MC Yearly Consensus - 1933

[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. King Kong
2. Duck Soup
3. Snow-White
4. The Invisible Man
5. Sons of the Desert

So, is this, like, the last year? Have we done them all?

[Spinal]

1. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
2. Land Without Bread
3.
4. Duck Soup
5. Zero for Conduct

[Melville]

1. Duck Soup
2. The Old Man of the Mountain
3. Zero for Conduct
4. Une nuit sur le Mont Chauve
5. Snow White

[Mysterious Dude]

1. Duck Soup
2. The Old Man of the Mountain
3. Lot in Sodom
4. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
5. The Invisible Man

[Spinal]

So, is this, like, the last year? Have we done them all?

From here we will do:

2004
1992
1982
1972
1962
1952
1942
1932
Pre-1920
2005
1991
1981
1971
1961
1951
1941
1931
2006
and probably 2007.

[Russ]

The Old Man of the Mountain (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijck-94JDhQ) is fantastic, but I slightly prefer Snow-White (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-arBMWSD9s).

[Raiders]

1. Liebelei (Ophuls)
2. The Invisible Man (Whale)
3. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Lang)
4. Bed of Roses (La Cava)
5. Land Without Bread (Bunuel)

-----------------------------------

6. Duck Soup (McCarey)
7. Sons of the Desert (Seiter)
8. Zero for Conduct (Vigo)

[Philosophe_rouge]

GREAT year, maybe my favourite of the decade.

1. Little Women
2. Duck Soup
3. Gold Diggers of 1933
4. Baby Face
5. The Bitter Tea of General Yen
--------------
6. Design for Living
7. Queen Christina
8. The Eagle and the Hawk
9. Betty Boop in Snow White
10. 42nd Street

[origami_mustache]

1. Duck Soup
2. Deserter
3. The Old Man Of The Mountain
4. King Kong
5. Footlight Parade

[Mysterious Dude]

The Old Man of the Mountain (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijck-94JDhQ) is fantastic, but I slightly prefer Snow-White (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-arBMWSD9s).
I like Une nuit sur le mont chauve (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zaAo2PVYV8), but I'm really pretentious.

[Raiders]

I like Une nuit sur le mont chauve (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zaAo2PVYV8), but I'm really pretentious.

I must be very pretentious then, 'cuz that was easily my favorite of all those linked in this thread.

[Weeping_Guitar]

1. King Kong
2. Design For Living
3. Duck Soup

[Yxklyx]

1. Gold Diggers of 1933 (Mervyn LeRoy)
2. Lady for a Day (Frank Capra)
3. Counsellor at Law (William Wyler)
4. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang)
5. Queen Christina (Rouben Mamoulian)

6. King Kong (Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack)
7. Footlight Parade (Lloyd Bacon)
8. Mystery of the Wax Museum (Michael Curtiz)
9. Duck Soup (Leo McCarey)
10. 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon)

[soitgoes...]

1. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang)
2. Leibelei (Max Ophüls)
3. Japanese Girls at the Harbor (Hiroshi Shimizu)
4. Sons of the Desert (William A. Seiter)
5. Duck Soup (Leo McCarey)
----------------------------------------------------------
6. King Kong (Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack)
7. Las Hurdes (Luis Buñuel)
8. Woman of Tokyo (Yasujiro Ozu)
9. The Pharmacist (Arthur Ripley)
10. Black and White (Ivan Ivanov-Vano, Leonid Amalrik)

[monolith94]

1. Duck Soup
2. Gold Diggers of 1933
3. Land Without Bread
4. Lot in Sodom
5. King Kong

[ledfloyd]

1. Duck Soup
2. Gold Diggers of 1933
3. Design for Living
4. King Kong

[Lazlo]

1. The Invisible Man
2. King Kong
3. Duck Soup

[Melville]

The Old Man of the Mountain (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijck-94JDhQ) is fantastic, but I slightly prefer Snow-White (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-arBMWSD9s).
I like Une nuit sur le mont chauve (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zaAo2PVYV8), but I'm really pretentious.
My list has been appropriately edited.

[Pop Trash]

1. Queen Christina
2. King Kong
3. Gold Diggers of 1933
4. The Invisible Man

[Qrazy]

1. Zero for Conduct
2. Duck Soup
3. The Invisible Man
4. Las Hurdes
5. Queen Christina

[monolith94]

We should use this: http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReviews20/a%20Busby%20Berkeley%20Collect ion%20DVD/a%20Mervyn%20LeRoy%20Gold%20Di ggers%20of%201933%20DVD%20PDVD _015.jpg image for gold diggers when it invariably makes the list.

[Philosophe_rouge]

We should use this: http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReviews20/a%20Busby%20Berkeley%20Collect ion%20DVD/a%20Mervyn%20LeRoy%20Gold%20Di ggers%20of%201933%20DVD%20PDVD _015.jpg image for gold diggers when it invariably makes the list.

My favourite sequence of the film, great photo :D

[Derek]

1. Design for Living (Ernst Lubitsch)
2. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang)
3. Counsellor at Law (William Wyler)
4. Zero for Conduct (Jean Vigo)
5. Duck Soup (Leo McCarey)
************************
6. Lady for a Day (Frank Capra)
7. Outskirts (Boris Barnet)

Not too impressed: Liebelei (Max Ophuls)
Land Without Bread (Luis Buñuel)
King Kong (Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack)
The Bitter Tea of General Yen (Frank Capra)
Prisoner 13 (Fernando de Fuentes)
She Done Him Wrong (Lowell Sherman)
Lot in Sodom (James Sibley Watson & Melville Webber)

Outright dislike: Hallelujah, I'm a Bum (Lewis Milestone)

[baby doll]

1. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang)
2. Queen Christina (Rouben Mamoulian)
3. The Bitter Tea of General Yen (Frank Capra)

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. King Kong
2. Design for Living
3. Ecstasy
4. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse

[Kurosawa Fan]

I won't be able to tally this until Monday, so I'll leave it open until then.

[Boner M]

1. The Invisible Man
2. Zero For Conduct
3. King Kong
4. Design for Living
5. Duck Soup

[Grouchy]

Awesome year! I had a hard time putting these three in order:

1. Duck Soup
2. King Kong
3. The Invisible Man

[Boner M]

Bah, forgot The Invisible Man. That was one of the first films that really encouraged me to dig deeper into that period of Hollywood.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Closed. Results to come later.

[origami_mustache]

The Old Man of the Mountain (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijck-94JDhQ) is fantastic, but I slightly prefer Snow-White (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-arBMWSD9s).

Cab Calloway ftw!

[Kurosawa Fan]

We have another Top 9, as the tenth film failed to receive more than two votes. Here goes:

#9
http://img376.imageshack.us/img376/9332/landwithoutbreadif2.jpg
Land Without Bread
Luis Buñuel

A surrealistic documentary portrait of the region of Las Hurdes, a remote region of Spain where civilisation has barely developed, showing how the local peasants try to survive without even the most basic utilities and skills.

Last film directed by Luis Buñuel until _Gran Casino (1947)_, with the exception of compilation films he made while working at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, such as El Vaticano de Pio XII (1940). Luis Buñuel was not above slaughtering several animals to deliver his message; he ordered the ailing donkey to be spread with honey so he could film it being stung to death by bees. Nor was the mountain goat falling off the mountain an accident, shot by Buñuel's crew for the desired sequence.

"Buñuel's ravenous study of human geography suggests that a land without bread is a land without God. If bread, like manna, is the food of the Lord, it is impossible to break bread in Las Hurdes." - Ed Gonzalez

[Kurosawa Fan]

#8
http://img352.imageshack.us/img352/3217/queenchristinadx8.jpg
Queen Christina
Rouben Mamoulian


Young Christina ascends to the Swedish throne at age 5. While she is queen, Sweden becomes a dominant European power at the end of the Thirty Years War. Like England's Elizabeth I, Christina (Greta Garbo) is pressured into a politically correct marriage (her cousin) but she falls in love with an emissary from Spain (John Gilbert). As with her English counterpart, religion becomes a focal point with Protestant Sweden aghast that their queen could marry a Catholic.

Greta Garbo initially requested that Laurence Olivier play the lead, Don Antonio, since she was impressed by his performance in Westward Passage (1932). In July 1933, the press announced that Olivier would take the part. However, when they did the rehearsals in August, Garbo and Olivier had no chemistry, and he was released, although MGM Studios honored his negotiated salary of $1,500 a week for four weeks minimum. Garbo requested that John Gilbert be cast in the role instead. The scene where Christina goes around the room at the inn, remember the night she spent with her lover, was choreographed so meticulously that Greta Garbo performed the scene to a metronome.

"Garbo's performance is too often apace of the script's lethargy, but as often, and more, in glamorous keeping with the romantic high-lights. Her regal impression is convincing, which counts for plenty.That goes for almost every character, from the humble peasants who are called upon to manifest their deep-rooted loyalty to the Crown in words, to the members of the royal court." - Variety Staff, 1933

[Kurosawa Fan]

#7
http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/1259/zeroforconductex0.jpg
Zero for Conduct
Jean Vigo

The intolerable pressure of life at an unpleasantly seedy boys' boarding school leads to a full-scale revolution.

Banned by the French censor until well after World War II. François Truffaut paid homage to Zéro de conduite in his 1959 film The 400 Blows by copying, practically shot-for-shot, the scene in which a line of schoolboys jogging through Paris loses its members one by one to the attractions of the city. Lindsay Anderson's film If.... in its whole is a less whimsical reimagining of Zéro.

"You just have to let the weirdness and anarchy wash over you, and enjoy it like a fresh dip in a lake. The key thing about the movie is that Vigo is able to let his anxieties, passions, dreams, and feelings come out lucidly on the screen. He wasn't hiding anything. He was a great poet." - Jeffrey M. Anderson

[Kurosawa Fan]

#6
http://img172.imageshack.us/img172/6265/designfc0.gif
Design for Living
Ernst Lubitsch

Two Americans sharing a flat in Paris, playwright Tom Chambers and painter George Curtis, fall for free-spirited Gilda Farrell. When she can't make up her mind which one of them she prefers, she proposes a "gentleman's agreement": She will move in with them as a friend and critic of their work, but they will never have sex. But when Tom goes to London to supervise a production of one of his plays, leaving Gilda alone with George, how long will their gentleman's agreement last?

Writer Ben Hecht and producer-director Ernst Lubitsch retained only one line from the original play by Noel Coward: "For the good of our immortal souls!" Considerable censorship difficulties arose because of sexual discussions and innuendos, although the Hays Office eventually approved the film for release. However, it was banned by the Legion of Decency and was refused a certificate by the PCA for re-release in 1934, when the production code was more rigorously enforced.

"Well, maybe it is a little lumpy for Lubitsch, but I think the film more than holds its own. Cooper is a problem, but the bubbles rise in spite of him. Very glossy, very continental, and sometimes very funny." - Dave Kehr

[Kurosawa Fan]

#5
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/7343/golddiggershs8.jpg
Gold Diggers of 1933
Mervyn LeRoy


Millionaire turned composer Dick Powell rescues unemployed Broadway people with a new play.

The musical numbers were added to the film after it was already finished due to the enormous success of Busby Berkeley's routines in 42nd Street (1933). A further production number with Ginger Rogers singing "I've Got to Sing a Torch Song" was planed, but didn't made it in the movie.

"What sets Gold Diggers of 1933 apart (from Busby Berkeley's other musicals), aside from the opening "We're in the Money" number sung by Rogers, is its closing sequence, "Remember My Forgotten Man," one of the most socially conscious song-and-dance routines ("You put a rifle in his hand, you shouted hip hooray, but look at him today") ever conceived by Hollywood." - Kenneth Turan

[Kurosawa Fan]

#4
http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/1634/imfaceni4.jpg
The Invisible Man
James Whale


A scientist finds a way of becoming invisible, but in doing so, he becomes murderously insane.

Boris Karloff had been the studio's original choice for the role of the Invisible Man, but James Whale wanted someone with more of an "intellectual" voice. Claude Rains was Whale's first and only choice. In order to achieve the effect that Claude Rains wasn't there when his character took off the bandages, the director had Rains dressed completely in black velvet and filmed him in front of a black velvet background.

"The many special effects -- some retouched on film by hand -- are quaint by today's digital standards, but that only makes them all the more fun. Now, when it's possible to do absolutely anything with computer graphics, the thrill may be gone." - Bob Graham

[Kurosawa Fan]

I'm going out to dinner with my parents after work, so the top three will have to wait until later tonight.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Son of a bitch. I just got home and went to finish this and realized I left the final tally at work. I'm not tallying this again, so I'll finish it first thing in the morning. Sorry guys.

[Kurosawa Fan]

#3
http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/6999/testamentdesdoktormabuslh9.jpg
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
Fritz Lang


Berlin police inspector Lohmann investigates a case, in which all clues lead to a man, who's been locked in a hospital for mental illnesses for many years.

In his autobiography "Timebends," Arthur Miller speculates that his unconscious mind picked the name "Loman" for Willy Loman, the protagonist of his greatest play, "Death of a Salesman" (1947), from the name of Kriminalkomissar Lohmann in "Das Testament das Dr. Mabuse."

"Lang was the original master of sound, and the opening jewelry heist is some of the best work. Lang cuts all the human sounds and greatly amplifies the object sounds to very tense and disturbing effects. Initially utilizing an unseen machine to represent a system of terror taking over, when the escape starts he switches to seen objects that present a threat to one of the parties." - Mike Lorefice

[Kurosawa Fan]

#2
http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/9141/kongye7.jpg
King Kong
Merian C. Cooper
Ernest B. Schoedsack

A film crew goes to a tropical island for an exotic location shoot and discovers a colossal giant gorilla who takes a shine to their female blonde star.

This film was successfully reissued worldwide numerous times. In the 1938 reissue, several scenes of excessive violence and sex were cut to comply with the Production Code enforced in 1934. Though many of the censored scenes were restored by Janus Films in 1971 (including the censored sequence in which Kong peels off Fay Wray's clothes), one deleted scene has never been found, shown publicly only once during a preview screening in San Bernardino, California in January 1933. It was a graphic scene following Kong shaking four sailors off the log bridge, causing them to fall into a ravine where they were eaten alive by giant spiders. At the preview screening, audience members screamed and either left the theatre or talked about the grisly sequence throughout the subsequent scenes, disrupting the film. Said the film's producer, Merian C. Cooper, "It stopped the picture cold, so the next day back at the studio, I took it out myself."

"In Jurassic Park you are looking, more or less, at a real dinosaur. In King Kong, you are looking at an idea of a dinosaur, created by hand by technicians who are working with their imaginations. When Kong battles the large flesh-eating dinosaur in his first big battle scene, there is a moment when he forces its jaws apart, and the bones crack, and blood drips from the gaping throat, and something immediate happens that is hard to duplicate on any computer." - Roger Ebert

[Kurosawa Fan]

#1
http://img396.imageshack.us/img396/8403/ducksoup161wk1.jpg
Duck Soup
Leo McCarey


Rufus T. Firefly is named president/dictator of bankrupt Freedonia and declares war on neighboring Sylvania over the love of wealthy Mrs. Teasdale.

Groucho Marx offered the following explanation for the movie's title: "Take two turkeys, one goose, four cabbages, but no duck, and mix them together. After one taste, you'll duck soup the rest of your life." This film marks the last appearance of Zeppo Marx in a Marx Brothers film. Shortly before this film premiered, the city of Fredonia, New York, complained about the use of its name with an additional "e". The Marx Brothers' response was, "Change the name of your town, it's hurting our picture."

"While Groucho soft pedals the verbal clowning for more physical effort this time the other boys also make a quick change. Chico and Harpo omit their musical specialties, which should make it much easier for the piano and harp numbers the next time, if needed. Zeppo is simply Zeppo. Press sheet says, "Zeppo, despite his straight character, is a most important part of the team. He's an expert gag man and is so splendid at imitating any one of the brothers, that should illness stop one from making an appearance, Zeppo can immediately take his place." Clearing up that mystery." - Joe Bigelow, Variety, 1933

[Kurosawa Fan]

Results:

1. Duck Soup - 59.5
2. King Kong - 39.5
3. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse - 31.5
4. The Invisible Man - 29.5
5. Gold Diggers of 1933 - 20
6. Design for Living - 19.5
7. Zero for Conduct - 18
8. Queen Christina - 14
9. Land Without Bread - 10

HM:

10. Liebelei - 9
11. The Old Man and the Mountain - 8
12. Counsellor at Law - 7

[soitgoes...]

I should've given my 5 points to Leibelei. I have failed you Raiders. :sad:

[Kurosawa Fan]

I should've given my 5 points to Leibelei. I have failed you Raiders. :sad:

It wouldn't have mattered. It still would have only had two votes (unless you didn't vote for it at all), and movies with only two votes aren't qualifying for the final list.