MC Yearly Consensus - 1936

[Raiders]

I think I prefer South Park's homage to "I Love to Singa" in the anal probe episode to the actual cartoon. Still good, though.

[Spinal]

Originally Posted by soitgoes...

So do I have 24-25? I'm not really sure what the rotation is and who's involved.

Let's do this:

You - 90's and 50's
Llopin - 80's and 40's
KF - 70's and 30's
Me - 00's/20's and 60's

Haven't heard from Eleven in a while. I'll assume he's out for now.

[koji]

1. Fury (Lang)
2. Libeled Lady (Conway)
3. The Petrified Forest (Archie Mayo)
4. Dodsworth (William Wyler) .
5. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Capra)

HM: The Lower Depths (Les Bas-fonds) (Renoir) My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava), Camille (Cukor)

[Spinal]

The Yearly Consensus blog in my sig has been updated after I fell behind a bit (in case anyone has been checking). Results are now up-to-date.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I'm going to close and tally this tomorrow evening.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I'm going to try to get to this today some time. I have a ton of stuff to do around the house, but I should be able to tally this at some point.

[Spinal]

Need an assist?

[Kurosawa Fan]

Originally Posted by Spinal

Need an assist?

I think I can get to this tonight. Apologies for the delay. Work has been hellish, and my day off consisted of cleaning and remounting the gutters on my house, which took pretty much all day. I was exhausted last night.

If I don't get to it tonight, I may have to take you up on that assist.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I'm going to start on this, but I don't have enough in me to finish it tonight. I'll pick up first thing in the morning whatever I don't get done right now.


#10

After the Thin Man
W.S. Van Dyke

Back in San Franciso after solving his last case in New York, Nick and Nora find another case. Nora's cousin Selma is accused of having murdered her husband, but for Nick it's clear that she is not the murderer and he starts to investigate, supported by Nora and Asta.

Though William Powell and Myrna Loy were very close friends off-screen, their only romantic moments together occurred on-screen. The public, however, was determined to have them married in private life as well. When the two stars showed up in San Francisco (where most of After the Thin Man (1936) was shot) at the St. Francis, the hotel management proudly showed "Mr. and Mrs. Powell" to their deluxe suite. This was an especially uncomfortable moment as Jean Harlow, who was engaged to Powell, was with them, and the couple had not made a public statement about their relationship. Harlow saved the day by insisting on sharing the suite with Loy: "That mix-up brought me one of my most cherished friendships," Loy said in her biography Being and Becoming. "You would have thought Jean and I were in boarding school we had so much fun. We'd stay up half the night talking and sipping gin, sometimes laughing, sometimes discussing more serious things." Meanwhile, Powell got the hotel's one remaining room -- a far humbler accommodation downstairs.

"Powell as the amateur detective, with Loy tagging along and getting herslef tangled up in the plot, eventually gets his man. The two leading players seem to have a swell time throughout. They do a bedroom scene which is packed with laughs, but which is topped by a subsequent sequence when, having slept through an entire day, they have their breakfast in the evening and appear unable, or unwilling, to adjust themselves to the passing of time." - Variety Staff Writer, 1936

[Kurosawa Fan]

#9

I Love to Singa
Tex Avery

A spoof of Al Jolson's "The Jazz Singer," a strict piano teaching owl is cursed with a son who "loves to singa," but only jazz.

The young owl is voiced by Tommy Bond, best know as Butch of the Our Gang films. In the "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe" episode of the adult cartoon South Park, characters Eric Cartman and Officer Barbrady lapse into Owl Jolson's odd song-and-dance routine whenever they get hit with an alien beam.

Sorry fellas, I couldn't find any reviews for this one. But uh.. I like it. So... yeah.

[Kurosawa Fan]

#8

Osaka Elegy
Kenji Mizoguchi

Ayako becomes the mistress of her boss, Mr. Asai, so she can pay her father's debt, and prevent him from going to prison for embezzlement.

Japan banned all screenings of Osaka Elegy in 1940, issuing the claim that the film’s mood tended toward the “decadent”.

"Thematically, Osaka Elegy introduces (Mizoguchi's) command of the dyads of gender relations: fathers/daughters, brothers/sisters, husbands/wives, men/mistresses. The dealings between each unit of these dyads are usually bitterly framed as transactions, satirising the creeping effects of capitalism on Japan. While a Mizoguchi man situated within the hypocritical Japanese patriarchy is not worthy of the piety expected of his offspring (for he is weak, selfish and cruel); a Mizoguchi woman is often forced into a downward spiral of gruelling situations predicated by the unfair expectations placed upon her by Japanese society – to be a skilled, hard-working mother, a loyal wife, an obedient daughter, a flawless virgin, and the glue which holds the family together. For this sensitivity, Mizoguchi has been dubbed Japan’s first 'feminist' director." - Michael Price

[Kurosawa Fan]

#7

Dodsworth
William Wyler

A bittersweet tale of the increasing estrangement of a retired automobile tycoon and his wife. Increasingly obsessed with maintaining an appearance of youth, she falls in with a crowd of frivolous socialites during their "second honeymoon" European vacation. He, in turn, meets a woman who is everything she is not; self-assured, self-confident, and able to take care of herself.

The play opened on Broadway in New York City, New York, USA on 24 February 1934 and had 315 performances. Walter Huston, Harlan Briggs and Charles Halton originated their movie roles in the play, but Halton's footage was cut from the final print. David Mamet, in his book "Bambi vs. Godzilla", sites this film as one of his favorites.

"Perhaps Wyler deserves more credit for the look of his films than he's usually afforded. Even if Rudolph Mate is also one of the greatest cinematographers, Dodsworth has the flourishes typically associated with Wyler's work with Gregg Toland, particularly deep focus photography, even though he'd only worked with Toland once, on his previous film These Three." - Mike Lorefice

[Kurosawa Fan]

#6

The Petrified Forest
Archie Mayo

Gabby (Bette Davis) lives and works at her dads small diner out in the desert. She can't stand it and wants to go and live with her mother in France. Along comes Alan (Leslie Howard), a broke man with no will to live, who is traveling to see the pacific, and maybe to drown in it. Meanwhile Duke Mantee (Humphrey Bogart) a notorious killer and his gang is heading towards the diner where Mantee plan on meeting up with his girl.

Leslie Howard and Humphrey Bogart had played the same roles in the stage version. Warner Brothers wanted to put Howard in the film but replace Bogart with Edward G. Robinson. Howard insisted on Bogart, and Robinson was happy to step aside from yet another gangster role. Bogart would later name his first child with Lauren Bacall Leslie, in honor of Howard, the man who gave him his first big break. The character of Duke Mantee was mainly inspired by bank robber John Dillinger.

"The Petrified Forest seems to have bigger things on its mind, though, than romance and a hostage situation. From the sign in the diner that says, "tipping is un-American, keep your change," to Gabby's father's tin soldier posturing and the grandfather's endless romanticized Old West spiels to Squier's long ruminations on being the last of a vanishing race, "the intellectuals," much of what's on display here evokes a society on the decline, propping itself up with patriotic guff, fairy tales, and violence." - Chris Barsanti

[Kurosawa Fan]

#5

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
Frank Capra

Longfellow Deeds lives in a small town, leading a small town kind of life - including playing the tuba in the town band. When a relative dies and leaves Deeds a fortune, Longfellow picks up his tuba and moves to the big city where he becomes an instant target for everyone from the greedy opera committee to the sensationist daily newspaper.

From the start, Frank Capra was convinced that Gary Cooper would be perfect for the part of Longfellow Deeds. Production had to wait six months for Cooper to become available, incurring costs of $100,000 for the delay in filming. Carole Lombard was originally down to play the female lead but she backed out three days before production began to go work on My Man Godfrey (1936). Shooting had to begin without a female lead in place. According to a Motion Picture Herald news item, the film was banned in Germany "on the ground that non-Aryan actors had participated" in the production.

"Mr Deeds Goes to Town needs the marquee draught of Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur and George Bancroft to make it really go to town. With a sometimes too thin structure, the players and director Frank Capra have contrived to convert Deeds into fairly sturdy substance. The farce is good-humored and the trouping and production workmanlike, but there are some lapses in midriff that cause considerable uncertainty." - Variety Staff Writer, 1936

[Kurosawa Fan]

#4

A Day in the Country
Jean Renoir

The family of a Parisian shop-owner spends a day in the country. The daughter falls in love with a man at the inn, where they spend the day.

The film is based on a short story by Guy de Maupassant, who was a friend of Renoir's father Auguste Renoir. Future star directors Jacques Becker and Luchino Visconti worked as Renoir's assistant directors. The film was not released until 1946, ten years after it was shot. Renoir never finished the filming due to weather problems, but the producer, Pierre Brauenberger, turned the material into a release after World War II.

"Maupassant's cynical little story evinces no particular interest in or feeling for the natural surroundings in which it is set. But Renoir's film is an entirely different matter: here, the natural world, and in particular the river (the same river flowing on from the end of Boudu perhaps?), are absolutely vital to the film, playing an equal role to that of the characters and story, and indeed reflecting back on them. Moreover, the changes in weather forced on the filmmakers (away from Maupassant's hot summer setting) now seem absolutely essential to the meaning and emotion of the film." - Ian Johnston

[Kurosawa Fan]

#3

Fury
Fritz Lang

Fury tells the story of the descent of a decent man into ruthlessness when he narrowly escapes being lynched, and of the revenge he seeks on the people of the small town who persecuted him.

The script was based upon the 1933 kidnapping and murder of Brooke Hart, the son of the owner of Hart's Department Store in San Jose, California. The two kidnapping suspects were pulled from jail by a group of vigilantes, who dragged them across the street to St. James Park and lynched both of them.

"In Fury's case, Lang acknowledges the problematic aspect of "assumption" and could make the nihilistic case that all human behavior rests on a thin sheet of ice and human conduct cannot proceed until all doubt (assumptions are confirmed) has been cleared away. The film, though, recognizes the need for assumptions and how we are bound as a community through assumptions, but all of our institutions and behavior are susceptible to becoming hardened into mechanical, inhuman forms. In love, as well as lynching." - Robert Castle

[Kurosawa Fan]

#2

My Man Godfrey
Gregory La Cava

In the depths of the Depression, a party game brings dizzy socialite Irene Bullock to the city dump where she meets Godfrey, a derelict, and ends by hiring him as family butler.

This was the first film to ever receive four acting nominations at the Academy Awards, and it did so in the year that the supporting categories were introduced. This is also the only movie to ever get Oscar nominations for writing, directing and all four acting awards without being nominated for Best Picture. It's also the only movie to ever get those six nominations and lose them all.

"My Man Godfrey, one of the treasures of 1930s screwball comedy, doesn't merely use Lombard and Powell, it loves them. She plays Irene, a petulant kid who wants what she wants when she wants it. His Godfrey employs an attentive posture and a deep, precise voice that bespeaks an exact measurement of the situation he finds himself in. These two actors, who were briefly married (1931-33) before the film was made in 1936, embody personal style in a way that is (to use a cliche that I mean sincerely) effortlessly magical." - Roger Ebert

[Kurosawa Fan]

#1

Modern Times
Charles Chaplin

The Tramp struggles to live in modern industrial society with the help of a young homeless woman.

Supposedly was to be Charles Chaplin's first full sound film, but instead, sound is used in a unique way: we hear spoken voices only when they come from mechanical devices, a symbol of the film's theme of technology and dehumanization. Specifically, voices are heard from:

• The videophones used by the factory president
• The phonographic Mechanical Salesman
• The radio in the prison warden's office

"Modern Times is as 100% a one-man picture as probably is possible. Produced, starring, authored, composed (special music) and directed by Chaplin, the pantomimist stands or falls by his two years' work as it unreels. Not only does he not falter but Chaplin perhaps scales new heights in maintaining a barrage of guffaws that is the more remarkable considering the advanced comedy efforts that have hit the screen since the advent of sound." - Abel Green, Variety, 1936

[Kurosawa Fan]

Well, I guess I had more in me than I thought. Anywho, the scores:

1. Modern Times - 64
2. My Man Godfrey - 33.5
3. Fury - 30
4. A Day in the Country - 20
5. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town - 19
6. The Petrified Forest - 15.5
7. Dodsworth - 13.5
8. Osaka Elegy - 12.5
9. I Love to Singa - 12
10. After the Thin Man - 11.5

11. Rose Hobart - 11
12. Sisters of the Gion - 11
13. The Crime of Monseiur Lang - 8

[Spinal]

You made it! Hurrah!

I have only seen the Chaplin film and the cartoon.

[Bosco B Thug]

Seeing the unfamiliar stills for Dodsworth and The Petrified Forest at #6 and #7 suddenly gave me the craving to watch a fresh classic Hollywood B&W film that I've never seen before. I'm actually really psyched now to rekindle the affect of classic Hollywood B&W movie luster.

[Qrazy]

Originally Posted by Bosco B Thug

Seeing the unfamiliar stills for Dodsworth and The Petrified Forest at #6 and #7 suddenly gave me the craving to watch a fresh classic Hollywood B&W film that I've never seen before. I'm actually really psyched now to rekindle the affect of classic Hollywood B&W movie luster.

Don't waste your time with The Petrified Forest. Watch some old Curtiz or Kazan film instead (Captain Blood, Angels with Dirty Faces, The Sea Hawk) or (Baby Doll, Face in the Crowd, Tree Grows in Brooklyn).

[Bosco B Thug]

Originally Posted by Qrazy

Don't waste your time with The Petrified Forest. Watch some old Curtiz or Kazan film instead (Captain Blood, Angels with Dirty Faces, The Sea Hawk) or (Baby Doll, Face in the Crowd, Tree Grows in Brooklyn).

Cool, will do.