Showing posts with label 1930's. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1930's. Show all posts

Thursday, August 4, 2016

Nick & Nora Watch: Another Thin Man (1939)



After two great movies in a row, the third installment of the Thin Man series, Another Thin Man (1939) feels like a project that just didn't gel as well as it could have.

I recently completed reading The Return of the Thin Man, which is less a book and more the lost story-treatments and scripts that Dashiell Hammett worked on during his tenure in Hollywood and some editorial/ historical notes about what was going on with Hammett in relation to the work.  Frankly, you're probably better off just watching the two movies it covers - After the Thin Man and Another Thin Man, but completionists will find the book worth checking out.

The gist of the notes about this third movie indicate that not only was Hammett sort of done with Nick and Nora before he even started work on the movie, the credited screenwriters, Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett - who had worked with Hammett on the two prior films - were also ready to call it a day.

All in all, the film does work.  Let's not call it a troubled film.  But the alchemy that caught everyone's attention in the original that semi-carried over to the sequel, is fizzling a smidge by this installment.

Saturday, July 2, 2016

Nick & Nora Watch: After the Thin Man (1936)



It's been years since I watched After the Thin Man (1936), which is kind of funny, because I have the poster for the movie hanging on the wall of my house.  I'd also gotten some of the details of the movie criss-crossed with other Thin Man films as I'd watched most of them in a blitz several years ago, and hadn't watched any of them but the first one again in a while.

I'm currently reading Return of the Thin Man, which is a fairly recent release as far as Hammett writings go.  It's not a book or short story, but the film treatment he worked on for the second and third Thin Man films, along with historical material for context.  While I remembered parts of the movie, most of what was in the treatment jived with what I could recall from the movie, so I was curious to see what was different.

Thursday, May 19, 2016

Weimar Watch: Threepenny Opera (1931)



Obviously near-post-silent German film isn't my usual deal, nor Brechtian musical comedy.  The closest I'll get to that is a fondness for Fosse's Cabaret and that I have all of the albums by The Dresden Dolls.  And, you know, Tom Waits and others have carried through the spirit of the movement through to the modern era.

I haven't seen much in the way of G.W. Pabst's directorial efforts, although I'm well aware, from film school, he's one of those names you're supposed to be able to drop.  He was a giant of German cinema in the pre-Nazi days, and brought Louise Brooks out of Hollywood and over to Weimar Germany, and I've seen Pandora's Box.  A contemporary of Fritz Lang and F.W. Murnau, going to the pictures in Germany back in the day must have been something.

Monday, February 15, 2016

Disney Watch: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)



On Nathaniel Capp's recommendation, I'm currently reading Walt Disney: Triumph of the Imagination, a Disney biography from a couple of years ago (and, spoiler: it's fantastic).  Naturally, part of reading the book is the reminder it is that I haven't seen a bunch of Disney films and cartoons in years and years.

The last time I remember seeing Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937) was during a theatrical run in summer of 1993 when I was working at The Disney Store and we were semi-required to go see the animated films so we could talk to customers about them.  Don't worry, they paid us to do so.  Terrific perk, and I would have been going, anyway.  And while it's likely I've seen it since then, it had to have been on VHS, to date the last screening I took in.

You guys can be cynical and weird about Disney's feature films, but I only feel that way about certain eras of their movies, and even then - not entirely.

But it all started, first, with a mouse.  And then with Snow White.

Saturday, January 23, 2016

Screwball Watch: The Awful Truth (1937)


It seems like this is the 3rd of 4th movie I've seen from about this era in which the theme is "rich people in New York ponder divorce, remember they like each other.  Everyone is polite.  Big Laughs."

It is funny.  It works.  Both Cary Grant and Irene Dunne are really terrific.  Irene Dunne is quite lovely and wears a wide array of architectural dreams as gowns.  It's all very light and fluffy and fun, and I will remember nothing about the movie later, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't recommend it.  Because it also has a very cute dog named "Mr. Smith".


Friday, January 8, 2016

Wonderland Watch: Alice in Wonderland (1933)



Well, this was an interesting one.  I meant to tune in for the first fifteen minutes to see what this movie was like, and then realized I'd watched the whole thing.

Saturday, January 2, 2016

Silent Watch: Tabu (1931)


I just watched the F.W. Murnau film Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931).   But the write-up will not be here.  More on that to come, I suppose.