"The HTF 100 Great Films of the 1930's Challenge" (1 Viewer)

[Lew Crippen]

in your opinion,

Here I must disagree, George. While in the exact sense, you may be correct in that all views of film (or any other art) are subjective, and leaving aside for the moment, that this is demostrabaly not true, to paraphrase George Orwell, "All opinions are equal, but some are more equal than others".

Just as you, Brook, JimK, and others too numerous to name have more equal opinions than movie fans who only watch graphics-laden action movies or the current crop of routine romantic comidies and have no familarity with the films of the 40s or the French New Wave, it is also true that those who have studied the art deeply, have a more equal opinion than you and I.

As an example, (sorry Evan) a place that I trust not at all is the IMDB ratings. This is as close to a popular poll as it is possible to get. There is no way, for example to know if those voting for San Frranscisco have seen hundreds of movies from the 30s (as I know all of us in this thread have) or five that happened to pop up on TCM in the middle of the night.

However, I must also be critical of Armin's professer, knowledgeable as he may be, whose world seemed confined to the U.S. and northern Europe, with token nods elsewhere.

As I recall, he did not even list one film from Japan.

Now it may well be that his area of expertise does not extend to Ozu and the like, so this is understandable. But this is no different than those of us in North America who are not familar with (for us) somewhat obscure and difficut to obtain/view German and French films.

I have brought up this point (or at least similar ones) many times before, and so far have not really seen this issue addressed.

While you may rightly charge that the current list is Hollywood-centric, the list will still be biased (just with a different slant) if we all watch the films you suggest (and as a complete aside, they are all on my 'to-watch' list if they ever show up down here in México).

Reviewing the list of your professor, leads me to conclude that his list is equally biased, though more knowlegeable, and many of the same arguements you make so passionatly can be brought to bear againt it.

My suggestion is to move forward with what we know and have seen. If my vote counts for anything (and in the past, it has not), San Fransicsco won't make the cut.

 

[george kaplan]

Lew,
First of all, let me make a small token gesture of comaraderie with you and Armin - San Francisco wouldn't get my vote either.
As to your other thoughts, here we get into very semantic-laden debates, where minutae can be the battleground for argument. I don't really want to get into that kind of philosophical discourse, but at some level, it's just the mathematician in me - I have to be precise with the terminology.
So, I'll make this attempt, and hope I don't miss the main points.
You are correct, that not all opinions are equal. At the extreme, there are opinions that are factually incorrect (e.g., the opinion that Citizen Kane was directed by Buster Keaton). Then there is the more subtle differences in opinion that are differentially informed by knowledge. For example, I'm going to pay more attention to the opinion of Roger Ebert than I am some guy I work with who refuses to watch black & white films.
Certainly, for films I've never seen, I place a lot more value in opinions of those who are knowlegable experts, than those who are not. So, in terms of valuing other people's opinions, certainly they are not all equal.
BUT...in the end, they are all just opinion. And when I've seen a film, the only opinion that matters at all is my own. If I love film X and hate film Y, the fact that every expert critic in the world loves film Y and hates film X means nothing to me. For me, my opinion is the only one that matters.
Now, when you get to a vote like the S&S, some criteria are applied to decide who gets to cast a vote. And while every voter on the S&S list is demonstrably more knowlegable about film, frankly, many of them have opinions that I value as much as I do a midden heap.
And for the 1930's challenge, we've decided that we are the ones who get to vote, and all of our votes are equally weighted. If someone wants to do a separate list where Armin's professor gets 100 votes, and Armin gets 50, and everyone else gets 1, except those who like San Franciso, who are automatically disqualified, then go for it.
Bottom line - opinions about film are based on many things. Some of it is knowledge, but there is always some element of subjective opinion. And while for some purposes, person A may find the opinions of person B more useful than the opinions of person C (e.g., A=Armin, B=Armin's professor, C= me), in the end, there is no objective way of saying that any opinion (about artistic worth of a film) is any more or less valid than any other.

 

[Armin Jager]

If someone wants to do a separate list where Armin's professor gets 100 votes, and Armin gets 50, and everyone else gets 1, except those who like San Franciso, who are automatically disqualified, then go for it.

That's a marvellous idea!!! I wonder that I didn't have it before ...

 

[george kaplan]

Yes. Obscure. I'd love to see this early Billy Wilder film (Wilder is my second favorite director), but I'm pretty sure you can't provide me a link to Amazon to buy a dvd of it like the one I gave you above. :frowning:

 

[Lew Crippen]

It's a simple matter of availability, where the heck do you get Japanese films from the 30s?

You made my point with your comment before you got the point that some of these masterpieces are not available in the US. It follows, excpet for serious students of cinema history (here) that these films are obscure here, even to those of us who regulary watch hundreds of films each and every year (and though I don't know your age, I'm betting the at least George and I have been watching films for a good many more years than you.

If you expect that the films you cite should be well known to the US cinema lover, then for sure your professor should be intimently acquainted with the very famous Japenese films from acknowledged masters like Ozu.

I state again (and so far without contradiction) that your professor's list, is in its own way, as biased as is the one put together by amatuers at the HTF (one of whom, I was not).

While I take major exception to some of the films included, and agree with much of your assessment, the fact that problems exist in the list is acknowledged. To the point that the list is being revised.

I challange a revision of the list which you provided. What films should be exclueded to make way for other, more important and more finely realized films?

 

[Adam_S]

Just to interject, (gotta go to work editing) since there's so many posts I can't read them all now. That 'terrible sitcom lighting' you mentioned, Armin, was designed by Karl Freund (and, btw, I prefer San Francisco to Mad Love, but he was a brilliant cinematographer).

 

[Armin Jager]

I challange a revision of the list which you provided. What films should be exclueded to make way for other, more important and more finely realized films?

Everything which fits in the MGM melodrama category .
I'd throw out: 1-2 THIN MAN films, BOYS TOWN, CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE maybe FOUR FEATHERS, G-MEN, at least 3 Universal horrors, MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY, SAN FRANCISCO, TOPPER, YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU (I'd throw out the whole creaky Capra stuff, but I guess that's unlikely to be accepted). Some films I haven't seen, but I strongly suspect I'd throw them out immediately (the Korda films e.g.). ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS, THE SCARLET EMPRESS and DAUGHTERS COURAGEOUS should move up immediately in the TOP 100.

 

[george kaplan]

Well, just picking on the films that I've seen here, I can already see that I MASSIVELY disagree with you. Therefore, it's not any stretch of the imagination to conclude that even if I saw all of these French and German films you list, I'd still probably not agree with you that they are better than many of the U.S. films you don't like.
Films you'd throw out that I wouldn't in a million years:
The Thin Man films (The only less that superb Thin Man film was the last one, and that wasn't made in the 30s)
Boy Town (an excellent film)
Universal Horrors (don't know which ones you're talking about, but I'd sure as hell not get rid of Frankenstein or Bride of Frankenstein).
Topper (not the greatest film of the 30s, but far better than most).
You Can't Take it With You, plus you'd throw out Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It Happened One Night - if these films are your definition of 'creaky', then you've just elevated 'creaky' to the equivalent of a 5 star rating.
Films you'd move up that I wouldn't:
Only Angels Have Wings
The Scarlett Empress
I realize English isn't your first language, but not only do you not seem to understand creaky, you seem to have misunderstood melodrama, which describes those two films in spades.
And to show that we're not in complete disagreement,
Films you'd throw out that I would too:
Charge of the Light Bridage
Four Feathers
G-Men
Mutiny on the Bounty
San Francisco
And finally, to really piss you off,
Some French films already on the list that I'd kick off:
L'Age d'or
L'Atalante
Blood of a Poet
Grand Illusion
Rules of the Game
All of which I've seen, and none of which I'd ever want to see again.

 

[Lew Crippen]

Actually I was referencing the Professor's list.

 

[Adam_S]

This is a selection I saw in yesterday's New York Times New DVDS article, about :

Four by Edgar G. Ulmer
The four Yiddish-language films that the director Edgar G. Ulmer made between 1937 and 1940 have been issued on DVD by the National Center for Jewish Film, all superbly restored from original 35-millimeter elements. They constitute not only a fascinating chapter in the history of Jewish culture in America but also an island of lyrical calm and benevolence in the midst of Ulmer's often dark, troubled work.
It's hard to believe that the man who made "Detour" (1945), one of the most claustrophobic and despairing of films noirs, could have made the open and exuberant "Green Fields" only eight years earlier. Based on a play by Peretz Hirshbein, "Green Fields" takes place in an idealized shtetl (constructed on the grounds of a Benedictine monastery in New Jersey), where a wandering scholar has come in search of "true Jews."
Ulmer's freewheeling camera and sun-dappled images suggest early intimations of neo-realism like Jean Renoir's 1935 "Toni," rather than the German Expressionist tradition in which Ulmer was formed. "The Singing Blacksmith" (1938) and "American Matchmaker" (1940) are equally light and enjoyable.
Ulmer's dark side does come back in "The Light Ahead" (1939), the finest film in this collection and one of Ulmer's most impressive works. The shtetl this time, though visibly grounded in the sets Ulmer erected for "Green Fields," is a far more emotionally tortured and spatially convoluted place, with twisted perspectives that provide a "Caligari"-like background for the painful romance of a handicapped laborer (David Opatoshu) and a blind orphan (Helen Beverly). Where many Yiddish films, like the Second Avenue plays that inspired them, ritualistically build to a climactic wedding scene, Ulmer stages the marriage of "The Light Ahead" at midnight in a cemetery - a weirdly compromised happy ending that looks forward to Ulmer's agonized postwar work.
The DVD's, which include enlightening program notes by J. Hoberman, are available at www.jewishfilm.org, priced at $36 or all four for $126. None carry a rating from the Motion Picture Association of America.

I'd dearly like to see these flicks, so I hope one of the online rental services pick them up.
Adam

 

[Adam_S]

Petrified Forest - :star::star:1/2
06/24/2005
OARDVD
Good flick with Bogart and a surprisingly likable Davis. But not much to distinguish it. Decent script, Very nice ending, but otherwise pretty average.

 

[Adam_S]

Caught up on a bunch of AFI thirties films this weekend, the best two were possibly worthy of consideration, Heidi and Bombshell. The rest were average.
Go West Young Man - :star::star:
Mae West is good in a film where she plays herself stranded among country yokels. But not much to recommend, funny and solid but not too special
Stowaway - :star::star:
Standard Shirley Temple film, not all that good, very by the numbers and a little silly with tinny musical numbers.
Klondike Annie - :star::star:1/2
Mae West film from Raoul Walsh that takes time for a slow and uninteresting opening act that transistions into something that works a lot better by the end of the film. Mae West reforming herself is quite delightful and her preaching as well.
Heidi - :star::star::star:
Involving Shirley Temple film where she's very good and not just mugging for the camera (see Stowaway) and is well directed with a good supporting cast but thin and arbitrary villains.
Hands Across the Table - :star::star:
very standard and moderately funny rom com with Carole Lombard and Fred MacMurry.
Bombshell - :star::star::star:
Outstanding script and performance by Jean Harlow, highly recommended for those elements alone, and as a great early Screwball comedy. Harlow plays her own story, literally, but has a much snappier and zanier plot than Go West Young Man.

 

[Brian Lawrence]

Okay, I had abandoned this for about the 4th or 5th time. Now it's time to finish it quickly before I vanish off into horizon again.
We are way past all of the many deadlines I have put up so now it's time to compile a list
I will be sending PM's & emails to all of the people who have participated in this challenge, so that those who where part of this, but long since stopped following it because I was asleep at the wheel, will know that we are voting.
I have kicked around various ideas on how to add and tally votes, and even how to vote in the first place. But I am not a great number cruncher, when it starts getting into complex things like weighting for various factors and what not. So as to keep this simple for me and hopefully everyone, I have a rather basic approach.
Simply PM me a list of all the films from the Current 100 list and considerations list that you have seen and rate then on a scale of 10-100 , while that may seem like a large number, Just think of a 93 vote as being the same as a 9.3 would be on a scale of 1-10
Also include a top ten overall list. Simply your top ten movies of the 30's listed in order
Once I have all the votes in, I will tally them up and at long last put up the completed HTF 100 list. I will be totaling the votes by average score a film receives from all the people that voted on that film. I know this may not be the most accurate method, but my goal here is not so much to have a list in precise ranked order, as it is to have a list of 100 films that are considered to be the most entertaining, important or influential films of the 1930's.
However, I will also be using the ranked top 10 lists to create a sub-list of the top 10 or 20 films in ranked order.
After I have put up the completed lists I will also compile a listing of all the votes received and post them in this thread also. This way we can see how everyone else here voted, and the raw numbers will be available to anyone who may wish to create a more complex or accurate list based on whatever exotic scientific formula of sabemetric like number-crunching they can come up with.

 

[Adam_S]

Well if we're ranking ALL the films we saw from the original list and the nominated, that leaves me with 164 films to slot into 90 spots. Hope you don't mind a few repeats, and I let the bottom end drop below 10 as there are at least three films I'd rate below a five on your scale. Sending you my lists now, I hope excel is an okay format.

 

[Adam_S]

Flying Down to Rio - :star::star:
Fred Astaire dancing & final number - :star::star::star::star:
09/03/2005
TCM timeshift
This is the sort of film that makes me want to finally sit down and watch That's Entertainment. The other three Astaire Rogers I've seen were worth watching on their own merits, this however is only worthwhile for the dance numbers. The first time Astaire and Rogers actually dance is the first time the film actually becomes somewhat interesting, and I'd say the highlight is Astaire's solo number. The way he just slowly gets sucked into the music is just outstanding, and overall amazing to watch. The final number on the planes is simply amazing to watch. Wonderful piece of work. The editing style is occasionally quite interesting, the wipe-transitions are quite effective. I espeically liked one jaggedy edge that went up as it cut to a long high shot of the hotel exterior and almost immediately came back down as it cut into a medium shot of the hotel owner.
The overall plot is annoying, though the Gangster silohuetes are amusing.
The print on TCM was pretty beat up with scan lines tears and cigarette burns, so it'll be nice when the DVD comes out and they start airing a clean version.
Adam

 

[Brian Lawrence]

I have received lists from Adam & George, still waiting for more to come in.

 

[Eric Peterson]

Brian,
I'll try and get mine to you before the weekend is up. I'm re-siding my house right now and it's sucking up a lot of time!

 

[Adam_S]

Caught up with another pair of thirties films, nothing too exceptional:
The Gay Divorcee - :star::star:1/2
09/16/2005
TCM Timeshift
Good film but because it has Howard in it, but the plot is pretty silly--how is it good for Ginger Rogers as the rich wife being set up to be caught cheating, creating a divorce? Wouldn't she just loose most of her money in the divorce. tsk tsk. Then again I guess that's part of the humor.
The Dance numbers were spectacular, especially the big one at the end. the script was good with several zingers and the use of Night and Day was also a highlight.
And Mimi is not a name that fits Ginger Rogers.
-------------
Baby Face - :star::star:
09/16/2005
TCM Timeshift
Wasn't the complete version of this film recently uncovered? Anyway there are some annoying issues, cut arounds. But mostly this is interesting for its pre-code value, but it has none of the verve and pizzazz that carries Red Dust or Trouble in Paradise. On the other hand this is worth seeing for Stanwycks performance and the character she plays. Great visual device to 'show' how she sleeps her way to the top.
Adam

 

[Brian Lawrence]

Still running very short on lists.

 

[Adam_S]

Gabriel over the Whitehouse - :star::star:1/2
09/30/2005
TCM timeshift
This is possibly the strangest film I've seen from the thirties, including Bunuel. It's a rare and delightful document of just how fucking desperately crazy Americans were leading up to FDR's election.
Walter Huston plays the president of the United States, he's just another one of the politicians, intent to not really do anything except fatten other politicians and whose main goal is to keep the boat rock steady.
he's also young and a little bit wild. That means he drives his own car and he drives fast, pushes it to 100mph, gets in a crash and is comatose for two weeks. When he comes back he's a changed man. He hides his recovery for a while so he can think and read and read and think. He comes out, promptly fires his secretary of state and then begins laying out reforms before the country. He's so extreme congress nearly mutinies, so he declares martial law ans essentially becomes a benevolent socialist dictator. He takes on gangland with a no holds barred fascist agenda and puts the government in charge of bootlegging because its major tax revenue the country desperately needs. He then decides that come hell or high water every other country in the world is going to pay their debts to America (and this is where the film gets really ridiculous). Since they realistically can't pay them under threat of war and AMerica can't realistically go to war over debts, he instead convinces all the countries of the world to demilitarize and thus save so much money they can pay america backa nd begin their own economic recoveries. :p Then the spirit of the lord leaves him and he promptly dies after signing the peace accord.
The film is filled with stunnign photography, the camera is extraordinarily dynamic and used to outstanding effect again and again, driving home points visually rather than via dialogue. Huston's two different personas are quite striking and are lit completely differently. Wonderful use of sculpted lighting and differently ground lenses to achieve the imposing Lincoln-relief of the divine president versus the soft and fat politician he naturally is.
In many ways this film is the most searing portrait of the depression I've seen, if only because it refuses to show the depression, we only see it through the extremes the fictional America is willing to let this president go to to fix it.
Adam