Horse Feathers (1932)

Directed by Norman Z. McLeod
Starring The Marx Brothers
Produced by Paramount Pictures

There's a college and a football team and a plot to steal another school's players and...frankly, I'm not going to bother.

You either like the Marx Brothers brand of comedy or you don't.  I don't.  There's no progression or escalation.  It's simply variations on the same jokes I did not like in every other movie.

There is nothing for me to say about Horse Feathers that I haven't said before.  If you want to know what I think, read any of these.

Will I watch the last couple of Marx Brothers films? Yes, but only to get through it.  As it stands, these are the movies I dread watching from each year.

*1/2 out of *****

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Que Viva Mexico! (1932)

Directed by Sergei M. Eisenstein and Grigori Aleksandrov
Produced by the Mexican Picture Trust

NOTE: There's no final star rating from me on this one.  Eisenstein started filming in the early 1930s, but went over budget and the film was never finished as he envisioned.  Several versions have been released over time, but none is what you can consider definitive. As such, it seems unfair to judge this on the traditional scale.

Que Viva Mexico! opens as though awakening from a dream.  Eisenstein's camera captures an ancient temple, each shot bringing us closer until we are no longer focused on the structure, but on the stone statues that decorate the edifice.

Then suddenly, there are people here as well standing or sitting motionless, as though they too have always been part of the landscape.  They have always been here and are the creators and characters in every tale.  Every story in Mexico ceases to exist on its own and becomes the continuation of one grand tome stretching back through the ages.

It's an effective, evocative prologue that as reflected through the prism of this film grants the country a timelessness.  Sadly, once the opening ends, we get the rest of the film and it is almost universally dull.


How much of that is Eisenstein's fault is impossible to say.  Eisenstein never completed the film so he never got to make the final cut.  And the director's signature montage approach to filmmaking is almost entirely dependent upon editing to bring the movie to life.

The film was originally intended to be four episodes bookended by the remarkable prologue and an epilogue.  Only three of the episodes were actually filmed.

"Sandunga" follows an engagement and wedding, complete with a gold necklace as dowery.  The images remain striking, but there's a feeling of repetition that sets in.  The monotonous approach extends into the next chapter "Fiesta," which details a religious celebration and bullfighting.

The final stanza "Maguey" is by far its best.  There is a compelling story centered around a villager who sees his bride abused by his boss (with a rape implied).  The villain holds the girls and throws her husband from the hacienda.  He then conspires with his friends to get revenge.

Their effort goes poorly.  The boss kills most of the men and captures the rest, including our hero.  The prisoners are buried up to their shoulders in the desert sand, then the bad guys ride onto their heads with their horses.  It is brutal in a way few films even today can be.

The fourth episode would have focused on the Mexican revolution, but it was never filmed so we move directly into the epilogue focused on how Mexicans treat death with mockery.  Children celebrate the dead by eating skulls made of sugar.  In its final shots, Que Viva Mexico! shows us characters from the film's episode wearing skull masks.  And when they pull of the masks, they reveal only their actual skulls underneath.

There are ideas here.  There are compelling images.  But is there a good movie in it all? Que Viva Mexico!'s final product reveals itself exactly as it was executed: half-finished thoughts scribbled in an unfinished script.

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The Heart of New York (1932)

Directed by Mervyn LeRoy
Starring George Sidney, Joe Smith and Charles Dale
Produced by Warner Brothers

The Heart of New York is about an inventor named Mendel who uses every cent he can scrounge together to feed his wild ideas.  He is threatened with eviction and may even lose his family because of his compulsion to create and build.

Things look dire until one of his inventions, a dishwasher, actually works.  It works perfectly.  After a life of dreaming Mendel has it made.

And I am certain there are lessons here about the dangers of fame and fortune.  Lessons about the value of family over money.  Lessons about how to properly wash dishes.

I can only assume all of the above happens because I spent all 73 excruciating minutes of this film hating every character.


The setting for The Heart of New York is a Jewish neighborhood.  And every character here is aggressively, unmistakeably Jewish in the most trope-filled possible ways.  Every person who walks into the frame talks like Jackie Mason.  Even the women.  Some may talk faster.  Some, slower.  But the entire affair sounds like the annual convention of Dr. Zoidberg impersonators.

Now imagine over an hour of that and only that.  Now you get the picture.

This would be okay if the characters' ethnicity and religion were integral to the plot.  At least it would give the stereotypical portrayals something resembling a purpose.  Sadly that's not the case.  In fact, near as I can tell, it's only there to be mocked.  Which degrades it from annoying to incomprehensibly ugly.

I could talk about the direction (or lack of it) in the film.  I could talk about the relatively good production design that gives Mendel's neighborhood the feeling of a real, tactile place.

But why? Then you may seek this out and I don't want to do that to you.  So I'll simply leave you with this:

The Heart of New York is a film that will make you wonder whether or not you can place a cotton swab into your ear far enough to pull it out the other side.

1/2 out of *****

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I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932)

Directed by Mervyn LeRoy
Starring Paul Muni, Glenda Farrell and Helen Vinson
Produced by Warner Bros.

I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang is based on a true life story of Robert Burns, a man sentenced to labor on a chain gang and subsequently escaped.  In the film, Burns has been renamed as James Allen, a World War I veteran who returns to America to find it is much harder to achieve his dreams than he might have hoped.

In truth, the beginning of the movie is not great.  Allen discovers that his old factory job is waiting for him, but turns it down to become an engineer.  Only he cannot find a job as an engineer.  So he engages in the all time dumbest job search I've ever seen.

He goes from New Jersey to Boston (because they are hiring in New England), gets and loses a job.  Then he goes to New Orleans. Nothing.  Then Osh-Kosh, Wisconsin.  Then St. Louis.  By now he is basically a hobo. It seems to be the most unfocused, unproductive job search of all time.  


There is a nicely, realized small moment when, at the end of his financial rope, Allen tries to pawn his war medal.  The shop owner shows him a case filled with the same medal.  Clearly, he's not the only war hero to fall on hard times.

Allen eventually meets up with another hobo who offers to find him a handout at a local diner.  Only the other man tries to rob the place.  The criminal is killed but James is captured and sentenced to a prison chain gang.

The movie kicks into gear here.  We see how horrific the conditions are.  Men working a sledgehammer all day and needing to ask permission not just to go to the bathroom, but even to wipe the sweat off their brow.  Each night, the guards would judge who didn't do enough work and they'd be whipped.  The film doesn't flinch from showing the brutality.  

Allen escapes and changes his name to the unimaginative Alan James.  But he's never free.  His landlady becomes his girlfriend and blackmails him into marriage when she discovers his history.  He has to hide his face every time he crosses paths with a policeman. 

Ultimately, he becomes a highly successful engineer and falls in love.  He attempts to divorce his current unloving and unfaithful wife, but she follows through on her threat and it becomes a tug of war between his current home state of Illinois and Georgia where he served his time.

The film asks interesting questions about the nature of crime and punishment, but leaves the audience to reach its own conclusions.  It also exposes a terrible punishment to which we once subjected fellow citizens.  They built our roads and railroads, but under barbaric conditions.

As a film, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang is above average.  More than that though, I found myself turning to Google just to learn more about chain gangs.  And any film that encourages the viewer to engage with history deserves a strong recommend.

**** out of *****

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Young America (1932)

Directed by Frank Borzage
Starring Spencer Tracy, Doris Kenyon and Ralph Bellamy
Produced by Fox Film Corporation

And now, on a very special episode of 100 Years of Movies... 

Young America is a message movie.  For me, movies that have a "I am going to pound my theme over your head" point to get across may have the highest degree of difficulty of any genre.  And despite the involvement of familiar names like Spencer Tracy and director Frank Borzage, this just does not come close to clearing the bar.

The film starts with Judge Blake allowing Edith Doray to shadow him for a day as hears the cases of juvenile delinquents before settling in on the story of one of the boys, Arthur Simpson, who is "the worst kid in town."

It will shock no one to learn that Arthur has a heart of gold but ends up in some unfortunate situations. Edith gets Art a job at the pharmacy her husband Jack operates.  But of course, that next day, a bully is getting handsy with a girl on her way to school, so Art steps in. Then in school, the bully torments Art's friend "Nutty" and Art attacks the kid leading to a suspension.  The bully then pummels Art after school, making him late for his job and getting him fired.  


The movie goes crazy when Nutty's grandmother falls ill and needs her medicine.  It's late so after trying to find Jack, the boys break into the pharmacy to get the medicine.  They end up in front of the judge who takes pity and suspends their sentence, but only on the condition that they never speak to one another again.

So a week after this, Nutty gets sick.  Art goes to see him and Nutty dies.  There was no typo there.  The kid just dies.  But not before giving us the most rote "I am about to die" speech of all time.  Every cliche of that speech is there to behold.

There's a plotline that involves the Dorays taking Art into their house, but frankly this whole think is pointless. Adults don't understand kids.  Okay, got it.  Any solution to that you'd care to share? No? Okay, moving on...

The acting is good.  Tommy Conlon plays Art and is kind of great. Ralph Bellamy on the otherhand decides to play "sympathetic judge" as "bored, overly-nonchalant judge" and it fails pretty miserably.

Young America was a three star film and then Nutty gave that speech and died and so did the film.  

 *1/2 out of *****

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Rewatching: Freaks (1932)

Directed by Tod Browning
Starring Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams and Olga Baclanova
Produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Director Tod Browning made 62 movies in 24 years.  Sadly, of all those films, he's only really remembered for two.  The first, Dracula, we covered in our 1931 retrospective.

Freaks is the other and it is not just one of my favorite films of the period.  It's one of my favorite films. Period.

The plot revolves around a circus side show.  The "freaks" include Hans and Frieda, two midgets that are dating; Daisy and Violet, conjoined twins with one married to a circus clown; and The Human Torso, a limbless man who can light a cigarette without help. There are others, but you get the picture.


The main plot kicks into gear when Cleopatra, a human trapeze artist, learns that Hans is heir to a great fortune.  From there, she plots with the show's strongman Hercules to woo and marry Hans, kill him and make off with the fortune.

There is so much to love about Freaks. There's always a risk of Browning exploiting the sideshow characters who were actual performers with a variety of maladies and abnormalities.  The film never goes there.  It treats the actors with respect.

The script smartly sets the action right in the middle of the world of the circus.  There's no new performer who has to have everything explained.  We are simply dropped into the lives of performers and expected to keep up.

A lot of the performers get subplots or moments.  We get a terrific sense of what life is like in a world where performers have no legs, women have beards and two bickering sisters literally cannot get away from each other. 

The film has long had a reputation as a "horror" film which a sentiment any fair reading would immediately dismiss.  It's a melodrama set in a unique world.  The horror elements, to the extent there here at all, exist solely in the last ten minutes of the film.  And even then, I don't think it ever becomes terrifying or grotesque.  Suspenseful?  Definitely.

 Freaks is about the easiest recommend in the world to me.  I've loved this movie since I saw it years ago.  Sadly, it was despised in its time and ultimately ended Browning's career.  It's a real shame because all Freaks shows is just how ahead of his time he was.

***** out of ***** 

NOTE: The turning point in the film is a wedding feast with Cleopatra becoming inducted into the world of the side show performers. The "freaks" pass around a cup that they each drink from and chant "Gobble gobble - one of us - we accept her." If you've ever wondered where the Simpsons' writers got "one of us" from, look no further.
 

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Polly of the Circus (1932)

Directed by Alfred Santell
Starring Marion Davies, Clark Gable and C. Aubrey Smith
Produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

The circus comes to a conservative town and the show's star, Polly the trapeze artist, is not pleased.  All of her promotional posters have been...altered.  Some of the locals find the woman's bare legs indecent so her image gets dressed up in a variety of ways.

An outraged Polly tries to confront an elderly priest over his apparent censorship.  Only problem is the old man is just a visiting bishop and the actual pastor in the town is really Clark Gable. I mean, the young John Hartley.

Anyway, John explains he had nothing to do with defacing the posters.  In fact, he is looking forward to catching her show that night.  Polly leaves in a huff and we as an audience hate her because of her complete lack of being Clark Gable.

So what can bring these two together? A horrific accident.


At the circus that night, an angered Polly attempts to perform her act.  And she succeeds until a yelling heckler asks where her pants are.  The momentary distraction is all it takes.  Polly reaches for a trapeze that isn't there and falls forward off the narrow platform.

The moment is critical for making us believe everything that happens for the rest of the film.  The director could have approached it a number of ways.  He could have just cut to the audience reaction.  He could have done a long shot of the fall from across the tent.  He could have simply cut from her misstep to Polly in a hospital bed.

But no. director Alfred Santell places the camera above and gives us the fall from the perspective of the platform. We see he plummet.  And we feel her hit the ground.  And our collective stomach turns.

When Hartley rushes to her aid, volunteering his home across the street as a place to get her help, there is no inkling of romance.  It's an emergency.  Polly is critically injured and needs immediate attention.  We believe this because we saw it in all its brutality.

Making this the starting point for what ultimately turns into a romance makes the path less obvious.  It's not a meet-cute.  It's a meet-ewww.  It makes the rest of the film feel less inevitable than this type of movie typically plays.

Of course, this is Hollywood and it's Clark Gable and a gorgeous Marion Davies.  So she convalesces at his home because she cannot be moved.  And she acts like she hasn't recovered because she wants to stay with John. And they have to fall in love.

Once we get there, the predictability sets in.  Obstacles to their romance appear and you never believe they won't be overcome. The conservative town turns against Hartley and we are supposed to believe that Hartley will care what the town thinks.  But we don't because Hartley is Clark Gable and the town isn't so that is not a fair fight at all.

There's an ending that feels overwrought featuring an implied potential suicide attempt.  And the film features what is fast becoming my least favorite staple of 1930s cinema: the perpetually drunk supporting character.

Polly of the Circus is ultimately an okay movie elevated by terrific lead performances and a cracker of a first act.

*** out of *****

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After Tomorrow (1932)

Directed by Frank Borzage
Starring Charles Farrell, Marian Nixon and Minna Gombell
Produced by Fox Film Corporation 

After Tomorrow is a strange little romantic comedy.  Most rom-coms focus on the couple's courtship: the meet-cute, the courtship, the misunderstanding that almost breaks them up, the last minute reconciliation...

After Tomorrow has none of these things.  When we meet our couple, Pete and Sidney, they are already an item.  They've been together for years and want to get married.  Only trouble is, they cannot afford to live together. This is the Great Depression, Pete has a poor job and their respective mothers are too self-absorbed to be helpful.  Pete's mom is codependent and clingy, sabotaging her son's chance at love at every turn; Sidney's mom wants a better life, even if that means buying a beautiful new negligee and forcing her daughter to pick up the bills.

The couple dream of their life "after tomorrow," a lyric from their favorite song that provides the film's title.  The lovebirds begin to suspect however that after tomorrow will never come.  Every day they wake up and it remains sadly "today."


The film, based on a play, gives the couple a prerequisite roller coaster ride of emotions.  Pete gets a new job that pays enough to get them to the altar, but on the eve of the wedding, Sidney's mom leaves with another man and her father has a heart attack (requiring expensive medical treatment that once again drains the marriage fund).

While there is a kernel of drama and comedy here and there, After Tomorrow succeeds as neither a tear-jerking romance nor a laugh-a-minute romp.  The obstacles it sets up are paper-thin and over-written.  It never feels like things happen to people in the story.  It's more like some screenwriter decided we hadn't hit the runtime yet so let's erect another obstacle in the path of the inevitable wedding.

Compounding the issues with the story is the universally unsympathetic cast of characters.  Both of the mothers are conniving, but in the most transparent of ways.  Pete's mom plots to prevent her son from leaving while Sidney's mom wants to live high on the hog.  But neither of them carry out their plans in secret.  Pete's mom in particular basically comes out and says what her goals are several times.  Of course, they're the villains so we're supposed to root against them.

Sidney's father loves his wife, but he also sees her for what she is.  And when he continues to pine for her after she's taken up with another man, it's hard to see him as anything but pathetic.

Because their mom's motives are so obvious, Pete and Sidney come off as foolish saps for following along with their shenanigans.  Pete seems so willing to make his mom happy, you begin to wonder if his heart is really in this marriage thing at all.  He supposedly wants to spend the evening with the love of his life, but a simple guilt trip from mom sends him running home. 

For her part, Sidney is a better character, but not by much.  She momentarily stands up for herself when her mom has failed to clean the kitchen, but all it takes is a feigned headache for the cheerily dutiful daughter to agree to complete the chore herself.  She seems constantly suspicious of her mom, but never acts on it.

Take the couple together and all we really know is they want to get married. And that they have cute pet names for one another.  In one of those touches you only get in a pre-Code film, their thoughts seem dominated in subtle and later unsubtle ways by the sex they are not having, but you never really understand why they are together at all.  And that makes it harder to invest in the race to the altar.

Frank Borzage does phenomenal camerawork here, following characters along streets and using some deep focus techniques, but it is all an exercise in futility.  There is no story here. It's a premise with a foregone conclusion, only postponed by obstacles that annoy.  No need to rush out and watch this one.  Better to schedule it for sometime after tomorrow.

** out of *****

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I Was Born, But... (1932)

Directed by Yasujirô Ozu
Starring Tatsuo Saitô, Tomio Aoki and Mitsuko Yoshikawa 
Produced by Shôchiku Eiga 

As a child, I remember being awestruck by my father.  He was a policeman.  His "partner" was a huge German shepherd named Jude.  He carried a gun and caught the bad guys.  He was a hero, larger than life.  My dad could definitely beat up your dad.

But then I got older. And I learned things about the world.  There were other police officers who did work similar to my dad. Other kids' parents made more. Or maybe they had a bigger TV. Or maybe they met Bobby Clarke.  My father was still a hero, someone who understood the world in ways I could barely comprehend. He just no longer resided on Mount Olympus.

Growing up is filled with these moments.  Your world expands, sometimes in small increments or sometimes in miles.  But as you learn, the mythic becomes mundane.

Yasujirô Ozu's I Was Born, But... perfectly captures that moment in growing up when you childhood innocence and naivete take one of their first hits.


Keiji and Ryoichi have just moved to a new suburban neighborhood with their parents.  Their father Kennosuke hopes that living closer to his boss will be the ticket to a promotion and a better life.

The boys start skipping school to avoid a bully named Taro and his gang, but Kennosuke puts an end to that.  So Keiji and Ryoichi go to Plan B: bribing an older boy to intimidate Taro.  The plan works perfectly, not only putting an end to the newcomers' daily torment, but getting them invited into the gang.

The boys soon get into that most timeless of childhood arguments: whose father is the most important?The brothers learn that Taro is the son of Iwasaki, who is Kennosuke's boss. Their faith in their father's immense stature is momentarily shaken, but they rationalize Kennosuke's position in a way only children could.

That night, Keiji and Ryoichi go to Taro's house to watch some home movies.  Kennosuke is there and becomes anxious when his sons arrive.  The reason for his trepidation is soon clear.  The films show Kennosuke as the office clown, making faces and serving as the butt of Iwasaki's jokes.

The boys are devastated. How could this very important man allow himself to be humiliated? Maybe dear old dad isn't all that they thought he was? Maybe, he is merely a man.

Every moment of I Was Born, But... feels completely authentic, as though Ozu is merely documenting a week in the life of this family.  The children fight and play and argue as children seemingly have for all time.  The conversations between parents and their kids are timeless, repeating words that will be familiar to the eye of families even today.

"The eye"? Yes, this film is a throwback if only by a couple of years.  It's a silent film surrounded by talkies.  Somehow, the approach only adds to the storybook-like element of the movie.  Indeed, it's full title translates as An Adult's Picture Book View — I Was Born, But..., which feels exactly right.

I Was Born, But... sets forth an epic drama by placing us back into the mind of the children we once were.  When every decision was the most important choice ever, and every slight was a crushing blow.  The ending is on the one hand somewhat obvious, but it's also lyrical and perfect.  Ozu may have set his "picture book" in Japan, but it's true power rests in its ability to transport the audience home. Wherever that may be.

***** out of *****

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Trouble in Paradise (1932)

Directed by Ernst Lubitsch
Starring Miriam Hopkins, Kay Francis and Herbert Marshall
Produced by Paramount Pictures

One of the many charms of watching certain films is their ability to make you root for the bad guy.  The multiplexes are littered with drug lords, mob bosses, morally dubious cops and sadistic hitmen that we want to see "get away with it."

Trouble in Paradise is one of those films.  We follow the exploits of Gaston Monescu, a notorious thief who meets his equal in Lily.  The beautiful con artist manages to momentarily relieve Monescu of his latest haul, arousing his curiosity.  The two become romantically involved and conspire to rob Madame Mariette Cole, a rich perfume company mogul.


Monescu ingratiates himself with Colet, becoming the socialite's secretary.  He manages her finances and affairs, all with an eye toward emptying her safe when the time is right.

Complicating the heist is Monescu's growing affection for Colet.  Lily begins to doubt her partner and insists on pushing up the schedule.  Colet's longtime money manager also begins to doubt Monescu's intentions.  And a former mark of Monescu's arrives in Paris and vaguely recognizes the thief.

The real achievement of Trouble in Paradise is the way it keeps the audience guessing.  Though we are always virtually with Monescu, we never really know what he is thinking.  Does he love Colet? Is it all part of a con? Just when you think you have it figured out another fly lands in the ointment.

Not knowing what Monescu wants does not keep us from rooting for him.  A lot of the credit goes to Herbert Marshall.  His Monescu is suave and debonair, a perfect gentleman devoted to a life of crime.  Monescu wields words as though they were a sword, slicing his way through every obstacle the script throws his way.

Kay Francis' Colet is a worthy object of desire for the thief.  She is beautiful and business savvy, navigating Parisian social circles with the grace of a dancer.  Her only foible is a naivete brought on by her way of life.  She cannot even fathom that she's invited a wolf into the hen house.

Miriam Hopkins's Lily is sadly the weak link in the trio.  Hopkins is not given much to work with and turns in a shrill performance that cannot help but make you root against her.

The story simply would not work without the right tone and Lubitsch manages the temperature here perfectly.  Trouble in Paradise has enough weight to give the plot real stakes, but it always keeps the action light and comedic.  The wrong approach would make the audience not care about Monescu or worse, hate him.  Happily, we are cheering on the criminal throughout.

Trouble in Paradise will not change the way you look at the world.  It's very simply a fun story well told by a master director.  To see this one is to watch a film of breezy perfection.

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

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Grand Hotel (1932)

Directed by Edmund Goulding
Starring Greta Garbo, John Barrymore and Joan Crawford
Produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Ensemble films are notoriously difficult affairs. Multiple characters in overlapping storylines can leave audiences unsatisfied.  The director has to be a tightrope walker: balancing plot elements and making sure everyone gets their screen time only to find in the end that viewers liked that character but hated that story.

If it's a small miracle that these types of movies succeed, then Grand Hotel turns water into wine.  The film follows a destitute Baron (John Barrymore) who is both a jewel thief and in love with the famous dancer Grusinskaya (Greta Garbo).  The Baron befriends Kringelein (Lionel Barrymore), a lifetime employee of General Director Preysing's (Wallace Beery).  Kringelein is dying and looking to use his remaining money to live life to the fullest.  For his part, Preysing is teetering on the edge of financial ruin and hires the beautiful stenographer Flaemmchen (Joan Crawford) to help him with his affairs.  Preysing likes the woman, but Flaemmchen is smitten with the Baron.

Did you get all of that?

The connective tissue between the players and stories is the location: The Grand Hotel in Berlin.  The hotel is effectively another character in the film.  We can feel the pulse of the movie in its lobby.  Rooms seem to morph from places of romance to ones of foreboding.  And we can never leave the hotel.  When characters head out its front doors, we cannot follow.  The tone constantly shifts and director Edmund Goulding takes full advantage of his locale.

If there is a surprise here, it is just how subversive Grand Hotel is in its themes. For a big Hollywood spectacle packed with stars, the movie is dark almost to the point of being nihilistic.  Of our main characters, one leaves the hotel in a body bag, another in handcuffs, and a third for a train station to meet a lover we all know is not showing up, a fact the hotel itself seems to conspire to conceal.

One of the few hopeful notes seems to be struck by Kringelein, who leaves the hotel with Flaemmchen for Paris to find a doctor who can heal him. But Kringelein's hopes strike me as false.  They are no more than a way to placate Flaemmchen's desperation. The Paris trip is more a way to pass the time with a girl who is his only true remaining friend.  It's a way to give her purpose for a little while.

The only other true hopeful moment comes from a minor character, a porter. As the film ends, he receives a call from the hospital.  His wife is having a baby.  Perhaps we can look forward to the future.

Or perhaps not.  Dr. Otternschlag, a permanent resident of the Grand Hotel, seems to act as the voice of the place. And he closes the film repeating a line he said at the beginning:

"Grand Hotel. People come and go. Nothing ever happens."

Indeed. Robberies and murder. Love and hatred. Death and birth.  All are consequential to the players. But the hotel just goes on.  Whether you leave the hotel for a train station or the morgue, there is always another guest waiting to check in.

Grand Hotel is about as perfect as an ensemble film gets.  It balances all of its elements and has something to say.  It's a masterpiece of the pre-Code era.

***** out of *****

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White Zombie (1932)

Directed by Victor Halperin
Starring Bela Lugosi, Madge Bellamy and Joseph Cawthorn
Produced by Edward Halperin Productions

Pop culture today seems more and more focused on a single horror creature.  While Twilight and its vampires have come and gone, zombies seem to be as ubiquitous on the big and small screens as there are undead in World War Z.  These films and shows have given us all sorts of zombies. Fast zombies. Slow zombies. Romantic zombies. Even "zombies" that may not be zombies at all. (And no, I am not stepping into the 28 Days Later debate.)

With the supremacy of zombies in the horror genre, it's useful to go back to the undead's humble beginnings. In the case of today's brain-eating legions, patient zero is 1932's White Zombie, starring horror legend Bela Lugosi.

The story of White Zombie will be unrecognizable to modern zombie film aficionados.  An engaged couple, Madeleine and Neil, arrive in Haiti to be married.  They head for a plantation owned by their friend Charles Beaumont, unaware that the man is obsessed with Madeleine and wants her for himself.

Beaumont approaches Murder Legendre, a voodoo master, for help in winning his love.  The evil Legendre runs a sugar mill using zombies as his labor force.  He gives Charles a potion that will turn Madeleine into a zombie. And from there, things get complicated.

The zombies in White Zombie will seem entirely foreign to fans of The Walking Dead, Night of the Living Dead and the recent World War Z. The zombies appear dead, but they are not entirely mindless.  They hate Legendre and would murder him but for the mental control he exercises over them.  Madeleine is turned into a zombie, but her "death" is not a permanent condition.

As with many zombie films, White Zombie uses its situation to address social issues and the human condition, specifically focusing on labor conditions and free will.  Sadly, the movie is barely interested in doing a flyby on these issues.  We get a brief scene in Legendre's mill with the zombies being forced to work every hour.  One of the zombies falls into the machinery, but the work continues without interruption.

Beaumont struggles with the idea of loving a woman who is forced to obey his commands.  His dilemma and the resulting dialogue are so on the nose as to sound nonsensical.  And the film contemplates this for just long enough to give Legendre time to zombify Beaumont.

White Zombie excels at conveying mood and atmosphere.  Legendre's castle, set on a cliff overlooking the ocean, provides just the right amount of shadow and dread.  And the look of the zombies in this black and white film is suitably creepy.

Where the film absolutely collapses like a brained member of an undead horde is the acting.  Lugosi, so great as the titular vampire in the prior year's Dracula, is maniacally over-the-top in the most annoying of ways.  Bellamy's Madeleine and John Harron's Neil overreact to every line and sound.  And Robert Frazer plays Beaumont, a scheming character trying to conceal his true intentions, by wearing every emotion plainly on his sleeve and face.

White Zombie is ultimately more important than it is good.  A fine sense of tone and mood is more than offset by a ridiculous script and hammy acting.  Still, if you are looking for the first time zombies rose from the dead, White Zombie remains history-making.

** out of *****

NOTES:

• White Zombie was made as an independent film, but utilized a lot of Universal Studios' sets from films including Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
• The band White Zombie, popularized by Beavis and Butthead in the 1990s, took their name from this film. Lead singer Rob Zombie has gone on to direct horror movies himself.

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Me and My Gal (1932)

Directed by Raoul Walsh

Starring Spencer Tracy, Joan Bennett, Marion Burns

Produced by Fox Film Corporation 

Spencer Tracy plays policeman Danny Dolan who dutifully walks his beat by the pier and flirts with a waitress named Helen. When Danny rescues a drunk who has fallen into the water, he gets a promotion to detective. 

Unfortunately, Danny's heroics distracted another police detective Al from his surveillance of a couple of gangsters, allowing the bad guys to escape. One of the men, Duke, is working with Kate, a bank teller and Duke's ex-girlfriend, to rob some safety deposit boxes. And (just to bring things full circle) Kate is Helen's sister. 

Danny and Helen begin falling in love, but Danny's investigation into Duke's gang threatens them all. Will Duke carry out his robbery? Can Danny and Helen survive? 

Me and My Gal seems determined to answer one overriding question: Is it possible for a minor character to ruin an otherwise great film? 

The answer? Almost. 

Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett are great as the main couple. Many of their dating problems would be familiar to a modern audience. Helen debates allowing Danny to kiss her. If she does, she's easy. If she doesn't, she's a prude. There is a perfect chemistry between the two which sells you on the courtship. 

Raoul Walsh may be the most unappreciated early Hollywood director around. His work here is solid without being distracting, making really effective use of early sound technology. 

In one scene, we see Danny and Helen having a conversation, but their voiceover betrays what they are actually thinking. It's well staged and the timing of the moment is spot-on. Have you seen this done before? Sure, but this must be one of the first instances of the technique. 

As for that minor character....sigh. Will Stanton plays the drunk Danny saves. For the first half of Me and My Gal, the drunk is constantly wandering into every scene. Danny leaves him at the pier and goes to the chowder house. The drunk follows him. He's at the pier later. He keeps popping up, over and over. 

In and of itself, this is not a problem. But Stanton has his own unique take on playing a drunk character. Imagine telling a high school freshman to act as obnoxiously inebriated as he possibly can. The resulting stumbling would be subtle and restrained compared to what we get here. 

Me and My Gal is a great blend of romantic comedy and crime drama. I only wish there was a sober edition. 

*** out of *****

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1932: Say Hello to My Little Friend... For the First Time

We've come to 1932. A gallon of gas costs 10 cents, a loaf of bread is 7 cents and a new car sets you back over $600. Big money if you're only making $1,650 per year. 

In the U.S., the Great Depression continued to decimate the economy and the unemployment rate was over 24 percent. Charles Lindbergh son was kidnapped and Amelia Earhart became the first woman to cross the Atlantic. Al Capone was convicted of tax evasion, providing an ending for The Untouchables. And Oklahoma debuted the first parking meter. In related news, I now dislike Oklahoma. 

In Hollywood, it was another big year. The original Scarface (non-Pacino version) debuted and became a touchstone for censors. Katharine Hepburn made her premiere, as did Shirley Temple. Disney produced its first Technicolor toon. And Walking Dead fans can look up White Zombie as ground zero of the undead craze. 

So what are we watching? White Zombie and Tod Browning's Freaks are obvious. I'll dive into my first Renoir with Boudu Saved from Drowning and Ozu with I Was Born, But... Of course, we will continue with the Marx Brothers via Horse Feathers. Beyond that? We will see where the year takes me.

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