Random Thoughts

Idiot’s Delight. Clarence Brown. 1939.

Hey… this is fun. It’s about a soldier (Clark Gable) returning from the previous war, and he’s an actor on a downwards trajectory. It’s very fleet-footed.

The movie has turned kinda strange. Clark is being pursued desperately by Norma Shearer… I mean, that’s not odd, but the way the movie leans into it is, because he’s been portrayed as such a loser up until now, and then Shearer shows up and can think of nothing better than to pair up with him. I mean, professionally. (They also have sex, which is *gasp*.)

Well, that was a sudden turn in the plot: Now it’s years later, 1939, and Gable is touring Europe… and getting held up in Switzerland because there’s a war looming. I didn’t see that coming: Most American movies around this time were rather circumspect about the whole “Hitler is a Nazi” thing. I mean, nobody wanted to be pulled before the Congress critters that were patrolling Pro-British “propaganda”.

Unfortunately, once we get to the main part of the movie, it’s all rather tedious. I mean, I appreciate the anti-war sentiments and stuff, but it’s… just… boring. It’s so weird they bolted that rather amusing preamble to something as earnest as this. I wonder what the story behind this is…

Right:

Previously, when Warner Bros. was considering making a movie of Sherwood’s play, the studio checked with Joseph Breen, the film censor, who predicted it “would be banned widely abroad and might cause reprisals against the American company distributing it. The play is fundamentally anti-war propaganda, and contains numerous diatribes against militarism, fascism, and the munitions ring.”

Huh:

According to MGM records the film recorded a loss of $374,000 – the only film Clark Gable made at MGM to lose money apart from Parnell and Too Hot to Handle.

Hey! Gable can dance! Sort of. He’s a bit off beat, but his feet are doing the moves. Impressive.

So… there’s bits in this movie that work, but it’s just so hamfisted. After being preached at in this way, I think most audiences would go YES LET”S HAVE A WAR THEN IF THAT MEANS WE DON”T HAVE TO WATCH MORE OF THIS MOVIE.

It’s kinda bad.

This blog post is part of the 1939
series.

They Made Me A Criminal. Busby Berkeley. 1939.

So here in this blog post is where I was supposed to make some food, but the next dish in the Bistro Cooking book was a mussel dish, and… while I was waiting for the grocery delivery guys to deliver a kilo of live mussels for me to cook up into a delicious pasta dish, I was kinda starting to dread the entire thing? I mean, it makes no sense: I eat mussels in restaurants all the time, and I know they’re cooked alive, but the thought of doing that myself made me slightly nauseous.

I know! I’m a wimp!

Then karma struck! When the groceries were delivered, it turned out they were out! Whoho!

So now there’s nothing for me to cook. Except the linguine and some tomatoes.

Oh well, let’s just watch the movie.

Oh! Busby Berkeley! Then I assume that this is a musical? It’s an odd name for a musical.

Nobody has started dancing yet. So… I guess it’s not?

It’s a kinda interesting get-up: Instead of an upstanding citizen being set up to take a murder rap, it’s a pretty unsympathetic, lying bastard of a boxer. So they’ve got an uphill battle when it comes to making the audience care for the injustices he’s suffering, but… I think they kinda do it? I’m into it, at least.

Yes, yes, he does meet this woman, who’s kind of heart and I’m assuming she’s going to reshape him into a good man, and that’s fine.

This movie has a bunch of er kids collectively called the Dead End Kids, and I’ve seen one of their previous movies: Angels With Dirty Faces. And… they made… a movie… called The Angels Wash Their Faces?

Man:

During production, the boys ran wild around the studio, destroying property, including a truck that they crashed into a sound stage. Goldwyn chose not to use them again and sold their contract to Warner Bros.

Actual hoodlums!

I mean, this isn’t a movie classic or anything, but for what it is, it’s pretty much perfect? There’s not much of a story, and what there is seems basically either rote, or made up on the spot, but it still works. Fun performances all around, and a couple of scenes (in the water tank, and in the ring) that was genuinely exciting.

So:

This blog post is part of the 1939
series.

Son of Frankenstein. Rowland V. Lee. 1939.

For today’s dish from the Bistro Cooking, we have another apple tart. I mean sex worker. This one looks less like an omelette than the previous one… it’s a cream and egg thing (and apples, of course). It is, again, as with many of the recipes in this book, very simple. Perhaps too simple? I’m thinking this is going to taste very… one note? But let’s see.

The pie shell is a pâte brisée, which sounds tastier than the previous shell, which was basically just flour and water, and tasted like and had the structural integrity of cardboard.

So these are all the ingredients. Nothing fancy.

OK, the shell first. So it’s flour, salt and butter in a FUD professor.

Blitz it until it’s forming granules, just 10 secs.

And then add some ice water and pulse it until it gathers into a dough.

It’s super duper simple, so I hope it tastes OK. Then into the fridge for an hour.

Then roll it out into the proper size. I think I’m getting the hang of these pie shell things now: This dough didn’t fight me while I was rolling it out.

Then into the tin, 20 minutes in the fridge agains, and blind baking for a bit.

And then removing the baking beans and the foil and baking some more.

I had a taste of the shell: It’s edible! It’s kinda crunchy and flaky and has a not offputting flavour.

Then it’s the filling: Some egg yolks…

… and cream and sugar. The recipe said to use either creme fraiche or cream, and I went for cream, because… I like cream?

A lot of apple chopping happened here. The apples are cut into halves and then quarters, which gives pretty thick apple … wedges? I’d assumed that they were supposed to be thinner, but what do I know? NOTHING.

Then the egg yolk/cream mixture, and some sugar on top, and then into the oven for 45 minutes. (I added some foil on the outside in case the pie shell is leaking out.)

OK, the recipe said to bake until really brown, almost even blackened at the er edges… I guess this qualifies?

Hm…

Oh, this is really tasty! The pie crust is flaky and delicious; slightly salty and very buttery. And the filling is a lot more complex than I had thought it would be: The acidity of the apples vs. the sugary yolk/cream go so well together. I can’t stop eating this! Which may just be because I’m very hungry, but even so! Yum. So much better than the omelette-like apple pie from the other week.

So let’s watch the movie while I’m noshing.

Wow. Both Karloff and Lugosi? And Rathbone? This isn’t the B movie I expected.

Oops! I’ve eaten almost half of the pie.

Everybody loves this movie! I guess I can see why, just by reading the list of actors involved, but I don’t really get it. I mean… I love 30s movies, but 30s horror has never been something that I’ve been interested in. I’ve never found them particularly amusing… but I remember being really scared by the first Frankenstein when I was like nine and it was shown on TV for some reason.

The sets are quite nice, although the cinematographer seldom manages to place the camera somewhere that does the scenery justice.

I feel this should have been more fun than it was.

This blog post is part of the 1939
series.

King of the Underworld. Lewis Seiler. 1939.

Welcome to the first week of the 1939 movie blog. But first: Some food.

So tonight’s dish from Patricia Well’s Bistro Cooking (which I’m cooking my way through, semi-chronologically) is a chick pea salad. I’m not really all that enthusiastic about this one, because I’m seeing “onion” and “garlic” here, which I both love, but whenever she’s doing a dish with these ingredients, and they’re not cooked, the result is usually very… raw… But let’s see! Perhaps this is the one that’ll actually work.

So it’s these ingredients. The recipe specifies dried chick peas, which I thought I’d ordered, but I got pre-cooked hermetic ones. Well. Paper-and-alu ones.

So instead of soaking for a day, I’m just rinsing them and giving them a quick heating. Perhaps that’ll totally destroy the dish? I have no idea.

So then there’s the chopping, which I enjoy… five cloves of garlic, though… I reduced it to four, and it’s still a lot.

So then all the herbs and the garlic goes into the vinaigrette.

And then olives and onions.

The recipe said nothing about chopping the olives, so I’m leaving them whole.

Well, that doesn’t look too bad?

Unfortunately, it’s pretty much like I feared it would be: It tastes like raw garlic and raw onion with some chick peas. WHYYYYY

I’ll pop it into the fridge and have a nibble at it tomorrow. Perhaps it’ll mellow…

So it goes well with the movie.

[twenty minutes pass]

This movie makes me realise that I haven’t really seen many of Bogart’s early movies.

Like, at all. Looking at that list, I think the first movie of his I’ve seen is probably The Maltese Falcon, from 1941? But he had a career for over a decade before that? And he was busy! Several movies a year. Like… seven movies in 1937? I’m guessing those were not all leads.

Oh, hang on, I’ve seen Angels with Dirty Faces from 1938.

Anyway, he’s really chewing up the scenery here. I mean, it’s great, but it’s not as effortlessly cool as he became later…

The rest of the mooks: Eh.

I mean… look at them.

This is a very original movie: I don’t think anybody could have guessed where the plot was going.

But… the problem is that the plot didn’t go anywhere exciting. I mean, it’s interesting: Much of the movie is about the gangster getting his autobiography ghost-written. That’s original, for sure, but… it makes the stakes very low: Is the ghost-writer going to get killed or not? And how is the dame going to save him? OK, put like that, it does sound exciting, but it… not?

It’s fascinating how many people they put into each shot. All of those people are cops, but it’s the same in the gangster shots: Way more people than seem necessary.

And the woman (who’s a doctor) saves the day by ingenious means. It’s a very… 30s movie.

There’s a lot to like here, but it doesn’t quite gel for me.

Popular movies from this week:

Poster	Votes	Rating	Movie
	801	6.5	King of the Underworld
	393	6.5	Devil’s Island
	231	6.5	Stand Up and Fight
	129	5.7	Pacific Liner
	37	6.3	Long Shot
	27	5.3	Water Rustlers
	10	5.9	Disbarred

This blog post is part of the
1939 series.