MC Yearly Consensus - 1935

[Spinal]

Submit your five favorite films from this year and in a week I will give you a top ten. IMDb dates will be used.

The point system is as follows

1st Place-5 points
2nd Place-4 points
3rd Place-3.5 points
4th Place-3 points
5th Place-2.5 points

There will be no restrictions on short films. A minimum of three films must be listed. You may edit your post freely up until the time that the voting is closed, which will be in about a week. I will give at least 24 hours warning before tallying votes.

You may begin now.

IMDB Power Search (http://www.imdb.com/list)

[Russ]

1. Bride of Frankenstein
2. Man on the Flying Trapeze
3. A Night at the Opera
4. Beware of Barnacle Bill (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPmdb315upY) Dave Fleischer!
5. Balloon Land (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKp7akCjiF4) Ub Iwerks!

Still desperately want to see Ruggles of Red Gap.

[Yxklyx]

1. Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale)
2. The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock)
3. Mutiny on the Bounty (Frank Lloyd)
4. Top Hat (Mark Sandrich)
5. Hands Across the Table (Mitchell Leisen)

6. Peter Ibbetson (Henry Hathaway)
7. Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl)
8. The Good Fairy (William Wyler)
9. Alice Adams (George Stevens)
10. The Informer (John Ford)

[Derek]

1. Top Hat (Mark Sandrich)
2. Ruggles of Red Gap (Leo McCarey)
3. The Devil Is a Woman (Josef von Sternberg)
4. The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock)

Not much of a fan: The Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale), A Night at the Opera (Sam Wood), Mutiny on the Bounty (Frank Lloyd)

[Kurious Jorge v3.1]

1. Top Hat
2. The Devil is a Woman
3. Golddiggers of 1935

[Ezee E]

I don't qualify for this one. Bummer.

[Grouchy]

1. Bride of Frankenstein
2. The 39 Steps
3. A Night at the Opera
4. The Informer
5. Mad Love

[Philosophe_rouge]

1. The Thirty Nine Steps
2. Les Miserables
3. The Bride of Frankenstein
4. The Lives of a Bengal Lancer
5. A Night at The Opera

[Spinal]

5. Balloon Land (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKp7akCjiF4) Ub Iwerks!

High body count in that one.

[MadMan]

The threads for the 20s and 30s are extremely useful to me, considering I've seen very little from both decades.

[soitgoes...]

1. Wife! Be Like a Rose! (Mikio Naruse)
2. An Inn in Tokyo (Yasujiro Ozu)
3. The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock)
4. Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl)
5. Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale)
------------------------------------------------------
6. Sazen Tange and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo (Sadao Yamanaka)
7. Top Hat (Mark Sandrich)
8. Tit for Tat (Charley Rogers)
9. The Good Fairy (William Wyler)

[origami_mustache]

Sazen Tange and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo
Triumph of the Will
A Night at the Opera
Balloon Land
Mad Love

[Yxklyx]

Will try to see Man on the Flying Trapeze this week.

[Mysterious Dude]

1. Carnival in Flanders
2. Triumph of the Will
3. The Informer
4. Mutiny on the Bounty
5. A Tale of Two Cities

[monolith94]

1. A Night at the Opera
2. The Man on the Flying Trapeze
3. Mutiny on the Bounty

Top Hat sucks.

[Boner M]

1. Peter Ibbetson
2. The 39 Steps
3. Bride of Frankenstein

Boy do I epic-fail at the 30's.

[Kurious Jorge v3.1]

Top Hat sucks.

thats what she said.

[Raiders]

1. Bride of Frankenstein (Whale)
2. Mad Love (Freund)
3. A Night at the Opera (Wood)
4. Triumph of the Will (Reifenstahl)
5. The 39 Steps (Hitchcock)

[ledfloyd]

1. Top Hat
2. Captain Blood
3. Bride of Frankenstein
4. Night at the Opera

[Kurosawa Fan]

I can tally this one Spinal. I can't participate, but I can tally. :sad:

[Qrazy]

1. 39 Steps
2. Captain Blood
3. A Night at the Opera
4. Top Hat
5. Mutiny on the Bounty

[Spinal]

I can tally this one Spinal. I can't participate, but I can tally. :sad:

Yeah, I don't have a complete ballot either.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Okay, this is closed. I'll have the results up soon. Sorry for the abruptness, but I leave for Chicago in the morning, so if I don't do it now I won't get to it until next weekend.

[Kurosawa Fan]

#10
http://img58.imageshack.us/img58/1834/devilisawomanvn7.jpg
The Devil is a Woman
Josef von Sternberg

In a café an older man details his encounters with a gorgeous heart breaker that his younger friend has only just met at the parade. Forewarned, the young man swears he will avoid the fate of his friend.

The Spanish government threatened to bar all Paramount films from Spain and its territories unless the film was withdrawn from worldwide circulation. They protested the unfavorable portrayal of the Spanish police. Paramount destroyed the original print after its initial run, and it remained out of circulation until 1959. In Maximillian Schell's documentary "Marlene", Marlene Dietrich said that this was her favorite of her films.

"Dietrich plays Concha in an animated, foot-stamping style that couldn't be more different from her other performances in the Sternberg Seven. To excuse her sadomasochistic callousness, Von Sternberg highlights the little girl in Dietrich, and even gives her the last word on their relationship: "You've always mistaken your vanity for love," she tells Atwill. For a proud man like Von Sternberg, this admission must have been difficult, but he's secure enough as an artist to be tough with himself." - Dan Callahan

[Kurosawa Fan]

#8 (TIE)
http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/3839/trapeze01ua2.png
Man on the Flying Trapeze
Clyde Bruckman & W.C. Fields


Hard-working, henpecked Ambrose Ambrose Wolfinger takes off from work to go to a wrestling match. His decision has catastrophic consequences.

This was the last film directed by Clyde Bruckman. Although Bruckman's name appears on the credit, this film was actually directed by W.C. Fields, who took over after Bruckman had to quit early in the shoot due to the effects of his alcoholism. This is the only film on which Fields technically worked as his own director. Mr Wolfinger's secretary is played by Carlotta Monti, who in real life was the mistress of W.C. Fields.

"From the opening, the film's filled with hilarious performances, especially by the duo of Howard and, as her mother, Vera Lewis. They are the butt of any number of jokes about marriage come horifically to life. Fields, of course, is stellar, particularly in the opening sequence, where he has to stop two burglars in his basement. The film's ending may be uncomfortably close to Fields going on a shooting rampage, but tragedy is the source of all good comedy." - Vadim Rizov

[Kurosawa Fan]

#8(TIE)
http://img377.imageshack.us/img377/2749/captainbloodca3.jpg
Captain Blood
Michael Curtiz


An enslaved English doctor and his comrades in chains escape and become pirates of the Robin Hood variety.

Robert Donat was cast in the title role, but didn't turn up at the start of shooting. Warner Brothers scrambled to find a replacement, asking Brian Aherne to take the role, but he refused. Warners decided to take a gamble on an unknown Australian named Errol Flynn. In his biography, "My Wicked, Wicked Ways" Errol Flynn (an infamous prankster) states that he played many pranks on Olivia de Havilland. One of them was leaving a dead snake in her underwear, which she found when she went to put them on. After that she lived in terror of what prank he would pull on her next. Basil Rathbone took a dislike to Errol Flynn. During their dueling sequence he reminded Flynn that he was being paid considerably more for his part in the picture than Flynn was and then deliberately wounded him in the arm (leaving a permanent scar).

"Conveying emotion in big, broad strokes and through buoyant, lithesome physicality, Flynn—shot in light almost as downy as that which envelops de Havilland—dominates Curtiz's frequently overcrowded and busy frame like a shining sword cutting through the fog. As a result of the charming de Havilland's rote role as a moralizing stick-in-the-mud (her eventual affection for the plundering Blood is as predictably bland as her ruffly outfits are constricting and chaste), the film's central romance isn't as captivating as the on-screen couple's later collaborations, and one pines for more (and more elaborate) set pieces than the somewhat wooden Flynn-Rathbone duel and a sea battle culled from silent movie and miniature model footage." - Nick Schager

[Philosophe_rouge]

1935, aside from 1930 is my weakest year of the decade.... I want to see The Devil is a Woman, though I don't expect it to be as good as the other Sternberg's I've seen. I also should get around to seeing ANY W.C. Fields sometime

[Qrazy]

Errol Flynn + Harold Ramis = Christian Bale

[Kurosawa Fan]

#7
http://img363.imageshack.us/img363/6982/madloveqx2.jpg
Mad Love
Karl Freund

An insane surgeon's obsession with an actress leads him to replace her wounded pianist's hands with the hands of a knife murderer which still have the urge to throw knives.

This is Peter Lorre's first American film. Charles Chaplin called Lorre the screen's best actor after seeing his performance in Mad Love. Peter Lorre was under contract to Columbia Pictures. He agreed to be loaned out to MGM for this film if Columbia would do a film version of Crime and Punishment with him in the role of Raskolnikov.

"Lorre brings astonishing depth to the pitiable doctor, transforming a stock mad scientist/psychotic villian into a tragic figure, a man who, as he plaintively bellows, has conquered science by who cannot conquer love. In addition, no other actor is quite as eerily unsettling as the crackly-accented Lorre. With his cold and sleepy eyes, he seems stuck in a perpetually hypnagogic state from which he occasionally, explosively bursts-forth, and it's these sudden awakenings from his trance that make the film genuinely creepy. Lorre, in the final act, brings terrifyingly hyperbolic madness to the screen as he goes crazy like Jack-Nicholson-in-The-Shining crazy." - Henry Stewart

[Kurosawa Fan]

#6
http://img381.imageshack.us/img381/8443/mutinylw5.jpg
Mutiny on the Bounty
Frank Lloyd


Fletcher Christian successfully leads a revolt against the ruthless Captain Bligh on the HMS Bounty. However, Bligh returns one year later, hell bent on avenging his captors.

Charles Laughton, playing William Bligh, was in reality terrified of the ocean and was violently seasick throughout most of the filming. Actor James Cagney was sailing his boat off of Catalina Island, California, and passed the area where the film's crew was shooting aboard the Bounty replica. Cagney called to director Frank Lloyd, an old friend, and said that he was on vacation and could use a couple of bucks, and asked if Lloyd had any work for him. Lloyd put him into a sailor's uniform, and Cagney spent the rest of the day as an extra playing a sailor aboard the Bounty.

"Delicate romancing amidst picturesque scenes in Tahiti by the English sailors is handled with finesse by the script, and the boys must have worn out plenty of kid gloves in slipping this part of the story in with diplomacy. Polynesians are considered members of the white race by many experts, but whether they are so held by the majority of layman is questionable. And Gable and Tone's girl friends are very much Poly in appearance. But it's all done so neatly that kicks won't be numerous." - Variety Staff, 1935

[Kurosawa Fan]

The top five will have to wait until later tonight. Sorry for the delay.

[Philosophe_rouge]

I'm not a fan of Mutiny on the Bounty at all really, some good performances sure, but it lacks any real interest visually or otherwise. Even Laughton is little more than a parody compared to his performance in Les Miserables, easily his best performance.

[Kurosawa Fan]

#5
http://img133.imageshack.us/img133/5216/triumphwillcrowdku4.jpg
Triumph of the Will
Leni Riefenstahl


The infamous propaganda film of the 1934 Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg, Germany.

Clips from this film were used in an Allied propaganda short (reportedly the work of a Canadian film editor) set to the British dance tune, "The Lambeth Walk". The legions of marching soldiers, as well as Hitler giving his Nazi salute, were made to look like wind-up dolls, dancing to the music. Nazi propaganda chief Josef Goebbels is reported to have seen a copy of the short film and was outraged beyond reason, leaving his screening room kicking chairs and screaming profanities.

"We see a lot of right-arm saluting in "Triumph of the Will," noticing how Hitler curls his fingers back to his palm before withdrawing the salute each time, with a certain satisfaction. What a horrible man. What insanity that so many Germans embraced him. A sobering thought: Most of the people on the screen were dead within a few years." - Roger Ebert

[Kurosawa Fan]

#4
http://img79.imageshack.us/img79/281/tophatxb6.jpg
Top Hat
Mark Sandrich


Showman Jerry Travers is working for producer Horace Hardwick in London. Jerry demonstrates his new dance steps late one night in Horace's hotel, much to the annoyance of sleeping Dale Tremont below. She goes upstairs to complain and the two are immediately attracted to each other.

Beddini's motto was originally, "For the men the sword, for the women the whip." The script was changed to "For the women the kiss, for the men the sword" after the censors objected. The two-minute dance of "The Piccolino" was filmed in one take.

"Aside from a certain unexplainable X factor that has to do with the right place (RKO) at the right time (the mid-'30s), I'd say that (Astaire and Rogers') big dramatic dances work so beautifully because Astaire recognized the large disappointment behind Rogers's seemingly unflappable reserve. Perhaps he had little use for her off screen, but on screen he responds sensitively to her hidden pain. The way he danced away her doubts is among the most moving (and most narcotically elating) images in film. Her barely perceptible awkwardness as a dancer paid off for the audience. After seeing them together, every woman wanted to dance with Fred Astaire, and Rogers made them feel that they could." - Dan Callahan

[Kurosawa Fan]

#3
http://img364.imageshack.us/img364/3031/nightso0.jpg
A Night at the Opera
Sam Wood


A sly business manager and two wacky friends of two opera singers help them achieve success while humiliating their stuffy and snobbish enemies.

The film was to have originally begun with each of The Marx Brothers taking turns roaring in lieu of Leo the Lion (MGM's logo mascot); Harpo Marx was to have honked his horn. When the movie was to be edited for length, Allan Jones' song "Alone" was almost cut. Jones pleaded his case to producer Irving Thalberg, who replied, "The Marx Brothers know their comedy, and you know songs. I'll keep it in." "Alone" went on to become the only hit song from a Marx Brothers film.

"Groucho and Chico in a contract-tearing bit, the Marxes with O'Connor in a bed-switching idea, and a chase finale in the opera house are other dynamite comedy sequences, along with a corking build-up by Groucho while riding to his room on a trunk. The backstage finish, with Harpo doing a Tarzan on the fly ropes, contains more action than the Marxes usually go in for, but it relieves the strictly verbal comedy and provides a sock exit." - Variety Staff, 1935

[Qrazy]

It should be renamed Failure of the Will.

[Philosophe_rouge]

I was dissapointed in Triumph, not enough Triumphing. I was really kinda bored despite some nice imagery. I'm a huge fan of propoganda too. Still, I'm looking forward to Olympia pt 1 & 2. I need to see Top Hat

[Kurosawa Fan]

#2
http://img133.imageshack.us/img133/7733/39stepskl7.jpg
The 39 Steps
Alfred Hitchcock


A man in London tries to help a counterespionage agent. But when the agent is killed and he stands accused, he must go on the run to both save himself and also stop a spy ring trying to steal top secret information.

Madeleine Carroll suffered at the hands of Hitch's quest for realism, right down to the real welts on her wrists from the long days of being handcuffed to Robert Donat. One day on the set Hitchcock handcuffed Donat and Carroll together and pretended for several hours to have lost the key.

"The 39 Steps does contain what I find to be one of the most emotionally-stirring and humane scenes Hitchcock ever filmed. For, in a career filled with artifice, suspense, murder, technical innovation and mastery, and a twisted sense of humour, this scene stands out as that rarest of all Hitchcock rarities: sincere. The scene I'm talking about is the crofter scene, set in the Scottish countryside on the small, remote farm belonging to a stern, religious Scottish crofter and his urban-born wife." - Pacze Moj

[Philosophe_rouge]

I LURVE the 39 Steps however one of my favourite Hitchcocks, top 3 probably

[Kurosawa Fan]

#1
http://img133.imageshack.us/img133/2663/brideoffrankensteinus9.jpg
The Bride of Frankenstein
James Whale

Dr. Frankenstein and his monster both turn out to be alive, not killed as previously believed. Dr. Frankenstein wants to get out of the evil experiment business, but when a mad scientist, Dr. Pretorius, kidnaps his wife, Dr. Frankenstein agrees to help him create a new creature, a woman, to be the companion of the monster.

Not long before filming began, Colin Clive broke a leg in a horse riding accident. Consequently, most of Dr. Frankenstein's scenes were shot with him sitting. When filming the scene where the monster emerges from the burnt windmill, Boris Karloff slipped and fell into the water-filled well. Upon being helped out, he realized he had broken a leg in the fall. The metal struts used to stiffen his legs (for the famous "monster lurch") helped keep the bones in place until they could be properly set. Editing after previews resulted in the loss of a subplot in which Karl imitates the Monster's murderous modus operandi to eliminate his miserly aunt and uncle and direct the blame away from himself. The "body count" in the original cut was 21. This was trimmed to 10 after pressure from the censors.

"From The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) onward, horror has been a cue for unexpected camera angles, hallucinatory architecture and frankly artificial sets. As mainstream movies have grown steadily more unimaginative and realistic in their visuals, horror has provided a lifeline back to the greater design freedom of the silent era. To see sensational "real" things is not the same as seeing the bizarre, the grotesque, the distorted and the fanciful. There is more sheer shock in a clawed hand unexpectedly emerging from the shadows than in all the effects of Armageddon, because Armageddon looks realistic and horror taunts us that reality is an illusion." - Roger Ebert

[Kurosawa Fan]

Final Tally:

1. The Bride of Frankenstein - 33
2. The 39 Steps - 31
3. A Night at the Opera - 28
4. Top Hat - 21
5. Triumph of the Will - 14
6. Mutiny on the Bounty - 12.5
7. Mad Love - 9
8. Captain Blood - 8
9. Man on the Flying Trapeze - 8
10. The Devil is a Woman - 7.5

11. The Informer - 6.5
12. Balloon Land - 5.5

No other films received more than one vote. Had I been able to participate, The 39 Steps would have been #1 (I haven't seen Bride of Frankenstein).

[Qrazy]

I was dissapointed in Triumph, not enough Triumphing. I was really kinda bored despite some nice imagery. I'm a huge fan of propoganda too. Still, I'm looking forward to Olympia pt 1 & 2. I need to see Top Hat

I've only seen snippets and liked what I saw Ok but I meant more a re-title content-wise.