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John Ford – The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
The Grapes of Wrath tells the powerful story of the Joad family’s trek from the dust bowl of Oklahoma to the fertile but futile fields of California in the early 1930s. Driven by the live rhythms of...
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Josef von Sternberg – Blonde Venus (1932)
Quote: American chemist Ned Faraday marries a German entertainer and starts a family. However, he becomes poisoned with Radium and needs an expensive treatment in Germany to have any chance at being...
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Harry Watt & Basil Wright – Night Mail (1936)
SYNOPSIS Made in 1936 NIGHTMAIL has become an icon of the British documentary movement. The budget was only £2,000 and the film was made as a promotional film for the Post Office services. The GPO...
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Tod Browning – Freaks (1932) (HD)
Review: Originally released in 1932 to cash in on the horror boom of the 30s, “Freaks” has always been something of a hot potato. Director Tod Browning, who’d scored a huge hit with the original...
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John Grierson & Edgar Anstey – Granton Trawler (1934)
Quote: Granton Trawler follows the small fishing vessel, Isabella Greig, as it carries out its dragnet fishing along the Viking Bank off the Norwegian coast of the North Sea. Grierson used the film to...
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Amleto Palermi – Cavalleria rusticana (1939)
PLOT & Review: (Contains some spoilers) Quote: This film was not based on the famous one-act opera of Pietro Mascagni but rather on the original story by the Sicilian writer Giovanni Verga. It’s...
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Max Ophüls – La signora di tutti AKA Everybody’s Woman (1934)
Plot & review: From a novel by Salvator Gotta, scripted by the director with Curt Alexander and Hans Wilhelm. Under anesthesia, after a suicide attempt, Gaby Doriot, movie star, relives her life...
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Vincent Sherman – Saturday’s Children (1940)
This third film version of Maxwell Anderson’s play Saturday’s Children stars Claude Rains as the impecunious but proud father of a large brood. Rains’ daughter Anne Shirley marries idealistic John...
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George Fitzmaurice – Arsène Lupin Returns (1938)
Synopsis by Hal Erickson This follow-up to MGM’s 1932 John Barrymore vehicle Arsene Lupin stars the ineluctable Melvyn Douglas. Reported to be dead, suave gentleman jewel thief Arsene Lupin (Douglas)...
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Jack Conway – Arsène Lupin (1932)
Synopsis by Mark Deming John Barrymore plays a burglar and his brother Lionel Barrymore is the detective trying to catch him in this cleverly cast drama. An upscale thief who works under the name of...
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Vittorio De Sica – Maddalena, zero in condotta AKA Maddalena, Zero for...
Imdb comment: This is definitely one of the best comedy ever made anywhere…In a Technical school girl students learn to write commercial letters to a Mr Doe in Germany…one day one of these letters is...
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Alessandro Blasetti – Resurrectio (1931)
PLOT SYNOPSIS: Desperate because abandoned by his lover (V. Alexandrescu), orchestra conductor hesitates: to kill himself, or kill her? He simply shoots the portrait of the lover and returns to...
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Roberto Rossellini – Il tacchino prepotente (1939)
This is an anti-Fascist short Rossellini made in 1940. Quote: La vispa Teresa was rejected and, although Ferrara said that Il tacchino was distributed by Scalera under its working title, “La perfida...
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John Cromwell – Jalna (1935)
In this adaptation of author de la Roche’s chronicle of the passionate lives of the strange Whiteoaks of Jalna, their beautiful family estate located in souther Ontario. The story begins as a young...
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Roberto Rossellini – La vispa Teresa (1939)
Quote: Scalera had obtained backing for a series of animal shorts and needed someone to make them. Roberto plunged in enthusiastically. He arrived at Ladispoli with animals of all sorts distributed...
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Sacha Guitry – Le Roman d’un Tricheur AKA Confessions of a Cheat (1936)
Synopsis The story of the cheat begins and ends with personal misfortune. When he was a young boy, our hero was caught stealing money from the family shop. As a punishment, he was not allowed to join...
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Ernst Lubitsch – Broken Lullaby (1932)
From the AFI Catalog: After World War I, Frenchman Paul Renard is haunted by the memory of Walter Holderlin, a German soldier he killed in the heat of battle. Having read and signed Walter’s last...
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Leni Riefenstahl – Der Sieg des Glaubens AKA Victory of the Faith (1933)
Der Sieg des Glaubens (English: The Victory of Faith) is the first documentary directed by Leni Riefenstahl, who was hired despite opposition from Nazi officials that resented employing a woman — and...
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Leni Riefenstahl & Béla Balázs – Das blaue Licht AKA The Blue Light (1932)
Synopsis Junta is hated by the people in the village where she lives, especially by the women, who suspect her of being a witch. Only she can climb the nearby mountains to a cave high up, whence a...
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Howard Hawks & Richard Rosson – Scarface (1932)
Plot Synopsis [AMG] Completed in mid-1930, Scarface, based on Armitage Trail’s novel of the same name, might have been the first of the great talkie gangster flicks, but it was held up for release...
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