Disney Animated Shorts (1930)

Produced by Walt Disney Studios

In Autumn, all of the creatures of the forest are busy making their preparations for winter. Squirrels gather nuts, a porcupine spears some apples and the beavers finish up their dams. Of course, each one of them contributes to the music of the forest in their own way. 

In Just Mickey, the titular mouse performs music on a violin for an unseen audience. He has to deal with an obnoxiously cackling heckler and cries his way through a sad number. 

In The Cactus Kid, Mickey arrives at a saloon in the Old West where Minnie works. At first, he fails to impress her, but when Minnie is abducted by a peg-legged villain, Mickey must become the hero. 

Each of the three Disney shorts here is six or seven minutes long. They are light on dialogue, story or characters and heavy on music. Like every single move a character makes finds a corresponding member of the orchestra. Color me annoyed. 

They're such simple plots, there isn't a ton to say. Just Mickey almost seems like a 3D short in places with the exaggerated scale and perspective they use. The only other surprise was to see Mickey strap on a pistol and get into a gunfight in The Cactus Kid. Not quite the image we have of the character today. 

These are all very slight, so I won't say much more. I was exceedingly bored by each of them. No official ratings, but I can't recommend anyone check these out.

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All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

Directed by Lewis Milestone

Starring  Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim, John Wray

Produced by Universal Pictures 

In a small German town, people line the streets to cheer on soldiers heading off to fight the French during World War I. A teacher stands before his class as the sounds of the celebration waft through the room. He implores his boys and their de facto leader Paul to enlist and defend the Fatherland. And to a boy, they do. 

Of course, once they join the army, every heroic illusion they have is shattered. Their kindly postman arrives as a reservist who is an overbearing dictator of a drill sergeant. They arrive at the front and find no food. They are given thankless tasks like stringing wire across the battlefield at night. Of course, those tasks seem like heaven compared to sitting in a trench, waiting for an errant grenade to find its target. 

Fortunately, Paul and his friends are taken under the wing of Katz, a veteran who may show them how to survive a war. Who will live? Who will die? And how will the experience change their lives forever? 

Sometimes, I have the sheer joy of watching a film that seems not just ahead of its time, but timeless. 

All Quiet on the Western Front is an absolutely fantastic (anti-)war film from director Lewis Milestone. It tells the tale of a group of gung-ho but naive German teenagers who are all too quickly introduced to the horrors of war. 

The film is cliched in its broadest strokes. You get the young idealistic soldier confronting the grizzled veteran who can only laugh at the youth he knows is about to either quickly grow up or die. You have the overbearing but clueless commanding officer. There's even that initial group of kids, small enough to be friends, but large enough that we know there will be a body count. 

What elevates All Quiet on the Western Front above its tropes is its focus on smaller moments and details combined with Milestone's bravura direction. 

There's an early tense scene with the troop assigned to sneak into the middle of the battlefield at night to string wire across it to slow the enemy's charge. I've seen that wire in dozens of other war films and never once considered how it got there or the danger its placement entailed. 

The boys, led by Paul (played by Lew Ayres), learn to appreciate a good pair of boots, a stale heel of bread and even a poster of a girl (in the absence of the real thing). They encounter the insanity of both bayonet charges and cooks who refuse to feed them (because the chef had prepared dinner for 150 and only 80 returned from the lines). 

The film features some of the best realized infantry battle sequences I've ever seen, but the one I want to highlight is a charge through a graveyard. As grenades rain down, headstones and even coffins become projectiles to be reckoned with. And when Paul ends up trapped between forces in a crater with a dying enemy soldier? Perfection. 

I found myself constantly seeing other war films in the early entry in the genre. There is a prolonged battle sequence which had to (and I mean HAD TO) be an influence on Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan opening. And when Paul returns home from the war on leave and finds he can no longer relate to those he had left behind? I couldn't help but think of Jeremy Renner's The Hurt Locker character's problems with his home life. 

 More than anything though, All Quiet on the Western Front is about the relentlessness of war. What I remember most is the constancy of the gunfire and barrages. The sound never lets up. Every moment has an inherent tension: it may be our hero's last. 

 If there's a weakness here, it's Ayres as Paul. He is perfect early on as the young, clueless recruit sent into a war he cannot possibly comprehend. But his performance is so earnest throughout the film that when he starts describing the horrors he has encountered, you never totally buy it. 

Fortunately, the film is so reliant on its ensemble that the weakness there is completely counterbalanced. All of the actors are great, but Louis Wolheim steals the movie as the wily veteran Katz. He is so fantastic as first Paul's mentor and then his friend, you want to just stay with him in every frame. 

Also of note is Slim Summerville as Tjaden. He basically plays the comic relief role throughout with a presence and features that reminded me of Harry Dean Stanton. 

By the time we reach the film's conclusion, there is an inevitability to what must happen. I'm not sure I totally buy the last frames, but there's no denying the juxtaposition of beauty and horror it represents. 

All Quiet on the Western Front is not simply an anti-war film. It's THE anti-war film. We see the horror of battle and what it does to the children sent to fight and die. Men are valued until they are a corpse; after that, they are debris. 

***** out of ***** 

NOTE: All Quiet on the Western Front won the 1930 Academy Award for Outstanding Production (today's Best Picture Oscar) and Best Direction.

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The Film Pasture: Ep. 3 - Beginnings, Endings and the Milestones in Between

We all have milestones we achieve with our blogs.  It may be getting our 100th follower or our first comment.  It may be finishing a project or a site redesign.  Sometimes, it’s even writing that first post ever, or saying goodbye to the site we’ve built over the years.

On today’s episode of The Film Pasture, we talk to a couple of bloggers about milestones they’ve recently hit.  First, we’ll talk with Nick of the Cinematic Katzenjammer about his experiences watching and reviewing one film every day for an entire year.  Then, we’ll talk with Jason Soto who recently shuttered his popular Invasion of the B-Movies blog to launch a new venture.

Please also note that this is actually the pilot episode of The Film Pasture that I recorded to demonstrate what I had in mind to the folks at the LAMB.  So even though it’s technically episode three, at the time we recorded it I thought this would be the first episode.  So don’t be shocked if you hear me referring to it as the first ep; I am not going crazy.

If you have a topic you’d like to see us cover, would like to come on the show or have some feedback to provide, you can reach me at thefilmpasture@verizon.net or on Twitter at filmpasture.

There will only be a couple of episodes left that we include in the LAMBcast podcast feed, so if you are listening to these through there, please be sure to subscribe in iTunes or Podomatic.  And, if you like what you are hearing, please give us a positive review in iTunes.  That will really help get both the show and the LAMB’s blogging network recognized.

We will be back in a couple of weeks with an in depth look at the Oscars.

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Another Fine Mess (1930)

Directed by James Parrott

Starring  Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy and Harry Bernard

Produced by Hal Roach Studios 

Stan and Ollie are once again in trouble with the law and take to hiding out in a vacant mansion. Trouble ensues when a wealthy couple arrives to lease the house and our heroes must pose as the owner, his butler...and the maid. 

Can the duo convince the potential renters they are the owners? And what will happen when the actual owner returns from vacation? 

 Remember that feeling you got when you watched the latest attempt by Saturday Night Live to take one of their recurring one-joke characters and stretch that into a feature film? 

That's pretty much my reaction to Another Fine Mess. 

Granted, it's only 30 minutes long, but over that half of an hour, the comedy basically has two jokes: smug superiority over the rich, and Stan's exasperated impersonation of a woman. 

I'm sure at the time of the Great Depression the former gags were funny and culturally relevant. However, today it's hard to see the humor. The wealthy are just too much of a caricature. The portrayal is over-the-top. Now that could work if any of the gags went as far, but it's basically Hardy's not-as-clever-as-he-thinks observations about the social elite that are meant to carry the story. It all comes across as out of balance. We are waiting for a payoff, for anything to happen, and it never does. 

More successful are Laurel's gender-bending transformations between butler and maid. The look of exasperation on his face is certainly smile-inducing, but the only true moment of humor comes in his one-on-one interactions with the wife of the potential renter. Laurel carries the joke exactly as far as it needs to go and you watch the scene unsure of how much his straight woman is laughing out of character. 

On the whole, Another Fine Mess ranks as a misfire. I kept waiting for some escalation, but it plays the same notes right up until the last moments. 

** out of *****

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Monte Carlo (1930)

Directed by Ernst Lubitsch

Starring Jeanette MacDonald, Jack Buchanan and Claud Allister

Produced by Paramount Pictures

It's a big day for Prince Otto Von Liebenheim. He is prepared to marry the beautiful Countess Helene Mara. The only problem is that is bride has left him at the altar. Again. For the third time. Undeterred, the prince vows to find and wed the countess.

Meanwhile, Helene has boarded a train with her servant Bertha. She's in such a hurry she didn't even bother to check where the train is going. She reviews the train's itinerary and settles on Monte Carlo as a destination. Once there, she can take her relatively modest amount of money, gamble a bit and earn enough to live in the manner to which she is accustomed.

And it almost works. After betting on number 16 and winning four times in a row at the roulette table, she loses it all on her fifth try. While she's at the tables, frittering away her last pennies, Count Rudolph takes notice of the beautiful countess and resolves to win her heart.

After being rebuffed by the bride-on-the-run, Count Rudolph assumes the guise of a hairdresser and begins caring for the woman he loves. She however thinks he is a commoner and no matter how strong her attraction, she decides she must keep away.

What will happen to the countess once the hotel learns she is penniless? Will "Rudy" reveal his secret? And who will Helene choose when the prince arrives to take her back?

 

As with many of the early sound movies, Monte Carlo is something of a mixed bag. It certainly has its issues (a dud of a leading man and a series of unmemorable songs), but a light tone and Jeanette MacDonald's performance ultimately are enough to carry the film. The movie grabs you from the beginning with a comically over-the-top turn by Claud Allister as Helene's fiancé. When he swears to the crowd he will find and return with his fugitive bride-to-be, the music shows the sly incredulity of the wedding guests that this "simp" of a prince can actually pull it off. 

Then we get to spend some time with MacDonald as Helene and she is the perfect combination of beauty, naivete and flirtatiousness. She belts out "Beyond the Blue Horizon" on her train ride to Monte Carlo in a nicely staged scene that combines MacDonald's voice, the sounds of the train and even a chorus of farmhands working in the fields to provide one of the film's high points.

Once Jack Buchanan's Count Rudolph is introduced however, the film just slows to a crawl. Any charisma and charm he has seems to come only in comparison to the amusingly annoying prince. You just don't see what Helene would with Rudy.

That said, the film takes full advantage of its pre-Code status to fill Helene and Rudy's interactions with all manner of double entendres. After his disastrous tryout, Rudy ingratiates himself with the countess by giving her a scalp massage. And the moans of ecstasy MacDonald lets out make her eavesdropping servant blush. She demands that Rudy "service" her and he provides a knowing smile in response. There's a lot of fun to be had in the dialogue.

I did love the ending of this. The film cleverly climaxes with Helene at a play with the Prince watching a story that closely parallels their own. It serves as a fun sort of confession and apology for Rudolph so that the love birds can be together.

On the whole, Monte Carlo is entertaining if not particularly memorable. If you're looking for a fun, pre-Code musical, you could do worse.

*** out of *****

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The Film Pasture: Ep. 2 - To Sundance We Will Go

Episode 2 of The Film Pasture, the podcast I host for the Large Association of Movie Blogs, is now available.

In this episode, I talk with Shala Thomas of Life Between Films about her experiences at the Sundance Film Festival.  We cover everything...well, as much as you can cover in about 20 minutes: planning for the fest, where to go, and (of course) which films rose above the pack.

The Film Pasture is available for download in iTunes.  Please check us out!

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Abraham Lincoln (1930)

Directed by D.W. Griffith

Starring Walter Huston, Una Merkel and William L. Thorne 

Produced by D.W. Griffith Productions

In a small, nondescript log cabin in Kentucky, a small child is born. We see him grow up and fall in love only to lose her to disease in her 20s. He courts an ambitious woman and runs unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate.

But with the country teetering on the brink of a civil war, his party turns to him to be its Presidential candidate. Can he win the White House? Will he lead his country through its most difficult hours? Does he fight vampires? And should he give up going to the theater?

Abraham Lincoln follows the life of one of our most famous Presidents from his log cabin birth to his assassination. It's well-acted and well-directed. So what's it missing?

Every major detail of his life. 

We see nothing of his Presidential election. No Gettysburg address. The Emancipation Proclamation, the Lincoln Douglas debates... all given only the most cursory of treatments. 

There are plenty of good biopics out there that play as a highlight reel of a person's life. Others focus on a less consequential event as a way of humanizing and illuminating a public persona. Griffith tries to do both here. He chooses to move throughout Lincoln's entire life over the course of 90 minutes, but focuses on the smaller moments in between the larger actions. It just never quite works. 

We meet an early love of young Abe's, but the next scene is at her deathbed. We don't spend enough time with her to care or even to feel the impact of her death on the rest of Abe's life. Similarly, Lincoln declares throughout that the Union must be preserved. Yet none of the smaller moments give the viewer any better understanding of why the future President believes this. 

Where the film actually takes off is in its second half when Lincoln has become President (in an election that happens entirely off-screen). We see his Cabinet, certain they will be able to steamroll an inexperienced politician, surprised by his resolve. There's the wonderful image of a vast bank of telegraph operators providing the President with his only sense of how the war proceeds through accounts shaded by the overconfidence of his commanders in the field. There's genuine tension in these scenes despite the fact that we know how it all turns out. 

The film's denouement is Lincoln's assassination at Ford's theater and Griffith cannot pull off the same feat. The action proceeds slowly, clearly with the intention of building up suspense, but it doesn't work. We know the assassin is successful. Making it worse, Griffith actually already showed us this very moment in history in The Birth of a Nation and did so far more effectively. 

To the extent anything in the film's first half works, it's due in large part to Walter Huston. As Lincoln, he's believable as brawler, as a young man in love, as a patriot, as a President. He has a carefree personality that turns grave and somber when faced with matters of state. He handles the frenetic movement of the script perfectly. 

The only other issue worth mentioning is the obviousness of some of the script. It's filled with a lot of winking "you'll never amount to anything" dialogue which of course is meant to give the audience (which has the benefit of 20/20 historical hindsight) a brief chuckle. However, after the fifth time you use that device, it starts to lose its charm.

Ultimately, Abraham Lincoln is hampered by its approach. The film flits from inconsequential moment to inconsequential moment, providing just enough information to intrigue without providing any illumination on the man behind the myth. The result is a solid lead performance, a lot of wasted narrative energy and ultimately more questions than answers for the audience. 

**1/2 out of *****

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Educational Films of 1930

It's time once again for everyone's favorite feature: educational films!

We are in the 1930s and we're learning about beavers (the animal, so stop snickering) and gliding.

Without further ado:

Beavers



No sound to this one which would normally mean it's pretty boring, but I found this strangely hypnotic to watch.  I definitely learned a bit (assuming our knowledge of beavers has not dramatically advanced in the last 100 years).  And the cute factor goes up exponentially when some young beavers are introduced 2/3 of the way in.

(Note: all double entendres above were entirely intentional).

Gliding



 

This looks awesome.

This film covers the sport of gliding.  After an early portion that covers a toy recreation of Charles Lindbergh's glider, the movie moves into the actual early gliders.  No cockpit.   Just you and the open air.

I've gotta think this was an amazing sport to try. And Boy Scouts used to do it.  How awesome would that have been?

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Introducing The Film Pasture...

People find their motivation in some weird ways.

Two-and-a-half years ago, I started 100 Years of Movies because I felt like I was missing out on some classic films and I needed a system to get me watching them. Chronology brought me order and the blog kept me honest (it's embarrassing to go a couple weeks without posting, something I do all too frequently).

As I've gotten to know more folks from the LAMB, I now realize there are a ton of great writers out there who put my hobby to shame.  I get to visit some, but not enough.  I want to get out and visit with more LAMBs.  And what better place to meet and discuss films with them but...

The Film Pasture.

With the blessing of shepherd Joel Burman, I am launching a new podcast called The Film Pasture.  Episode 1 just went live and features a discussion with the LAMB's founder about the origins of the site and with the current shepherd about what's going on today.

In the future, I want to have all manner of discussion with my fellow bloggers and podcasters.  There will be more news here and on the LAMB and at the LAMB Forums.

For now though, feel free to give a listen to my rookie effort:

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Soup to Nuts (1930)

Directed by Benjamin Stoloff
Starring Ted Healy, Charles Winninger, The Three Stooges
Produced by Fox Film Corporation

So here it is: The debut of the comedy trio we all know and love as The Three Stooges. Moe (billed here as Harry Howard), Shemp Howard and Larry Fine make their first appearance on the big screen. 

It turns out that even in the beginning they were really entertaining.  Their characters here are more subdued than we may be used to, but you can see the beginnings of the comic stylings of the team.

Of course, the problem in Soup to Nuts is they are relegated to the background for almost the entirety of the piece.

It's clear at the beginning here, the writers and producers are going for a Marx Brothers vibe more than anything.  The star of the piece for all intents and purposes is Ted Healy's character (creatively named "Ted"), who is basically an imitation of Groucho without the glasses or moustache.  He's followed around by a mute fireman (Fred Sanborn) who poorly fills the Harpo role.  The Stooges collectively are playing Chico (interestingly, with Shemp, not Moe, in the alpha dog role).

While you can see the beginnings of what will become the Three Stooges bread and butter, Healy and Sanborn are painful to watch.  Healy's every line delivery feels forced and over-written and Sanborn's eyebrows move as though they are aliens from another planet in the most distracting of ways.

None of this even touches on the film's "A" plot which follows costume shop owner Otto Schmidt who is more interested in inventing useless and overly complicated machines (the film was written by Rube Goldberg and features some of his designs).  The man's shop is taken over by a creditor, who dispatches his son Carlson to oversee the operation. 

Carlson immediately falls for Otto's daughter Louise and tries to win her heart.  She of course cannot love the man she sees as taking her dad's shop.

Ted works for Schmidt and loves hanging out at the local firehouse, populated by the Stooges and the mute fireman. 

In the end, Ted and Carlson concoct a way for the latter to win Louise's hand at the fireman's ball.  The plan goes awry and their is a very nicely-shot fire sequence featuring the inept Stooges trying to rescue Carlson and Louise.

I can't say Soup to Nuts is a good movie.  It's boring and tedious and inconsistent in its camerawork and sound design.  It is however worth it as a curiosity.  Every time Shemp, Moe and Larry come onto the screen, the film crackles and pops.

I just wish there was a bit more of them.

** out of *****

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The Blue Angel (1930)

Directed by Josef von Sternberg
Starring Emil Jannings, Marlene Dietrich and Kurt Gerron
Produced by UFA

Professor Rath is an instructor at a small college in Germany. None of his students give him the respect he believes he deserves. After a particularly trying session, he notices one of his students trip on the way out of class. The boy drops a photo from a local cabaret, featuring the beautiful Lola.

Rath heads to the club that night to catch the boys in the act. While there, he meets Lola and is oblivious when one of his students stows the dancer's underwear in his coat.   

Rath is obsessed with Lola and welcomes the opportunity to return the panties to her the following night. After some talking, the professor ends up spending the night. 

His rendezvous makes him late for the next day's class and infuriates the principal who knows where Rath spent his evening. Rather than apologize, Rath professes his love for Lola and resigns his professorship to marry the dancer.

But the now-former-academic's honeymoon quickly comes to an end. He does not like Lola's profession and takes a job as a clown in her show to make a little extra cash. Meanwhile, Lola seems to have eyes for the show's new strongman. 

When Lola's traveling show heads back to Rath's hometown, the former esteemed professor is set up to be a laughingstock. How will Rath deal with this turn of events? And can he retain the love of Lola?

 

I struggle with The Blue Angel. 

On the one hand, it's a perfect little morality tale about a self-important, pseudo-intellectual who gets the comeuppance he so richly deserves. 

On the other, it doesn't give you anything to cheer for. His students are brats. The show's performers are bad guys. It's not entertaining and you don't learn anything you didn't already learn from countless hours spent interacting with other human beings. 

The big weapon the film has in its favor is of course the fantastic Emil Jannings in the lead role. He is perfect as a professor who believes he is untouchable until of course he becomes the husk of a man upon his fall. 

But Jannings is also the problem here. We've seen all of these notes before. He brings the same pride and authority to the doorman in The Last Laugh and the general in The Last Command. He also ends up in the same haunted shell by those films' climaxes. The difference of course is those other films are simply better than anything The Blue Angel has to offer. 

This is the film that brought Marlene Dietrich to prominence and I can safely say that she's good here. She plays Lola as both bored with her existence, but intrigued when the local professor takes an interest. 

There is one interesting thread that is never fully explored. By the film's end, Rath is forced to play a clown in Lola's show. The denizens of his hometown, whom he previously derided and sat in judgement if, get the final laugh. 

However, in earlier scenes, the show already had a silent, but melancholy clown who Rath seemingly took the place of. Given the film's ending, I wonder about that unnamed clown. How did he get there? Does Lola regularly consume men like Rath to ultimately play the fool before discarding them? Are simply seeing a moment in a cycle of destruction? 

The movie suggests this, but really doesn't spend much time on it. Ultimately, The Blue Angel is far more interested in showcasing Jannings. 

Is this a good movie? A well-made, well-acted movie? Absolutely. Can I recommend others sit through it? Well... 

***1/2 out of *****

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