1930s

This vividly stylized, broodingly intense early Mexican sound melodrama by Juan Bustillo Oro hinges on an audacious flashback structure. When an ailing monk recognizes a new brother at his cloister, he becomes deranged and attacks him. Dos monjes recounts the men’s tragic shared past once from the point of view of each, heightening the contrasts between the two accounts with visual flourishes drawn from the language of German expressionism, including camera work by avant-garde photographer Agustín Jiménez.Read More »

Plot synopsis
Westfront 1918 (aka Comrades of 1918) was the first talkie effort from German filmmaker G. W. Pabst, which he made for Nero Films, a production company headed up by Seymour Nebenzahl. Like the contemporary Hollywood production All Quiet on the Western Front, Pabst’s film is a bitter, melancholy antiwar statement. The story concentrates on four German soldiers, sent to the front in the waning days of World War 1. The futility of killing an enemy who is already dead spiritually, and of being killed for a cause that has for all intents and purposes been resolved, is brought home to the viewer with both barrels. The astonishingly fluid camerawork of Fritz Arno puts the spectator in the thick of the battle, and the effect is both terrifying and heartbreaking To watch only a few moments of Westfront 1918, one might think that Pabst had been making sound pictures all his life, rather than a mere couple of months. – by Hal Erickson.Read More »

A law student poses as a fight promoter to catch a notorious gangster.Read More »

Harold Lloyd’s most critically successful talkie. Timid milkman, Burleigh Sullivan, somehow knocks out a boxing champ in a brawl. The fighter’s manager decides to build up the milkman’s reputation in a series of fixed fights and then have the champ beat him to regain his title.Read More »

A nightclub waiter and a manicurist share the same room, she sleeps there by night and he by day. They’ve never met, but they can’t stand each other. Then one day, they meet by chance…Read More »

Lady lawyer Portia Merryman (Frieda Inescourt) defends woebegone Elizabeth Manners (Heather Angel), who is on trial for shooting her lover Earle Condon (Neil Hamilton). Ironically, Portia herself had once had an affair with Earle’s father, powerful publisher John Condon (Clarence Kolb). She has a pretty good idea of what is going on in Elizabeth’s head, since she herself was on the verge of killing Condon when he ruthlessly took custody of her illegitimate son (not Earle, though that certainly would have brought things full circle). As Portia toils and strains to free her client, she carries on a romance with Dan Foster (Walter Abel) — the attorney for the prosecution. LA Law and The Practice have nothing on this one!Read More »

Synopsis:
The road-show troupe of a top Broadway show go cross-country while taking the audience along on the on-stage scenes as well as what happens and is happening back stage of the production. The spectacular dancing ensembles and colorful costumes and pulchritude on-stage offers a contrasting background to the drabness of the backstage, where joy, sorrow, tragedies, deception, and romance are intertwined.
— Les Adams.Read More »

Five friends make a pact to stick together through school, agreeing to graduate at the same time and to marry at the same time…Read More »

Plot: Dan Crackett, Secret Service Agent, is looking for a counterfeit money ring. He has tracked the stolen plates to somewhere in Mexico. In Washington, Saxby sends Brass Bancroft to El Paso to team up with Dan. They make plans to meet in a gambling saloon in Mexico called the ‘Silver Slipper’. It is there that the gang kills Dan and pins the murder on Brass. Brass, with the help of Gabby and Elaine, must stay out of jail so that he can find where the press is working and who is behind the counterfeit bills. Written by Tony FontanaRead More »