ABCs at the Movies: The Doubles Round!

[Meryl]

[southendmd]

From IMDb:  This is quite a rousing film for a biopic, and sports one of Arliss's best performances. Made two years after Hitler's rise to power, the whole subtext of the film is anti-Semitism and the then-current events in Europe. Napoleon is the stand-in for Hitler--the man all peace-loving men must join together to wage war against to secure peace. There are scenes of violence in the Jewish ghetto--stirred up by anti-Semite Karloff. Everything Rothschild does he does to end anti-Semitism; many speeches on this theme. Rothschild's father is shown as a Shylock-type, making money with money, fooling the tax collector, but with reluctance and great bitterness, doing so only because other professions are denied him, and because the tax collector overcharges Jews. C. Aubrey Smith gives a really delightful performance as Wellington. The final scene is one of the first live-action sequences to be made in three-color Technicolor, before BECKY SHARP. The topicality gives the film an immediacy that is often lacking in period films.

[Fran]

The big winner at the Academy Awards:  Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Writing (Adaptation)!

From IMDb:

In 1996, Steven Spielberg anonymously purchased Clark Gable's Oscar to protect it from further commercial exploitation, gave it back to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, commenting that he could think of "no better sanctuary for Gable's only Oscar than the Motion Picture Academy."

[dot-matrix]

info from thethrillingdetective.com



"Blondes...Brunettes...And Their Bankrolls! He makes 'em!... Takes 'Em and Tosses 'Em Away! Wild Jimmy in a Knockout riot of Laughs!"-- slug line on original poster.

(1934, Warner Brothers)
Working titles: Always a Gent, The Heir Chaser
66 minutes
Black and white
Based on the story "The Heir Chaser" by Laird Doyle

Directed by Michael Curtiz

Starring James Cagney asJIMMY CORRIGAN
Also starring Bette Davis, Allen Jenkins, Alan Dinehart, Alice White, Arthur Hohl, Philip Reed, Hobart Cavanaugh, Mayo Methot, Renee Whitney

Jimmy Cagney plays JIMMY CORRIGAN, the scrappy, strutting operator of a missing heirs bureau out to win the heart of the beautiful Joan (Bette Davis) in 1934's Jimmy the Gent. But it ain't easy. Jimmy may know every trick in the book, but Joan's the assistant of his biggest competitor, who happens to be one smooth, suave dude. But to win her back, Jimmy's willing to do almost anything, up to and including (GASP!) becoming respectable.

By most accounts, it's a pretty good flick, with some great, zippy dialogue between Cagney's cocky bantam rooster and Bette Davis' wise-ass blonde, who thinks the runt's "the greatest chiseler since Michelangelo."

But there's more here than first meets the eye. At first glance a fluffy piece of lightweight entertainment, the flick was actually pretty gritty for its time. According to Tom Howard, in the August 2001 issue of Crime Factory, the film is "laced with bribery, corruption, double-dealing, racketeering, fraud, ratting and selling out (and) comes across even today as an extremely bitter expose of the self-seeking underbelly of human society. No heroes or heroines here. Few sympathetic characters at all. Just about everyone is out there pitching strictly and ruthlessly for number one."

There's some pretty tough and earthy dialogue, and even a scene where the cops pay off a stool pigeon with a shot of dope.

The heir hunter racket popped up seventy years later in Chris Larsgaard's Shamus-nominated The Heir Hunter.

[MaineWriter]

==comment==

from IMDb: An underrated picture of veritable wackiness, KISS AND MAKE UP is a forerunner to the classic screwball comedies of the late-thirties and early-forties. The storyline of a progressive plastic surgeon (Cary Grant) who becomes involved with his greatest creation (Genevieve Tobin) has a great FRANKENSTEIN-esquire aura that contains some surprisingly dark overtones for a film comedy of this era – a darkness which is present, but not really explored. The film is benefited greatly by Cary Grant, who gets an early chance to display his grand prowess at farce, which is one of the many qualities that inevitably made him a huge Hollywood star. The rest of the cast is also rounded out acceptably, with Tobin, Helen Mack, and Edward Everett Horton all turning in fine work.

On the downside, the film is extremely episodic, which is not inherently a problem in many cases, but here it prevents the picture from gelling into the knockabout farce it intended to be. Also somewhat detrimental is director Harlan Thompson's approach to the material, which often lacks energy or pizazz; make no mistake, Thompson's work is perfectly acceptable, but I could not help but imagine how truly dynamic the film could have been with Howard Hawks or (later) Peter Bogdanovich in the director's chair. Thompson earns major points for the frantic final chase scene, however, which concludes the film with a thunderous, side-splitting, wig-ripping bang! The movie as a whole is solidly enjoyable, but this terrific end sequence alone raises it's rating by at least a notch or two.

[southendmd]

From IMDb:  Fritz Lang's version of the classic Hungarian play (better known to U.S. audiences in its musical play version - CAROUSEL) is quite excellent. Lighting is especially good and the exuberance of the opening scenes on the midway coupled with the highly imaginative heavenly sequences towards the end of the film sets this version above the others. Boyer is perfectly cast and almost unrecognizable (he's so young) as the carnival barker. He is full of bravado and exuberance. Solidly handled with bright touches.

Also this:  Eventually, two angels show up and haul Boyer off to the hereafter - where he must atone for his sins! The term 'angels' is one I use loosely. Dark-suited, pale-skinned and shaven-headed, these two guys look like denizens of an X-rated Berlin nightclub. Kinkier still is Boyer's personal 'spirit guide' - a mad-eyed knife-grinder played by Antonin Artaud, the twisted genius who invented the Theatre of Cruelty.

Liliom is a rare treat for old-movie buffs. Lyrical and fantastic, yes. Soppy and sentimental, never. It stands comparison with Lang's best work from Berlin or Hollywood. I can only regret he did not spend more time in France.

[oilgun]

[MaineWriter]

Congratulations on a nice, even 500 posts!

Leslie

[MaineWriter]

==comment==

from IMDb: Glamorous American jewel-thief Sophie Lang returns to the U. S. after lying low in England for five years. New York police inspector Stone is determined to trap the elusive Lang by enlisting the unknowing aid of Max Bernard, a suave European stone-stealer, traveling in America under the pseudonym of Sir Nigel Crane. Max and Sophie chase each other around, evade their pursuers, and of course fall in love. Along for the hunt are Leon Errol as a bumbling health-obsessed detective and Alison Skipworth as Sophie's crafty accomplice. Lots of laughs to be found, including Gertrude Michael's impersonation of a haughty Russian countess which comes out ala Garbo and a great line by Inspector Stone, "Never teach your grandmother to suck eggs." The film proved to be popular enough with audiences to spawn two sequels, The Return of Sophie Lang (1936) and Sophie Lang Goes West (1937). Critics were fond of the caper as well. The New York Times called it "…witty and exuberant entertainment performed with light-hearted gaiety by an excellent cast." Variety stated "Ralph Murphy directed the picture with a rat-tat-tat pace, not allowing it to stop for a minute."

[southendmd]

From IMDb:  If Jack Warner had had his way, Bette Davis would have wound up playing all kinds of molls in various Warner Brothers gangster films. Of Human Bondage was a significant milestone in her career because she proved to everyone, including herself, that she was capable of so much more.

Like Frank Sinatra with Angelo in From Here to Eternity, Davis knew she was born to play the slatternly amoral Mildred from W. Somerset Maugham's classic novel. Though she rarely used false accents in her movie career after this, she got the Cockney speech pattern down perfect. Davis will keep you riveted to your seat with her performance her. And what a scandal it was that she wasn't nominated. I suspect some intrigue was at work there, possibly the brothers Warner who didn't want her to get a swelled head. Also she'd gotten this break through role at another studio so they weren't going to make a dime on it.

Two years later Leslie Howard and Bette Davis would team up again in The Petrified Forest. But what a contrast between the dreamy naive Gabby and Mildred. The same with the male leads. In The Petrified Forest, Leslie Howard is the world weary blase Alan Squire. In Of Human Bondage, Howard's Philip Carey is a shy man with a deep inferiority complex because of his club foot. He clings to Mildred because even though she's degraded him, he feels he'll never find another attachment again.

For both the leads Of Human Bondage represented a considerable stretching of considerable talents. The two later screen versions are markedly inferior to this one.

=aside= Gil
500 looks good on you!