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Tommaso -- how does the Kalatazov compare to Kozintsev and Trauberg's fascinating (sadly incomplete) Odna (Alone) -- which should get points for its excellent Shotakovich score (featuring the first cinematic use of a theremin).

Well, I wouldn't even think of comparing these two films, as they are totally different in approach and content, even though they are both set for the main part in some remote region. But while Odna is a human drama centering around an individual, Salt for Svanetia plays much more like an ethnographic documentary; there are no 'characters' in the usual sense of the word, and there is also no contrast between the advanced world of the city and the rural region as in Odna. And even the Soviet propaganda only comes up in the very last few minutes ("we will build a road" and so forth) in Svanetia. But the absence of a real 'storyline' doesn't mean that Svanetia isn't engaging on an emotional level. For instance, the animals licking sweat and urine of(f) humans, because it contains the much needed salt, are a sight that reminds forcibly about the precariousness of existence, which is one of the themes of the film.

So, better take the film on its own; Odna, of course, is a masterpiece, too.

Unless Svanetia gets a DVD release, I doubt Ill get to see it.

Continuing my run through thirties movies (and apparently, my run at interrupting people's conversations to talk about something much less challenging) I saw Captain Blood tonight.

I hated Flynn style adventure movies as a kid, so I'm coming to them for the first time as an adult after I watched his Robin Hood for the first time in years, and really enjoyed it. This one felt like something of a rough draft- it was overlong for the material, the fun smartass Flynn wasn't present enough, and relationship with De Havilland felt less clever than it would in their later pairings. The germs of everything I love about them are there, and the naive charm of the thing still puts it in a special class- and a Flynn/Rathbone swordfight is always something to prize.

matrix -- have you seen the 1937 Prisoner of Zenda?

I haven't- how is it?

It's very good - IMO it's actually superior to Captain Blood and even The Sea Hawk, and I'd put it on a level with The Adventures of Robin Hood. Run, don't walk to get the DVD while you can (before Warner discontinues it, if they haven't already). You also get the Deborah Kerr remake thrown in for good measure (though, while enjoyable, it doesn't hold a candle to the Colman original).

I just finished The Merry Widow to round out this decade of Lubitsch, saving his I Killed a Man/Broken Lullaby.

Monte Carlo-Bachanan isn’t terrible as the male lead, but he is bland and forgettable, which leaves MacDonald and her shoulders to hold up the show. It’s that unfortunate film where everything speaks to Lubitsch’s talent and is fun, entertaining, well-done, but just not enough compared to what else was out there. Take the little clock figure changing instruments throughout the night, which is cute and worth a chuckle, but far less effective than the similar device in say, The Awful Truth. So this would be my least favorite of these Lubitsch musicals, but oddly enough the only one without a problematic gender-backfiring ending.

Smiling Lieutenant- This is really Hopkins’s film, I think. Her confused, attracted, besotted, and finally confident Princess is what really makes it more than just a more polished version of what was going on in The Love Parade. Personally, I adore The Love Parade, rough edges and all (except maybe that nasty ending), but this is definitely a worthy second.

One Hour With You- I may prefer this over The Marriage Circle, but only just. There’s more energy here, and the first 4th wall breaking aside has a wonderful challenging tone that seems to take the approaching code head-on. And then there’s that dirty little song about wedding rings, which I guess constitutes the Eclipse liner notes suggestion that this is a ‘cynical’ look at marriage, meaning legalized sex? I felt the film presented a reasonably happy and affectionate marriage which made the final reconciliation plausible if still unequal (guy gets a mistress and lady gets…. Dreams?), though I guess it could suggest a world in which only marriage between the sexy can endure, hence not Mitzi and the Professor.
Ruggles is also pretty great here, and I particularly liked his more confident and completely out-of-place reprise of ‘One Hour With You’ once alone with MacDonald. There’s also a wonderful moment when he cuts between Chevalier and MacDonald in order to dance with her, but almost seems about to go off with Chevalier instead.

Trouble in Paradise- I can’t really add any more praise here.

Design for Living- Another great urbane, romantic romp, made fresher by Cooper’s rough edges. It feels unfair to compare it with Trouble but it’s hard not to. It’s a great deal of fun, but it doesn’t have the effortless pace of the former and between the various back and forths begins to drag. Plus, Hopkins annoyed me here more than either of her previous Lubitsch performances. But it’s still a delight, and a welcome step away from the sexism of the earlier Chevalier films.
The Merry Widow- It took me awhile to warm up to this one, especially since it was the last of the Chevalier series I watched, and well-he’s Chevalier. Plus the first half-hour is pretty unremarkable, save all the black on lots of white rhymes of the Widow’s mansion and the brutal page turn in her diary.
Once she and Chevalier met up in the brothel/dancehall though, everything clicked. MacDonald’s aping and taking swift control over the proceedings is great to watch, as is their dirty exchange after they sit down—a great mix of Lubitsch wit and code absurdity. See also the code translation of ‘Darling’. And from then on the film’s energy carries it through the comedic, dramatic, and romantic with the usual lightness and grace. Not at all a great musical, but a damn good romantic comedy.

Angel- Dietrich and Lubitsch seem an odd combo, and the film has an odd tension between Lubitsch’s more comfortable romantic comedy of manners and Dietrich’s sultry woman with a secret melodrama. But it’s a credit to both that they somehow mesh so well. The three principals all have good chemistry with each other, and it’s a chemistry that changes quite a bit depending which two are on screen. Marshall and Dietrich in particular manage to play out a strained marriage, but one that obviously still has a lot of love in it, much better than Lubitsch’s later attempt in ‘That Uncertain Feeling’. And that means the ending feels genuine, and not a code copout. The more I think about it the better the film seems, so I may rewatch it just to see if I’ve somehow inflated it. But definitely worth a look, if only to see Lubitsch stretch a bit out of his comfort zone while still managing to make it look like his comfort zone.

Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife- This may be one of the least sexy of Lubitsch’s films, but one can’t entirely neuter Lubitsch. The film’s more a standard screwball, and lacking the sublimated desire of Angel or Ninotchka, especially from Colbert’s end, which makes her machinations to win over Cooper permanently seem much more insane than they should be. Still it’s a fun, silly, screwball movie, and Cooper brings an intensity and roughness that’s generally absent from Lubitsch’s more urbane heroes. I really enjoyed this, but like Monte Carlo it may just be remarkably good without being remarkable (although I think it’s a huge leap over Monte Carlo).

Ninotchka- The charms of this film are considerable, but I just can’t get fully behind it. Perhaps it’s the microscopic view of Paris compared to Russia, or my inability to warm up to Douglass. Of all Lubitsch’s ‘great’ films (Trouble, Shop, To Be) this is far and away my least favorite. Still good, but I think Angel and The Merry Widow will place higher on my list.

I understand most of these have already been thought and talked over enough compared to some rarities of the era, but I'd still be interested to know what you all think of those outside the Trouble-Ninotchka canon. Especially the overlooked Angel, which is on a pretty good VHS, and Bluebeard, which I think has a lot going for it despite not being great.

And is Broken Lullaby worth hunting down? From what I've heard I feel time and resources might be better spent elsewhere.

Shrew wrote:And is Broken Lullaby worth hunting down? From what I've heard I feel time and resources might be better spent elsewhere.

Broken Lullaby is easily the worst Lubitsch film I've seen. It's unlike any of his other films, in both subject-matter and tone, but its lifeless pacing and stiff performances made it a chore to watch. Frankly, I had trouble seeing Lubitsch's hand in it at all. I would love to hear a defense of the film, but I can't recommend that you track it down.

I have today been revisiting Artificial Eye's "Complete Jean Vigo". Amazing visual ideas and a poetry of cinema of course. I also love the humanist (leftist) comedy. But I have to admit that I lose some interest for the story at the second half of L'Atlante. And sometimes the editing feels a bit messy (and at other times brilliant). For me Zéro de Conduite is the better of the two, despite being so short. I just wish Artificial Eye hadn't decided not everything that is said has to be translated. I don't speak French. Does anybody have the lyrics for the song in Zéro translated into English?

Two pretty-much dead certs for my 30s list that I've seen since the last go-round:

Salt for Svanetia - Stylistically electrifying Kalatozov documentary which shows that the visual pyrotechnics of The Cranes Are Flying and I Am Cuba were old, old news in the 50s and 60s. The structure and message are typical of the period (Communism Will Save the Peasants From Centuries of Hardship!), but the sequences that illustrate them are superb. Has this great film enjoyed a decent DVD release anywhere in the world?

Philips Radio - Another 'singer not the song' selection, as Joris Ivens takes what could have been a routine industrial film commission and uses it as an opportunity to see how much fun he could have with the brand spanking new sound film format. Add in the visual invention of Rain and you have a film that's far more entertaining and aesthetically thrilling than it has any cause to be. Available on the big Dutch Ivens set.

Broken Lullaby is easily the worst Lubitsch film I've seen. It's unlike any of his other films, in both subject-matter and tone, but its lifeless pacing and stiff performances made it a chore to watch. Frankly, I had trouble seeing Lubitsch's hand in it at all. I would love to hear a defense of the film, but I can't recommend that you track it down.

Interestingly I just watched this last night and I really enjoyed it. I agree that's is a very different kind of film for Lubitsch, but I found it pretty fascinating to see him try something new. I liked Phillips Holmes performance, probably due to his earnestness and I thought the premise was quite good. Essentially Holmes' is a grieved French soldier in WWI, who goes to Germany in order to meet the family of a soldier he killed. He ends up keeping his identity a secret and falling for the dead soldier's fiancee (Nancy Carroll). Holmes does a fine job with conveying his anguish over his predicament. I found the film went along quite nicely and at 75 minutes it doesn't have the opportunity to overstay its welcome. I would definitely recommend it.

My thoughts exactly. "Broken Lullaby" is very untypical for Lubitsch, but it seems to be the work of an emigrant who cared very much for what was going on in his native country/continent, and as such, I find it a deeply heartfelt film, genuinely touching.

Similar to Shrew's excellent rundown of Lubitsch in the 1930's, I thought I'd slowly but surely offer my thoughts on King Vidor's 1930's output.

Not So Dumb - well the 1930's start off with a dud. A very disappointing film in light of how great Marion Davies and Vidor's previous collaborations are. It's even more disappointing, given how great Hallelujah is. The direction is pretty tepid, there is some very clumsy editing and every performance is just awful, with some obvious flubs and stiff and awkward line readings. I always wondered if Vidor didn't just blast this one out in a week or something, as it just doesn't feel like anyone gives a damn.

Billy The Kid - A serviceable western that is really hurt by Johnny Mack Brown's performance in the lead. He gives his usual aw-shucks performance, but it's woefully out place in the film. Particularly since the final half of the movie involves Billy The Kid going on a hunger strike. I don't think the film would be a masterpiece or anything sans Brown's dopey persona, but it would likely be pretty darn good.

Street Scene - Among Vidor's finest films of the decade. The film makes wonderful use of its setting on a single city block in New York City. It's a precursor to something like Dog Day Afternoon or Do The Right Thing in that sense, with multiple storylines unfolding and leading to an ultimate climax. The film is brisk and really benefits from Vidor's non-condescending treatment of the immigrant characters who populate the film.

The Champ - Possibly Vidor's best known talkie, this one disappointed me quite some bit. Wallace Beery as a curmudgeon is pretty hard to mess up, but the film gets needlessly convoluted and overly maudlin, plus Beery's character doesn't get nearly as much screen-time as he really ought to.

Birds of Paradise - not a great film, but it is quite beautifully shot. It's sort of Tabu-lite. Joel McCrea at one point was a very beautiful man and Delores Del Rio was an equally beautiful woman. It's a pretty hokey story with McCrea as a westerner who arrives on a tropical island and falls for local princess Del Rio, who happens to be on the verge of being sacrificed to a volcano. Vidor does a nice job with the on location photography and Busby Berkeley reportedly choreographed some of the tribal sequences.

I've never been a big fan of the classical Hollywood cinema with some obvious exceptions (everything by Garbo, Dietrich, and Astaire/Rogers for example, and of course the films of Lubitsch, Capra or Sturges), but I've increasingly developed a very weak spot for some pre-code films in the last years, and here's the one I watched last:

Illicit (Archie Mayo, 1931): Fascinating film with Barbara Stanwyck, who plays a young woman who wants to have a firm relationship with her boyfriend but doesn't want to marry him because she fears that this would mean a cooling-down of their love, which is of course what happens when the two finally marry because of social expectations. Only a separation seems to be able to rekindle their old relationship.
This must have been an incredibly daring film in its time, and I wonder whether the ending (which somehow marred the film a little for me), which seems to finally re-install conventional social concepts, was imposed by the studio. It's surprising, however, how well the film still works for the most part. It's based on a stage play, and the film doesn't do much to change this, so don't expect too glorious visuals. But this is more than made up for by the acting, which is very fine all around (with an utterly charming performance by Charles Butterworth as the good-natured and mostly inebriated friend of the couple), but it is really Stanwyck who must be praised most here: subtle, convincing, and very stylish on top of it. Available from Warner Archive in a flawless transfer from a print which admittedly has seen some better days.

Any recommendations for lesser known pre-code films apart from those in the three Forbidden Hollywood volumes and the set from Universal?

Any recommendations for lesser known pre-code films apart from those in the three Forbidden Hollywood volumes and the set from Universal?

Frank Borzage's A Man's Castle is a really beautiful film set amongst the bleakness of a "Hooverville", the tented settlements that arose to house the masses of unemployed during the depression. The film is shot with a lot of shimmering soft focus which gives it an otherworldly feel, particular since most of it takes place in a dump. The film sadly only exists with some key sequences truncated and/or missing, a victim of post-1934 cuts to get it re-released. One particularly climactic speech by Spencer Tracy gets chopped up noticeably and the love affair between Glenda Farrell and Tracy gets excised almost wholly, leaving only some brief innuendo. But the film is really great in spite of the censorship.

Frank Capra's The Bitter Tea of General Yen is one of his lesser known films, but it really blew me away when I watched it a couple of weeks ago. The film does feature some heavy-handed racism about the yellow peril, Nils Asther's General Yen is portrayed very sympathetically and the film focuses primarily on the blossoming relationship between him and Barbara Stanwyck. It was interesting to see Capra use some avant-garde touches, including an incredibly striking dream sequence involving Stanwyck and Asther.

George Cukor's What Price Hollywood? might be his most stylistically-adventurous film. The plot of the film forms the nucleus of the later versions of A Star is Born, with the main difference being that this film is not a musical. Constance Bennett gives a more hardboiled performance in the lead than either Janet Gaynor or Judy Garland's incarnation, and Lowell Sherman is suitably endearing, yet pathetic in the Norman Maine role. Sherman's suicide sequence is particularly striking with a rapid-fire montage telling the story of his life in his final seconds. Another really interesting sequence is a scene where Bennett is trying to learn a bit part that involves her saying a line while going down some stairs. Rather than show her reading her line over and over an then moving forward in time, Cukor films her feet going up and down the stars over and over again to mark both the passage of time and the learning of her lines. The middle section of the film is a bit of a bore with Neil Hamilton giving an impossibly charismaless performance as Bennett's love interest, but there is a lot too offer and I think it's a shame the film isn't better known, especially considering the reputation of the later two versions.

At the beginning of these things I'm always so overwhelmed in the knowledge of my own ignorance. For example over the past week I finally got to seeing three films that I really should have gotten to ages ago. I'll have more to say about The Thin Man when I finish off the series and I really can offer nothing new about City Girl as much as I try(though the visual element specifically as glue to Sunrise and Tabu is worth plenty of discussion). Instead I'll gab about the one that is most guaranteed to make my list, The Old Dark House.
James Whale seems to have the most genuinely weird reputation ever. Despite being well known and important he doesn't get any recognition beyond the Frankenstein movies and maybe The Invisible Man. It's really sad that his other movies are left behind entirely. What rings especially odd to me is that to a certain extant of what I've seen of his work these supposed entries into the horror genre are easily the most bizarre and unconventional of his work. With The Old dark House swinging the hardest into noncommercial territory(Bride of Frankenstein isn't too far off either though being as much an experimental success with a traditional[sort of]narrative as Sunrise).
The film much as it's title is magnificently simple and being one of the few Hollywood pictures that really can claim to be a day(or rather hour)in the life of story. There's really no events and it's just a bunch of average people stuck in a house with a group of weirdos. God, I wonder how many dozens if not hundreds of films did that inspire. everyone from Waters to Hopper seemed to use some variation.
Actually Waters is probably the best director as comparison considering how far into camp this film intentionally resides in. I've always been mystified at the treatment of these films as horror, but this one(along with the near perfect The Invisible Man)doesn't even seem to bother with the pretenses of horror. everything seems to build up to a gag we never quite see. Even the climax with the pyromaniac brother seems to have a dark farce feeling to it. Even under threat the audience is laughing. I can't think of any other film that uses such dark expressionist lighting to develop a mood of amusement. The entire time I imagined Whale directing with an eyebrow raised and eyes puffed out as if to say, "what else did you expect the largest Hollywood gathering of queers to be like?" That tone is set and never lets up right from frame one with that lovely title card informing us in case we couldn't identify his big hulking body that yes this is the same Karloff from Frankenstein.
In relation to that I can't imagine what was a better learning tool than this for Laughton on Night of the Hunter. The climax especially seems to nail that perfect mixture of horror and hilarity that makes the younger film such a hoot.

Knives, have you seen Waterloo Bridge? It's one of my favorite pre-codes and will figure pretty highly on my list. Mae Clarke is one the more underrated actresses of the era and she gives one of those rare performances that feels years ahead of its time. She is completely naturalistic and understated in the film, offering a glimpse into the style of acting that wouldn't really take hold until the 1960's. I admire how the film subtly deals with Clarke's spiral into degradation at the opening of the film, treating it sort of matter of factly, and letting the audience figure out the weight of everything that is going on. I think Whale handles the subject material very adroitly, turning a potentially maudlin script into some quintessential melodrama.

I'll have to see it again before I vote for it, but I have managed to see all of his films with(legal)DVD releases which I guess just amounts to those five(six I suppose if you count Hell's Angels which I will vote for). I do remember the performances giving an immense weight to the central romance which had the perfect mix of tragedy and warmth. I also remember a really great gag from the father about prohibition. Something like Americans having to be animals if the law passes or something along those lines. Actually now that I'm reminiscing I don't even need to(even if I will)rewatch it. It's amazingly great.
Also I saw that you brought up A Man's Castle which I have been wanting to see. I've got an internet location for it, but I really would love to see it on DVD but don't know of a release.

As far as I know, there is no DVD release of A Man's Castle. It would have fit well into the Borzage-Murnau set, though I think the fact that the film is cut pretty heavily put it on the shelf. I could see where they might want to sit on it, in hopes of the missing material showing up. Though Fox has a pretty crummy record of releasing films of that era.

Well that's unfortunate. Borzage is basically as ignored as Whale I guess(they're on the same do not miss level of quality too). To the Internet I go than.

Oh, and to tie the topic of Universal horror and and the pre-code era together everyone needs to see the Poe adaptations, particularly the Black Cat which has Lugosi's best dramatic performance. It's probably the most shocking film from the era, meaning it's the most shocking until the '60s. While the highlights are obviously the Karloff and Lugosi mashup the direction is perfect too. Ulmer is as Germanic here as he ever was. Some of the scenes even look like leftovers from Metropolis. All three movies are about an hour in length so you really can hit them down in one evening. Though I find it best to take time to savour them as individuals.

Haha, I literally just got The Black Cat in from Netflix today- I'll have to watch that. The other two movies on the disc, Murders in the Rue Morgue and the Raven- are they worth watching?

Absolutely. The Black Cat is the best in the whole set, but the other four are fantastic in their own way. Murders in the Rue Morgue is somewhat like a sound Caligari with Lugosi as as this mad god of a scientist doing the most bizarre experiments I can think of. His relationship with the ape is totally bizarre and reminds me in a positive fashion of the funeral scene in Sunset BLVD. Beyond Lugosi's demented performance though Karl Freund becomes the real star. I'm tempted to say this is better than his German work. If you care anything about look this is not a film to miss.
Of the three Poe films The Raven is the weakest with a pretty traditional story saved by Lugosi hamming it up. Karloff is given nothing in a role with less dignity than his The Old Dark House one. That said it's very good and more than worth the hour(nearly to the minute) that it takes to watch. Though it is interesting just how human they allow their villain to be and it's the film that along with the better Mad Love got horror films temporarily banned in England.
I'll talk about the other two later, but I do want to note to humour in Black Friday being in the Lugosi set even though he's barely in the movie. Also the Karloff equivalent set is worth a look even if none of the movies are on the Poe level.

Tommaso wrote:Any recommendations for lesser known pre-code films apart from those in the three Forbidden Hollywood volumes and the set from Universal?

I do know that I am not talking about pre-code movies here, but I found the two Mayo-directed films which were part of one of those Warner Gangsters Collections (Mayor from Hell/1933 & Black Legion/1936) very likable. Especially 'Black Legion', which was, as far as I remember, Warner's first antifascist movie, dealing with fascist organizing in the Detroit region, & Bogart's first lead, will very likely make it on my list. If you ever give it a try, don't miss Nykino's short newsreel "The World Today: The Black Legion', which documents/dramatizes the same events and can be found on 'Unseen Cinema 4' & on Youtube.