1931-1940

Synopsis
Fresh out of journalism school, fledgling reporter Betty Bryant badgers city editor Joyce into giving her a job on the paper. Informed that human interest stories pop up several times a day at the emergency squad station, Betty heads in that direction, where she meets rookie Pete Barton, “Chesty” Miller and Pete’s brother Dan, with whom she falls in love. Meanwhile, Slade Wiley, an unscrupulous contractor, has won the bid on a contract to build the underwater Newford Tunnel. Discovering that his low bid is causing him to lose large amounts of money, Wiley conspires with underworld leader Nick Buller to detonate a series of explosions that will panic the stockholders into selling their shares at ridiculously low prices, thus enabling Wiley to gain control of the stock. Reasoning that Betty’s publicity would assist their plans, Wiley and Buller keep in close contact with her and allow her access to the construction site. Read More »

Convicted tells the story of a diligent detective named Burns (Quigley) who is forced to arrest Chick Wheeler (Edgar Edwards), brother of Burns’ sweetheart Jerry Wheeler (Hayworth), for murder. The more he thinks about it, the more Burns is convinced that Chick is innocent. With Jerry’s help, Burns tracks down the genuine miscreant in the nightclub where the heroine works.Read More »

If one were to gather the hundreds of books written about Ludwig van Beethoven, sift through each with a fine-tooth comb, and extract every simple mistake, wild speculation, and outright falsehood, the result would still be nowhere near as fabulous and artificial as this 1936 biopic, which rewrites the composer’s life story into a throbbingly melodramatic tale of genius ignored and love unrequited. Director Abel Gance, best known for his expansive silent classic Napoleon, wasn’t interested in the truth of Beethoven’s life, but instead the romantic ideal of a great man tormented by history; Gance’s Beethoven is merely a variation of the filmmaker’s beloved Bonaparte, triumphant yet scorned by his inferiors in the artistic realm rather than the political. (Needless to say, among the film’s many omissions is Beethoven’s bitter rededication of the “Eroica” Symphony.)Read More »

A man has the knack for finding stolen items. Then returns them to the insurance company. Finds some fake jewels and turns them in. Antics ensue.Read More »

Synopsis:
Once a Lady is a 1931 American Pre-Code drama film directed by Guthrie McClintic and starring Ruth Chatterton, Ivor Novello and Jill Esmond. The film, produced and distributed by Paramount Pictures, is a remake of the Pola Negri silent film Three Sinners (1928). The film was the final attempt by British matinée idol Novello to establish himself in Hollywood. Anna Keremazoff, a Russian living in Paris, leaves her beloved city and her bohemian lifestyle to marry Briton Jimmy Fenwick after she becomes pregnant by him. When the couple arrives at the Fenwick estate in Kent, Anna candidly tells Jimmy’s snobbish family she is pregnant. Shocked by Anna’s lack of decorum, Jimmy’s priggish aunt and mother begin a slow campaign against her free spirit.Read More »

The Yagyu family’s elder son sends an old and cheap looking pot to his young brother, ignoring that the pot contains a map showing where it was hidden a treasure of a million ryo. He tries to recover it but his brother’s wife has sold it to some junk dealers. Finally the pot ends up in Yasu’s hands, a kid whose father was killed although Tange Sazen was supposed to protect him from in his way to home, so Tange Sazen will look after Yasu.Read More »

This is the third film based on a story by Lajos Biro and Jules G. Furthman. The first two were silent films, Cecil B. DeMille’s The Whispering Chorus in 1918, and The Way of All Flesh in 1927. In this melodrama, Paul Kriza (Akim Tamiroff), a respectable bank cashier, leaves his wife Anna (Gladys George) and their children to seek greater fortunes in the big city. But instead of making his mark, he makes a mess of his prospects, and he ends up destitute. Ashamed to face his family, he remains in the city, and is presumed to be dead.Read More »

Judy Bloch, Pacific Film Archive wrote:
Aubignac, a village situated high upon a crag in Provence, suffers the common fate of such enclaves, reduced and abandoned over time. Only three people remain: an old blacksmith, a withered crone, and a middle-aged poacher, Panturle (Gabriel Gabrio). And finally, it is Panturle, alone. Enter Arsule (Orane Demazis), a down-at-the-heels cabaret singer, and Gédémus (Fernandel), an itinerant knife-grinder who has picked her up; now she pulls his cart, like something out of La Strada. Arsule and Panturle team up to revitalize her existence and his land, the welcoming soil of Aubignac. Harvest, based on Jean Giono’s novel, is at once Pagnol’s crudest and clearest statement about humans and the earth: both will decay if left alone. But there is darkness, too—like the grinder whose comic ruses are edged with threat—against which the simple humanity of Arsule and Panturle becomes rather more complex.Read More »

Synopsis:
Anti-semitic Nazi propaganda “biography” of the Rothschilds, a German Jewish family whose members rose to the top of the European banking community during the Napoleonic era.Read More »