Grand Illusion, 1937 (Grade A+)

DIRECTOR: Jean Renoir
Awards, Nominated for an academy award for best picture.
Cast: Jean Gabin, Marcel Dalio, Pierre Fresnay, Eric Von Stroheim, Dita Parlo

sez says: an A+ -- WWI -- provides a setting to display the things that binding us together and the things that divide us and how we allow ourselves to be divided against our selves.  Nationalism, class affiliation, religion, love, loyalty, pride, creativity are all pieces of the puzzle.  But what is important are the alignments that are created --and destroyed-- by these aspects of humanity. And this story winds its way around these issues, saying in the sub text:. War is beyond stupid and terrifying. It is nonsense.  Nationalism is not healthy (just lines on a map) -- but it is a powerful engine of emotion.  Mistreatment of Jews is absurd. (remember what Hitler was doing in 1937 when this was made). The Aristocracy is in decline--and with that something about honor is being lost. And more.  There is so much in this movie it is hard to know where to begin. I could write a book--or two--about this story and they way it is told--and I bet there are plenty of books already written.  If you haven't see this, do. (Grade A+)

 

Alexander's Rag Time Band, 1938 ( Grade C-)

Director: Henry King

Awards: Yes nominated for a number of academy awards--won best Music Score

Cast: Tyrone Power; Alice Faye, Don Ameche, Ethel Merman, Jack Haley, Jean Hersholt, John Carradine. Ruth Terry. Douglas Fowley, Chick Chandler, Joseph Crehan, Robert Gleckler, Stanley Andrews, Donald Douglas, Lon Chaney Jr., Edwin Stanley

sez says -- Ethel Merman sure was some singer!  Next to Merman poor Alice Faye is a wash-out. But, evidently, Fay was considered to be 'more beautiful' so she got the lead role. That makes the whole movie sit sort of uncomfortably-crocked.
Anyway-- this is packed with Irving Berlin Music, so for people who like Berlin that is a plus.  It is set in San Francisco, World War I and New York. So that is the backdrop.  But that is it. There is no story to speak of. Two people love each other but they keep having trouble getting together --till the end-- and when they do get together that ends the movie.  In the meantime you get to hear a dozen or more Berlin tunes--which are best done by Merman....and you get to see some cool dancing by Jack Haley.  You've  got to like Berlin to want to see this--if you like Berlin, it is light entertainment.  Grade C -

Lost Horizon, 1937 (Grade B+)

Director: Frank Capra

Awards?  Yes -- some academy awards and lost of nominations; plus is on an AFI Top 100 list

Cast:: Ronald Coleman; Jane Wyatt; John Howard; Margo; Thomas Mitchell; Edward Everett Horton; Isabel Jewe;;; H.B. Warner; Sam Jaffe

A Standard Plot Description Says: "In Frank Capra's classic based on the James Hilton novel, plane-crash survivors are led through the Himalayas to Shangri-La, a village without hate or crime and where no one ages. Robert Conway (Ronald Coleman) is chosen to succeed Shangri-La's High Lama and falls for Sondra (Jane Wyatt), but his brother convinces him to leave on an ill-fated trek. When Conway ends up in England with amnesia, will he manage to go back and fulfill his destiny?"

sez says:--I say this movie as a child on TV and never forgot it--it has a magical sense about it that is a perfect fit for films of the 1930s. I say it again in the 1970's--at which time I realized that this "utopia" is based on slave labor (happy dark skin people who don't have plumbing yet while the white folks live in a castle.) And the the way you keep men from fighting with each other over women is that if a man want's another man's wife, all he has to do is ask for her, and the original husband will give her to the man who has asked (nobody has to ask her!) --so, the women in the castle, while they are not quite slaves, they are the property of men to be handed around at the whim of those men.  So this is a utopia for whom? 

Now I watched it again--and the latest version to be released is a remake of the original. It is really fascinating. Evidently a lot of different, cut versions have been released over time. Film scholars undertook the job of putting the original back together.  They could not find film footage for the entire move--but they had the full audio  SO they have inserted stills into the film to look at  when there is audio that lacks the original visual footage. The story is broadened..and the philosophy of what might have been considered utopia is also opened up. The problems I had with the story in when I saw it in the 1970s are all still there--and they are even magnified.  But the bases of this society would make a wonderful topic of study about what do people imagine they want, and how they perceive the world as it actually exists.

Plus, no matter how much I chafe at the racism and sexism and classism of the story it is still a wonderfully compelling film, well made and  not to be missed. Thre is good reason it is considered a classic.  (Grade B+)

Stage Door, 1937 (Grade B-)

Director: Gregory LaCava
Awards?  nominated for numerous Academy Awards but I don't know if it won any
Cast Katherine Hepburn; Ginger Rogers; Lucille Ball; Eve Arden; Adolphe Menjou; Ann Miller; Gail Patrick; Constance Collier; Andrea Leeds; Samuel S Hinds

sez says --this was written by Edna Ferber and George S Kaufman and it has a better than average, snappy-talk, script.  Young women want to go on stage. They live in a boarding house together and form a family--ie the group squabbles and takes care of each other. Hepburn, a rich girl slumming, moves in, and against her father's wishes she aims to be an actor.  The rich father wants his daughter to fail so she will give up the stage and come home. He secretly funds a play for her to star in .... meanwhile the hardworking and talented young women in the boarding house are exposed to all sorts of indignities--which they suffer lightly because of their wit and banter.  What story of happens re: Hepburn's opportunity is woven into and around the lives of the women at the boarding house. And I'll not say more so as not to spoil the story. But while Hepburn's situation plays out  the story explores the problems the women in the boarding house face. First and foremost is malnutrition. But a close second is men who want to take advantage of them--and those men, who don't believe they should even be trying to make a life for themselves, lie and connive and offer to make them STARS, etc. The story is ok--and the acting is fun. The best thing about this is is is about a society of women.  Men are not seen as heroes, nor are they seen in particularly positive light. They are a backward looking option for these women--to get married and have a family is not anyone's obvious goal.  (Grade B-)