adventure. The images are so intense that they still resonate for viewers decades later. The film itself has a rollicking sense of fun about the proceedings, and gives us frames full of action and nuance.

In the film, Popeye, Olive Oyl, and Wimpy are sailing along, minding their own business. The big bad bully Sindbad (a lightly made-over Bluto) decides he wants Olive Oyl, so he sends a giant bird to sink the boat and clutch her in its talons. It’s up to Popeye to save the day.

He cooks the giant bird in a volcano. He knocks out a two-headed monster. Sindbad has him in his grip and is about to defeat him when crack, gulp! He down his spinach and clobbers the bad guy.

Popeye proved popular for decades, although the Fleischers would stop making his cartoons in 1940. Subsequent animated incarnations of the singing sailor are markedly inferior. The Fleischer creations of the 1930s are the gold standard.

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

NFR Project: 'The Plow That Broke the Plains' (1936)

 

NFR Project: ‘The Plow That Broke the Plains’

Dir: Pare Lorentz

Scr: Pare Lorentz

Pho: Leo Hurwitz, Ralph Steiner, Paul Strand, Paul Ivano

Ed: Pare Lorentz, Ralph Steiner

Premiere: 1936

28 min.

It was one of the most difficult film productions in history. When it was finished, nobody liked it. Now it’s known as one of America’s most influential documentary films.

When the Great Depression occurred, one of the many agencies the Roosevelt administration established was the Resettlement Administration, which aided farmers impoverished by the Dust Bowl. They thought it would be informative and helpful to make a short documentary film about the Dust Bowl – its causes, its effects, and efforts to remediate it.

To make this film, they tapped a young writer and critic, Pare Lorentz. He had zero film experience but, undaunted, pressed forward with a budget of $6,000. Using no actors and filming on location, Lorentz and three cameramen, Leo Hurwitz, Ralph Steiner, and Paul Strand, took footage of the devastation wrought by the drought. They traveled from Montana to Texas, gathering images of barren fields, dust-swamped houses and barns, and skeletal farm animals.

Lorentz’s inexperience and lack of communication skills frustrated the cameramen, who were noticeably much more leftist than the film’s creator. They created their own script, which indicted capitalism. Lorentz fired them, and picked up the last of the film’s footage himself.

The film went over budget. There was no money to pay for post-production work, so Lorentz took it upon himself to finish the film with no compensation. He paid for processes and equipment out of his own pocket. He wrote voiceover narration and had it recorded. He commissioned a score for the film from the noted American composer Virgil Thomson. The reason Thomson was chosen over 11 other candidates? He agreed to do the work for $500.

When the score was recorded, Lorentz made the musicians stop at midnight, as he didn’t have the money to pay them overtime. The players, charmingly, finished the session for free.

Lorentz was critically lauded for the work, but many dismissed the film as mere government propaganda – which the film is. It seeks to evoke an emotional reaction, and proposes a course of action for the viewer to take. Hollywood refused to show it in theaters. Many objected to Lorentz’s bleak estimation of the situation. Residents and politicians form the Great Plains lobbied against it. Finally, in 1939, the film was withdrawn from distribution, not to be seen again until 1961.

The film is a model of persuasive filmmaking. In 28 minutes, it presents a history of the settling and development of the Great Plains, outlines the causes for the loss of arable farmland (overdevelopment and technological advances being the primary culprits), and lists government programs that aimed to mitigate the damage done to the people and the land.

It’s a memorable film. The images are simple and powerful, beautifully photographed. Thomson’s score remains his best-known work. The film fulfilled its purpose – it documented a major historical event, provided analysis of its causes, and gave hope to viewers that government action could help those who needed help most.

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

NFR Project: 'My Man Godfrey' (1936)

 

NFR Project: ‘My Man Godfrey’

Dir: Gregory La Cava

Scr: Morrie Ryskind, Eric Hatch, Zoe Atkins, Robert Presnell Sr.

Pho: Ted Tetzlaff

Ed: Ted J. Kent, Russell F. Schoengarth

Premiere: Sept. 6, 1936

94 min.

The screwball comedy reaches new heights with My Man Godfrey. The urbane tale of a “bum” who becomes a 5^th Avenue butler contains tons of laughs, while engaging in some serious soul-searching and espousing a progressive point of view at the same time.

Godfrey Smith (William Powell) is the resident of a city dump in Manhattan. The haughty Cornelia Bullock (an icy Gail Patrick) wants to use him to win a scavenger hunt, but is refused. Her daffy sister Irene (Carole Lombard), much more compassionate, enlists Godfrey’s sympathy. He goes with her and helps her win the scavenger hunt.

This leads to a job offer. It seems that the wealthy Bullocks are always losing butlers. Would Godfrey care to make a try?

Godfrey assents, and soon he is cleaned up and impeccably mannered, dealing with the crazy inhabitants of the Bullock household. Besides Cornelia and Irene, there is their mother (Alice Brady), a muddle-headed dimwit who keeps a “protégé,” the sponging Carlo (Mischa Auer). Presiding uncomfortably above the mania is Mr. Bullock (Eugene Pallette), a financier. The family dysfunction is extreme, hilarious, and quite costly.

Godfrey begins to work a little magic, coming to grips with all the Bullocks’ peccadillos and smoothing away their anxieties, all the time keeping them at an arm’s length about his true past. (It seems that Godfrey is one of the Parks of Boston; he left society and fell into homelessness following a disastrous marriage.)

Through all this, loopy Irene has fallen in love with Godfrey, and continually throws herself at him, which Godfrey politely deflects, although you can see that her daffy charm is working on him. Things come to a head – and I hate to spoil the ending, but you will have to see it to believe it. Everyone ends up with a quiet moment of reflection. Godfrey transforms the dump into a nightclub (The Dump), with jobs and housing for 50 “forgotten men.”

The script is absolutely top-notch, full of crushing observations and wry winks. Lombard and Powell have great chemistry together (they were married and divorced before this film). Powell was a master of the understated reaction, and he is delightfully subtle as Godfrey. It’s a fairy-tale story, but a good one.

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

NFR Project: 'Modern Times' (1936)

 

NFR Project: ‘Modern Times’

Dir: Charlie Chaplin

Scr: Charlie Chaplin

Pho: Ira H. Morgan, Roland Totheroh

Ed: Charlie Chaplin, Willard Nico

Premiere: Feb. 5, 1936

87 min.

Charlie Chaplin resisted the coming of sound longer than any filmmaker. A stunningly gifted pantomimist, he knew his kind of comedy worked best without dialogue. He was simply capable of evoking whatever emotions he wanted to – laughter, tears, pity – through the vehicle of the camera. A decade after sound came in, Modern Times is his farewell to silence, and to his famed Little Tramp character.

Chaplin’s last silent picture is not a silent picture. There is music, of course, a score composed by Chaplin himself, and a plethora of sound effects as well. Some characters are given the power of speech – most notably, Chaplin’s micromanaging boss at the factory he works at in the opening of the film. As the Little Tramp, Charlie himself remains voiceless until the end of the film when, forced to sing without knowing any lyrics, he sings a long string of nonsense words, telling the song’s story eloquently through his face and body. So there, he seems to be saying. I don’t have to say a blessed thing to get my point across.

Chaplin starts out as just another worker in a great factory, tightening nuts on an assembly line speedily and spasmodically, working so hard that he keeps jerking his arms about when off the line. The pace is doubled and redoubled. Finally, Charlie goes berserk, has a nervous breakdown, and starts tightening anything that resembles nuts – buttons, noses, nipples. He spies a shapely young woman, and the wrenches he wields turn to horns athwart his head, and he pursues her like a stag. The human animal reasserts itself.

Charlie is taken away, cured, and released, only to fall afoul of the law when he is mistaken for the leader of a Communist rally. Charlie winds up in jail, where ironically, he finds stability, peace, and contentment. Meanwhile, we are introduced to the Gamin, a scrappy young girl (Paulette Goddard) who lives by her wits on the streets.

The two meet in a paddy wagon. She and Charlie wind up together, and dream of a happy domestic life. It is not to be. Charlie gets a job as a night watchman, then spoils the Gamin with food from the store, letting her sleep there in the furniture department. Meanwhile, real crooks try to rob the store and Charlie proves to be little match for them. Again he goes to jail.

Again and again, Chaplin and the Gamin try to go straight and play the game according to the rules – and again and again, they run afoul of the law. They are free spirits, and so don’t conform to the normalcies of the proper and upstanding. Society has no place for them. 

Eventually, the two end up in a tumbledown shack, and they get jobs entertaining at a café. But the law gets wise and seeks to arrest the Gamin and put her in a reform school. Once again, the two break away and hit the open road, journeying side by side down the center stripe of the road. The Little Tramp is still rootless, but here in the end, he has someone to share his wanderings with.

Chaplin’s grim assessment of the modern world, with its industrialization, riots, strikes, injustice, and inequality, is balanced by his unending playfulness, a refusal to take the human world seriously. It is subversive (the Nazis banned it) and thought-provoking. Chaplin could say so much with his movies; it is difficult to find a more profound cinematic influence.

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

NFR Project: 'Master Hands' (1936)

 

NFR Project: ‘Master Hands’

Dir: Henry Jamison ‘Jam’ Handy

Scr: N/A

Pho: Gordon Avil

Ed: Vincent Herman

Premiere: June 23, 1936

33 min.

The corporate promotional documentary film, known as an industrial, has a much longer history than one might imagine. Earlier efforts in the National Registry such as Westinghouse Works 1904 show us manufacturing processes, with men scrambling around amid huge pieces of machinery.

Director ‘Jam’ Handy created this film to promote the car manufacturer Chevrolet. In Master Hands, the emphasis is again on workers and process, although this narration-less documentary leans in to get close-ups shots of hands at work, turning out auto parts and assembling cars until they, complete, at last roll out of the factory and onto the road. Throughout, there is a score underpinning the film, one that leans heavily on snippings from Wagner.

Ironically, it was these workers who would famously go on a sit-down strike against General Motors in 1936. The picture Handy creates the impression of a smooth, purposeful, logical process at work, it’s one that doesn’t include the faces or voices of the men that made the process possible.

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

NFR Project: 'Fury' (1936)

 

NFR Project: ‘Fury’

Dir: Fritz Lang

Scr: Bartlett Cormack, Fritz Lang, Norman Krasna

Pho: Joseph Ruttenberg

Ed: Frank Sullivan

Premiere: June 5, 1936

92 min.

It is arguable that German director Fritz Lang had created his greatest films before he came to America. He had already made Metropolis and M, as well as lesser-known classics such as Destiny, Spies, Die Nibelungen, and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. His thrillers and fantasies enchanted the German and the international public.

His Jewish heritage, however, put him in danger with the Nazis in power. He was actually offered the job of the head of UFA, the dominant German film corporation, by Josef Goebbels. He wisely declined, and soon made his escape first to France and then the United States.

Fury was his first American film. It’s gritty and relentless, a “problem” picture that demonstrates a distinct lack of faith in human nature, especially that of crowds. Lang had a hand in the screenplay, and his cynicism and blunt truthfulness are unsettling, especially in an ostensibly mainstream picture.

The movie stars Spencer Tracy as Joe Wilson, a regular guy who plans to wed his beloved, played by Sylvia Sidney. Driving to meet her, he is stopped in a small town where a kidnapping has taken place. He is arrested and is taken to the town jail. Meanwhile, the inhabitants of the town begin to gossip about him, and soon the rumors swell out of proportion until the whole town is convinced that he is the kidnapper.

After a lengthy barroom session, drinking their courage up, the men march to the jail to lynch Joe. Unable to get him out of his cell, they set fire to the jail, and dynamite it as well. Joe escapes with his life, but everyone assumes he was killed in the fire.

Joe wants vengeance. He hides out as 22 of the town’s citizens are charged with murder. The townspeople fight back by declining to identify any of the suspects, hoping to avoid evidence of their participation in the attempted lynching. Unfortunately for them, a newsreel crew captured the action on film. The prosecuting attorney plays the film for the courtroom, and there the proof is: freeze-frames of the rioting show the guilty. The defendants are doomed.

Tracy enters the courtroom just at that moment, to confess his malice and to let the defendants off the hook. It’s a pat ending that does not mitigate the indictment of mob mentality that Lang illustrates here. His experiences in Germany taught him what human nature was capable of, and he takes a dim view of the wisdom of the common man. He sees mankind as deluded and malicious – even Joe, formerly a sweet guy, is transformed into a revenge-obsessed maniac.

Lang would go on to tackle all manner of genre films during his time in Hollywood, most notably in film noir. He manages to smuggle in his subversive view of human nature in everything he makes, but it was never so openly on display as in this film.

The parallels with contemporary history are obvious. We just saw 1,500 violent rioters pardoned by a criminal president, and their crimes painted as innocuous, or denied completely. When people lose control and lash out at each other, it is their ill will that reconfigures their memories into more pleasing shapes.

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

NFR Project: 'Flash Gordon' (1936)

 

NFR Project: ‘Flash Gordon’

Dir: Frederick Stephani

Scr: Frederick Stephani, Ella O’Neill, George H. Plympton, Basil Dickey

Pho: Jerome Ash, Richard Fryer

Ed: Saul A. Goodkind, Louis Sacklin, Alvin Todd, Edward Todd

Premiere: April 6, 1936

245 min.

What fun! The best of the old movie serials is a wonderful science-fiction fantasy. Flash Gordon the comic was created in 1934, in response to the popularity of the sci-fi cartoon strip Buck Rogers, which debuted in 1929. The great comics artist Alex Raymond created multiple stunning worlds, creatures, and adventures for his heroic space traveler to experience. It immediately enchanted comics readers.

Movie serials were a unique feature of Golden Age movie making. Shown before the main feature, they were melodramas, episodic stories, pitting a hero against a villain or villains in a series of trials. Ten to fifteen minutes long, they ended with what was termed a "cliffhanger" -- a situation deadly to the hero that seems to be inescapable. The following week, the hero's escape from peril is revealed.

This story of the film concerns the imminent destruction of Earth, caused by a rogue planet that’s sailing through the aether on a collision course. The young athlete Flash (Buster Crabbe, an Olympic swimming champion, like Tarzan’s Johnny Weissmuller), with female companion Dale Arden (Jean Rogers), join the genius Dr. Zarkov (Frank Shannon) in his home-made spaceship, to travel to the planet Mongo to prevent the destruction from happening.

When they land on Mongo, they find it full of strange, giant beasts (blown-up footage of lizards adorned with spikes and horns), and hostile soldiers. They are taken to the throne room of Emperor Ming the Merciless (Charles Middleton), where Ming decides he wants Dale, and does his best to rid the planet of Flash. And so, for 13 episodes, Flash and Ming battle it out, moving boldly from one cliffhanger to another. There are Lion Men and Hawk Men, and a city that floats in the sky, and an “ourangopoid” (a guy in a gorilla suit with a horn glued to his head). In all the places he finds himself, Flash never gives up his devotion to Dale.

Universal spent a lot of money on the production, and despite the limitations of special effects at the time, the filmmakers cobbled together a convincing enough series of settings. Props and costumes were recycled from the studio’s earlier horror films (Dr. Zarkov’s laboratory is filled with Kenneth Strickfaden’s machines created for Frankenstein). The project had a large budget, and you can see it in carefully made miniatures, sweeping settings (lots of curtains are used to cover the lack of money for sets), and convincing costumes.

All the performers do a decent job of producing a believable effort. Tops among them, however, is Charles Middleton as the bald-pated, merciless Ming. (Ming is unfortunately an Asian stereotype, based on the fictional character Fu Manchu). Middleton gets fully into the character, going over the top as he emphasizes Ming’s cruel and arbitrary outlook. Ming remains one of cinema’s great villains.

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

NFR Project: 'Dodsworth' (1936)

 

NFR Project: ‘Dodsworth’

Dir: William Wyler

Scr: Sidney Howard

Pho: Rudolph Mate

Ed: Daniel Mandell

Premiere: Sept. 23, 1936

101 min.

This is an admirable example of the all-too-rare adult drama. There are no explosions, or chases, or gimmicks, just people relating. It requires a measure of maturity to appreciate, and as a result could never be made today.

Director William Wyler earned his first of 12 Oscar nominations with this film. He was devoted to detail, and was kown for getting the most of out his actors. Here he helps his cast negotiate complex and subtle states of mind, in a straightforward, transparent manner that lets us see into the characters as they change and develop.

The movie is adapted from the play by Sidney Howard, which itself was based on Sinclair Lewis’s 1929 novel. It concerns the middle-aged, wealthy industrialist, Sam Dodsworth (the great Walter Huston, father of John and grandfather of Anjelica), who decides to retire and travel in Europe. His wife, Fran (Ruth Chatterton, in a lacerating performance) is a snob and social climber, although Sam fittingly describes the two of them as “hicks.”

This is the story of a marriage coming apart. Fran starts a shipboard romance with another man (David Niven) that is rapidly crushed, but it serves as a presentiment of what the rest of the movie will entail. In Europe, Fran hobnobs with the titled and wealthy while Sam checks out the local monuments. Soon Fran is hanging out with another wealthy man, and it’s obvious that she’s being unfaithful to her husband.

Sam, being the hero, is as patient as Job with Fran and her willfulness. Time and time again he forgives her and tries to give the marriage another try. However, Fran remains socially ambitious, and terrified of getting old. Her attempts to travel with a younger man turns to talk of divorce and remarriage. However, in her very first film appearance the tiny but formidable Maria Ouspenskaya plays the young man’s mother, who quashes Fran’s plans bluntly.

Meanwhile, Sam is striking up an acquaintance with an expatriate widow, Edith (Mary Astor) who’s everything Fran is not – compassionate, thoughtful, loving. It takes more selfish behavior by Fran to drive Sam back into Edith’s happy arms.

Here the drama is all in the dialogue. Everything is developed through exchanges that are tense, fraught with unspoken anger and sorrow. Ruth Chatterton’s portrayal of Fran is complicated – she’s clearly the villain of the piece, but Chatterton injects her with desperation and sadness, making a her vulnerable and not just a stereotype. Huston’s performance as a typical American man is pitched perfectly.

Dodsworth liberates himself from a toxic relationship, and rediscovers his desire to work and be a part of the larger world. With Edith, he finds a partner to accompany him on his next big adventure.

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

NFR Project: 'Top Hat' (1935)

 

NFR Project: ‘Top Hat’

Dir: Mark Sandrich

Scr: Allan Scott, Dwight Taylor

Pho: David Abel

Ed: William Hamilton

Premiere: Aug. 29, 1935

101 min.

The plot is negligible. An American dancer in London, Jerry (Fred Astaire), falls for model Dale (Ginger Rogers), but she’s under the mistaken impression that he’s a married man. He follows her to Venice to straighten everything out.

That’s it. This gossamer thread of a storyline is, fortunately, entertainingly funny and staffed with great character actors – Edward Everett Horton, Eric Blore, Erik Rhodes, and Helen Broderick. The farce is propelled through a series of wry observations, malapropisms, comic glowers, and slapped faces.

Likewise, the movie is set in Cloud-Cuckoo Land – a lavishly designed, palatial Art Deco setting all gleaming floors and crisp angles. It’s a perfect situation in which to stage a romantic fantasy, at heart which this is. Everything serves to deliver the goods – the dance numbers that tell a story in themselves.

On hand is a top-notch score from Irving Berlin, a soundtrack full of hits. Astaire starts out with a jaunty, aggressive tap proclaiming his singlehood in “No Strings.” His clatter awakens Ginger Rogers in the suite below. She complains. He spreads sand on the floor, and dances a gentle sand dance to soothe her to sleep.

Later the two meet cute in a rainstorm under a gazebo. He sings “Isn’t It a Lovely Day (to Be Caught in the Rain)?”, and the two dancing a courtship dance, tattooing the floor, testing each other’s tapping skills, spinning into glee together. Obviously, they are meant to be together.

Then Fred dances solo on stage to “Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails,” banging out the rhythms while a file of similarly duded-up gents mirror his moves behind him Finally he turns and knocks off the members of the chorus with blasts of his cane. There can be only one Fred Astaire.

“Cheek to Cheek” is remarkable for its sinuously danced intimacy. Rogers wears a (notoriously) feathered dress which captures the light and shimmers as she moves. Astaire is elegance personified, wooing Rogers with words and music, and, finally, dance.

From this point on the end is in sight, and only the big number “The Piccolino,” an oddly uninvolving extravanganza, remains to be enjoyed. Astaire and Rogers literally dance their way out of the film.

In all cases, the camera does little more than record the full-figure dancing of the principals. There are no cuts, no close-ups, no cinematic cheating. These are real-time, insanely difficult routines, and to see Fred and Ginger step through their paces with easy grace lets us inhabit that higher realm for a time, to be dazzled by the possibilities performers present.

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