Lost Horizon

Frank Capra, 1937 (8.2*)
Exotic, unspoiled locales around the world have always appealed to the more daring individuals of more populous regions, such as Europe; just look at the nationalities of all the famous explorers. In 1923, Frenchwoman Alexandra David-Neel was the first known westerner to enter the forbidden Tibetan city of Lhasa. She then published her accounts in her 1932 book Magic and Mystery in Tibet.

Shortly thereafter, novelist James Hilton wrote a short novel about a flight of western travelers that crashes in the Himilayas, and the survivors are rescued and taken to a fictitious hidden city in a mountain valley, called Shangri-La. Basically, this is a story of an exotic utopia untouched by civilization and the ills of modern society. The westerners are treated like welcome guests, and their’s is an adventure of a lifetime.

Frank Capra went out of character for this film of adventure and fantasy, starring Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt, and Edward Everett Horton as the crash survivors, and Sam Jaffe miscast as a Tibetan spiritual master. It's contains none of Capra's homespun humor, nor is it a glimpse at classic Americana. A newer partially restored version has the entire soundtrack, but some scenes are filled in with only still images. It looks like the Hays Commission deleted scenes where people were simply talking, but within their bedrooms - innocent enough unless you're under the cloud of censorship.

The story may also be taken as a metaphor of a spiritual quest to find one’s center within, away from the distractions of the material world. Often we get a peek at this realm, and find it difficult to return due to life circumstances. Like the beautiful Australian film Walkabout, this utopia may exist in one’s past, and you can either remember it nostalgically, or make the physical effort to return to the same location where you once found bliss.

Since the late 1800’s, there have been many accounts by westerners of this little-explored region of earth and it’s philosophies, until during the 60’s it blossumed into an international cultural movement, generally called The New Age. The allure of the Himilayas and it’s mountain people have had a profound effect on western civilization, whether intentional or not. This story was an early entry that added fuel to that fire.

Nominated for 7 Academy Awards for 1937, including picture (a year when there were 10 nominations, the winner being The Life of Emile Zola), it won two, for film editing and art direction.

Read more...

The Awful Truth

Leo McCarey, 1937, bw (8.8*)
This is one of those 30’s screwball comedies that you can watch over and over. Cary Grant plays a man who may or may not have been philandering, as he’s getting a tan in a salon in the film’s beginning because he’s supposed to have been in Florida. When he gets home, wife Irene Dunne is gone, and the two start divorce proceedings.

They also start trying to make each other jealous by trying to get engaged as fast as possible. Of course, they then play little games trying to saboutage each other’s attempts at a new relationship. All this is made a classic with some very funny dialogue and performances to match. There’s a great sequence in which Dunne has someone play her husband sister for his new lady’s family.

Asta the dog, from the Thin Man series, has one of his 14 film roles here as Mr. Smith, the family pet for whom Grant demands visitation rights in the divorce proceedings - but is he missing the dog or Dunne?

Awful Truth is a film with genuine laughs, not one of those films that is pleasant throughout and a funny concept, but seemingly lacks any laugh-out-loud dialogue. McCarey had a hand in some of the best comedies of his era, notably the Marx Brothers’ best film, Duck Soup (1933)

McCarey actually won the Oscar® for best director for this film, which he later duplicated with Going My Way in 1945, for which he also won for best screenplay. This could have easily won for screenplay as well.

Ranked #515 in our update of the top ranked 1000 films of all-time
Top Ranked 1000 Films on the Net

Ranked #84 comedy on our list of comedies in the top 100
Top Ranked Comedy Films of All Time

Read more...

The Adventures of Robin Hood

Michael Curtiz, 1938 (8.2*)
This version of Robin Hood remains one of the most lively and colorful; it playfully captures the feel of the original legendary myth – after all, it’s a band of merry men cavorting in the woods in tights! These are the people who invented the phrase ‘derring-do’, that pretty well sums it up.

It’s a film of fluff and derring-do, all with gusto and tongue-in-cheek, starring the energetic Errol Flynn as the nobleman turned highway robber with his band of thieves. Olivia de Havilland provides the romance, as a damsel trapped inside the castle with those in control, but whose heart is stirred by this roqueish rascal, who, of course, risks capture just to face Olivia and make with some serious flirtation from a distance, which is all it takes for this bored lady.

Of course, there has to be a reason for all this, so the story is that while King Richard is away fighting in one of the Crusades, the Norman lords, led by Basil Rathbone, are abusing the Saxon masses, so Robin of Loxley stands up for the people by basically becoming a small-time warlord with a tiny guerrilla army hiding in the forests, so he's a medieval Che Guevara fighting the politicians in cahoots with the wealthy capitalists who together are stealing land from the people with inpunity.

For it’s time, this was some of the best technicolor ever put on film, it’s a beautiful palette to behold, one of my favorites (I’m a painter and a photographer, with a degree in Painting and Drawing). They truly 'don't make em like this anymore', though Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy (2003-07) is an attempt to recapture the unbridled, mindless joy of cinematic mayhem in the name of good.

Read more...

Alexander Nevsky

Sergei Eisenstein, Russia, 1938, bw (8.8*)
Memorial Day War-a-thon Film #22
In 1242, Russia in being invaded by two sides - the Mongols from Asia to the east; and by the Germans Teutonic Knights of the Holy Roman Empire from the west, the European side. Novgorod is the last free, unconquered city in Russia. The population, calls on the Prince Aleksander Nevsky for help in organizing the defense - he had defeated Swedish invaders in a previous battle.

His plan is to lure the Germans onto a giant frozen lake, which is one of the great battles in cinema, shot in beautiful black and white. [see photo below] This movie was made on the eve of a threatened invasion of Russia by Germany, just before the outbreak of WW2. The idea was to obviously make pro-Russian, nationalistic propaganda. Nonetheless, it is an overwhelming, marvelous, stunning powerful masterpiece.

If you can forget the ideology, which is that Russia will always use her winter to her advantage in repelling invaders, and watch it as art, you will witness perhaps Eisenstein's greatest work, and a black-and-white classic.

Read more...

M.

Fritz Lang, 1931, bw (9.0*)
No. 11 on our compendium of all polls, No. 55 on the IMDB 250
M. is the classic Fritz Lang suspense thriller in which someone is murdering children in a German city, the police can't catch him, and the manhunt is so intense that it's interrupting all the normal crime, so even criminals enlist in the killer's search.

Peter Lorre is the psychotic serial killer, in a chilling performance, one that put him on the map as a creepy actor that can sell a sociopathic character. Lang did a great job capturing both the uneasiness and the complexity of the characters, as well as creating the atmospheric mood with lighting and cinematography, characteristic trademarks of German expressionism. Lang is more interested in the effects of the killings on the town than the actual crimes.

Like Murnau (Sunrise, The Last Laugh, Nosferatu) and Pabst (Pandora's Box), Lang is a must-see for fans of early cinema, particularly German, and before they came to Hollywood, which makes M. essential viewing as well. His 1926 masterpiece, Metropolis, is the most famous and significant early science fiction film, the same can be said for this film in the genre of crime.

Read more...

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

David Hand, supervising director (5 others credited as "sequence directors"), 1937 (8.7*)
Notably, the first full-length animated film, from Walt Disney Studio, features songs for kids like "Hi Ho, Hi Ho", without which the film would seem even longer than it does. Snow White is pursued by a queen jealous of her beauty, and she flees into the forest and discovers the house of the dwarfs while they are away at work and invites herself in. Of course, the dwarfs fall in love with her and want her to stay. She is later given a poisoned apple by the queen and falls into a sleep that only a prince can awaken with a kiss.

The best artwork was in the static backgrounds, in the style of the earlier Silly Symphonies cartoons from Disney Studios, probably the height of their talents (check out the Oscar®-winning Water Babies sometime to see what I mean), which provided an artistic setting for the simply animated characters to exist in. Here, the two styles blended together well, and became the Disney standard for a few decades, later copied by The Triplets of Belleville (2003), hand-drawn by Sylvain Chomet as a tribute to the early Disney style. animation

As innovative as this was, when it came out it only received special awards from the New York Film Critics, the Venice Film Festival, and an honorary Oscar®.

You know, as a kid, I always wondered about this film - I mean, a single babe of a young woman is suddenly living with seven adult dwarfs - it kinda makes you wonder.

Read more...

All Quiet on the Western Front

Lewis Milestone, 1930, bw (8.5*)
Best Picture (AA)
Winner of the Oscar® for best picture of 1930, this classic anti-war film is based on the novel by Frenchman Erich Maria Remarque. Ironically, in shooting this film, which is about young, idealistic German soldiers, director Lewis Milestone, also an Oscar®-winner for best director, chose to have the Germans speak English, yet the French are speaking French! go figure..

The lead role went to young Lew Ayres, just 19 at the time and with no major film credits. At times he overacts a bit, as do most actors of that era, used to making exaggerated facial expressions, a holdover from the silent film era. If you can get past the dated look of this film, and the resulting stilted dialogue, then it's actually a pretty good war epic.

There are many scenes of WW1 action that are probably close to reality. We've become so accustomed to Hollywood war films that a realistically shot war film will likely look more tame to us than celluloid war. Unfortunately the pace of the war sections are broken up by visits home, visits to wounded comrades, too much marching, and much searching for food. In short, this 150 minute film could have been under two hours with a drastic improvement in pace for the viewer.

I wouldn't call this one of the great war films by modern standards, but it's an important war film in the history of cinema, and pretty good for its era, coming soon after the first best picture winner, Wings, also about WW1, but a silent epic. This should make an interesting double feature with Jean Pierre Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement, a 2002 French film about WW1, one of the most beautiful color films ever shot, about a woman's search for her fiance, missing from the front lines. We see his story in flashbacks until its conclusion.

Ranked #212 all-time on the IMDB top 250

Read more...

The Informer

John Ford, 1935, bw (8.8*)
Possibly the best John Ford film, this one is not a western but a political film in which Victor McLaglen plays an alcoholic member of the IRA in the 20's, in an Oscar®-winning performance for best actor (the best of his long career), who can't decide if he's fighting a revolution or looking for his next drink. Intelligence personnel know his weakness for alcohol and he becomes a target of those seeking information for the British side.

Winner of four Oscars, for best actor, director, music score, and screenplay - it lost best picture to Mutiny on the Bounty. This is still a riveting, politically-charged story 75 years later.

Read more...

Swing Time

George Stevens, 1936, bw (8.2*)
One of the best of the nearly interchangeable Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals. This one stands out due to some very innovative musical numbers, especially Astaire's tribute in blackface to legendary tap dancer William "Bojangles" Robinson, in which dramatic lighting (or special effects) has Astaire dancing with 3 giant shadows of himself.

In this thin plot, he's trying to get enough money together to marry his fiance, but of course, Ginger Rogers intervenes as usual. Other than The Gay Divorcee, the plots of these musicals are forgettable. Each runs something like this: a musical performer, usually Astaire, who is usually betrothed to some high society girl he actually despises, meets Ginger Rogers, who is either a dance instructor or an out of work chorus girl or singer; right way they dance like seasoned pros together, fall in love, and once Fred is out of his current relationship, he and Ginger happily dance off together into the closing credits. [Astaire later admitted that his favorite dance partner was actually Rita Hayworth.]

The Gay Divorcee had the most original and comedic plot, as Rogers hired a professional corespondent (named Tonetti) to get out of a divorce, meets Astaire, who becomes the new and real reason for a divorce. What may set any of the others apart is the quality and originality of the dance numbers, which is the achievement of Swing Time, not to mention that this one has master director George Stevens (Shane, Giant, Suddenly Last Summer) at the helm.

Read more...

Jezebel

William Wyler, 1938, bw (8.1*)
Wyler has a track record likely to remain unbroken, as 13 of his films were nominated for best picture Oscars®, including five years in a row, and he successfully directed actors to 12 individual Oscars®, including Bette Davis for this film. When she was asked to play Scarlett in Gone With the Wind a year later (she was the overwhelming choice of fans and the producers), she replied, "No thanks - I've already played Scarlett once".

This story is also a little soapy like Wind, but at least we're only subjected to less than two hours rather than nearly four. Here she also plays a less than saintly southern belle, who also scandalized the town, in this case by appearing at a ball in a red dress, which unfortunately loses some impact by being in black-and-white.

I did like the ending of this film more than Wind, which I found to be dreary and hopeless. As many know, the south really never recovered from the Civil War and remains in pretty much a depression nowdays. Georgia leads the nation in recent bank failures and is in the top 3-5 for unemployment, so the end of Wind made me think that Scarlett likely did not have any life to envy after returning to Tara.

Nevertheless, for fans of perhaps the greatest actress in film history, a double-Oscar® winner, and one of the greatest directors, this is a must-see.

Read more...

Triumph of the Will

[Our 600th film reviewed]Leni Reifenstahl, Germany, 1935 (8.2*)
This is a hard film to recommend, but an important documentary for both historical events covered as well as pioneering film techniques. Leni is a former actress turned filmmaker as Hitler's chosen film propagandist. In her first major film here, she documents the rise of the Nazi party in Germany.

She later apologized for the film, but it's so eerie to watch today that it's effective as anti-propaganda as well, likely scaring far more people than it inspires. She went on to direct the documentary of the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin, in Olympia, also a classic of film technique. She buried a camera in the earth to get a shot of the starting line of the 100 meter dash. In Triumph, she uses striking geometric compositions to amplify the impact of crowd scenes, into what could rightfully be called, in Clockwork Orange vernacular, real 'horrorshow', something so terrifying that you have to watch it.

Down a point or so in the rating for being blatant propaganda, but it's still cinematic art, and influenced many other directors.

Note: posted on Pearl Harbor day, as this film shows the seeds of war being sown in the 30's

Read more...

The Gay Divorcee

Mark Sandrich, 1934, bw (8.5*)

My favorite of the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musical comedies, because this one is by far the funniest. The absurb plot involved bored Mimi, looking to get out of her marriage, a hired co-respondent Italian named Tonetti ("If you like-a spaghetti, stick-a with Tonetti!", is his professional motto), hilariously played by Eric Rhodes, who was in several with the dance team for comic relief - he was an expert, scene-stealing comic actor. Thanks to a very funny password phrase mix-up about fate, when she goes to meet him at a resort, she mistakes Astaire for the hired beau.

There's mucho dancing, romancing, and running around before the husband is due to arrive, including a monster 15-minute version of "The Continental", the song from this that won the Oscar® that year, beating out Cole Porter's "Night and Day", also from this film. Overall, 5 Oscar® nominations, this is a don't miss for fans of the screwball comedy and the musical era in Hollywood.

Quote: Fate is foolish, take a chance! (Tonetti) This was one confusion of their 'passcode' (of many): Fate is the fool's word for chance.

Read more...

Goodbye, Mr. Chips

Sam Wood, 1939, bw (8.6*)
Based on the novel by James Hilton (Lost Horizon), this is perhaps the quintessential Hollywood film about a teacher, in this case a Mr. Chipping, wonderfully played by Robert Donat in a career defining role, an uptight professor at a private boys school. Over time, he opens up and gains the affection of literally thousands of students in a heartwarming story of transformation. On a vacation (and around age 50), he meets the enchanting Greer Garson (half his age, in the supporting role that made her a star) hiding out from a storm, and she changes his life, as well as giving him his nickname, Mr. Chips.

Perhaps the one flaw in the film is that we get a lot of detail in the beginning and end of his teaching career, but the central portion that forms the core of his adult life is shown as a montage of calendars and images of time passing in just a minute or so. I felt cheated of the stories that would have made the students revere and honor him. We're visually led to believe that simply time moving by is responsible.

Mr. Chips was nominated for 7 Oscars®, including picture, director, screenplay, actress, actor - and many today feel that it was a better picture than winner Gone With the Wind. Robert Donat did receive a well-deserved best actor award, upsetting the more popular Clark Gable. Don't bother with the musical remake starring Peter O'Toole; it's one of those that lends argument to prohibiting remakes at all.

I suppose were I to rank the top films of 1939: (1) Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (2) Goodbye, Mr. Chips (3) The Rains Came (4) The Wizard of Oz (5) The Women
The Rains Came actually won the special effects Oscar® over favorites Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind, for it's incredible depiction of an earthquake, dam collapse, and flood in India in 1916 - it's an underrated and under-viewed classic, featuring perhaps Myrna Loy's finest dramatic performance.

Read more...

The Women

George Cukor, 1939, bw (8.0*)
This pleasant bit of fluff is one of the first, most archetypal of the all-talk films, where the characters don’t do a lot actually, they just talk about their lives, a style later copied by The Big Chill, Diner, Metropolitan, and My Dinner With Andre. This group of women congregate at a dude ranch out west, and discuss their philandering husbands, new romances, and other 'women's issues'.

What made this film was the expert direction of master George Cukor (My Fair Lady) and the cast: Rosalind Russell, Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Paulette Goddard, Bary Boland, Joan Fontaine, Marjorie Main, Hedda Hopper (as a columnist, naturally; she always plays herself). The dialogue and script are witty, never dull, and though hard to classify as comedy or drama, or to give it’s flimsy stories much weight, it’s still a sparkling film to watch today, and likely the first to feature an all-female cast - no doubt it's a film of a stage play, it has that look as a film.

In a year considered one of Hollywood’s best, this film stood above the more celebrated, along with Goodbye, Mr. Chips and The Rains Came.

Read more...

Olympia

Leni Riefenstahl, Germany, 1938, bw (9.2*)

This historic documentary shot by the Nazi propaganda machine's chief filmmaker still looks modern today. The idea originally was to show the glory of Germany and document their many Olympic victories in a fine film by their top director, but the politics were taken out when black American Jesse Owens and others stole the thunder, leaving the Germans with little more than this filmed record.

Riefenstahl pioneered a number of techniques that will look more commonplace today. One that stands out here is burying a camera at the starting line of the 100-yard dash to capture a ground-eye view of that race's tension just before the gun. She always manages to interest the eye even when the action isn't so riveting, and is a master of b&w composition and lighting.

Denounced by many for being the film voice for the Nazis, Riefenstahl later apologized for making Triumph of the Will (1935) in particular, about the rise of Hitler and the party, and attempted a normal film career afterwards, but never again approached the artistic achievement of these two documentaries.

Read more...

The Edge of the World

Michael Powell, 1937, bw (8.0*)
Filmed on one of Scotland's Shetland Islands, in a location so remote that the Roman Empire named one of the these islands the Latin for "edge of the world". This is a stark, beautifully shot black and white film whose style mirrors the harsh, simple, ascetic lifestyle of the people who inhabit the westernmost islands of the British Isles, beyond whose open sea lies "only America". Life is becoming increasingly harsh and unliveable for the fisherman of the island, due to overfishing from the bigger commercial fleets, and some nearby islands have had to be evacuated. The only current means of livelihood are wool and peat and there is little future for the island's youth, who are deserting for the towns and cities of the big islands.

Powell is perhaps less polished without his famous screenwriting partner Emeric Pressburger, (see The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life and Death, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp) but this remains a very interesting early Powell effort. In fact, one might say the stark island landscapes only broken by people foreshadowed Antonioni's L'avventura over 20 years later. The dvd features a documentary by Powell shot when cast and crew revisited the island of Foula, location of the film's shooting, and revisited original inhabitants who were also in the film 25 years previously.

Read more...

The Rains Came

Clarence Brown, 1939, bw (8.2*)
Very good early film about India, with some very expensive special effects for the time, which won an Oscar over Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind for those; they are of King Kong quality. Tyrone Power is an Indian doctor, trained in England naturally, doing his best to maintain dignity and help the poor citizens of Ranchipur. Myrna Loy is Lady Esketh, a woman of the world with too much time given her boring husband's negligence, so she sets her sights on the Indian doctor. H.B Warner and Maria Ouspenskaya play the local rulers, and Maria really shines here in another unforgettable performance. She seems to have been in nearly every film in those days; she was also in 39's Intermezzo.

The story really heats up during an earthquake sequence that leads a dam to collapse, then we see the special effects at work as thousands flee amid walls of water. This changes the lives of all involved, and Loy goes from her comedic sarcasm to a woman with a serious purpose in life, in perhaps her finest dramatic performance. There are other subplots of romance here but they take a backseat to the major disaster unfolding. This is a surprisingly good drama considering it gets lost among the other 1939 films, but perhaps after Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, it's up there with the other dramas of that year to me.

Read more...

The Wizard of Oz

Victor Fleming, 1939 (8.4*)
The GOOD news: the remastered colors will blow you away, all fans should see this new dvd version. Toto and the creepy flying monkeys were terrific, having a seemingly gay lion (Bert Lahr's only memorable role) was a stroke of comic genius, Margaret Hamilton was the perfect evil witch, Frank Morgan the perfect wizard, and I hope everyone got the reference to poppies putting them to sleep and snow waking them back up.

Otherwise, everyone's favorite children's fantasy just could be the most overrated film of all time, #18 on our Top Ranked survey (I'd put it about 200th). This actually followed the classic animated Snow White by two years, which makes me wish that Disney had at least had a hand in this. Can you imagine this film if they made it today, with the technology used for Lord of the Rings? My problems began in my own childhood, thinking this was "one giant-sized kid", even bigger than the witch - one would think they had good enough child actors to have cast this movie appropriately. Judy Garland looked like she was in her 20's (though just 17), but this was supposed to be a little girl, maybe ten years old. It always seemed to me that "Over the Rainbow" was just thrown into this movie, didn't fit the rest of the film's music (its certainly not a kid's song), and seems like it should have been in Meet Me in St. Louis instead (a more appropriate vehicle for Garland, imo). Buddy Ebsen was supposed to be the tin man but had a reaction to the metallic makeup and dropped out. Could't they get Donald O'Connor? (Don't get me wrong, I'm a Garland fan since I love great singers, I just prefer her in other roles: St. Louis, and Star is Born; she's miscast in this, it's a popular choice, not an artistic one)

All that aside: This is great fun for kids, with lame humor (unless you're under 10) and very slow scenes, but with the "Yellow Brick Road" refrain to seemingly link it all together and keep it moving. In fact when the film came out, Harvard's awards dubbed it "the worst film of all time". Of course, that was 1939 and they didn't have many films to choose from. For kids and fans only, you know who you are, or if you just need something entertaining!

Update: upon considering the religious implications, I upped my rating a little. Did anyone else notice that the only other American Dorothy sees on her journey has set himself up as "god" in Oz, which rhymes with "Gods" by the way? He rules by fear and intimidation ("dare you question the great Oz?"), using magic (smoke, mirrors, illusions) to convince people he's something supernatural, then sends people on tasks in his name that he hopes will get them killed so he's done with them and won't have to deliver anything material. Then when Dorothy's group succeeds, all he has to offer is homespun advice and common sense wisdom, and they have nothing more than what they already had, only self-realization. This could be nothing but a satire of religion to me (or history of religions), or at least America's version of religion; perhaps the way U.S. politicians use religion to scare and control people, and to get votes. I'm not sure of author Frank Baum's original intentions way back when he wrote this, but it sure seems that this is a clear parody of how we are controlled, even in this 'new millenium'.

[Updated: 7.29.09]

Read more...

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Frank Capra, 1939, bw (9.1*)
The perfect film for an inauguration and new era of optimism, Mr. Smith is Frank Capra’s idealistic tribute to the spirit of democracy. Jimmy Stewart is a populist Senate candidate, one who vows to bring government back to the citizens and fight for what’s right, even standing up to his own party in Congress. He is appointed to office, and his political naivity is tested by the corruption he uncovers.

Naturally he becomes hated in Washington by those in power but at the same time he’s also a hero of the people, and especially his girlfriend, played by Jean Arthur, who helps him legally in his fight. We need more films like this, and Capra was the master of this type of optimistic Americana. Sadly, Capra's Magic Town, about a town used by pollsters to predict elections, is not available on dvd, but it's another political satire as well as a great look at small town America, self-awareness, and the nature of voters and the media. Mr. Smith is #128 on our top ranked films survey.

Note: according to Robert Osborne on Turner Classic Movies, the US Congress saw an advanced showing of this film and tried to ban it by offering Columbia 30% over the cost for the movie so they could destroy it, as it attacks political corruption in the Senate. Capra talked Columbia into showing it, that this was exactly the type of corruption the film was about, politicians who answer to special interests for money and not to the welfare of the citizens. Ironically, the movie was banned after release in Nazi Germany and communist USSR, so the US Congress was trying to side with those fascist governments re censorship! Live and learn people, our 'enemies' ideas are alive and well in the minds of those easily bought out for money, the same type of fascism prevails in all those that would censor individual expression and call it 'national security' or 'treason' or some such nonsense. They forget we were founded by 'treasonous revolutionaries' who risked death for our version of liberty, seven million laws and all, regulating everything we eat, drink, think, take as medicine, see in the media, or are allowed to say at work, school, or in public. Did I miss anything? Oh yeah: all travel is controlled by 'papers' (visas, passports, etc), and enforced by armed guards at all borders, and then inside those borders as well. It's a giant prison planet - where does freedom exist nowdays?

[Updated: 7.28.09]

Read more...

Grand Illusion

aka La Grande Illusion
Jean Renoir, 1937, France, bw (8.9*)

I’ve often searched for the greatest classic French film, and I’ve often been disappointed, that is, until I saw Grand Illusion again for the first time in over 40 years. Most critics place Renoir’s Rules of the Game near the top of their lists (it’s #3 on the 1000 list, Illusion is #26, they are 1 and 10 for foreign language films), but like Roger Ebert, Rules of the Game I just don’t get, but I get Grand Illusion. This is probably the first great prisoner escape film, and along with All Quiet on the Western Front, one of the great anti-war films that preceded WWII.

This is a beautifully shot film about French prisoners during World War I being held by German officers in a tall, forbidding medieval castle. Career officers played by Erich von Stroheim, a German with a broken back now in a brace and relegated to prison warden duty, and a Frenchman played by Pierre Fresnay, are actually civil and gentlemanly toward each other, and symbolize the last of a dying breed of soldier: those born into families of career soldiers who continue the tradition. The others are common men, officers due to ability and necessity, and features Jean Gabin in his best role as a non-aristocratic everyman soldier, who, no matter how well treated they are, still plans an escape, as its their duty.

Without giving way too much, this has some eloquent statements about compassion, survival, heroism, and humanity in the midst of a brutal and senseless world war. The grand illusion, of course, is that war is not glory and bravery, but a useless waste of humankind, each one of which leaves behind a family and friends. There is one event between the two career officers that I did not understand, that didn’t seem true to their characters, and its an integral point in the plot so I can’t spoil it - that’s why this gets a 9 and not a 10. This was the first foreign language film to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar®.

Note: I think I still prefer Jean de Florette/Manon des Source as my favorite French movie, although technically it's two separate films, but its both halves of one novel and really should be watched together.

Read more...