MCMXXXIX Redux

It’s over? It’s over!

So, after doing a blog series where I watched one movie per year for a century (1919-2018, I think), I then did a blog series for every month in a decade (the 40s), and this one was one movie per week in a year (1939).

You may be noticing a pattern in the methodology here.

So… how was 1939?

Googling for “the greatest year ever for movies”, 1939 often comes up. And it was indeed a good year — perhaps because the grim reality of the 30s was finally letting up some, and the grim reality of 1940 hadn’t yet set in.

Looking over the list of movies, it’s… pretty spiffy? It was a fun project — I got to see a bunch of movies I wouldn’t otherwise have chosen to see.

I wondered whether there was going to be an obvious seasonal difference to the movies (as I watched them chronologically, one per release week in the US). And, yes, there were more blockbusters in the summer and before Xmas, but otherwise not a lot.

The impending war with Nazi Germany was not mentioned a lot: A handful of movies, at most, even alluded to the war. I was surprised at how noir some of the film noirs were — those movies became very scarce indeed when the war started.

So… there you go.

Oh, yeah:

I got the colour palette from… somewhere on the interwebs. It’s nice, isn’t it? I googled for “colours 1939”, except not in English.

I

King of the Underworld. Lewis Seiler

II

Son of Frankenstein. Rowland V. Lee

III

They Made Me A Criminal. Busby Berkeley

IV

Idiot’s Delight. Clarence Brown

V

Honolulu. Edward Buzzell

VI

Made For Each Other. John Cromwell

VII

Nancy Drew… Reporter

VIII

Wife, Husband and Friend. Gregory Ratoff

IX

Oklahoma Kid. Lloyd Bacon

X

The Little Princess. Walter Lang, William A. Seiter

XI

Midnight. Mitchell Leisen

XII

You Can’t Get Away With Murder. Lewis Seiler

XIII

The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle. H.C. Potter

XIV

East Side of Heaven. David Butler

XV

Never Say Die. Elliott Nugent

XVI

Dark Victory. Edmund Goulding

XVII

Union Pacific. Cecil B. DeMille

XVIII

Rose of Washington Square. Gregory Ratoff

XIX

Jamaica Inn. Alfred Hitchcock

XX

Goodbye Mr. Chips. Sidney Franklin & Sam Wood

XXI

The Gorilla. Allan Dwan

XXII

Charlie Chan in Reno. Norman Foster

XXIII

Daybreak. Marcel Carné

XXIV

Fric-Frac. Claude Autant-Lara & Maurice Lehmann

XXV

Five Came Back. John Farrow

XXVI

Bachelor Mother. Garson Kanin

XXVII

On Borrowed Time. Harold S. Bucquet

XXVIII

Bulldog Drummond’s Bride. James P. Hogan

XXIX

Each Dawn I Die. William Keighley

XXX

Beau Geste. William A. Wellman

XXXI

In Name Only. John Cromwell

XXXII

The Wizard of Oz. Victor Fleming

XXXIV

Fifth Avenue Girl. Gregory La Cava

XXXV

The Women. George Cukor

XXXVI

Blackmail 1939. H.C. Potter

XXXVII

Babes in Arms. Busby Berkeley

XXXVIII

Espionage Agent. Lloyd Bacon

XXXIX

The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. Michael Curtiz

XL

Ninotchka. Ernst Lubitsch

XLI

Zangiku monogatari. Kenji Mizoguchi

XLII

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Frank Capra

XLIII

The Roaring Twenties. Raoul Walsh

XLIV

Drums Along the Mohawk. John Ford

XLV

Allegheny Uprising. William A. Seiter

XLVI

Tower of London. Rowland V. Lee

XLVII

Day-Time Wife. Gregory Ratoff

XLVIII

Destry Rides Again. George Marshall

XLIX

The Devil’s Daughter. Arthur H. Leonard

L

Gone With The Wind. George Cukor, Victor Fleming, Sam Wood

LI

Gulliver’s Travels. Dave Fleischer

LII

Invisible Stripes. Lloyd Bacon

MCMXXXIX LII: Invisible Stripes

Invisible Stripes. Lloyd Bacon. 1939.

This is it! The final movie in this blog series; a Bogart movie released in the last week of 1939.

This is pretty good. A quite noir noir.

Heh heh. This evil capitalist wanted to hire Raft to snitch at the workers at his plant and Raft decked him! Pow! Yeah!

I’m really enjoying this. The storyline is classic: An ex con who can’t find anybody to hire him, while his buddy’s who’s gone back to gangstering is living high. Will he break? Etc?

So that’s by the numbers, but it’s such a charming, well-made movie. Raft is perfect as the stoic guy trying to go straight, and Bogie is Bogie, of course. It’s got all these little, cool touches, all the time… just little things, like the girlfriend up there walking around the corner like that…

Heh heh… Here’s Raft dancing with his mother, Flora Robson… She says he should be dancing with the young girls. “You’re just as young as any of them, he says.” Raft was 38 at the time, and Robson was 37.

The magic of cinema! And the rule that no women over 40 should ever be on screen.

This blog post is part of the 1939 series.

MCMXXXIX LI: Gulliver’s Travels

Gulliver’s Travels. Dave Fleischer. 1939.

Oh, it’s animated! Is this the first animated movie in this blog series? I think it may be.

Directed by Dave Fleischer…

It quite un-Disney so far.

It’s very odd, though. The animation shifts wildly between being quite good and OH MY GOD WHAT”S GOING ON WITH THAT FACE THE HORROR THE ROTOSCOPE

And I’m one quarter in, and I have no idea what this movie is even going to be about.

The audio could have been more legible on this bluray. And… I’m not so sure about the picture, either. It’s so… soft? It looks like it’s been upscaled from a DVD?

Aha:

Due to the film’s public domain status, it has been released by many distributors in various home video formats. E1 Entertainment released the film on Blu-ray Disc on March 10, 2009, but received strong criticism for presenting the movie in a stretched and cropped 1.75:1 format, as well as applying heavy noise reduction.

Well, that’s not the version I have here… this isn’t 1.75:1. But it’s still not actually good.

That’s kinda cool.

What.

Anyway, this is the second “feature length” animated movie ever, so I really should be cutting it some slack. In addition, it was made on a really tight schedule for it to premiere Xmas 1939 (after the astounding success of Snow White), and… they had to make do.

But the problems here aren’t technical, really. This is just a sucky movie. The storyline is befuddling (i.e., there really isn’t much story here, just an excuse to draw gags… that mostly doesn’t work), and the pacing seems designed to make even gags that could work seem awkward.

This blog post is part of the 1939
series
.

MCMXXXIX L: Gone with the Wind

Gone With The Wind. George Cukor, Victor Fleming, Sam Wood. 1939.

So we’re now in December 1939, and I have only three movies to go in this blog series. This one is … big. Long? Long.

Ooops. I had forgotten that this movie is so long that is has an overture.

So it starts seven minutes in.

So southern!

I haven’t seen this movie since the… mid 80s? So what I’m wondering is, of course: How racist is this gonna be?

Well, it’s got Black actors, at least. That’s gotta count for something.

Oh, wow. This movie is made… er… by the same directing team as The Wizard of Oz?

Hm… Victor Fleming is the credited director on both, so I’m not sure what’s up with that. Anyway, that’s a pretty astounding feat: Directing these two huge movies the same year.

Mm-hm!

OK, I’ve never understood Clark Gable’s supposed charms. He’s just kinda a sleazeball?

The director(s) do a lot of this shot with varying participants. It’s a good shot, though.

I like this movie! It’s really taking its time, but the pacing feels so natural; not dragged out like in modern “epic” movies. It’s got a good flow.

But it really leans in to the tragedy of Southern soldiers being killed, and the tragedy of those waiting at home… very effectively at that. But then you think about the monstrous thing they died fighting for and it’s… it’s…

I guess you could make a moving movie about the brave German soldiers (and their long-suffering wives) that died defending Buchenwald from shadowy, never-seen on screen American soldiers?

NOW SOMEBODY”S GONNA MAKE THAT MOVIE SORRY

Oh my god. The portrayal of Prissy…

I guess this movie asks the question: Will Scarlett ever stop being such an asshole? (I’m guessing that it’s gonna go “no” at the end.)

This really is quite racist. I mean, beyond the call for a movie from 1939.

Scarlett in Scarlet.

The plot really doesn’t make that much sense. I mean, beyond “women be stupid and evil”. Why didn’t she just let that guy marry her sister and then bilk him out of $300 instead of marrying him herself?

OK, she had higher ambitions than just $300…

I think the misogyny of this movie has been undercommunicated. I mean, the bit about Scarlett causing her husband’s death because she was breaking Sharia law I mean, driving her carriage without a man…

Unfortunately, condoms weren’t invented in 186… 7?

Oops!

The hooker with a heart of gold.

Hattie McDaniel got an Oscar for this role, and it’s well deserved. The oldifying makeup and dye they’re using on her is kinda eeeh, though.

I’m gonna build those stairs in this apartment.

Ah, yes, that post-rape glow.

Yeah yeah.

I liked the first fourteen hours, but the last hour was kinda a drag.

This blog post is part of the 1939
series
.

The Best Comics of 2020

It’s been a year and… some… and I forgot to do a year end summary. I know! It’s what you all were waiting for.

So: When I read comics, the ones that are particularly cool end up on a little shelf near the couch where I can look at them fondly while doing other things. These are the ones that ended up on that shelf last year, and are therefore the best of 2020? Right?

Right.

But this time around I don’t have time to write about any of them, so just some snaps.

Familiar Face by Michael DeForge:

Cryptoid by Eric Haven:

Almost American Girl by Robin Ha:

Mitchum by Blutch:

Tears of the Leather-Bound Saints by Casanova Frankenstein:

Inappropriate by Gabrielle Bell:

Psychodrama Illustrated by Gilbert Hernandez:

A Gift for a Ghost by Borja Gonzalez:

Goblin Girl by Moa Romanova:

Non #8 edited by Eric Reynolds:

Umma’s Table by Yeon-Sik Hong:

The Contradictions by Sohpie Yanow:

Døden by Halfdan Pisket:

I Want You by Lisa Hanawalt:

Nori by Rumi Hara:

Portrait of a Drunk by Ruppert & Mulot & O. Schrauwen:

The Sky is Blue with a Single Cloud by Kuniko Tsurita:

Aaand… those are the best comics from 2020. The jury is in. A house. Somewhere.

And then there’s these books, which are really spiffy, but not from 2020:

Nobody’s Fool by Bill Griffith:

The Man Without Talent by Yoshiharu Tsuge:

Reincarnation Stories by Kim Deitch:

Well! That wasn’t a lot? Hm. Well, I’ve been reading mostly new and fresh comics this year, I guess…

There you have it. Now you know what to buy people for Xmas in just … nine months?