1933
As some of you may have noted earlier in my blogs I have a mystic number to hit for every year of cinema. That number is still standing at 50. Well this week I hit a milestone in the fact that 1933 became the first year of the 1930s to hit that mark. It somewhat pains me to say this but I’m not entirely convinced it’s a great year of cinema. You see part of my theory is that if I’ve seen 50 films from a given year, 10 of them should be 5-star films, provided I was watching good enough movies. The idea is that one out of five films I watch on average will turn out to be spectacular. The best years of cinema have more than 10 great films before I even hit 50 total films, and well I can politely turn my nose up at a given year if that number dips below.
Looking through the list again, I found that I actually wrote Dinner at Eight down twice, so instead of seeing 51 films like I thought, it’s only 50, oh well these things happen. After bumping up my ratings for James Whale’s Invisible Man (which features by far the most evil of all Universal monsters) and King Kong, which is just a fantastic film I was far too cynical to appreciate at age 16, the total comes to 8 films. Not the strongest number to say the least. What is somewhat odd is that of those 8, 7 of them are American movies. Now I have a well documented love of all pre-Code Hollywood films (code was established in 1934), so it’s not extraordinary to say this was my favorite period of Hollywood moviemaking. What is upsetting is the lack of great foreign films I’ve found from the same year. Although the fact that about 1 in 5 of the films I’ve seen from this year are foreign, I guess my sample size isn’t large enough.
Since you’re wondering, if I were to flesh out a top ten this is how it would look:
10. Ganga Bruta
9. Bombshell
8. King Kong
7. Man’s Castle
6. State Fair
5. The Invisible Man
4. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
3. Design for Living
2. 42nd Street
1. Duck Soup
Now Ganga Bruta I enjoyed but I clearly need to watch it again, and well the rest of the films are fairly fresh in my mind and still hold up. You may have noticed there are no Japanese films, well I’ll get to that.
Japan Before the Occupation
Now I’m not an expert on this subject, in fact I’m very far from it, but for reasons I won’t get into here, I’ve recently come into quite a bounty of Japanese films from all era’s really, but the one’s I’ve been focusing on are the films before 1946. Now I’ll still take some of those Occupation films, but I’ve had a long standing obsession with trying to find foreign films from WWII, considering how few are very well known, and realizing that I lacked a lot of knowledge of what was considered Japan’s golden age, I figured this is a good a time as any to learn more.
So I’ve been stock piling films from Mikio Naruse, Hiroshi Shimizu, and anyone else I can find. If you’ll look at my last film journal post, you’ll see I already went in depth with Ozu last month. Here I’ve been tackling what I can find. Some of the films have flashes of pure brilliance, but I’m still waiting to find that solid masterpiece. That isn’t to say there aren’t already masterpieces of Japanese cinema from the 30s that I’ve seen, just none of the one’s I’ve been watching lately.
Partially because I’ve gotten so many of these films I’ve taken a slight diversion from Rosenbaum’s list, don’t worry I’m still tackling that as well, but these Shimizu films were just too much to resist. Finding Japanese films from the 1920s in any condition is not an easy task. Few countries cinematic roots were more destroyed than Japan, possibly with the exception of the great Scandinavian films of the 1910s. As a result many films of this period we’ve only heard about, and often times films remain in simple fragments. I watched Jiraiya the Hero (1921) this past week which is in horrible condition and incredibly short, but it does stand out as the earliest Japanese film I’ve managed to see. I still feel I’m getting acquainted with Shimizu, considering I’ve only seen about 4 of his films now. Hell I still feel like a novice on Naruse even though I’ve seen 10 of his films already.
Stanley Kubrick Still the Greatest
Rather unexpectedly I watched 2001 and The Shining back to back this past week. I don’t really need reassurance or a reminder to tell me that Stanley Kubrick is in fact my favorite of all directors, but watching these two films again still allowed me that familiar touch of seeing the greatest in action.
Lately I’ve been thinking about sound. Now some people have dedicated much of their scholarship to sound in films specifically and to me it seems like that lest step in film appreciation. We are drawn to plot, characters, performance, then we notice things like composition, editing, and staging, and ultimately sound and music come around. Perhaps this is odd because it seems so obvious to pay attention to, but because it is pretty much the last dimension of film to evolve, it seems the last thing most people pay attention to.
Stanley Kubrick has been much applauded for his visual sense thanks in part to his photography background, and I’m still amazed at John Alcott’s cinematography in The Shining. His staging and pace have been examined in depth, particularly in 2001 where he deliberately set a slow pace for the proceedings. His orchestrated camera movements have earned numerous comparisons to directors like Welles and more succinctly Max Ophuls. However like Abel Gance who was also known more for his editing prowess and his innovation above all else, he was more than capable of utilizing sound to the fullest. I was struck again by the audio in 2001 which is as artistic as it gets. So much of the film is silent, as you would expect space to be. For long stretches all we hear is the sound of breathing. The film is remembered for it’s use of rather well known pieces of classical music, but it is the eerie and ominous score that to me resonates most powerfully. In this regard the film has some similarities to The Shining, which uses much more odd music rather than a traditional horror score. To me Alex North’s contributions to 2001 are perhaps the film’s most overlooked.
Since I’ve written rather long winded essays on each of these films I’m just going to leave it with my sonic observations for now.
…And the award for worst DVD ever is . . .
Years ago I wasn’t poor. I know this is hard to believe for anyone whose met me in the last say 6 years, but once upon a time I had money. Rather than do something odd like save it, or put it away for retirement, I decided to use this money to purchase DVD’s and a whole lot of them. My brother who picked up Dawn of the Dead on DVD from Anchor Bay figured like too many other people that the same company’s version of Night of the Living Dead should be the definitive version. After all this company is well known for putting out quality versions of all kinds of great films, from Werner Herzog’s films to Spaghetti Westerns. Well this is one time they dropped the ball tremendously.
I knew the DVD was terrible, so with the help of Entertainment Weekly which in one random issue actually pointed out which of the many, many, many, many versions of Night of the Living Dead was the one to get on DVD, I ordered the Millenium Edition, which was under $10 if I remember correctly. It featured a commentary track from Romero, and was the complete original film as god, or Romero anyways intended. Well since I’ve decided to educate my lady with the National Society of Film Critics A-List, this film was on it, and well seeing how these young kids today think The Walking Dead is cool for some unknown reason, I figured a little education on the classics was in order. Well I went down to the basement to dig the DVD up and found A Night at the Opera, Night of the Shooting Stars, A Night to Remember, and wait oh shit where the hell is my Night of the Living Dead? Turns out there is a box, or half box of my DVD’s that is either completely lost or severely buried in my attic somewhere. Of the other DVD’s I’ve noticed missing include Chapelle Show Season 2, Citizen Kane, Raging Bull, John Carpenter’s The Thing, Children of Paradise, and possibly others that I just don’t notice missing yet.
Well picking a movie to watch tonight we were on a horror kick, recently watching The Shining (see above) and The Exorcist. Since NOTLD is one of the few horror films on the list, and my copy of Nosferatu wasn’t here (don’t worry that hasn’t been lost) this was the film of choice. Couldn’t find it so decided to watch my brother’s copy. Well turns out there are two versions of the film on the Anchor Bay DVD. The first one which I was severely warned against is a 30th Anniversary edition which features NEW FOOTAGE. Not like restored crap, like some jack ass just shot some scenes and added them to the movie like we wouldn’t notice or we’d think it’s cool. If George Lucas convinced us of anything it’s to leave your damn movies alone, forever. Well we were in luck because there’s another version of the original cut on the film, so we were safe right? Turns out that both the extended version and the original cut now feature a “New Score” which was impossible to switch off. After a few minutes of what was the most inappropriate and worst horror movie music I’ve possibly ever heard I had to shut it off and give up.
So I downloaded the good version online. Yes I know you think it’s stealing, but keep in mind I own the DVD I just can’t find it, so to hell with it. On top of it the damn movie is public domain, hence why people were free to piss all over it as well as they saw fit. So if I go to trial for this, I hope I can dig up my actual copy of the film. On another note the film is still fantastic, and truly groundbreaking. It’s amazing now how much zombies have changed, even if this is the modern birth of the ghouls. You rarely see zombies affected by fire like you do here, and at least early in the film the zombies move kinda fast, and aren’t too dumb to avoid grabbing weapons if necessary. Over the years even Romero has allowed his zombies to be dumbed down (although Land of the Dead saw something of a next step in evolution, but that movie was garbage). It’s amazing how easy it is for zombies to tear open human flesh in nearly every movie, I mean try right now to bite your arm, give it a shot, takes a whole hell of a lot of pressure, and I bet even Lou Ferrigno himself couldn’t rip your intestines out without some surgical tool. I digress, point is fuck the Anchor Bay DVD don’t ever buy it.
