Category: writing
Film 33 (a): Frankenstein
Frankenstein (1931) dir. James Whale. USA. NB: This wasn't on our docket, but we inserted it upon realizing that "Bride of Frankenstein" is a direct sequel. Picture starts out with a wallop. Midnight funeral services are in progress on a blasted moor, with the figure of the scientist and his grotesque dwarf assistant hiding at … Continue reading Film 33 (a): Frankenstein
Film 30: The Scarlet Empress
The Scarlet Empress (1934) dir. Josef von Sternberg. USA. Von Sternberg (1894-1969) was one of the true Hollywood characters, sometimes a great director, always a great show. He dressed in costumes appropriate to the films he was directing, made his assistants remove their wristwatches because he could hear the ticking, and calmly claimed he did … Continue reading Film 30: The Scarlet Empress
Film 28: King Kong
King Kong (1933) dir. Merian C. Cooper. USA. But "King Kong" is more than a technical achievement. It is also a curiously touching fable in which the beast is seen, not as a monster of destruction, but as a creature that in its own way wants to do the right thing. Unlike the extraterrestrial spiders … Continue reading Film 28: King Kong
Film 27: Duck Soup
Duck Soup (1933) dir. Leo McCarey. USA. My father loved the Marx Brothers above all other comedians or, indeed, all other movie stars. The first movie he ever took me to was "A Day at the Races." All I remember about that experience was the fact of my father's laughter. But there was something else, … Continue reading Film 27: Duck Soup
Film 33 (b): The Bride of Frankenstein
The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) dir. James Whale. USA. One advantage of horror movies is that they permit extremes and flavors of behavior that would be out of tone in realistic material. From the silent vampire in "Nosferatu" (1922) to the cheerful excesses of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in Hammer horror films of the … Continue reading Film 33 (b): The Bride of Frankenstein
Film 31: The Thin Man
The Thin Man (1934) dir. W. S. Van Dyke. USA. For audiences in the middle of the Depression, "The Thin Man," like the Astaire and Rogers musicals it visually resembles, was pure escapism: Beautiful people in expensive surroundings make small talk all the day long, without a care in the world, and even murder is … Continue reading Film 31: The Thin Man
Film 32: Top Hat
Top Hat (1935) dir. Mark Sandrich. USA. Because we are human, because we are bound by gravity and the limitations of our bodies, because we live in a world where the news is often bad and the prospects disturbing, there is a need for another world somewhere, a world where Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers … Continue reading Film 32: Top Hat
Film 14: Wings
Wings (1927) dir. William A. Wellman. USA. "Ironically, a mass-market silent spectacular like William Wellman's Wings effortlessly showcases far more visual variety than mainstream American films have offered since: it displays shifts from brutal realism to nonrealistic techniques associated with Soviet avant-garde or impressionistic French cinema - double exposures, subjective point-of-view shots, trick effects, symbolic … Continue reading Film 14: Wings
Film 13: The Passion of Joan of Arc
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, France To modern audiences, raised on films where emotion is conveyed by dialogue and action more than by faces, a film like "The Passion of Joan of Arc” is an unsettling experience--so intimate we fear we will discover more secrets than we desire. Our … Continue reading Film 13: The Passion of Joan of Arc
Movie in a Weekend 