1931-1940

Bursting with the ideas of a who’s-who of the Central European avant-garde, this eye-opening rediscovery is the missing link between Buñuel and Vertov, the Surrealists and the Soviets. Modernist novelist Vladislav Vancura joined forces with the famed Surrealist poet Vitezslav Nezval and the founder of structuralism, Roman Jakobson, to channel their movements’ missions into one superbly energetic film loosely structured around two children caught between their variously incompetent parents and an experimental reform school (“Education by Freedom!”). Vancura unleashes a dizzying storm of competing ideas and aesthetics, mashing up genres and accepted narrative norms to subvert the framework of conventional cinema, and, by extension, society. Anchoring the film’s dizzying camera angles and bizarre vignettes is some pointed commentary, as witnessed in the excesses of the Jazz Age bourgeoisie and the struggles of the Great Depression. On the Sunny Side pulsates with an energy that’s still ahead of its time.Read More »

After saving a tramp from suicide, a millionaire takes his clothing and disappears. Word is out that he will give a million francs to anyone who is kind to a tramp.Read More »

Quote:
“Faubourg Montmartre” is an old-fashioned melodrama,handicapped by a desultory screenplay which blends prostitution on the boulevards,a murder -which will not be explained-,and even hullabaloo in Corse.

This is the story of two sisters, one of them is a semi-whore with her pimp (played by Charles Vanel),the other one (Gaby Morlay) tries to walk the line,in spite of her sisters’ attempts to debauch her.Enter a not-so-handsome young man (A forgotten actor called Pierre Bertin whose performance is absolutely awful)the younger sister falls in love with.Read More »

Adam Lemp, the Dean of the Briarwood Music Foundation, has passed on his love of music to his four early adult daughters – Thea, Emma, Kay and Ann – who live with him and his sister, the girls’ Aunt Etta, in the long time family home. Of the four, Kay has the greatest promise as a musical performer, specifically as a singer. Theirs is a loving family, however much the girls exasperate their father with their love of popular music, since he loves only the classics, most specifically Beethoven. The girls support each other however they can, but each is an individual with her own distinct personality and wants, including the type of man each wants as a husband. Practical but deep in her heart romantic Emma has long been courted by their next door neighbor, unassuming florist Ernest Talbot, and clever Thea wants to be Mrs. Ben Crowley, he a wealthy up and coming banker with prospects. Only the youngest, the fun loving Ann, states that she doesn’t want to get married. Their collective … Written by HuggoRead More »

In his autobiography Michael Powell described Contraband as “all pure corn, but corn served up by professionals, and it worked” . This is perhaps how audiences have most often approached Contraband, as a slight piece of British World War II propaganda with entertaining asides of comedy and romance; charming and well-made but little more. Beyond this a rating as a minor imitation of Powell’s great rival Hitchcock might be bestowed, even if for little reason other than its concern with spies. But unlike Hitchcock, the cool observer, Powell was always a hot-headed rebel, and as such his views on war, whether between nations or the sexes, are more unconventional.Read More »

Synopsis:
‘When a German U-Boat captain is sent on a spying mission to the North of Scotland during World War One, he finds more than he bargained for in his contact, the local schoolmistress.’
– Ian HarriesRead More »

Synopsis:
As the title “The Queen’s Heart” suggests, this early German black and white version of Mary Queen of Scott’s eventful reign and death focuses on her emotional perception rather lyrically, with some songs, mainly by her. Starting in the Tower, awaiting and receiving her sentence to the ax from the English court, where Elisabeth I chose to remain absent in person, we flash back to Mary’s arrival after a long exile at the sophisticated, splendidly hedonistic French royal court, where she was raised as a Catholic, in her people’s eyes effeminate or even depraved, elegant pleasure-accustomed lady, at utter odds with the stern Scottish protestantism of John Knox as well as England’s Anglicanism.Read More »

Paris, at the time of the Great Depression. Bastien, a manual worker, persuades his timid friend, Ségard, to leave with him for Canada, to start a new life in a country where, according to the publicity films, everything is possible. The two men arrive in the port of Le Havre, ready to depart on the ocean liner Tenacity. They take lodgings at a boarding house where they both fall under the spell of the charming serving girl Thérèse. When the boat’s departure is delayed, Bastien takes advantage of the hiatus to court Thérèse. One evening, he gets her drunk and lures her into bed with him, without his friend knowing. The next day, Bastien has made up his mind to stay in France with Thérèse…Read More »

Synopsis:
Promises of happier times dawn for the financially distressed Patterson family when father Sweeney and brother-in-law Archibald “Doc” Finney win a $150,000 grand prize in the sweepstakes contest. With their windfall, each member of the family decides to pursue a dream. Drummer Sweeney reorganizes his old high school ragtime band, while Doc bankrolls his own horse betting system. Mother Elsie, who won an art contest in high school, takes up the easel and paint brush, while daughter Mary enrolls in finishing school in hopes of snagging a rich husband, and Junior is shipped off to military school. Grandpa Casey Patterson, meanwhile, thinks that the whole brood has taken leave of their senses. Clouds begin to darken the family’s dreams when Sweeney hires the comely Yolo to spice up his band, and Mr. Jordan, the wealthy father of Mary’s suitor, Johnny Jordan, pays a surprise visit to the family and is shocked to find Yolo balancing on Sweeney’s back.Read More »