Man With A Movie List

Director: Luis Buñuel Year: 1930 Run-time: 1 hr 3 min Source: Kanopy Notable For : This is Buñuel's second film, also a collaboration with Dali.  It's also considerably longer than Un Chien Andalou , and while it's still dream-like in the surrealist tradition, it's more thematically coherent.  Specifically, it takes aim at Catholic and bourgeois values, specifically sexual mores.  It's very deliberately provocative, especially the ending, although as with the previous film it's difficult to decipher any particular message.  However, it was enough to get it attacked by right-wing mobs and eventually even banned. Verdict : As with the last film, it's not easy to judge, since it evades any obvious analysis.  The two films are certainly enjoyable in their own way, and despite the greater length I had no trouble paying attention.  The second film lacks some of the stranger images that Un Chien Andalou conjures up, but it makes up for it by putting togeth...

Director: Josef von Sternberg Year: 1930 Run-time: 1 hr 31 min Source: DVD Wikipedia Notable for : Josef von Sternberg made a star of Marlene Dietrich earlier in 1930 with the classic film The Blue Angel (not on the list).  This is their second film together, made after Dietrich emigrated to America.  Set in French-occupied Morocco, it co-stars Gary Cooper as the devil-may-care French Legionnaire who catches Dietrich's eye - von Sternberg seems to have a penchant for anti-heros, considering Docks of New York , his first film on the list.  Morocco seems to be somewhat divisive among cineastes, who can't decide whether von Sternberg is breaking gender norms here.  There's an intriguing early scene where Dietrich's character kisses a female audience member during a vaudeville performance, but ultimately she falls head over heels for Cooper's character who spurns her after some wavering.  The final scene involves Dietrich throwing it all away and following ...

Director: Lewis Milestone Year: 1930 Run-time: 2 hr 13 min Source: Amazon Video Wikipedia Notable for:   As a direct adaptation of the German author Remarque's now-classic novel, it's a much more explicit and compelling anti-war film than The Big Parade , with which it has a lot in common.  The adaptation is reasonably accurate, although many of the iconic scenes from the book have a more "Hollywood" presentation that is familiar to novel-to-film translations from then to now.  Everything feels a little bit more romantic in a way that the book very intentionally avoids.  The message and themes of the book do remain fairly intact, however.  WWI was largely pointless war with an immense cost, and to make that claim in a big budget production eleven years after the war ended is not a trivial thing. Verdict: As only the second sound film on this list, it's remarkable how modern it feels, although considering how many later war films have stolen from it, it...

Director: Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer Year: 1930 Run-time: 1 hr 13 min Source: Criterion Channel Wikipedia Notable for : Having all the hallmarks of a modern independent movie, including non-actors playing versions of themselves, and largely improvised scenes.   The film brought together five filmmakers at the beginning of their careers - most of them would later emigrate to America and pioneer the film noir genre. The film is also the perfect snapshot of Weimar Germany at its peak, showing five aimless young people with no idea of the tragedy that their country would endure before too long.  The film's naturalistic style would become hugely influential in America, and is another instance of the free exchange of ideas between America and Germany at the time.  Along with Pandora's Box and its epitome of the American "flapper", this film would embody American glorification of the working class.  (In many ways it parallels Mother Krause's Journey to H...

Director: Mikhail Kalatozov Year: 1930 Run-time: 53 min Source: Kanopy Wikipedia Notable for: It's not the first documentary on the list, but it is the first to adopt many of the conventions we would associate it.  Salt for Svanetia is a docudrama not unlike Nanook of the North , not on the list, purporting to describe the culture and history of the Svanetia region of Georgia.  Much of it is transparently staged.  The eventual aim is to applaud Soviet modernization of an industrious, but backwards and superstitious people.  The film ends as Soviet workers build a road bringing the much-needed titular resource to the region. Verdict: It is a beautiful film with an expressionist style, the drama very reminiscent of Eisenstein.  And at least at the beginning, it seems respectful of the region's customs and economy, and it has some historical value.  But ultimately, it's exploitative in a way that's much more pernicious than much of the Soviet propa...