Man With A Movie List

Director: Jean Renoir Year: 1932 Run-time: 1 hr 24 min Source: Criterion Channel Streaming Notable For : This is the first film on the list from the great French director Jean Renoir, son of the impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir.  Boudu  is adapted from a play - the titular tramp is a character is a tramp who, after being saved by a bourgeois bookseller, then proceeds to take advantage of his benefactor's kindness by upending all social mores and lustily pursuing his wife and maid (who he was having an affair with).  Verdict:  As a tramp character, Boudu is inevitably compared to Chaplin's iconic character.  However, unlike the purity and innocence that made Chaplin's Tramp so endearing, Boudu as portrayed by Michel Simon is more like Heath Ledger's Joker, taking delight at watching other people squirm at him.  And there are multiple cringeworthy moments, both comically cringeworthy as he gets shoe grease all over the wife's bedroom, and pr...

Director: Marc Allégret Year: 1932 Run-time: 2 hr 7 min Source: Criterion Channel Streaming Notable For : This is the sequel to Marius , and the second in a beloved trilogy of French films based on contemporary plays by Marcel Pagnol.  It picks up immediately after the first film left off, changing the focus from the young man full of wanderlust to the woman that he carelessly leaves behind.  All of the great actors return from the first film. The mood weaves behind wry, character-based humor to extremely poignant drama.  There's a remarkable and novel compassion for women in this film, and the relevance to feminism may be one factor in the film's being remade twice. Verdict : I liked Marius , but Fanny  is revelatory in how it puts the first film into a greater dramatic context.  A contemporary moviegoer might well sympathize with Marius' desire to see more than his confining hometown, but the tremendous hardship that he imposes on Fanny, who is lef...

Director: Ernst Lubitsch Year: 1932 Run-time: 1 hr 23 min Source: Flixfling Notable For : We're in the middle of a sudden influx of great American comedies, and Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise  is one of the best.  It's not quite screwball comedy, but it has a wonderful energy (like Love Me Tonight ), and like the best escapist entertainment, there's never any real sense of danger or inescapable drama to the proceedings.  Lubitsch is a director I was looking forward to - his films have an ineffable energy (the famous "Lubitsch touch") - somehow he plays to the best of his actors' strengths, and the three leads in this film are all iconic in their own way.  You know you're in for a great treat from the very first moment. Verdict : This is one that I'd love to return to, to reveal to newcomers.  So many great scenes, little details that stand out.  The way that Herbert Marshall runs up and down stairs, barely moving his upper body as his feet s...

Director: Rouben Mamoulian Year: 1932 Run-time: 1 hr 44 min Source: DVD Notable For :  Love Me Tonight  is the first musical on the list. Set in Paris, it matches the French entertainer Maurice Chevalier, with his husky, deeply accented voice, with the American soprano Jeanette MacDonald.  The vocal styles are very different, but the chemistry between the leads is genuine.  It's first and foremost a light comedy, with the music (all classic Rodgers and Hart tunes) all serving the comedy, with many of the lyrics replaced.  When the characters aren't singing, they're walking and acting to a background rhythm.  It's nowhere near to the bombastic musicals of the 60's, or the elaborate choreography of Busby Berkeley, but something else entirely. Verdict :  This is a classic - my wife and I were laughing most of the time.  In addition to being a great musical, it might be the first great comedy of the sound era - the jokes aren't physical like in...

Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer Year: 1932 Run-time: 1 hr 13 min Source: Criterion Channel Streaming Notable for:  Despite (or perhaps because of) sharing a director with Passion of Joan of Arc , this horror film is something of a cult classic.  At heart, it's a vampire story, which unlike Nosferatu  hews closer to the modern mythos (this came out after Bela Lugosi's Dracula , so it's not really a forerunner in that regard).  But the main vampire herself only appears in a couple brief shots, and the film is really more a series of very unsettling and effective vignettes that star our rather clueless male protagonist.  The long, exquisite close-ups of Dreyer's most famous masterpiece are not here, but we do get his propensity for excellent set design. Verdict : This is the first horror film in the series where I really felt something - no jump scares here, but there are some genuine slow-building horrors, such as a bitten woman slowly turning towards the cam...

Director: Josef von Sternberg Year: 1932 Run-time: 1 hr 20 min Source: DVD Notable for : This is the second, and not the last collaboration between von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich to appear on the last.  It's also perhaps the most iconic, since it concisely captures the strengths of both actress and director.  Like in Morocco, the "exotic" actress is paired with a rich, international setting.  But here Gary Cooper's "what you see is what you get" machismo is traded in for the more complex reservedness of the British actor Clive Brook.  There's also a diverse (i.e. Americans in make-up) and cosmopolitan supporting cast. Verdict : Dietrich is in top form here as the seductress with many layers, a master of expressionism.  Von Sternberg knows how to capture all of her little revealing moments, and there's a lot of brilliant shots, most famously the moment where she hides from the leading man with a cigarette, her face lit in pure black and whi...