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. Six years later, Jimmy returns from the war as a candidate for Parliament and finds Anna increasingly discontented, but is unsympathetic to her complaints. Anna’s only companion has been her daughter Faith, whom the Fenwicks have tried to control. When Bennett Cloud, an old lover of Anna from Paris, visits for Jimmy’s campaign speech and finds Anna denuded of her spirited personality, he invites her for an afternoon of dark cafes and vodka. She returns home late and overhears the Fenwicks’ plan to send her away until the election is over. When Anna exposes the scheme and refuses to be manipulated, Jimmy promises to spend a few days with her in Paris, then abandons her on the train, calling her a hindrance to his career.

Once a Lady (1931).mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1h 19mn
Size: 	1.28 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	716x478 ~> 716x537
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	2 081 Kbps
BPP: 	0.254
Audio
#1:  	English 2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 Kbps (Stereo)

https://nitro.download/view/C48A219290CB11D/Once_a_Lady_(1931).mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Guthrie McClintic – Once a Lady (1931) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Lilly Turner (1933) provided a bravura role for star Ruth Chatterton, and another opportunity to display her versatility. Lilly is a hard-luck dame with lousy taste in men. First she marries a no-good bounder who promises her the world, but instead turns her into a cootch dancer in a carnival. Then she finds out her “husband” already has a wife. Left alone and pregnant, Lilly marries an alcoholic pal (Frank McHugh), and the couple joins a traveling medicine show. Things go from bad to worse when a psychotic strongman in the show develops an obsession for her. When a genuine nice guy, played by Chatterton’s then-husband George Brent, comes into her dreary life, Lilly tries to grab some happiness. But it may be too late.

After a distinguished career on the New York stage, Chatterton was part of the wave of theater performers who had gone to Hollywood at the beginning of the sound era. Already in her mid-30s and not conventionally pretty, Chatterton was nevertheless a great success in films, bringing a sense of “class” to the medium, and was twice nominated for Oscars®, for Madame X (1929) and Sarah and Son (1930). Unlike many stage actors of the era, Chatterton did not use exaggerated diction or grand gestures. Her acting style was naturalistic, her way of speaking staccato, distinctive, and charming, her facial expressiveness small but precise. Although her normal speech was cultured, in Lilly Turner Chatterton is playing a working class character, so she drops her g’s, but it seems natural, not affected. In his book about pre-code film actresses, Complicated Women (2000), Mick LaSalle called Chatterton “a vision of total female authority, circa 1930. Even in weepies, she was commanding. Short and slightly plump, Chatterton was convinced she was beautiful, and she convinced everybody else, too. She had a baleful stare and yet a surprisingly mischievous, almost childlike, smile. She was a diva.”

Lilly Turner was the second film together for Chatterton and director William A. Wellman. A “man’s man” with a preference for action films and a contempt for divas, Wellman was not happy when he was assigned to direct Frisco Jenny (1932) with Chatterton. The dislike was mutual, but after three days of icy silence between them, director and star called a truce, recognizing each other’s talents, and becoming great fans of each other. Frisco Jenny would be Chatterton’s favorite film. While she and Wellman were happy to work together again, Lilly Turner was not as good as Frisco Jenny. For Wellman, Lilly Turner was just another programmer, one of six that he cranked out in 1933 under contract at Warner Bros. In spite of the grim story, Wellman gives the carnival scenes a certain seedy vitality. And reliable character actors Guy Kibbee as the medicine show boss, and Frank McHugh as Lilly’s bibulous husband get a chance to play characters with a few more facets than their usual one-note comedy roles. Mordaunt Hall noted in the New York Times that Kibbee “does remarkably well by the part.” But as for Chatterton, she “is not in her element in such a narrative, for she is obviously far better suited to a more sophisticated subject.” The Variety reviewer wrote that the film “fails to measure better than fair,” but had praise for Chatterton’s efforts, saying “Picture is Miss Chatterton’s all the way, star making every effort to give what the story lacks and what is missing in the direction.” In spite of such reviews, Lilly Turner was a box-office success.

Lilly Turner is clearly a pre-Code film, dealing frankly with Lilly’s sexual affairs, and that may be the reason why it wasn’t seen for many years. According to studio records, in 1936, Warner Bros. tried to reissue it, but was denied a Production Code certificate.

580MB | 1h 06m | 640×480 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/61BC7618E1E00E3/Lilly.Turner.1933.William.Wellman.avi

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post William A. Wellman – Lilly Turner (1933) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

New York Times Review

In their enthusiasm for the idea of electric fans carrying voices across hotel courtyards, those concerned with the producing of “Anybody’s Woman,” the talking picture now at both the Times Square Paramount and the Brooklyn Paramount, favor coincidences that are absurdly unconvincing. This more or less ingenious notion can be accepted in an early episode, but when it crops up again in the climactic sequence the result is emphatically disappointing.

This film, which is based on a story by Gouverneur Morris, has, however, in its cast those intelligent players, Clive Brook and Ruth Chatterton, and therefore all is not lost. Paul Lukas also gives a clever performance.

In her direction Dorothy Arzner reveals no little care, but there are many moments when the incidents lack imagination. It becomes a case of preaching during many of the scenes, when they might have been tinctured with a suggestion or two from Sir James M. Barrie’s play, “What Every Woman Knows.” The story is invariably amateurish in its writing and its development. And even Miss Chatterton, who enjoys the opportunity of costuming herself in several attractive creations, is inconsistent in her speech. At times her voice is intentionally hard and her choice of words suited to the rôle, but on other occasions she adopts a cultured tone and suddenly acquires an enviable vocabulary.

Miss Chatterton plays a chorus girl named Pansy Gray, whose outlook on life is dismal. Apparently the only man she has ever respected was a lawyer who had defended her when she was apprehended for appearing on the stage in an inextensive costume.

The picture opens with a glimpse of Clive Brook as Neil Dunlap in a thoroughly intoxicated condition. His memory leaves him on such occasions. It is while he is mumbling in an uncertain fashion to Gustav Saxon (Mr. Lukas), a self-made man of wealth, about the wives he has divorced, that he is impelled to listen to Pansy’s discourse which he is supposed to hear distinctly only when an electric fan is turned in the right direction.

In his drunken state Dunlap is so much impressed by what Pansy says to her feminine friend that he and Saxon invite her to come to their room. Dunlap believes that a woman like Pansy would do more for a man than any of the wives he has had. So he asks Pansy to marry him, and following a brief hesitation she accepts. Dunlap is, as might be presumed, the lawyer who defended Pansy.

When Dunlap appears next morning he does not remember anything that happened while he was inebriated. Pansy tells him that she is his wife and eventually Dunlap is convinced. Later in his home town he invites a number of friends and their wives to dinner to meet Pansy. The men appear, but their wives excuse their absence on the grounds of indisposition.

There is a silly incident at the dinner, and Pansy, who has been doing all she can to keep Dunlap from drinking, takes too much to drink herself. Various contretemps occur and finally Pansy leaves Dunlap. He finds life miserable without her, and finally the electric fan is brought into action again and Dunlap hears his wife’s voice while she is having dinner on a terrace with Saxon.

Mr. Brooks’s acting is splendid. Huntly Gordon, Virginia Hammond and Juliette Compton handle their rôles with pleasing restraint.

The stage contribution is “Garden of Girls.” It was directed by Boris Petroff.

ANYBODY’S WOMAN, with Ruth Chatterton, Clive Brook, Paul Lukas, Huntly Gordon, Virginia Hammond, Tom Patricola, Juliette Compton, Cecil Cunningham, Charles Gerrard, Harvey Clark, Sidney Bracey and Gertrude Sutton, based on a story by Gouverneur Morris, directed by Dorothy Arzner; “Garden of Girls,” a Boris Petroff stage revue. At the Paramount.

698MB | 1h 20m | 592×448 | avi

<https://nitro.download/view/9E1E0AE67E9D13E/Anybody’s_Woman.1930.Dorothy_Arzner.avi

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Dorothy Arzner – Anybody’s Woman (1930) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

After selling his Ohio auto-parts plant, Sam hopes to celebrate his retirement by taking his wife Fran on a romantic getaway to Europe. Instead, Sam and Fran begin to grow apart, realizing they want different things from life…

Warner Archive Collection wrote:
Based on the best-selling novel by Sinclair Lewis, this “handsome, intelligent film” (Los Angeles Times) garnered seven Academy Award nominations, winning one*, and is “one of the authentic masterpieces of the 1930s” (Filmex Guide). Sam Dodsworth (Walter Huston) is a small-town rags-to-riches millionaire who finds that his money cannot bring him happiness. His unsatisfied wife, Fran (Ruth Chatterton), seeking glamour and sophistication, persuades him to take her on a grand tour of Europe, where she promptly deserts him for a romantic but penniless baron. Brokenhearted, Sam meets Edith (Mary Astor), an understanding widow who arouses passions he never thought he had and sets him on a collision course with his wife, unleashing a torrent of desire, betrayal and shocking revelations.

2.15GB | 1h 41mn | 790×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/7B2F38A592F133B/Dodsworth.1936.576p.Bluray.AAC.2.0.x264-SaL.mkv

Language:English
Subtitles:English SDH

The post William Wyler – Dodsworth (1936) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Plot: Young Raymond Floriot, following in his father Louis Floriot’s professional footsteps, he now France’s attorney general, has just passed the bar exam. Raymond’s first case, appointed to him by the courts, is a murder case. His pitiful and poor Jane Doe client, who refers to herself only as Madame X, admits to killing the scoundrel of a man named Laroque, but won’t disclose why or in turn defend herself in court. Raymond knows nothing of her past, which includes once being a woman of class, married to man of prestige. But that marriage ended because he treated her without love, which resulted in her leaving him for another man, who in turn passed away shortly thereafter. Her first marriage produced a son, who her husband refused to let her see. Her son never knew she was alive, he being told by his father that she died. The consequence of his action left Madame X on a downward path where she never found love. Now, in turn, she hopes her silence will protect the one that she really loves, he who doesn’t even know about her selfless sacrifice.

1.31GB | 1h 34mn | 640×480 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/4091A5D4A3DAAF1/Madame_X_(1929)_DVDRip_BBM.avi

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Lionel Barrymore – Madame X (1929) first appeared on Cinema of the World.