I suppose the worries of war were upon Hollywood at the time. As such, studios really put out lots of fine cinema for everyone to enjoy: animation, adventure, romcoms, satire, thrillers, Bagdad. Sweet! Oh, particularly if you’re a romcom fan, this year, has some of the greats of early cinema.
Yay, sports! This movie celebrates Pat O’Brien’s Rockne, one of the greatest college football coaches of all time, who supposedly invented the forward pass. It’s all cliches and divine secrets of the ra ra brotherhood, but it’s amusing fun nonetheless; you know it’s All American too, because a future President happens to be a star of the movie…
Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant found love in other great romcoms of the year, because they happen to be titans of the genre. Nothing better than watching 2 heavyweights fight, especially over Katharine Hepburn. George Cukor directors this British love story masquerading as an American one, with Hepburn lamenting her marriage to an uninteresting man, while she’s pursued by her captivating ex (Grant) and a charming newspaper reporter (Stewart).
You’ve Got Mail fans will recognize this set up instantly. Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan work for a gift shop, and hate each other. Both insist they have loves they’ve never met either, writing letters to a pen pal love they hope to meet soon. Ernst Lubitsch is a smart director though, and he finds ways to sell us on Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan’s chemistry with one another, using the romcommy set up to tell a much more complex, interesting tale than you might think.
Sadly Disney never tried this again, but this effort is puts them at their most ambitious. This movie is one giant orchestra animation, taking classic symphonies putting them to a series of shorts/vignettes. More are hits than misses. The one you shouldn’t miss is the famous one: where Mickey Mouse, a sorcerer’s apprentice, tries to animate mops and buckets to clean up instead of doing the work himself: it’s brilliant.
When Charlie Chaplin, the great silent film star, decided to open his mouth and speak for the first time, it’s impossible to ignore his power. Sure, there’s plenty of silliness here, about his little “tramp” juxtaposed against a tyrannical leader of a Germanish country we might all know. But that silliness contains an undercurrent of truth to power, and as a message for tolerance and understanding above all else, culminating in one of cinemas great ending monologues by the man famous for not speaking.
If you’re a fan of screwball romcoms, this is the defining one. Rosalind Russell is a journalist, about to leave her profession to marry Ralph Bellamy. Unhappy about this is her ex and editor, Cary Grant, who uses a late breaking news story to try to win her back. Howard Hawks, the flexible director extraordinaire captures all the loopy fun and romance Grant and Russell put on display, also telling an EXTREMELY fast moving dialogue driven story that’s shockingly progressive for its time.
Another movie you’ll recognize immediately. Abu (Sabu), a well meaning but peasant thief, meets a former prince (John Justin) smitten with a princess (June Duprez) who is trapped in her palace by Jaffar (Conrad Veidt), corrupt vizier to said prince. Abu then takes a series of trips that find him with a magical lamp, containing a genie (Rex Ingram) grant him wishes to help save the day. Even without the great soundtrack, this movie is adventurous and exciting, and contains some eye popping colors making the middle east look amazingly vibrant. Epic adventure storytelling is rarely better than this.
Inspired probably by Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Alfred Hitchcock’s 2nd US feature stars Joel McCrea, an American Journalist who witnesses a murder of a Dutch diplomat in Amstermdam. Aside from Hitchcock’s twisty direction and a script that takes us into all sorts of shenanigans, the director also has a couple amazing setpieces involving a Holland staple, umbrellas and a plane that won’t soon be easily forgotten. Amazing blockbuster filmmaking.
John Steinbeck’s amazing story would be great in any medium. Thankfully, John Ford and Henry Fonda made the movie version as special as Steinbeck’s novel, a heartbreaking poetic tale of a struggling family of migrants trying to keep everyone together and make ends meet. The movie captures that concept of a corporate enemy and trying to beat them by of caring for each other that would be used in countless movies forevermore.
In my opinion, the pinnacle of Disney’s first golden age. A puppet gets wished to life by a lonely woodworker, with a chance to become a real boy, aided by his conscience, a singing cricket. The songs are sensational, the adventure plot has a little bit of everything, and there are moments of magic that will be seared into your brains forever.
