Man With A Movie List

Director: Hiroshi Shimizu Year: 1933 Run-time: 1 hr 8 min Source: The Criterion Channel Notable For : This list would be entirely different had not the great bulk of Japanese films in the 20's and 30's been lost in the destruction of war.  Hiroshi Shimizu was an incredibly prolific director who made over 160 films, and was a great influence on Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi, but he's relatively unknown today. Verdict :  Japanese Girls at the Harbor  reveals the maturity of his style, with a simple, effective silent melodrama (very Borzage-esque) with few close-ups, but rather some of the most emotional long shots so far yet.  The director conveys a lot with the way that his wonderful actors position themselves in relation to each other, and how they hold their bodies.  As with Mizoguchi's work, the focus is on the women - the male characters are weak-willed, and helpless without the support of these women.  Also, I don't often say this, but the war...

Director: Fritz Lang Year: 1933 Run-time: 2 hr 4 min Source: The Criterion Channel Notable For : The wonderful period of Weimar cinema is coming to an end.  Hitler came to power at the start of 1933, and Lang's latest crime thriller was censored upon release, ostensibly for its focus on lawlessness and anarchy.  Lang would later claim that the "age of crime" promoted by the titular villain (a ghost that possesses a psychiatrist) was a secret reference to the Nazi party. Verdict:  Whether you believe in this symbolism or not, it's Lang's finest, most suspenseful film carrying the legacy of the old crime serials of Feuillade.  For the first time, the heroes and villains seem somewhat evenly matched, with the mysterious crime syndicate being opposed by a lead homicide investigator as well as a defector from the bad guys (together with his unbelievably understanding wife).  The special effects are top-notch, and the film is tightly plotted, with a dollop of a...

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: Merian C. Cooper Year: 1933 Run-time: 1 hr 44 min Source: Amazon Video Ebert's review Notable For:   King Kong was a blockbuster monster movie with a clear legacy to the modern day.  Perhaps it did more than any other movie to permanently tie together the spectacular big-budget film with the latest special effects.  There's a reasonable case to be made that it, more than any other film of the sound era, epitomizes where American movies were going. Verdict :  The effects, the fight scenes on the island between Kong and the dinosaurs - they're all really cool, and they made this movie worth watching.  But the film is problematic down to its supposed thematic core.  The racism is the first thing that audiences started to notice, most obviously with the portrayal of the islanders, but more implicitly with Kong himself.  Then there's the weird sexism of its supposed theme, the idea that Kong (and in a parallel sense the leading man Jack) ...

Director: Max Ophüls Year: 1933 Run-time: 1 hr 36 min Source: Youtube Notable for:  Ophüls is a German director who is better known for the films he made in the 50's, near the end of his career.  Liebelei , which translates to "fling", is about a casual romance that quickly develops into something serious before ending in tragedy.  It's set in the Imperial Era of Germany, but seems to me to speak more presciently about the Weimar era that it was filmed in.  The loosening of social mores that frequently characterizes that period feels true to the natural way that romance blossoms in Liebelei  - as such, the story feels relatable from a modern perspective, even though we live in a very different time still. Verdict : This is an obscure classic that I wouldn't mind revisiting in the future.  It took some searching on Youtube to find a good version with English subtitles, but I'm very glad I did - this is a bit of a tearjerker, but the depiction of ...

Director: Sun Yu Year: 1933 Run-time: 1 hr 46 min Source: Youtube Review of Film as well as Bios of its Director and Stars Notable For:   Little Toys  is Sun Yu's second film of 1933, with much of the same cast.  Li Lili is wonderful in this film, but the lead is played by Ruan Lingyu, a woman with a much more tragic history, as recalled in the terrific essay linked above.  Here she plays a toy-maker who is competing against foreign factory-made imports.  She makes clever and imaginative games for children while the competition is selling guns and soldiers.  With a very real war with Japan heating up, the distinction is prescient and fascinating to explore in this film. Verdict : Little Toys  is a classic film that I feel has a lot more nuance than Daybreak  - unfortunately, the only version I could find is a poorly translated (and synced) version on Youtube with almost no music (the film is silent).  This makes it a pretty difficult...

Director: Dave Fleischer Year: 1933 Run-time: 7 min Source: Youtube Notable For : This is not the Disney feature film that would premiere four years later - this is a Betty Boop cartoon from Max Fleischer's studios.   (This is the second of the three animated shorts from 1933 to anticipate a Disney classic.) Betty Boop was in her prime here, two years after her debut and one before the Hays Code would force her animators to tone down her sexuality.  Betty's not really the main draw here - it's the nonstop craziness happening all around her.  This is probably the most dynamic and energetic cartoon I've ever seen - certainly it does more in seven minutes than most modern cartoons with a full feature length.  All this and a Cab Calloway song to boot. Verdict : This is my favorite of the three animated shorts in a row, and being on Youtube in HD, there's no reason not to watch it right now.  After the game Cuphead came out last year, there was a lot of t...