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418,616 | 1,609,079 | 27,806 | 6 | Unfunny ' honey , I'm home ' sitcom . | ' Is My Husband Not Fabulous ? ' would be the literal translation of this German film's title . ' Ist mein Mann nicht fabelhaft ? ' was produced in Germany a few months after Hitler became Chancellor . This marital comedy is such light-hearted froth that I'm tempted to say that Hitler's regime hadn't yet cast its shado... |
418,468 | 1,609,079 | 171,610 | 6 | Pain , pin , pun : Sharp's the word . | The single cleverest thing about this early short film is its French title , which unfortunately doesn't work nearly so well in English . ' La Peine du Talion ' would translate roughly as ' The Point of Law ' . . . which ( because of this story , involving a sharp pin ) is a play on the word ' point ' , and which is al... |
419,332 | 1,609,079 | 18,013 | 6 | She drops her panties but he's watching the clock . | I saw ' Die Hose ' in October 2007 at the silent-film festival in Pordenone , Italy ; they screened a print from the Murnau archive in Wiesbaden . The official English-language title of this film is ' A Royal Scandal ' , but a more accurate translation of ' Die Hose ' would be ' The Pants ' , with the double meaning of... |
419,398 | 1,609,079 | 445,438 | 6 | Same old tricks with a new Trixie . | ' The Honeymooners ' was one of the greatest shows in the history of television . Not only was it consistently hilarious , but the Kramdens and the Nortons were well-defined believable characters we could actually care about . More than once , I've genuinely empathised with Ralph Kramden's frustration as yet another of... |
418,975 | 1,609,079 | 329,742 | 6 | Beggar thy neighbour | Friedrich Dürrenmatt's dark comedy ' The Visit of the Old Lady ' has been filmed several times , and staged frequently : it was the last play performed on Broadway by Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne . At the time that I write this , there are plans afoot for a musical version to open on Broadway , starring Angela Lansbur... |
418,216 | 1,609,079 | 20,158 | 6 | George Bernard Shaw is wrong again . | ' Melody of the World ' is one of the very first German sound films . Although this film was produced more than a year after ' The Jazz Singer ' ( which isn't really the first talkie , but let it pass ) , ' Melody of the World ' seems to be firmly convinced of its own importance as the first talking picture , or at any... |
419,625 | 1,609,079 | 45,230 | 6 | No talking in the library | ' The Thief ' is a gimmick film , and the gimmick is more interesting than the film itself . Without the gimmick , this movie is a fairly banal Cold War drama . The central character is an American nuclear physicist ( played by Ray Milland ) who , at regular intervals , gives classified information to spies for a forei... |
418,721 | 1,609,079 | 27,899 | 6 | The animation is better than the gags . | This is basically a ' Baby Herman ' movie : a baby keeps obliviously wandering into perilous situations , and then just as obliviously wandering out of them again . . . while the frantic guardian , all too aware of the danger , keeps getting hurt . But at least this cartoon gives Popeye a change from his usual formula ... |
419,227 | 1,609,079 | 20,108 | 6 | Not as good as John Ford's remake | Five years before Victor McLaglen starred in John Ford's Hollywood film ' The Lost Patrol ' , his younger brother Cyril starred in a low-budget British-made film of the same story . This little-known version ( with a cast who were largely obscure even in Britain ) isn't nearly so good as Ford's remake , but it differs ... |
419,281 | 1,609,079 | 29,879 | 6 | Nary a bazooka . . . | Bob Burns was a popular radio comedian who had rather less success in movies . Billing himself as ' the Arkansas Traveler ' , Burns played a folksy small-town southerner ( a slight self-caricature ) , telling corny stories about the folks down home . Burns is now remembered only for inventing the word ' bazooka ' . He ... |
418,560 | 1,609,079 | 24,190 | 6 | Heather Thatcher ! None can match her ! | The American character actor Edward Everett Horton had the sort of precise , well-modulated diction which American audiences tend to mistake for an upper-class English accent . In " It's a Boy " , Horton actually plays an Englishman . Even more amazingly , he does so in a British film ( from the splendid Gainsborough P... |
419,110 | 1,609,079 | 24,180 | 6 | Not with a bang . . . | Infernal Machine ' is a suspense film with a promising set-up . It takes place aboard a moving vehicle ( an ocean liner ) , so we have a sense of the characters surging forward even if the plot is becalmed . Also , there's a clearly-established zero hour - a time bomb is set to go off at midnight - so there ought to be... |
419,114 | 1,609,079 | 24,080 | 6 | Not bad , but Preston Sturges did it better . | SPOILER ALERT ' Gretel Wins the Jackpot ' is a frothy German comedy , if that's not an oxymoron . Interestingly , the premise of this film anticipates the very similar premise to Preston Sturges's ' Christmas in July ' . But Sturges's film is funnier and more plausible . Pert actress Lucie Englisch plays Gretel , a you... |
419,497 | 1,609,079 | 18,338 | 6 | Barmy in the army | Dane and Arthur were not one of the all-time great comedy teams , but there was one unusual aspect of their teamwork . In most comedy teams , the comedians play allies . . . but Dane and Arthur sometimes played adversaries at cross purposes , with Karl Dane as the authority figure and George K . Arthur as the anti-auth... |
418,780 | 1,609,079 | 1,206,328 | 6 | She cuts up his sausage . | Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones ( no , not the Welsh singer ) were classmates at the University of Texas who decided to write a simple little stage musical : the result was the incredibly successful ' The Fantasticks ' , adapted from a French play . Over the decades , Jones and Schmidt occasionally collaborated on other p... |
418,243 | 1,609,079 | 14,480 | 6 | Hardboiled yeggs | The main character in ' 60 Cents an Hour ' is Jimmy Kirk , a soda jerk . I wish his name were James Kirk , so I could make a few Star Trek jokes in this posting . Actually , this is a pretty good comedy so there's no need to make fun of it . Jimmy Kirk is played by Walter Hiers , whom I've seen in character roles elsew... |
418,410 | 1,609,079 | 148,458 | 6 | Heckle and Jeckle just gestating . | There is no " McDougal " in this cartoon , unless perhaps that's Dimwit the hound under another name . Here we have a very early Heckle and Jeckle cartoon , when the two magpies ' personalities were still in flux . They're drawn a bit differently here , with their beaks a bit longer and sharper than they would later be... |
418,442 | 1,609,079 | 295,653 | 6 | A fare effort | I saw ( but didn't hear ) this very early English musical film ( with its credits missing ) in October 2006 at the Cinema Muto festival in Sacile , Italy . Aye , a production company in England was making MUSICAL films in 1909 ! The Warwick Trading Company released silent films with musical phonograph discs , which the... |
418,220 | 1,609,079 | 18,297 | 6 | Mills & Boon companions | James M Barrie is now remembered solely for ' Peter Pan ' , but his play ' Quality Street ' was once extremely popular . . . so much so that in Britain a brand of filled chocolates were named Quality Street . Barrie's play ( despite this film version and a remake ) is now out of fashion , but the Quality Street choccie... |
418,280 | 1,609,079 | 22,099 | 6 | The one about the farmer's daughter . | ' Lügen auf Rügen ' would roughly translate into English as ' Scams Out of Bamboozles ' . It's meant to be a light-hearted comedy . This film is somewhat idiotic , but - - in fairness - - it's no worse in this respect than a lot of Hollywood and British films of the same period . The attractive Maria Solveg plays a far... |
418,233 | 1,609,079 | 10,598 | 6 | Danish blue-blood mellerdrammer | This film by Carl Dreyer is titled ' The President ' in the old-fashioned European sense of the word ' president ' : the title character is the presiding official of a European town ; not quite the mayor , nor quite the chief magistrate . Like its title , this entire film is very much a product of the fading days of im... |
419,626 | 1,609,079 | 25,915 | 6 | . . . and it ' Blows ' and it ' Blows ' . | ' The Trumpet Blows ' deserves some credit for sheer nerve , just for casting Adolphe Menjou , George Raft , Sidney Toler and Edward Ellis as Mexicans . Credulity is strained even more by casting Menjou and Raft as brothers . Menjou is Pancho Montez , a former bandito ( clearly based on Pancho Villa ) now living in the... |
419,708 | 1,609,079 | 14,388 | 6 | Dix in a fix in the Mexican sticks | Here's Richard Dix ( did his friends call him Dick Dix ? ) in an action movie that seems like it might be more appropriate as a vehicle for Tom Mix . But Dix or Mix , this movie isn't very good . Dix plays a U . S . Army lieutenant on duty at the Mexican border , where he's assigned to catch drugs smugglers . ( Little ... |
418,701 | 1,609,079 | 148,319 | 6 | Heckle & Jeckle meet Doctor Strangelove | With a title like ' Hula Hula Land ' , I was afraid that this Heckle and Jeckle cartoon would contain racial stereotypes of exotic " natives " . Fortunately , that isn't the case . ' Hula Hula Land ' contains nothing but wholesome hilarious violence . . . nothing remotely objectionable . The two magpies are hot-dog sal... |
419,089 | 1,609,079 | 29,816 | 6 | Chinatown in Turkmenistan ; or , the peasants are revolting . | I'm not nearly as fluent in Russian as I'd like to be . One way I gain familiarity with the language is by watching Russian movies ( preferably recent ones , with contemporary dialects ) and trying to follow the dialogue . A friend of mine from Kiev recommended this early Russian sound film to me : although it's offici... |
418,673 | 1,609,079 | 45,481 | 6 | Strike a light , Vesta ! | I've never understood the appeal of the male impersonator : the actress who pretends to be a boy or a man . The only context in which this makes sense to me is the British panto , in which the ' principal boy ' is played by an actress whose male costume of tight-fitting breeches actually emphasises ( rather than concea... |
419,361 | 1,609,079 | 157,321 | 6 | All about Bacall | ' Applause ' was a Broadway musical based on the cult movie ' All About Eve ' , but it differs significantly from that film . After Lauren Bacall starred as Margo Channing in ' Applause ' on Broadway , she repeated her starring role in the West End production of that show in London . In one of the most ironic casting c... |
418,508 | 1,609,079 | 49,540 | 6 | No gold in them thar hills , but some merits anyway | ' The Naked Hills ' is an Allied Artists picture , and it follows the very distinctive format of that low-budget studio : at the very beginning of the movie , we see a clip of the most exciting scene in the picture , shown out of sequence as a teaser . . . even though we don't yet know who these characters are , nor th... |
418,716 | 1,609,079 | 11,942 | 6 | Is that you , Josephine ? | Larry Semon made ' The Bakery ' during the phase of his career when he was trying to be Chaplinesque . We see him here in the titular bakery as the general dogsbody , just as Chaplin was employed in various workplaces in several of his Essanay and Keystone comedies ( notably ' Dough and Dynamite ' , also set in a baker... |
419,021 | 1,609,079 | 1,105 | 6 | Ethereal and erotic | Asta Nielsen was an ethereally beautiful silent-film actress who made only one sound film , then went into a long Garbo-like retirement . There are some strong parallels between Nielsen and Garbo , including some roles they both played ( notably ' Mata Hari ' ) . It's intriguing that Nielsen and Sarah Bernhardt both pl... |
419,182 | 1,609,079 | 1,151 | 6 | Falling nimbly down the chimbley | Here's a real piece of Dickensian mellerdrammer , courtesy of D . W . Griffith . George Nichols plays Paulton , a miser . Griffith establishes that Paulton's a miser by showing him gloating over his money , as if he were Ebenezer Scrooge or Silas Marner . Paulton's only daughter Alice has decided to marry , but Paulton... |
419,454 | 1,609,079 | 14,153 | 6 | Silent German chick-flick , amazingly restored . | I saw ' Inge Larsen ' in October 2006 at the Cinema Muto festival in Sacile , Italy . The five-reel restored print was patchworked from sources in Deutsche Kinemathek ( Berlin ) and Gosfilmofond ( Russia ) . These had some of the original intertitles but also had ' flash ' titles that were handwritten ! Worse luck , so... |
418,406 | 1,609,079 | 249,655 | 6 | sideways Orient-ation | I viewed a print of this short movie courtesy of Lobster Films , Paris . Here we have a French ' trick ' film by the Pathe Brothers , from the same period in which Georges Melies was making his very popular trick movies . However , in Melies's films the trickery was accomplished by jump cuts , and spectacle was provide... |
419,711 | 1,609,079 | 14,188 | 6 | We never do meet the " monster " . | What a weird movie ! IMDb's website describes ' The Last Moment ' as a horror film , but I would classify it as an adventure film that gradually creeps into melodrama . I found several sequences to be unnerving , but I never once got that shivery frisson that a good horror movie provides . In the first reel of ' The La... |
418,529 | 1,609,079 | 16,388 | 6 | The horse upstairs | Film production in silent days was radically different from movie-making in the sound era . Silent films were usually shot from a scenario - - a detailed synopsis - - rather than a precise script . In post-production , the editor and title-writer of a silent film had great creative freedom to restructure the footage , ... |
418,992 | 1,609,079 | 25,195 | 6 | A Brazil nut in the Viennese pastry | ' Grenadiers of Love ' is a Spanish film starring the Brazilian leading-man Raul Roulien , who ( at this point ) was young and handsome , but an untalented actor with no onscreen chemistry . Roulien had a brief attempt at a Hollywood career that went nowhere ; it's not surprising that his movie career in Spain didn't g... |
419,327 | 1,609,079 | 209,397 | 6 | He pants for his trousers . | I saw ' Seraphin ; or , The Naked Legs ' in October 2007 at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone , Italy . The festival screened a print on loan from Cinémathèque Française , Paris . Georges Biscot ( who stars in this crude comedy ) became a film comedian by an unusual route : he started out in the movies as a film... |
419,388 | 1,609,079 | 18,639 | 6 | A curate's egg | I was eager to see ' Alias the Deacon ' because it's based on a play co-written by John B . Hymer . The play's original title was ' The Deacon ' . The film version , adding that word ' Alias ' , makes the title funnier and also more accurate . Hymer was an extremely successful playwright in the 1920s , but his work has... |
419,427 | 1,609,079 | 317,605 | 6 | Not as good as Veidt's , but this has its merits . | I should declare a personal interest here : the Austrian film ' The Grinning Face ' is based on one of my all-time favourite novels , ' The Man Who Laughs ' by Victor Hugo . How much of a favourite is it ? Well , the protagonist of this novel is named Gwynplaine ( Hugo's imperfect attempt at creating a British name ) .... |
418,787 | 1,609,079 | 141,833 | 6 | Felix salutes Edgar Allan Poe and the Ritz Brothers . | ' Bimbo's Initiation ' ( 1931 ) is generally considered one of the very best cartoons from the Fleischer studio . Here we have ' Skulls and Sculls ' , a Felix the Cat cartoon made a year earlier at a different studio , yet using exactly the same premise . Felix the Cat is walking along when he is abruptly blindfolded a... |
418,393 | 1,609,079 | 31,325 | 6 | Which way did he go , George ? | Douglas Corrigan was an early example of the ' 15 minutes of fame ' phenomenon . A working-class Texan from a family with strong Irish-American roots , Corrigan bought a junked aeroplane and fixed it to his own satisfaction - some parts literally held on with baling wire - and in 1938 he flew cross-country from Califor... |
419,041 | 1,609,079 | 22,585 | 6 | Impressive military scenes | Werner Krauss was an important actor in German silent films , and many of his films from that period were well-received in Britain and America . Krauss never received any offers to work in Hollywood . . . possibly because he was too similar in type to Emil Jannings , who had a fine Hollywood career in the late silent e... |
419,359 | 1,609,079 | 16,015 | 6 | Hoot Gibson meets Ben Hur | I haven't seen many Hoot Gibson movies - - I'm more familiar with the work of his wife , stuntwoman Helen Gibson - - but I suspect that " Let ' er Buck " isn't typical Hoot Gibson fare . Among other things in this movie , Hoot competes in a chariot race ! CONTAINS SPOILERS . Texas Cowhand Bob Carson ( Gibson ) is in lo... |
418,208 | 1,609,079 | 22,553 | 6 | She's a winner , Max is a whiner and Jacob's a weiner . | Jenny Jugo was a Teutonic brunette who specialised in light comedy ingenue roles , similar to Deanna Durbin but with less singing . Well into her forties , Jugo exhibited a girlish quality and an easy grace that enabled her to give excellent and believable performances in roles for which she was frankly too old . ' Wer... |
418,310 | 1,609,079 | 16,642 | 6 | Heaven will protect the working girl | ' Bertha , the Sewing-Machine Girl ' is as dated and awkward as its title . This film was made in 1926 but seems more typical of the film fare of 1916 . The heroine is a working girl ( whom heaven will protect ) , yet who spends just enough time in a sweatshop to justify the film's title . She quickly gives up her sewi... |
419,484 | 1,609,079 | 1,518 | 6 | Another ' lost ' film comes home . | I saw " Broncho Billy's Adventure " - - an allegedly ' lost ' film - - in October 2006 at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Sacile , Italy . This movie proves my point about so-called ' lost ' films : namely , that many film archives don't know precisely what they've got , and therefore nobody should claim definitively th... |
418,489 | 1,609,079 | 18,887 | 6 | ' Fifty-Fifty ' : rather nifty | ' The Fifty-Fifty Girl ' is a pleasant comedy with some adventure content . It's hardly a great film , but it retains some interest for its depiction of feminism , 1928 vintage . At this point , women in America had been voting for eight years and were now seeking other ways to redefine their role in society . Like man... |
419,539 | 1,609,079 | 311,075 | 6 | Hubert Humphrey meets a triceratops | ' The Enormous Egg ' was originally a children's novel by Oliver Butterworth , who wrote a few books for young readers during breaks from his career in New England as a full-time professor of English and Latin . ' The Enormous Egg ' was his most popular book ; he wrote a sequel called ' The Narrow Passage ' ( note the ... |
418,886 | 1,609,079 | 22,724 | 6 | There's no ' B ' in ' William Goodrich ' | The comedy short ' Bridge Wives ' was made in the early 1930s , when American households ( especially the women ) were in the throes of a nationwide craze for contract bridge . The fad inspired several other comedy films during this same period , including Loretta Young's ' Grand Slam ' and Leon Errol's hilarious ' Hon... |
419,090 | 1,609,079 | 18,993 | 6 | Colleen as Eliza Doolittle ; not much Marquis value . | Once again we have a ' lost ' film which turns out merely to have been mislaid . No prints of " Her Wild Oat " were known to exist until an excellent print surfaced in 2001 , in the Czech National Archive in Prague . Usually , when a Hollywood silent turns up in a non-anglophone nation , the original intertitles have b... |
418,387 | 1,609,079 | 131,589 | 6 | Danish blue cheese . | I saw ' Smuglerne ' ( ' Smugglers ' ) in October 2006 at the Cinema Muto festival in Sacile , Italy , where it was screened as a print with an alternate title : ' In the Hands of the Sharkers ' . This movie was made by Denmark's Nordisk studio , which had previously made a lot of krona from movies purporting to expose ... |
419,109 | 1,609,079 | 21,400 | 6 | dis-Oriented | ' Son of the Gods ' , starring Richard Barthelmess , is a good example of how an actor's current performance is inflected by his ( or her ) previous performances . With the possible exception of " Tol'able David " , Barthelmess's best ( and best-known ) role was his performance as the gentle Chinese immigrant in ' Brok... |
419,166 | 1,609,079 | 8,129 | 6 | Eight cents a word ? O . Henry was dreaming ! | SPOILERS THROUGHOUT . ' I Will Repay ' is adapted from O . Henry's short story ' A Municipal Report ' , but this film version makes some changes in the story which I consider largely improvements . In O . Henry's original , the ( unnamed ) narrator is mostly a passive observer : here , named Roger Kendall , he plays an... |
418,217 | 1,609,079 | 21,396 | 6 | Oakie dopey , Olive oily . | I once had dinner with film actress Victoria Horne at the Players Club in Gramercy Park , years after the death of her husband Jack Oakie . Although she had a long and impressive career in her own right , Horne was much more interested in talking about her husband's life and career . She was deeply gratified that I had... |
419,478 | 1,609,079 | 321,820 | 6 | Belly-laughs and an elasticated face | I saw this crude but hilarious early comedy in October 2007 at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone ; the annual festival has made a welcome return to that beautiful town after eight years in nearby Sacile . . . a town no less beautiful , but in Sacile the festival's programme was split between two smaller cinemas ... |
419,651 | 1,609,079 | 11,401 | 6 | Lost and found comedy | Life of the Party was released shortly before the scandal that ruined Roscoe Arbuckle's career , which resulted in the Hays Office banning Arbuckle from the screen even though he was acquitted on all charges . Consequently , there were no plans to re-release this film , and no American or British prints of " Life of ... |
418,536 | 1,609,079 | 17,078 | 6 | Martha Sleeper is a keeper ; " flivver " flavour flits . | Long Fliv the King is fairly funny , and has a more coherent plot than usual for a Charley Chase movie , so it's unfortunate that this 1926 comedy has a title that so thoroughly dates it . The word " fliv " is short for " flivver " , which was 1920s American slang for a light automobile . The title " Long Fliv the Ki... |
418,473 | 1,609,079 | 257,847 | 6 | Reverse angle drag . Cheeky ! | Early movies often had descriptive titles , as they were so short that they usually consisted of a mere incident rather than an actual plot . " Ladies ' Skirts Nailed to a Fence " contains more plot than usual for this period . Two women in elaborate Victorian dress ( including skirts that reach the ground ) are gossip... |
419,715 | 1,609,079 | 415,642 | 6 | First half funny , second half . . . ( shrug ) | Silent-film comedian Snub Pollard gave hilarious performances in some Hal Roach short comedies , yet Pollard never managed to develop a character who could sustain a feature - length film . Even some of his short films contain a split-level structure , with the story abruptly changing direction midway through the movie... |
419,603 | 1,609,079 | 24,816 | 6 | Weill and Gershwin did it better . | Benvenuto Cellini was a goldsmith in 16th-century Florence , and apparently he was also something of a hell-raiser and a swordsman ( in the sexual sense as well as the literal one ) . However , it's my understanding that we have only Cellini's own memoirs ( never published in his lifetime ) as testimony of his sexual p... |
418,610 | 1,609,079 | 29,127 | 6 | Ciannelli has one brilliant scene . | Nero Wolfe is supposedly one of the great sleuths of detective fiction , but his appeal eludes me . Wolfe is an extremely unsympathetic character : arrogant , lazy , self-indulgent , corpulent . He avoids detective work ( or any other work ) unless he absolutely needs the money , preferring to spend his time eating eno... |
418,465 | 1,609,079 | 346,113 | 6 | Betty goes batty , but LeRoy would rather tap . | ' Public Jitterbug # 1 ' is an excellent example of the sort of nonsense - - often highly entertaining nonsense - - which was ground out by Hollywood studios in the decades when a trip to the movies meant a double feature plus selected shorts . This ' Jitterbug ' is a mini-musical : too brief ( and too ephemeral ) to b... |
419,464 | 1,609,079 | 15,843 | 6 | Great vaudeville team in weak comedy | Two of the very biggest names in the American theatre during the early 20th century were the comedy team of Weber & Fields . They were ' Dutch ' comics , portraying an exaggerated ethnic stereotype that was meant to be German ( ' Deutsch ' ) , not from Holland . In their most famous stage get-ups , they both wore goate... |
418,785 | 1,609,079 | 149,160 | 6 | Jangle in the jungle . | Here we have a mid-level Heckle and Jeckle cartoon : not one of their best , but nor one of their worst . The magpies decide to stow away aboard a luxury flight to Africa , and of course mayhem ensues . What I found most interesting about this 1949 toon is its post-war depiction of luxury air travel . There's one shot ... |
418,519 | 1,609,079 | 34,814 | 6 | Jackboots galore | ' Der Große König ' ( ' The Great King ' ) was a Nazi propaganda film which won the 1942 Coppa Mussolini prize as the best foreign film released in Italy that year . One assumes that Mussolini's film critics were not completely objective . And yet this movie has excellent production values and a gripping story which ( ... |
418,402 | 1,609,079 | 23,425 | 6 | Goodbye , Dolly ! Billy Wilder is welcome . | ' Scampolo , a Child of the Street ' is a starring vehicle for Dolly Haas , an actress specialising in ' waif ' and ' gamin ' roles , whom I've slagged quite thoroughly in a couple of other IMDb reviews . I find Haas intensely annoying ; she does all sorts of little bits of physical business ( quivering lips , eyes bri... |
418,533 | 1,609,079 | 21,279 | 6 | Odour of the Garter . | ' Queen High ' is ever so slightly a musical , based on a 1914 Broadway play that became a 1926 stage musical : the film jettisons most of the Broadway score and adds two new songs . Top billing goes to Stanley Smith ( who ? ) and Ginger Rogers as the young lovers , but they warble their songs in operetta voices , and ... |
419,495 | 1,609,079 | 24,656 | 6 | If it wasn't for those pesky kids . . . | Cecil B . DeMille had a long and mutually profitable relationship with Paramount , interrupted by a brief falling-out with Adolph Zukor , during which DeMille made a few films at MGM in the early sound era . . . including his weirdest and most atypical film , ' Madam Satan ' . ' This Day and Age ' was made shortly afte... |
419,220 | 1,609,079 | 16,953 | 6 | Alpine for you , my darling | German filmmaker Arnold Fanck single-handedly invented an entire movie genre : the mountain film . This refers not to mountain-climbing movies in general , but to a specific type of movie in an Alpine setting . A ' mountain film ' depicts the experiences of an athletic young Aryan man , high in the mountains , where he... |
418,909 | 1,609,079 | 21,305 | 6 | Rare glimpse of Clayton , Jackson & Durante | ' Roadhouse Nights ' is supposedly based on a novel by Dashiell Hammett which I haven't read , but I suspect that this movie varies hugely from the source material . The most interesting thing about this movie is that it contains some performance footage of Clayton , Jackson and Durante . . . who were headliners in vau... |
418,230 | 1,609,079 | 218,483 | 6 | Pleasant , but could have been better . . . | The 1931 Broadway musical ' Of Thee I Sing ' was a landmark in the American theatre . The songs ( by the Gershwin brothers ) were fully integrated into the script by George S . Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind , advancing the plot rather than interrupting it . Whereas most other musicals of the 1930s offered frothy escapism ... |
419,506 | 1,609,079 | 1 | 7 | There are two versions of this movie . | Here's a perfect example of the pitfalls of writing about films : especially films from the earliest days of the cinema . The other IMDb'ers who have posted reviews of Carmencita's performance for Thomas Edison's Kinetograph camera are apparently reviewing footage from Edison Motion Picture # 28 , which has been reissu... |
418,438 | 1,609,079 | 15,343 | 7 | Funnier than I'd expected . | One of the tragedies of the first World War - - the bloodiest war in history , up till that time - - was that thousands of the men who'd survived through the Armistice came home to discover that their civilian jobs were no longer open , and other jobs were not easy to find . ' Smithy ' is a comedy - - a fairly lowbrow ... |
418,832 | 1,609,079 | 221,399 | 7 | Groucho plays it straight , gets honest laughs | The 1960 American TV version of ' The Mikado ' ( which I saw in England ) was so popular that its highlights were released on an LP phonograph record : I have an original pressing of this . The best part in ' The Mikado ' is the comic lead role of Ko-Ko , the Lord High Executioner , but some of the other roles are good... |
418,925 | 1,609,079 | 21,943 | 7 | You VILL obey orders , ja ? | ' The Captain of Köpenick ' is a true story that could only have happened in Germany , where the authority of a uniform was ( and still is ? ) obeyed without question . In 1906 , an obscure Tilsiter cobbler named Wilhelm Voigt ( 1849-1922 ) purchased the second-hand uniform of a Prussian infantry captain . Wearing this... |
418,211 | 1,609,079 | 416,012 | 7 | Mickey Rooney ( herself ) as Mary Pickford ! | The Mickey McGuire series of comedy shorts were a spin-off from ' The Toonerville Trolley ' , an extremely popular daily comic panel written and drawn by Fontaine Fox . ( There was also ' Toonerville Folks ' , a Sunday strip version . ) Basically , small-town Toonerville was its own little universe , and the gentle hum... |
418,913 | 1,609,079 | 36,982 | 7 | Victor Sjostrom's subtle performance | ' The Emperor of Portugallien ' was originally a novel by Selma Lagerlof , an early recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature . Her novels remain popular in Scandinavia ; elsewhere , she is now remembered ( if at all ) only for her very long children's novel ' The Adventures of Nils ' . I suspect that the plot of ' T... |
418,923 | 1,609,079 | 21,910 | 7 | Louise Beavers as Whistler's Mother . | ' Girls About Town ' is a fascinating example of the winking immorality that prevailed in Hollywood in the early 1930s , causing the public uproar that led to the Production Code . Lilyan Tashman and Kay Francis play a couple of . . . well , it's not quite clear how these ladies earn a living , as they sleep until 5 . ... |
418,359 | 1,609,079 | 17,584 | 7 | She's Russian , he's rushin ' . | Once again , a ' lost ' film turns out merely to have been mislaid . Bill Wellman's ' You Never Know Women ' was ' lost ' for decades , until a print surfaced in the Library of Congress . . . one of the two most obvious places to look for it ! ( The other being AMPAS . ) This movie turns out to be a pleasant light come... |
419,343 | 1,609,079 | 17,585 | 7 | Master comedian , good comedy | Raymond Griffith was a very popular comedian of the late silent era , who is now forgotten because very few of his films have survived . He also embodies the cliché of the silent-film star whose voice is inappropriate for talkies : due to a bronchial ailment , Griffith could not speak above a whisper . After a couple o... |
419,265 | 1,609,079 | 30,492 | 7 | Goose-stepping screwballs | ' So , You Don't Know Korff Yet ? ' is a low-budget comedy , made in Germany during the Third Reich but largely free of Nazi agitprop . It's an amusing film , with an interesting depiction of Hollywood-style gangsters as imagined by Germans . Vermeylen is a wealthy Dutch art collector , who lives in Amsterdam with his ... |
419,040 | 1,609,079 | 33,173 | 7 | Lucy & Desi and Rodgers & Hart | ' Too Many Girls ' is froth , but it's well-made froth : a fun movie musical that's just slightly below top-notch , based on a 1939 Broadway musical comedy of the same name , starring Eddie Bracken and Desi Arnaz ( who repeat their stage roles here ) . The songs are by Rodgers and Hart , but only one song here has beco... |
419,236 | 1,609,079 | 19,655 | 7 | It's not her ' Asphalt ' . | ' Asphalt ' was directed by Joe May , a fairly talented director / producer who helped start the career of Fritz Lang , one of the greatest film directors of all time . Joe May had the misfortune to be Jewish in Hitler's Germany . Fortunately , he escaped to Hollywood . Unfortunately , none of Joe May's Hollywood films... |
419,013 | 1,609,079 | 321,326 | 7 | In some ways , better than Spencer Tracy's movie | ' Edouard mon fils ' is an adaptation for French television of the English drama ' Edward , My Son ' . My French is not of the best , but I was able to follow the action of this talky drama largely due to my familiarity with the original playscript and its film version . I wish I had seen the play , co-written by Rober... |
419,198 | 1,609,079 | 19,647 | 7 | ' Argyle ' earns its stripes . | According to its opening credits , ' The Argyle Case ' is based on a stage play . . . but then , immediately after the main credits , a title card appears bearing a message with the signature of William J Burns , the deputy attorney-general who founded the FBI . According to this title card , ' The Argyle Case ' is bas... |
418,598 | 1,609,079 | 808,405 | 7 | Entertaining ? Yes . Accurate ? No . | This film ' Oh , Mr Faulkner , Do You Write ? ' takes its title from an incident during William Faulkner's stint as a Hollywood screenwriter . The director Victor Fleming separately invited Faulkner and Clark Gable ( who had never met before ) to join him on a duck hunt . ( Some versions of this story claim that the di... |
419,494 | 1,609,079 | 227,396 | 7 | Historic interest only | The reign of France's king Louis Philippe ( 1830-1848 ) was a turbulent era . Louis initiated all sorts of social reforms which were allegedly ' progressive ' , but which achieved little actual progress . For example , France's Child Labour Act of 1841 mandated that children aged 8 to 12 could not be used in manual lab... |
419,536 | 1,609,079 | 15,051 | 7 | A don't-ask-why chromosome | The 1924 silent movie ' The Last Man on Earth ' is one of those ideas that just won't go away : suppose there was only one fertile male on Earth , and all the women fought over his services ? This same gimmick showed up again in the 1933 semi-musical film " It's Great to Be Alive " and yet again in Pat Frank's 1946 nov... |
419,019 | 1,609,079 | 141,071 | 7 | A moon in a toon . | ' Felix Trips through Toyland ' is a typical - - and therefore enjoyable - - example of the low-budget Felix the Cat cartoons drawn by Otto Messmer in stark black-and-white . Messmer , alas , was not well-paid for the long hours he put into these cartoons . At the very end of his life , Messmer was supported largely by... |
418,792 | 1,609,079 | 17,870 | 7 | Felix almost anticipates Hitchcock . | The title of this Felix toon is ' Woos Whoopee ' , which makes sense if you view a print with the original credits . Since Felix received star billing - - his name above the title - - the credits manage to read ' Felix the Cat Woos Whoopee ' . At this time , Felix the Cat was indeed a hugely popular box-office draw , f... |
418,759 | 1,609,079 | 15,074 | 7 | Uncle Fester meets the Kid from Borneo . | Following his performance in Chaplin's ' The Kid ' , Jackie Coogan became an astonishingly popular silent-film star while still a very young child . Sadly , the many millions of dollars earned by young Jackie were squandered by his parents and his stepfather . Because of Coogan's misfortune , the guardians of modern ch... |
419,414 | 1,609,079 | 4,209 | 7 | Japanese Comanches . | I saw ' The Last of the Line ' in October 2006 at the Cinema Muto festival in Sacile , Italy . They screened a print on loan from the Museum of Modern Art in New York City . The original credits list an actor with the Victorian-style billing of ' Mr Bingham ' - - no forename , just Mister Bingham - - in the role of the... |
419,357 | 1,609,079 | 26,578 | 7 | Not a knockout , but it goes the distance . | Max Schmeling remains a controversial figure . As the boxing champion of Germany ( and then world champion ) during Hitler's reign , there was naturally some tendency on the part of the Third Reich to use Schmeling as a symbol of the Aryan ubermensch . In 1936 , Schmeling fought the undefeated Joe Louis . By Nazi stand... |
419,435 | 1,609,079 | 156,590 | 7 | The clockwork man gets ticked off . | One of the most delightful silent films I've ever seen is Ernst Lubitsch's 1919 ' Die Puppe ' ( ' The Doll ' ) , based on a tale by E . T . A . Hoffmann , starring Ossi Oswalda as a young woman who impersonates a life-size mechanical doll in order to woo a young man . This early German sound film ' Der Hampelmann ' ( '... |
418,902 | 1,609,079 | 26,571 | 7 | Alice Faye is even sexier than usual . | It's interesting how different roles played by the same actor can form a continuum . The master showman played by Warner Baxter here in ' King of Burlesque ' could arguably be the same master showman played by Baxter in ' Stand Up and Cheer ' and ( so memorably ) in ' 42nd Street ' , if only they all had the same name ... |
419,595 | 1,609,079 | 17,754 | 7 | A nice change from the usual Mix | Tom Mix and his equine companion Tony the Wonder Horse had a solid career in Westerns , but just occasionally Mix ( or his producers ) made a commendable effort to vary the formula . . . notably with ' Dick Turpin ' , in which Mix played the long-riding highwayman and male horse Tony played Turpin's mare Black Bess . '... |
418,696 | 1,609,079 | 23,794 | 7 | Peter Ibbetson meets " Goodnight Sweetheart " . | In adapting his own stage play ' Berkeley Square ' for the screen , playwright John L Balderston made numerous changes . One change is significant in hindsight : during Act One of the stage play , the dialogue makes several references to a war hero named Bill Clinton ! ( A hero on the side fighting AGAINST the United S... |
419,170 | 1,609,079 | 724,957 | 7 | Sullivan's Beatles tribute with no Beatles . | Ed Sullivan and the Beatles had enjoyed a mutually profitable relationship ever since the Fab Four made their Stateside debut on Sullivan's TV show . Gradually , the Beatles tapered off their participation in Sullivan's shows , diminishing from live appearances to taped appearances to mere archive footage . This IMDb r... |
419,714 | 1,609,079 | 14,941 | 7 | Second-hand Cohan | ' George Washington , Jnr ' was originally a 1906 Broadway musical written by George M Cohan as a starring vehicle for himself , his parents and his wife Ethel Levey . ( George's sister Josie had dropped out of the family act by then . ) The 1906 musical featured one rousing song ( an early version of " You're a Grand ... |
419,085 | 1,609,079 | 19,935 | 7 | Lina Basquette , R . I . P . | The Godless Girl was one of Cecil B . DeMille's cynical attempts to combine sexual sensationalism with puritanical moralising . . . thus catering for movie audiences ' voyeurism while stroking their prejudices and allowing them to feel moral and pious . Many of DeMille's films offered this combination of sexual explo... |
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