MC Yearly Consensus - 1935

[Spinal]

Submit your five favorite films from this year and in a week I will give you a top ten. IMDb dates will be used.

The point system is as follows

1st Place-5 points
2nd Place-4 points
3rd Place-3.5 points
4th Place-3 points
5th Place-2.5 points

There will be no restrictions on short films. A minimum of three films must be listed. You may edit your post freely up until the time that the voting is closed, which will be in about a week. I will give at least 24 hours warning before tallying votes.

You may begin now.

IMDB Power Search

[Russ]

1. Bride of Frankenstein
2. Man on the Flying Trapeze
3. A Night at the Opera
4. Beware of Barnacle Bill Dave Fleischer!
5. Balloon Land Ub Iwerks!

Still desperately want to see Ruggles of Red Gap.

[Yxklyx]

1. Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale)
2. The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock)
3. Mutiny on the Bounty (Frank Lloyd)
4. Top Hat (Mark Sandrich)
5. Hands Across the Table (Mitchell Leisen)

6. Peter Ibbetson (Henry Hathaway)
7. Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl)
8. The Good Fairy (William Wyler)
9. Alice Adams (George Stevens)
10. The Informer (John Ford)

[Derek]

1. Top Hat (Mark Sandrich)
2. Ruggles of Red Gap (Leo McCarey)
3. The Devil Is a Woman (Josef von Sternberg)
4. The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock)

Not much of a fan: The Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale), A Night at the Opera (Sam Wood), Mutiny on the Bounty (Frank Lloyd)

[Kurious Jorge v3.1]

1. Top Hat
2. The Devil is a Woman
3. Golddiggers of 1935

[Ezee E]

I don't qualify for this one. Bummer.

[Grouchy]

1. Bride of Frankenstein
2. The 39 Steps
3. A Night at the Opera
4. The Informer
5. Mad Love

[Philosophe_rouge]

1. The Thirty Nine Steps
2. Les Miserables
3. The Bride of Frankenstein
4. The Lives of a Bengal Lancer
5. A Night at The Opera

[Spinal]

Originally Posted by Russ

5. Balloon Land Ub Iwerks!

High body count in that one.

[MadMan]

The threads for the 20s and 30s are extremely useful to me, considering I've seen very little from both decades.

[soitgoes...]

1. Wife! Be Like a Rose! (Mikio Naruse)
2. An Inn in Tokyo (Yasujiro Ozu)
3. The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock)
4. Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl)
5. Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale)
------------------------------------------------------
6. Sazen Tange and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo (Sadao Yamanaka)
7. Top Hat (Mark Sandrich)
8. Tit for Tat (Charley Rogers)
9. The Good Fairy (William Wyler)

[origami_mustache]

Sazen Tange and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo
Triumph of the Will
A Night at the Opera
Balloon Land
Mad Love

[Yxklyx]

Will try to see Man on the Flying Trapeze this week.

[Isaac]

1. Carnival in Flanders
2. Triumph of the Will
3. The Informer
4. Mutiny on the Bounty
5. A Tale of Two Cities

[monolith94]

1. A Night at the Opera
2. The Man on the Flying Trapeze
3. Mutiny on the Bounty

Top Hat sucks.

[Boner M]

1. Peter Ibbetson
2. The 39 Steps
3. Bride of Frankenstein

Boy do I epic-fail at the 30's.

[Kurious Jorge v3.1]

Originally Posted by monolith94

Top Hat sucks.

thats what she said.

[Raiders]

1. Bride of Frankenstein (Whale)
2. Mad Love (Freund)
3. A Night at the Opera (Wood)
4. Triumph of the Will (Reifenstahl)
5. The 39 Steps (Hitchcock)

[ledfloyd]

1. Top Hat
2. Captain Blood
3. Bride of Frankenstein
4. Night at the Opera

[Kurosawa Fan]

I can tally this one Spinal. I can't participate, but I can tally.

[Qrazy]

1. 39 Steps
2. Captain Blood
3. A Night at the Opera
4. Top Hat
5. Mutiny on the Bounty

[Spinal]

Originally Posted by Kurosawa Fan

I can tally this one Spinal. I can't participate, but I can tally.

Yeah, I don't have a complete ballot either.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Okay, this is closed. I'll have the results up soon. Sorry for the abruptness, but I leave for Chicago in the morning, so if I don't do it now I won't get to it until next weekend.

[Kurosawa Fan]

#10

The Devil is a Woman
Josef von Sternberg

In a café an older man details his encounters with a gorgeous heart breaker that his younger friend has only just met at the parade. Forewarned, the young man swears he will avoid the fate of his friend.

The Spanish government threatened to bar all Paramount films from Spain and its territories unless the film was withdrawn from worldwide circulation. They protested the unfavorable portrayal of the Spanish police. Paramount destroyed the original print after its initial run, and it remained out of circulation until 1959. In Maximillian Schell's documentary "Marlene", Marlene Dietrich said that this was her favorite of her films.

"Dietrich plays Concha in an animated, foot-stamping style that couldn't be more different from her other performances in the Sternberg Seven. To excuse her sadomasochistic callousness, Von Sternberg highlights the little girl in Dietrich, and even gives her the last word on their relationship: "You've always mistaken your vanity for love," she tells Atwill. For a proud man like Von Sternberg, this admission must have been difficult, but he's secure enough as an artist to be tough with himself." - Dan Callahan

[Kurosawa Fan]

#8 (TIE)

Man on the Flying Trapeze
Clyde Bruckman & W.C. Fields


Hard-working, henpecked Ambrose Ambrose Wolfinger takes off from work to go to a wrestling match. His decision has catastrophic consequences.

This was the last film directed by Clyde Bruckman. Although Bruckman's name appears on the credit, this film was actually directed by W.C. Fields, who took over after Bruckman had to quit early in the shoot due to the effects of his alcoholism. This is the only film on which Fields technically worked as his own director. Mr Wolfinger's secretary is played by Carlotta Monti, who in real life was the mistress of W.C. Fields.

"From the opening, the film's filled with hilarious performances, especially by the duo of Howard and, as her mother, Vera Lewis. They are the butt of any number of jokes about marriage come horifically to life. Fields, of course, is stellar, particularly in the opening sequence, where he has to stop two burglars in his basement. The film's ending may be uncomfortably close to Fields going on a shooting rampage, but tragedy is the source of all good comedy." - Vadim Rizov

[Kurosawa Fan]

#8(TIE)

Captain Blood
Michael Curtiz


An enslaved English doctor and his comrades in chains escape and become pirates of the Robin Hood variety.

Robert Donat was cast in the title role, but didn't turn up at the start of shooting. Warner Brothers scrambled to find a replacement, asking Brian Aherne to take the role, but he refused. Warners decided to take a gamble on an unknown Australian named Errol Flynn. In his biography, "My Wicked, Wicked Ways" Errol Flynn (an infamous prankster) states that he played many pranks on Olivia de Havilland. One of them was leaving a dead snake in her underwear, which she found when she went to put them on. After that she lived in terror of what prank he would pull on her next. Basil Rathbone took a dislike to Errol Flynn. During their dueling sequence he reminded Flynn that he was being paid considerably more for his part in the picture than Flynn was and then deliberately wounded him in the arm (leaving a permanent scar).

"Conveying emotion in big, broad strokes and through buoyant, lithesome physicality, Flynn—shot in light almost as downy as that which envelops de Havilland—dominates Curtiz's frequently overcrowded and busy frame like a shining sword cutting through the fog. As a result of the charming de Havilland's rote role as a moralizing stick-in-the-mud (her eventual affection for the plundering Blood is as predictably bland as her ruffly outfits are constricting and chaste), the film's central romance isn't as captivating as the on-screen couple's later collaborations, and one pines for more (and more elaborate) set pieces than the somewhat wooden Flynn-Rathbone duel and a sea battle culled from silent movie and miniature model footage." - Nick Schager

[Philosophe_rouge]

1935, aside from 1930 is my weakest year of the decade.... I want to see The Devil is a Woman, though I don't expect it to be as good as the other Sternberg's I've seen. I also should get around to seeing ANY W.C. Fields sometime

[Qrazy]

Errol Flynn + Harold Ramis = Christian Bale

[Kurosawa Fan]

#7

Mad Love
Karl Freund

An insane surgeon's obsession with an actress leads him to replace her wounded pianist's hands with the hands of a knife murderer which still have the urge to throw knives.

This is Peter Lorre's first American film. Charles Chaplin called Lorre the screen's best actor after seeing his performance in Mad Love. Peter Lorre was under contract to Columbia Pictures. He agreed to be loaned out to MGM for this film if Columbia would do a film version of Crime and Punishment with him in the role of Raskolnikov.

"Lorre brings astonishing depth to the pitiable doctor, transforming a stock mad scientist/psychotic villian into a tragic figure, a man who, as he plaintively bellows, has conquered science by who cannot conquer love. In addition, no other actor is quite as eerily unsettling as the crackly-accented Lorre. With his cold and sleepy eyes, he seems stuck in a perpetually hypnagogic state from which he occasionally, explosively bursts-forth, and it's these sudden awakenings from his trance that make the film genuinely creepy. Lorre, in the final act, brings terrifyingly hyperbolic madness to the screen as he goes crazy like Jack-Nicholson-in-The-Shining crazy." - Henry Stewart

[Kurosawa Fan]

#6

Mutiny on the Bounty
Frank Lloyd


Fletcher Christian successfully leads a revolt against the ruthless Captain Bligh on the HMS Bounty. However, Bligh returns one year later, hell bent on avenging his captors.

Charles Laughton, playing William Bligh, was in reality terrified of the ocean and was violently seasick throughout most of the filming. Actor James Cagney was sailing his boat off of Catalina Island, California, and passed the area where the film's crew was shooting aboard the Bounty replica. Cagney called to director Frank Lloyd, an old friend, and said that he was on vacation and could use a couple of bucks, and asked if Lloyd had any work for him. Lloyd put him into a sailor's uniform, and Cagney spent the rest of the day as an extra playing a sailor aboard the Bounty.

"Delicate romancing amidst picturesque scenes in Tahiti by the English sailors is handled with finesse by the script, and the boys must have worn out plenty of kid gloves in slipping this part of the story in with diplomacy. Polynesians are considered members of the white race by many experts, but whether they are so held by the majority of layman is questionable. And Gable and Tone's girl friends are very much Poly in appearance. But it's all done so neatly that kicks won't be numerous." - Variety Staff, 1935