Man With A Movie List

Director: Yuan Muzhi Year: 1937 Run-time: 1 hr 31 min - A couple sources claim this film was inspired by Frank Borzage.  I've always thought that the left wing Chinese melodramas that have appeared so far bear close kinship to Borzage, even though they weren't explicitly romantic in the same way, so it didn't surprise me to see a film that may have been more directly inspired.  Thus it surprised me that Street Angel  is quite often very funny in a physical way, although it does veer towards tragedy at the end (in a way that felt a little forced to me). It even has musical scenes with our list's appearance of a bouncing ball (that goes right-to-left to match the Chinese subtitles).  It's a strange film to be sure, and very different from its Chinese forerunners.  But I do really like the characters, and the odd frenetic pacing makes for something exciting and different.

Director: Sadao Yamanaka Year: 1937 Run-time: 1 hr 25 min - This is actually the third of Yamanaka's films to appear on the list, but the only one that seems to have gotten any physical release outside of Japan.  That's really unfortunate - this film has an incredibly forward-thinking style, and I would really love to see the others.  Despite being set in feudal Japan, with samurais, this has almost nothing in common with Kurosawa.  Instead it's a story of class-based oppression, that left me drawing comparisons to Altman in the way that it weaves between characters.  The tragedy really hits hard by the end.  So glad the list is here to introduce me to films like this that I would otherwise never encounter.

Director: Fernardo de Fuentes Year: 1934 Run-time: 1 hr 25 min - This is the first Mexican film on this list.  I watched an interview with Guillermo del Toro in which he remarked that until a landmark film in late 20th century (whose name I have unfortunately forgotten), Mexican films were mostly "folkloric" in nature.  I don't think that's fair to the quality of a film like El Compadre Mendoza , but it is accurate in the sense that the film is proud to display Mexican song and culture, and I can't fault it for that.  There's a lot of wonderful song, as well as distinctive costumes that come with the Revolutionary setting.  The story builds to something really interesting by the end, even though it's not unpredictable and the acting leaves something desired.  Ultimately, it's an important reminder that the "golden age" of film is not contained to the three pillars of Japan, France, and the US.  These early efforts outside these countries ...

Director: Jean Renoir Year: 1937 Run-time: 1 hr 54 min - I've always been a little skeptical of Renoir's reputation, despite the generally high quality of his films, but this is the first one where I think I understand. In the late 1930's, Renoir was likely the only director that could pull a feat like this off.  He puts so many coherent and moving messages into a film that's still fun and accessible.  To put it succintly, La Grande Illusion  is  The Great Escape , with three times the heart and no less excitement. - I could say much more, but for a list watcher the excitement here is seeing three big names combine.  The excellent Jean Gabin from the last film isn't really the star performer here, since he gets to share the screen with Pierre Fresnay from the Marseille trilogy, and, strangely, Erich von Stroheim, the director of Foolish Wives , who just steals the show whenever he appears.  Dang, this film is really good.

Director: Julien Duvivier Year: 1937 Run-time: 1 hr 34 min - It still blows me away how much versatility there was in French cinema of this period.  I like others think of the New Wave as the "peak" of French cinema, but there was so much to admire about the earlier works.  This film is the first on the list to feature Jean Gabin (who will reappear in the very next list film).  He seems to me to strike a rare balance between masculinity and emotionalism, and this film epitomizes that.  Here we have a dangerous criminal in the vein of Fantomas, to hear the police talk of him, who gives himself over completely to love.  It's a surprisingly sweet story, with a great setting and some interesting colonial subtext.

Director: Leo McCarey Year: 1937 Run-time: 90 min - McCarey, also the director of Duck Soup , helms this evolution of the screwball comedy that, along with the entire genre of romantic comedy, originated with It Happened One Night .  While that film maintains a lot of sweetness and heart along with its wit, The Awful Truth  doesn't really strive for any real chemistry between its leads.  It doesn't really have to, because it's very funny and it has Cary Grant.  Much of the behavior of these leads scans as cruel to a modern eye (or alternatively freeing on the woman's part) but it all somehow works with the frenetic pacing.  I liked it quite a bit.

Director: Yasujiro Ozu Year: 1936 Run-time: 1 hr 22 min - And now Ozu enters the scene, with a style already fully developed.  Clare and I recently watched his 1950's color film Good Morning  since it appeared in Criterion Channel's Saturday Matinee series, and we got to see his (very) funny side which doesn't often show up in his most recognized films.  The Only Son  is definitely on the other side of that spectrum, but it's still an excellent film, and it's one that really hit home for me, coming coincidentally near Mother's Day. - Here we have the first time that math education features on the list, with a classroom full of students copying down one of Euclid's proofs, presumably.  Being a "night-school teacher" is here the symbol for the protagonist's thwarted dreams in the big city, and man, can I relate (although I have it much better than he does, I think).

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi Year: 1936 Run-time: 1 hr 11 min - Here we see many of the same themes from Mizoguchi's earlier film The Water Magician , but this one feels much better paced, and shows how Mizoguchi (and Ozu, who's up next) quickly adapted to the standards of the talkie.  We have a brave, self-sacrificing woman being let down by the fecklessness of the men they rely on.  The ending, with the woman out on the street fending for herself, could be seen as tragic or freeing, depending on your mood.  It's a great film, full of the tension that comes with rapid modernization in the cities (also the theme of the next film).  This isn't yet peak Mizoguchi, but it's getting close.

Director: Jean Renoir Year: 1936 Run-time: 40 min - You can tell that French film is thriving in 1936 by the fact that a film by Renoir is the worst of the last three on the list.  (Renoir has two 1936 films on the list - and other classics from this year that didn't make the cut.)  That's only really due to its brevity, and the fact that it wasn't properly finished due to extenuating circumstances.  What exists is still pretty excellent - putting the elegant but slight story aside, it's Renoir's ode to the natural world, which never quite came through before due to the bluntness of 1930's cinematography.  In fact, it's the only Renoir film I've seen in which he channels something of his father's eye for natural beauty (a fact he alludes to himself in a later commentary he gave on the film).

Director: Marcel Pagnol Year: 1936 Run-time: 2 hr 48 min - I was greatly looking forward to the end of the fantastic Marseille trilogy, and it did not disappoint.  The last two films were based on plays by Pagnol - this is the only film that he directed himself.  Its characters, caught between societal expectations and their own wayward desires, are the most richly realized humans I've encountered on this list.  After being so pragmatic for so long, the finale finally gets to let Fanny and Marius have the relationship they deserve, without hurting anyone else.  The dialogue isn't quite as snappy this time around (perhaps because it's not based on a pre-existing play), but the film still got me teared up.  My main complaint is that the title character, so excellent in the last two films, doesn't get as much to do in this way, and that's a shame because the mononymic Raimu is such an outstanding actor.

Director: Sacha Guitry Year: 1936 Run-time: 1 hr 21 min - France seemed to be the nexus of the film world if 1936 is any indication - the next three films are all excellent and groundbreaking in different ways. - Story Of A Cheat  is a bold and impish classic about a man who always finds that being on the wrong side of good just seems to keep paying off.  It's refreshingly open about the artifice of cinema, takings its time to introduce its cast and crew before the story begins.  This is a one-man show unlike any other so far, with Guitry starring in, directing, writing, and narrating his own tale.  If this film is any indication, Guitry is woefully underrated.  I sense this might be the only of his films on the list, and that's unfortunate, because this ranks up there with my favorites.

Director: Charlie Chaplin Year: 1936 Run-time: 1 hr 27 min - Charlie Chaplin took a five-year break between City Lights  and this film, but in that time kept his focus on the American dream.  Modern Times  feels like the film on this list that has more than any other tackled the Great Depression as a subject, and it's altogether strange but fitting that it would be Chaplin, the fading icon of the 20's, who would feel so contemporary.  This is remembered today for the wonderful opening scene set at an insane Metropolis -style factory, but the whole film is terrific, and open to all sorts of fascinating analysis.

Director: George Stevens Year: 1936 Run-time: 1 hr 43 min - Swing Time  is the second Astaire-Rogers musical on this list, and I agree with the general consensus that it has better dancing than Top Hat  but is a worse story and comedy overall.  The plot makes no sense, more or less, and as in the last film I spend most of the time in awe of the characters' clothes. - Like the last film, this is such a great quarantine feel-good film that I hate to report that it gets thrown off the rails by a blackface minstrel scene.  It's entirely believable that Astaire was really trying to honor his black tap dance mentor with this one, but nevertheless it's really hard to watch (and is thankfully only the second time that blackface has appeared on the list - after Moulin Rouge - it was extremely prevalent in the era. - It's bizarre to imagine that this is the sixth film starring Astaire and Rogers and even the second of 1936, so it's easy to imagine that audience...

Director: George Cukor Year: 1935 Run-time: 2 hr 9 min - David Copperfield is not a Dickens novel I'm especially familiar with, but this film does an excellent job giving me the full scope of the book in a breezy two hours.  The snappy pace at which it covers a long period of a man's life is pretty enviable, and though some emotional story beats feel cheapened because of it (especially the death of Copperfield's first wife), it still succeeds as a movie by keeping a high melodramatic pitch throughout.  This is a story that's largely about empathy, and this film has no trouble helping us feel for its characters, even though the situations are not as dire as some of Dickens' other novels, such as Oliver Twist.