Though it didn’t produce a high level of famous cinema, 1930 will forever be important because its starts the decade of transition away from the silent era towards movies with words in them, as well as images. The year culminates with one of the greatest war movies ever made, based on one of the greatest war novels ever written.
As cinema was transitioning into a new era. Alfred Hitchcock was also developing and honing his craft. The Master of Suspense can be seen trying stuff he would employ famously later, with great eye for discomfiting imagery and boundary pushing violence.
In the uncertain new era for Westerns, of course John Wayne would be in the first talking one. Raoul Walsh directs this important but expected story of a man (Wayne) guiding a caravan through to the West coast, facing external and internal peril at every turn.
Luis Brunel gives us our first ephemeral piece of filmmaking, as a group of malnourished soliders try to wander back to help fight an upcoming battle. What’s fascinating about this surreal movie is that Salvador Dali, THAT Salvador Dali, helped create this movie with Brunel. Wild!
Cinema’s first masterpiece of the talking era doesn’t disappoint; of course a man named Lewis Milestone directed it. The story is as anti-war as they come, as a group of conscripted German soldiers eagerly fight in World War I, only to realize that everything they fought for was bullsh*t, because of the spectacularly filmed horrors of trench warfare.
