Modern Times (1936)

Country: USA

Director: Charlie Chaplin

Screenplay: Charlie Chaplin

Starring: Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Henry Bergman

Length: 87 minutes 

Summary/Logline:

A blue collar worker (a.k.a. the Tramp) struggles to make ends meet for him and his sweetheart in an increasingly mechanized and dehumanized world. 

Background/History: 

His first (sort-of) talkie and explicitly political film, Modern Times was inspired by Chaplin’s distressed observations of Europe during the Great Depression while promoting City Lights (1931), and by a conversation with Gandhi lamenting the profit-driven industrialization of society. Arguably his most popular film, Modern Times inspired cultural phenomena like Jean-Paul Sartre’s journal, Les Temps Modernes and the famous “chocolate assembly line” episode of I Love Lucy.

HIM:
If Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) and Chaplin’s City Lights (1931) got it on and had a baby, they would have to name it Modern Times. I'm no enemy of free enterprise (even though I'm about to sound like one), but if anything could turn me into a flag-waving communist, it's this oldie but goodie. Chaplin’s indictment of industrialization, crony capitalism, and the exploitation of workers (symbolized not-so-subtly by a herd of sheep, one notable black one among them), Modern Times must have profoundly resonated with a Depression-era population desperate for work and often left to feel like mere cogs in the Great Industrial Machine - in the Tramp's case, literally.

As in Metropolis, business magnates look for cheaper and better ways to squeeze the most out of their workers. We also see a female freedom fighter working tirelessly to defend the socially-disadvantaged masses while struggling to put bread on her own table. This is a world in which there is no middle class, just a handful of Richie Riches and everyone else. (Sound familiar?) To be an "employee" is to barely subsist, which means you might just have to turn to a life of crime if you want to feed your family. Who cares if you go to jail, Chaplin concludes, at least that way you eat. The poor guy doesn’t want much, just a job that pays a decent wage and a home he won’t lose to the bank. Filthy socialist!

But there’s something else we should notice here. The fact that a man as well-off as Chaplin could tell a probing story about working class problems suggests that there was, once upon a time, an era when the wealthy registered enough concern about the rich-poor divide to talk honestly about it. A stark reminder that our experiment with democracy and social welfare over the past couple of centuries has been short-lived and that the rich and powerful will always find a way to build million-dollar condos atop the carcasses of the poor bastards who helped get them there.

Don't get me wrong, I love money. I just hope my humanity doesn't drown if I find myself swimming in it.

HER:

And he does it again! Chaplin had an undeniable knack for combining laughs, a well-constructed plot, and a great big heart in all of his films. Case in point: a midpoint scene in which a former co-worker robs the department store the Tramp is now guarding, claiming not to be a criminal and just needing to feed his family. It's a moment that has you chuckling one minute and fighting tears, the next. Classic Chappy!

The opening assembly line scene isn't just a classic, it's farkin' hilarious, as funny today as it was 80 years ago, showing that when it came to comedy, Chaplin just got it. I also love that he rather consistently steers away from reducing his female characters to props, choosing instead to give them strong, decisive and, dare I say, equal importance in his stories.

It was heartbreaking to learn of the opposition Chaplin faced during the second half of his career thanks to Senator Joseph McCarthy and all of his friends. But maybe the persecution he endured was part of what made him such a brilliant storyteller, who knows? Either way his films still resonate as some of the most creative, honest and authentically human of the twentieth century. Discovering great movies like Modern Times was exactly why we started this blog. Thank you, Charlie!

It Happened One Night (1934)

Country: USA

Director: Frank Capra

Based on: Night Bus, a short story by Samuel Hopkins Adams

Screenplay: Robert Riskin

Starring: Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter Connolly

Length: 105 minutes

Summary/Logline:

The spoiled daughter of an overbearing millionaire runs away and falls in love with a surly reporter on a wild road trip from Florida to New York.

Background/History:

This seminal romantic comedy won the “big five” Oscars in 1935 (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay), a feat equalled by only two other films: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) and Silence of the Lambs (1991). Gable and Colbert landed the lead roles only after heavyweights like Robert Montgomery, Margaret Sullavan, Carole Lombard, and Bette Davis were unable to commit. One of the last rom-coms screened before the MPAA started enforcing the infamous Hays Code (which would have censored out Claudette Colbert’s famous leg shot), It Happened One Night was initially a critical and box office blah. However, the film quickly picked up steam and became Columbia Pictures’ biggest success at the time, earning $2.5 million on a $325,000 budget.

HIM:
There’s an old adage that says comedy doesn’t age well. For proof, look no further than It Happened One Night, the “original” romantic comedy in which women are either spoiled brats, unhinged lunatics, or jaded old maids - in short, children. Correspondingly, men exist to rescue, discipline, and think for women, when they’re not spanking them (or threatening to), that is.

Try as he may, writer Robert Riskin’s attempts to make Ellen intelligent, independent, and occasionally averse to Gable’s endless chauvinism drown in the relentless stereotypes of the era. Her actions constantly contradict her words. In a camping scene, Ellen tells Peter she doesn’t need him and that he can leave at any time before turning into a panicky mess when she can’t immediately locate him. And forgive my heresy, AFI, but the “classic” sexy-female-leg-stops-a-car scene made my eyes come this close to rolling out of my head. That and the fact that after only two days with the paternalistic Peter, she can’t imagine living without him.

So how did It Happened One Night end up on our and many other “most important” lists? Primarily because it wrote the blueprint for all future rom-coms. You’ve got your lovers starting as far apart as possible, zingy sparring and bantering, road-trip antics, compounding male chivalry, a few solid comedies-of-errors, near-end misunderstandings, and a final recognition that they were always meant to be together. There’s even a wedding stopped in the nick of time for our lovers to reunite. (Think The Graduate meets Runaway Bride.) Groundbreaking, genre-building stuff and a few good laughs.

Unfortunately, the sexism is so thick and pervasive, no matter how hard I tried to contextualize the film in historical terms, I simply couldn’t enjoy it. I’ll agree that It Happened One Night is an important film, but not only because it helped establish a genre: it was also the unintentional arch-promoter of a thousand gender stereotypes and an unfortunate rogue-rescues-female formula, both of which have plagued Hollywood and society ever since. 

HER:

Ugh! Here's the way it works: I'm never, ever, EVER going to like a movie where a "brat" (by 1930s definition, a woman) gets spanked, threatened, scolded and cajoled by her Knight in Shining Armour. Not now, not in any of my former lives, not if the AFI paid me a million dollars, not if the CIA tortured me slowly on a spit over molten hot lava. Eye-rolling, exasperating bulls**t. Did I stutter? (Drops mike and saunters off stage.)

World Premiere: The Two Pauls, Episode 2 - Sex, God & Superheroes

Paul Jensen and I go head-to-head on some of the biggest (and most controversial) upcoming films of 2014 over one white and two reds!

See Episode 1 (Oscar Edition) here. Meanwhile, see The Story Behind The Two Pauls below. Big thanks again to the tireless crew at Popkin Media!


The Story Behind The Two Pauls
by Paul Donnett

When Vancouver Film School grad and savvy entrepreneur Nick Carey approached film Jedi Paul Jensen about doing a Siskel and Ebert-style web series featuring reviews of films past and present, the man with the exhaustive Star Wars action figure collection literally hidden in his bedroom closet jumped at the opportunity. Bonus: Each episode would feature a bottle of wine, specially paired with the movie in question.

But who would sit in the other chair, they wondered? Who could match wits with Sir Jensen's freakishly encyclopedic mind and show each film its due reverence, whilst remaining j-u-u-u-st sober and coherent enough to bring each episode to a thrilling climax?

The choice was obvious. After all, if there's anyone who knows about thrilling climaxes, it's this guy. Paul and I had actually talked about forging such a venture a year and a half earlier and now, thanks to the fine people at Popkin Media, the two Pauls were about to get their wish! My only condition: one bottle of wine simply wasn't enough.

So Paul, producer Nick Carey, and I met over drinks on Tuesday. Followed by more drinks with Popkin partners Patrick Do and Ben Gaumond on Friday. Followed by an all-day Saturday shoot that took The Two Pauls from concept to production in under a week. Never in my experience has a project come together so quickly, so seamlessly, and with such an enjoyable group of highly competent, over-caffeinated egomaniacs!

Subscribe to Popkin Media to catch future episodes of Film Night With The Two Pauls

Duck Soup (1933)

Country: USA
Director: Leo McCarey

Screenplay: Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, Arthur Sheekman, Nat Perrin
Starring: Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, Chico Marx, Zeppo Marx, Margaret Dumont
Music: Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby
Length: 68 minutes 

Summary/Logline: 
President Rufus T. Firefly fights to save the nation of Freedonia from a hostile takeover by the imperialistic ruler of Sylvania. 

Background/History: 
Undisputed masters of Vaudeville stage comedy, the Marx Brothers' relentless puns and slapstick antics laid the groundwork for a thousand comedians and comedy acts to come. Following up on the success of Horse Feathers, Paramount’s highest grossing film of 1932, Duck Soup was initially a critical and box office disappointment. It has since become one of the most important and influential films in cinematic history.  

HIM: 
The same year my father rendered me catatonic with Frank Langella's Dracula (see our review of Nosferatu - 'nuff said), he yinned that yang by shuttling me to Vancouver’s now sadly defunct Ridge Theatre one Sunday afternoon and introducing me to a phenomenon that would brand my concept of funny for time and eternity. It was the Marx Brothers, starring in a whopping three-course meal of Monkey Business (1931), Horse Feathers (1932), and Duck Soup (1933). I was nine years-old but by the time the last reel finished, I couldn't wait to grow a grease-paint moustache and smoke my first cigar.

My first thought was, "Man, these guys are hilarious, but why do they keep copping gags from Bugs Bunny?" Of course, I couldn't have then known that it was actually the other way around: that Looney Tunes - like Monty Python, Robin Williams, Gabe Kaplan, Jerry Seinfeld, Jim Carrey, and countless others - drew inspiration from a quartet (originally a quintet) of comedy geniuses way, way ahead of their time.

It's safe to say that the Marx Brothers helped shape and distinguish one of two distinct, if subtle, streams of comedy in cinema's early history. On the one hand was the heartwarming comedy-with-a-message of Charlie Chaplin in films like The Kid (1921), City Lights (1931), and The Great Dictator (1940). On the other, was the silly, absurdist humour of the Marx Brothers and the Three Stooges, where the laughs existed for their own sakes, rather than serving a larger narrative purpose. With Chaplin, laughs were important but story was number one. With the Marx Brothers and the Stooges, laughs were everything, story be damned.

I recognize Groucho and company aren't everyone's cup of tea. But call me sentimental, I just can't get enough of 'em. And on that note, hello, I must be going!   

HER:

Before I met the Donnett clan, I had never heard of The Marx Brothers. I came from a Three Stooges-lovin' family and, therefore (obviously), didn't need to look any further to get my fill o' slapstick hilarity.

So, needless to say, Duck Soup was my first Marx experience. And what a first it was! Not short on moments of outrageous sexism, I have to admit Groucho was an equal opportunity guy when it came to spreading the insults around. (I guess that's a good thing?)

All in all, I found the story exciting and the physical humour both clever and original. As a benchmark for physical comedy beyond the 30s, I can definitely see why it made it to the list. And given the political climate of the times, I can see why this film proved popular then and now. Still, I'll take the Three Stooges over The Marx Brothers any day. But don't tell "Him" that! 

"Nuk, nuk, nuk!!"

King Kong (1933)

Country: USA

Director: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack

Producer: David O. Selznick

Screenplay: James Ashmore Creelman, Ruth Rose

Starring: Fay Wray, Bruce Cabot, Edgar Wallace

Length: 100 minutes

Summary/Logline:

A director and his film crew travel to a mysterious island and return to New York with a really big ape who just can't get enough of Fay Wray.

Background/History:

King Kong hit audiences at a time when nature documentaries (popularized by the Lumière brothers) and jungle adventure films were very much in vogue, including 1913’s Beasts in the Jungle, 1918’s Tarzan of the Apes, and 1925’s The Lost World. Inspired by the fantastical trick photography of director Georges Méliès in films like 1902’s Voyage dans la lune, Selznick and Cooper enlisted special effects guru Willis O’Brien and team to marry stunning matte-painted backgrounds with cutting edge stop-motion animation, finely-detailed miniatures (including animals, people, and entire sets), and robotics. Meanwhile, composer Max Steiner was paid $50,000 to write the original score.

Made in eight months on a budget of $672,000, King Kong earned $2.8 million at the box office. Canadian actress Fay Raye had the looks, charm, and scream to win her the part of Ann Darrow. Peter Jackson offered her a role in his 2005 remake but she passed away shortly before filming began. Two days after Wray’s death (Aug 8, 2004), the Empire State Building’s lights were dimmed in her memory. Kong was remade in 1976 with Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange, and again in 2005 with Naomi Watts and Adrien Brody.

HIM:

As a movie about people making a movie and getting w-a-a-a-y more than they bargain for, King Kong is more than just the first great monster film; it’s also the first great meta-narrative monster film. (Say thank you, Blair Witch, Cloverfield, Paranormal Activity, et al!) As an example of early cinema’s radical visual evolution, few films equal Kong with its unprecedented special effects, groundbreaking shots of Kong in motion from inside plane cockpits, and seamless composite editing.

Story-wise, however, Kong is a mixed bag. Part of me loves the film and part of me is left scratching my head. Great pacing, wicked suspense, and wow, does this plot move! But, in the end, what is Kong about? What are the deeper meanings, the broader themes? The big ape’s journey is so firmly entrenched in pop culture, so revered and legendarily awesome(!), it’s a bit harrowing to critique, never mind imagining how audiences must have first reacted to the film's basic, central idea.

As our next few reviews will demonstrate, the “important” films of the 30s were awash in epic, eyeball-rolling sexism, Damsels-in-Distress (i.e. every woman) constantly requiring Savior-Rogues (i.e. any man), and such. With this in mind, lacking any definitive message aside from the weak and incomprehensible addendum, “it wasn’t the planes, it was beauty killed the beast”, King Kong may serve most significantly as an ironic if unintentional metaphor for the age: that men spent most too much of their time thumping their chests and protecting “their” women like mindless, macho animals, when they could have been behaving like human beings and enjoying something akin to functional, fulfilling relationships.

I get that the film is also trying to say something about the evils of western colonialism, capitalism gone wild, the exploitation of nature, and the disenfranchisement of those whom society deems unacceptable. But in the end, the film is a triumph of style – albeit wonderful, revolutionary style - over substance. Sure I was a little sad when (spoiler alert!) Kong fell to his death, but unlike Peter Jackson in 2005, director Merian Cooper hadn’t given me much of a reason to care about Mr. Big, so I didn’t. 

Having said that, I don’t doubt there would have been a rosebud or two in my pajamas when Kong first appeared had I been in the audience in 1933!  

HER:

First, the good news. Cool special effects!

Now for the fun part. I'm supposed to believe that, in the 30s at least, a man could easily find and lure a woman from a homeless shelter to his boat, destination unknown, simply by offering her a cup of coffee and a starring role in his "next big film"? And that this same woman would be subsequently treated like a princess by a boatload of sailors? How about no?

And then there are those wicked stereotypes about minorities (look, a "China Man" in "authentic" Chinatown regalia) and indigenous peoples (feast your eyes on these bloodthirsty island savages). That and the skipper's bizarre ability to suddenly speak the native language of an island he didn't even know existed ten minutes prior.

And the end of the story? In a word, totally unsatisfying. (Okay, two words.) I mean, what was this movie about? Big mechanical gorillias with bad hair and bristol board teeth? I get that it was supposed to be about a classic beast protecting a classic beauty, but I got no real sense of this until 45 seconds before the closing credits began to roll. Until then it just seemed that Kong saw her as a toy to play with, and one that he wasn't particularly interested in until the schoolyard bully came along, in this case, a T-Rex with those freakish carny arms.


In short, I felt King Kong lacked a meaningful theme, point, or redeeming lesson - except, of course, that if one lives on the twentieth floor of a luxury apartment, he or she should probably keep their bedroom window closed, lest they be plucked from their slumber by a giant, hairy hand and meet with an undesirable demise. 

City Lights (1931)

Country:  USA

Director: Charlie Chaplin

Screenplay: Charlie Chaplin

Starring:  Charlie Chaplin, Virginia Cherrill, Florence Lee, Harry Myers

Length: 87 minutes 

Summary/Logline: 

A homeless man falls in love with a blind girl selling flowers and goes through hell to help her pay rent before she is evicted. 

Background/History: 

Opting to stay silent when sound films were already popular (Chaplin believed “talkies” were merely a fad), City Lights was an instant box office smash, earning over $5 million or more than three times what it cost to make. Albert Einstein was at the premiere. Chaplin was beloved of directors like Orson Welles, Stanley Kubrick, Federico Fellini and Woody Allen. His mother Hannah died during pre-production and the film was put on hold. Some have suggested that the film is partially autobiographical, with the flower girl representing Chaplin’s mother.

HIM: 
Chaplin's signature character, The Tramp, had already appeared in Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914) and served as the comical heart of dozens more films to follow. But he was more than the guy with the little moustache and cane: Chaplin was a Hollywood powerhouse for decades as actor, producer, distributor, part owner of United Artists, and if that weren't enough, composer for his 1931 classic with Arthur Johnston. 

City Lights is pure joy from start to finish. At a time when special effects and sound were radically transforming what audiences could expect from movies, Chaplin chose to make a simple film with (get this) strong characters, great pacing, unforgettable sight gags, choreographed sequences that didn't waste a single prop, and most importantly, a deeply touching human story. And at the center of it all, history’s most unsung hero and undisputed king of unlucky coincidences, The Tramp.  

Here, our boy's heart is stolen by a blind flower vender whose heart he tries to win in return, if only he could get away from the drunk Jekyll-and-Hyde millionaire who can’t decide whether or not the Trampster is his new best friend. As my dear wife will no doubt attest below, not everyone is a fan of silent films. But whereas some non-talkies are arguably diminished by a lack of sound, the dance-like pantomime comedy of City Lights thrives on it. Take the Cigar-at-the-Dance scene, the Suicide-Prevention-at-the-River scene, or the Boxing Jitterbug scene. Instant classics, all. 

But it’s the gorgeous story in the middle of everything that finally pulls your heart out and gives it a big, gooey, and, somehow, totally genuine hug. Easily my favourite film among the Hundred so far.
   

HER: 
I don’t usually like slapstick comedy - i.e. can’t stand it. But the laughs came so fast and furiously, and Chaplin made me love him so completely, I simply couldn’t resist. And you're right, darling, I didn’t give a tinker's cuss that it was silent! 

Of course, it didn’t hurt that I likes me a good underdog story and loves me a good love story. And what’s with that ending? Totally took me off guard and had me weeping! City Lights is sweet, funny, honest stuff!

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

Country: USA

Based on: The 1928 novel by Erich Maria Remarque

Director: Lewis Milestone

Screenplay: George Abbott & Maxwell Anderson

Starring: Louis Wolheim, Lew Ayres

Length: 138 minutes

Summary/Logline:

Seduced by the “glories” of war and zealous to defend the Fatherland, a group of young German enlistees have their illusions tragically crushed and find the post-war adjustment to everyday life nearly impossible. 

Background/History: 
A veteran of the First World War, writer Erich Maria Remarque experienced firsthand the grim realities of war and the lonely, often misunderstood challenges of returning to "normal" life. As a result, he desired to draw public attention to post-traumatic stress disorder decades before it was given a name. Steven Spielberg cites the benchmark film as a key source of inspiration for 1998’s Saving Private Ryan, and many of its most memorable scenes have influenced - or been copied outright - by other directors. After serial publication in the German newspaper Vossiche Zeitung in 1928, the novel was published as a book in 1929. Produced on a budget of $1.2 million, the film earned $3 million at the box office. The first "talkie" war film to win Oscars (Best Director, Outstanding Production), All Quiet on the Western Front was re-released in 1939 to remind audiences of the evils of war as World War I ramped up across the Atlantic. German screenings in the early 1930s were broken up by Nazis throwing mice and stink bombs into theatres. 

HIM: 
Despite his victory over the forces of evil, when Frodo Baggins returns to the Shire after going to hell and back in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, he finds himself forever scarred, an empty shell of a hobbit no longer able to find joy in old comforts or consolation from neighbours unable to relate. Christopher Walken's Nick shares a similar fate in The Deer Hunter, as does Tom Cruise's Ron Kovic in Born on the Fourth of July and Jeremy Renner's Sgt. James in The Hurt Locker. But before all of them came German private Paul Baumer, the man to whom every other cinematic soldier of misfortune owes a melancholy 21-gun salute. 

All Quiet on the Western Front is as relevant today as it was 84 years ago. Not merely because war is still very much with us but also because, as the film poignantly highlights, governments still struggle to adequately provide a soldier's basic needs, naive young minds still fall prey to dubious appeals to national pride, and wars are still predicated on the questionable objectives of businessmen and politicians safely removed from the battlefield. 

But it's Remarque's focus on the long-term psychological impact of war that makes the novel and film both groundbreaking and enduring. (For a more recent and personal take on the subject, read Kristi Anne Rasppery's heartbreaking article detailing her nightmarish struggle to reconnect with her Iraq war vet dad.) And by inviting us to explore a soldier's harrowing journey from the German point of view, the film forces us to reflect on our common humanity and the universality of fear and sacrifice.

Apart from its powerful psycho-social commentary, All Quiet is also a brilliant bit of storytelling. Opening on a classroom full of young men who take the bait and sign up for duty, the film then never leaves their side. We follow them through basic training, watch the traumas of war cement them into a band of brothers as if we ourselves are on the front lines. We march with them, fight with them, shiver and cry in claustrophobic bunkers beside them, and as a result, share in their madness and despair. The conspicuous absence of music throughout most of the film simultaneously builds suspense and honours our intelligence by allowing us to absorb the horror and heartbreak without any hokey, superfluous melodrama. 

Milestone knows when to take a breath, too. A midpoint supper conversation among the troops raises perennial questions about how wars get started and to what degree soldiers even comprehend what they are fighting for. “One country offends another,” posits one soldier. “What," another responds, "you mean there’s a mountain over in Germany gets mad at a field over in France?” “Maybe it was the English," offers another. "I don’t want to shoot any Englishmen. I never saw one till I came over here.” “Well someone must have wanted it!” In the end, the boys conclude that wars are largely generated by politicians wanting to leave legacies and manufacturers wanting to get rich, and decide that the world's leaders should be corralled in a pen without weapons and forced to fight their own wars. Simplistic perhaps, but not far from the truth.

On the technical front, All Quiet is a marvel to behold. 42 minutes in, our boys watch helplessly from the trenches as airstrikes move closer and closer, followed by waves of enemy combatants whom they mow down in a blaze of machine gun fire before dispatching with rifle butts and bayonets. Between the scenes of carnage, the camera stops to capture the men's horrified screams and expressions: tragic snapshots of an entire generation forever ruined by a few minutes of senseless, outrageous violence. Few war films have been able to duplicate the raw and grizzly trauma of this, the first and arguably most realistic battle scene ever filmed. Indeed, I find it difficult to imagine how Milestone was able to achieve such cinematic realism, replete with explosions, close-ups, and unrestrained performances, without half of the cast actually dying. 

In the end, the film brings us back to the classroom where it all began. Paul's teacher asks the returning vet to encourage a fresh group of students to sign up for war, but he can't and is decried as a coward for insisting that  it's better to live and let live than to kill for some misplaced sense of national pride. In the end, he chooses to return to the front lines rather than live in a society that considers war glorious. In a bittersweet coda, Paul inadvertently seals his fate by reaching out from the trenches to touch a butterfly, a symbolic search for beauty in world poisoned by war. It's a perfect ending to a near-perfect film.

HER:

I am no fan of war and I generally don’t find watching movies about war, or ones loaded front to back with violence, entertaining. So you can imagine that, after reading the logline for All Quiet on the Western Front, I wasn't particularly fired up about watching this one. (Forgive the gun pun.)

However, this isn't a film that sensationalizes war. On the contrary, All Quiet is a staunchly anti-war film. If we have children, they will be watching this movie. I especially love that the writer chose to tell the story from the German point of view, forcing us to recognize the universal human impact (and therefore the madness) of war.

Oh, and by the way, it's not silent!! Endlich! Perfekt!