Stage Door (1937)

Going through all these old movies, it's easy for the titles to blend together and I struggle keeping them straight sometimes afterward. Most of them are enjoyable and entertaining, but very few stand out. Stage Door is definitely one of the stand-outs.

The primary setting is a boarding house for women struggling to become actors in New York City. They talk throughout the movie with the speed and wit of the Gilmore Girls, but instead of two of them, it's a houseful. It's a fantastic blend of hilarious one-liners and heartfelt emotional drama starring Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers (sorry, no Fred Astaire here).

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John Ford

One of the great, early American film makers, John Ford was referred by Frank Capra as the "king of directors" and Orson Welles said his three favorite directors were "John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford." Ford won a still record holding four Academy Awards for Best Director.

The first of these was for The Informer (1935) which I just watched. Unfortunately, this is not one that stands up as well against time as most of Ford's other work. The protagonist is Gypo, a dim-witted thug who turns in a fellow criminal to collect the reward money, then blows it all during a night on the town. Gypo is played larger than life by Victor McLaglen, to the point that he is comically overacting. It was a performance that earned him the Oscar back then but would easily land him the Razzie today.

Ford's other Oscar wins were for The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), and The Quiet Man (1952). He was additionally nominated for Stagecoach (1939) and directed many other classics including The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (1962) and My Darling Clementine (1946).

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Les Miserables (1935)

I was excited to watch this after hearing it was one of the more faithful adaptations of the book (one of my all-time favorites), though when I saw the run-time was a mere 1:48 I knew everything would have to be insanely rushed.

It started off well enough, but then they seemed to realize they weren't going to have the time necessary and just ended the story suddenly. Marius (Cosette's love) isn't introduced until nearly the end of the entire movie.

The film is well cast and well acted, but anything shy of a mini-series will always be inherently incapable of doing justice to Hugo's masterpiece.

READ THE BOOK!

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Top Hat (1935)

Though the formula for romantic comedies is the same today as it's been since movies began (boy meets girl, some misunderstanding causes boy to lose girl, misunderstanding is resolved and boy gets girl back), they just don't seem to work as well as they used to. It may be as simple as they didn't have to try as hard in the past and that ease shows on screen.

Top Hat isn't great, but it's very enjoyable and a far better choice than whatever the latest Adam Sandler and/or Jennifer Aniston picture is. It is also, incidentally, the movie that they show to John Coffey in The Green Mile.

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The Champ (1931)

Maybe a bit hokey by today's standards, but I thought the sentiment here held up better than I would have expected. The champ is a washed-up former world boxing champion. He's a gambler and a drunk and a father. His 8-year-old son Dink idolizes him and doesn't even call him "dad" but "champ."

Wallace Beery won an Oscar for his portrayal of the down-and-out fighter, but the kid deserved it more in my opinion. He's the real heart of the story, played by Jackie Cooper, who grew up to play Clark Kent's boss in the Christopher Reeve Superman man movies.

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Heaven Can Wait (1943)

So, I just assumed this was going to be the original version of the 1978 Warren Beatty movie of the same title. This was not remotely the case. Other than the title, the stories have little to nothing in common. In Beatty's version, he gets put back in a different body on Earth much to the confusion of both those in his life and that of the man whose body he inhabits.

The 1943 version, directed by Ernst Lubitsch, tells a man's life story, focusing primarily on his relationship with his wife. It is framed, completely unnecessarily, by his telling Satan (though is never called by name) of his life so Satan can decide whether to keep him or send him to heaven. The story itself was funny and engaging, but morality or salvation are hardly significant themes and the film would probably have worked better with a different title and without the bookends of the protagonist sitting in Hell's lobby.

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The Front Page (1931)

Meh.

I thought about leaving my review at that. I really couldn't get into this movie. There were a lot of characters coming in and out and without a recognizable face, I couldn't keep track of who was who (full disclosure - I may have been on my computer part of the time). I watched the 1974 version immediately after and it was a little better, but largely because it starred Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.

I will give the original some credit for having fun one-liners and giving us the cliche of the reporter shouting into the phone in a very staccato manner (it may predate this film, I suppose, but we're only a few years into talkies at this point).

The director, Lewis Milestone, did direct the best picture winning All Quiet on the Western Front of the previous year (a great movie) and won a best director Oscar in the very first Oscar ceremony for Two Arabian Knights. They actually awarded two that year and he won for directing a comedy.

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