1930s

Joseph McBride wrote:
Wee Willie Winkie provides a case study of how Ford approached what could have been another pot-boiler and infused it with his own artistic sensibilty. If there were any real justice in Hollywood, Ford would have won an Oscar for a film such as this one, whose truly superior craftsmanship is all the more impressive for seeming so effortless. With larger-than-life romanticism, Ford deflty creates a child’s storybook vision of the world, then introduces unexpectedly touching moments as reality impinges on the consciousness of the innocent protaganist. This stylised feeling was heightened in the film’s original release by tiniting the daytime scenes sepia and the nighttime scenes blue, reviving a practice from the silent cinema.Read More »

Beautiful, 24 October 2003
Author: Bruce Karam (Bruce.Karam) from Tucson, Arizona 85710 USA
A beautiful story of love, that reminded me of Greta Garbo’s “Anna Christie”. I loved Vilma Bankee’s voice and accent. I felt that the film was charming in it’s “innocence” and simplicity, while dealing with a very complex issue. I hope that I may someday see it again.Read More »

Review (amazon.com)
Un celebre baritono incontra sul piroscafo che lo conduce dall’America in Italia, una non meno celebre pianista. Costei è ricchissima e superba. Il baritono se ne innamora ma soffre per l’alterigia di lei. Poiché la ragazza ha beffato alcuni cantanti che si sono esibiti durante un concerto a bordo, il baritono si rifiuta di cantare, ed anzi, se la ragazza non promette di starsene rinchiusa nel camerino della Scala, egli è deciso a non partecipare alle recite liriche per cui è stato scritturato a Milano. Per quanto altezzosa la ragazza, che ricambia segretamente i sentimenti dell’uomo, si reca durante il suo debutto nel camerino di lui. Intanto un famoso critico nega qualunque valore al nuovo cantante, anche perché è geloso dell’interessamento che la ricca ereditiera dimostra per lui. Il cantante, d’accordo con la direzione del teatro, si presenta in una nuova opera sotto il nome di un suo collega polacco, di cui il critico è entusiasta. Durante l’intervallo egli, alla presenza di tutti, svela la propria identità al critico stesso che aveva tessuto pubblicamente le lodi dell’interprete straniero. Dopo questa vittoria egli ha modo di conoscere i veri sentimenti della ragazza di cui è innamorato. I due concluderanno l’avventura con il matrimonio.Read More »

SYNOPSIS: Karl Muller and his foster brother, Stephan Brenner, leave their farm in the Austrian countryside, and travel to Vienna to study medicine. Karl is in love with his foster sister, Lottie Brenner, and would rather work as a farmer, but in deference to the wishes of his foster mother, Mrs. Brenner, he studies hard and is named valedictorian of his class. Stephan, on the other hand, enjoys drinking and flirting more than studying. One night, while drunk, he performs an illegal operation on his girl friend Anna. After she becomes very ill, he confesses everything to Karl, who agrees to try to help her, even though he does not yet have his license. While Karl is with Anna, she dies, and he takes full blame for the operation in order to spare Mrs. Brenner’s feelings. He is not allowed to graduate and spends time in prison. After he leaves prison, he returns home to find that Stephan has died. Karl is eager to return to farming, but after he successfully operates on a boy injured in an accident in front of the house, Mrs. Brenner convinces him to pose as Stephan and continue his work as a surgeon.Read More »

Plot: Lina, Giovanni and Carlo take the Roma-Orvieto train for a trip to the countryside.
Quote:
One of the beacon films of the European cinema of the Thirties. Celebrating the sound film as a rebirth of cinema, Treno popolare combines and harmonises, with genius, several characteristics of the cinema of the period. Talking pictures, of which it is too often said that they rendered cinema theatrical, also accentuated and stimulated realism. (…) This realism, born from sound and the possibility to make characters speak in their own langauage and with their true voices, here extends to a unanimist depiction of Italian society, and notably of the petite bourgeoisie of the time, portrayed with great veracity in its daily activity and behaviour.Read More »

Aleksandr Medvedkin’s Happiness, as rowdy as any Soviet silent movie, is a comic parable composed of equal parts of Tex Avery and Luis Buñuel. It satirizes the plight of a Soviet farmer who finds himself providing for the state, the church, and his peers at the expense of his personal satisfaction. A hapless young prole, Khmyr, is tasked by his wife with the goal of going out in the world and finding happiness, lest he end up dead and dissatisfied after a lifetime of toil, like his father. Through stylistic exaggeration and a systematic attack on pre- and post-Revolutionary Russia’s dearest institutions, the movie achieves a wide-ranging, and deeply wounding, attack on the limitations placed on personal freedom in Russian societyRead More »

Quote:
From acquarello at Strictly Film School Blog: Hiroshi Shimizu’s government-pressured, militarism-era film A Star Athlete is a breezy, refreshingly lighthearted, and subtly subversive slice-of-life comedy that centers on an all-day student march in formation and armed combat drills through the rural countryside for military training exercises. Shimizu demonstrates his deceptively facile adeptness and virtuoso camerawork through a series of extraordinarily choreographed plan sequence shots: a track-and-field race around the campus track between the school’s start athlete Seki (Shuji Sano) and his constantly spurring – and sparring – team mate (Chishu Ryu); an extended dolly sequence of the students’ march as bemused villagers and flirtatious, love-struck young women alternately respectfully step aside, playfully trail, obliviously obstruct, and amorously chase the dashing students in uniform; a mock battlefield charge assault through muddy fields as a guilt-ridden motley crew of travelers on the road scramble to flee from the students in a mistaken belief of being chased in retribution for their petty transgressions during their brief stay in the village.Read More »

Synopsis:
Aboard the U.S. submarine S13 in the China seas, Chief Torpedoman Burke goes about his duties. In actuality, he is Quartermaine, the infamous former commander of the British ship Royal Scot, which was sunk by Germans with a Field Marshal aboard. Quartermaine had told his sweetheart that the Field Marshal would be aboard, not knowing that she was an informant for the enemy. When the S13 sinks, Burke takes charge when the commander, Ensign Price, is unable to command. Burke must keep his mates alive long enough on the bottom of the sea for rescuers to arrive.Read More »

Quote:
Judge Moffett is as crooked as they come and the Board of Judicial Corruption is after him. So he hides out in the poor part of town. While there, she drops the bankbook that Moffett has listing his accounts and Mary returns it to him. But Moffett thinks Mary saw the book and he puts her away for six months on a trumped up charge. Mike is overcome with grief and when he comes to his senses, he talks to Mary who tells him about the book. This gets Mike beat up and put on a boat to South America, but he jumps ship and plots his revenge.Read More »