What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[2jakes]

^^^^^
I always felt that if they came from
Rome, Italy they should've sounded more like:

Always good to see the "Hot Toddy" smile!

(Thelma Todd)

 

[Formeruser012523]

Going back to short subjects with "Grand Slam Opera," a 1936 Educational Pictures two-reeler starring Buster Keaton.

In the 1920s, Educational Film Exchanges was the number one independent producer/distributor of short comedies -- producing its own shorts under the Mermaid, Tuxedo, and Coronet labels, and distributing those of other independents like Al Christie and Joe Rock. But the talkie era led to problems, and by the mid-thirties, Educational had given up distribution to sign a contract supplying short product to Fox, and had fallen to pretty much rock-bottom of the two-reeler business. Its comedies were shot on the cheap, featuring either novice talent that wouldn't stick around long or old-time comics who had worn out their welcome everywhere else. The films had a dingy, shopworn look that generally matched the quality of the material and the performances.

Such was the case for Buster Keaton when he signed with Educational in 1935. He'd been fired by MGM in 1933 after going on a frustrated rampage at the studio, and spent the next two years drifting in and out of an alcoholic haze before he dried out enough to go back to work. Finding all the major studio doors closed to him, he settled in with Educational figuring that he might have a chance to do his kind of comedy there -- and considering his condition and the cheap facilities available for production, his Educational shorts are surprisingly good.

There's a myth that Keaton never adjusted to talkies, fueled by his impaired performances in his last MGM features, but the Educational two-reelers show him finding a niche. They aren't up the standards of his silent work, but they do show the comedian finding ways to adapt to the demands of sound without giving up everything that made him special as a silent performer. One major adjustment is his comic persona -- instead of the determined workingman or the naive millionaire he played in silents, in these films he pretty much always appears as a country boob named Elmer Butts, who thru ingenuity always seems to find a way to get by. This role, while limiting, works well with Keaton's dark, raspy voice, and he's able to make the character both likeable and flexible enough to allow for bits of silent-type humor.

In "Grand Slam Opera," Elmer leaves his hick town to go to New York, where he plans to compete on "Colonel Crow's Amateur Night," a parody of the then-current Major Bowes radio fad. However, he arrives with a act utterly unsuitable to radio -- he's a juggler. From this very simple premise, Keaton manages to wring out twenty minutes of genuinely entertaining comedy, following Elmer's stumbling, fumbling attempts to make good and impress the ingenue he meets along the way. This is a long way from "Cops," but at a time when the two-reeler market was collapsing, it stands out as one of the better pure comedy shorts of the period.

Thanks for posting the video because I was gonna go look for it after your analysis. I even looked up the year on Top Hat during the dancing scene as that was a clear spoof. It had been so many years since I had watched this I'd forgotten that part & had rewatched Top Hat recently, as well as some Keaton films and shorts.

Thanks again, always a joy to watch Buster. When he's not being misused, at least.

 

[Zombie_61]

^^^^^
I always felt that if they came from
Rome, Italy they should've sounded more like:

I'm only sharing a casual observation I've made, but I've heard and read a number of comments about Leonard "Chico" Marx' "Italian" accent over the decades, mostly complaining it was too stereotypical and that Italians who spoke English with an accent didn't sound like that. First, he reportedly learned this "accent" from listening to the people he grew up with in New York and would imitate them when necessary in order to gain access to various floating crap games and pool halls and such where he would not be welcome if they realized he wasn't Italian (he was a notorious gambler/hustler throughout his life), so it must have been good enough to fool the other gamblers/hustlers. Second, my wife's family emigrated to the U.S. from Italy, and more than a few of them sound/sounded exactly like Chico did.

 

[Formeruser012523]

I'm only sharing a casual observation I've made, but I've heard and read a number of comments about Leonard "Chico" Marx' "Italian" accent over the decades, mostly complaining it was too stereotypical and that Italians who spoke English with an accent didn't sound like that. First, he reportedly learned this "accent" from listening to the people he grew up with in New York and would imitate them when necessary in order to gain access to various floating crap games and pool halls and such where he would not be welcome if they realized he wasn't Italian (he was a notorious gambler/hustler throughout his life), so it must have been good enough to fool the other gamblers/hustlers. Second, my wife's family emigrated to the U.S. from Italy, and more than a few of them sound/sounded exactly like Chico did.

Was really hoping amongst those clips would be the "Tutsi Fruitsi Ice Cream" but, alas because I always think of Craig Ferguson.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Chico's accent was also a holdover from the family's vaudeville act, "Fun In Hi Skule," a version of the standard "schoolroom comedy" routine in which the entire school was made up of ethnic caricatures speaking in dialect, taught by a schoolmaster who always had a thick Captain Katzenjammer German accent. Groucho used such a dialect in the skit, and didn't drop it until World War I, while Harpo originally played a goony country stereotype called "Patsy Bolivar." He stopped talking early in the act, but before he did, he appeared with a yokel accent.

This type of act was around long after the Marxes gave it up. A popular radio show called "Kaltenmeyer's Kindegarten," heard as a Saturday morning feature on NBC in the 1930s, featured exactly the same setup with even more dialects represented. Along with the German schoolmaster and the Italian and rube caricatures, there was an "Izzy Finkelstein" type with a Yiddish accent who was always trying sell the teacher a new suit, a two-fisted Irish boy, a yumpin'-yiminy Swede, and a caricatured African-American kid with a drawn-out minstrel dialect.

 

[Fading Fast]

"The Front Page" from '31 and its remake "His Gal Friday" from '40

• "His Gal Friday" is possibly the worst, most-misleading name ever for an outstanding movie

• I watched these back to back to compare the original and remake, but there is no comparison as the remake took everything that was good in the first one and amped it up and everything that was boring in it and got rid of it

• The machine-gun dialogue between reporter Hildy Johnson and newspaper owner Burns is no longer a side show in HGF as it was in TFP, but is the core. And they set that core on fire - and piqued it with sexual tension - as the Johnson role changes gender from Pat O'Brien to Roslind Russell

• HGF is Russell's movie as she creates a gives-better-than-she-gets strong-woman role in code-land Hollywood driving over milquetoast fiancee (Ralph Bellamy), out reporting the men while delivering more blows than Cary Grant (playing the newspaper owner and her ex-husband) does when they stand toe to toe (which they do in every scene they share)

• The stories are about the same, but the movies aren't, as TFP, only a few years into the talkies, is uneven in speed and unfocused at times; but HGF is a fully confident movie centered on a love triangle - Russell, fiancee Ralph Bellamy and ex-husband Grant - that Bellamy doesn't see, Russell wants not to see and Grant manipulates as flagrantly as he can

• Bellamy comes off as a nice guy so outmatched in brains and personalty by Russell that you pray every minute she doesn't marry him - a life battling with uber-rapscallion Grant would at least keep her spirit alit

• HGF is all about smart dialogue - one dig after another - delivered faster (by nearly every actor in nearly every scene) than anyone in real life talks and pre-dating Tarantino by fifty plus years / you need to see it more than once to catch all the good lines / as in a Hitchcock film, the story exists only to give us an excuse to watch the actors

• The male world might be divided into two types of men, those who can't image a world without Hildy Johnsons in it and those who don't understand the Hildy Johnsons of the world

• In both movies, not subtly, but also, not in you face, the "Red Scare" plays on in the background with both implying it was not so much a real threat but a marginal one used by the entrenched political machine to drum up votes - interesting perspective on '30s politics [attempted objective reflection of the movie, not a personal opinion on the politics]

• One of the few times the remake of a movie tops the very good original in almost every way

 

[LizzieMaine]

Good analysis. I'd add a thought that "The Front Page" also suffers quite a bit from being, essentailly, a filmed stage play -- it's invaluable for encapsulating a top Broadway show of the twenties, but as a movie it creaks far more than the spiffy remake. It's not as mossy as a lot of the early talkies seem today, but any film made in 1931 is bound to suffer technically in comparison with the kind of work being done ten years later. It took a while for that early-talkie stiffness to sift out, especially when it came to filming material that originated on the stage.

 

[Fading Fast]

Good analysis. I'd add a thought that "The Front Page" also suffers quite a bit from being, essentailly, a filmed stage play -- it's invaluable for encapsulating a top Broadway show of the twenties, but as a movie it creaks far more than the spiffy remake. It's not as mossy as a lot of the early talkies seem today, but any film made in 1931 is bound to suffer technically in comparison with the kind of work being done ten years later. It took a while for that early-talkie stiffness to sift out, especially when it came to filming material that originated on the stage.

I love watching an original and remake back to back ("These Three" '36 and "The Children's Hour" '61 is another fantastic original-remake combo) as you learn a lot about movie making and how it and the culture change over time.

 

[LizzieMaine]

One of the most interesting comparisons you cam make is to look at the three versions of "The Maltese Falcon" -- the 1931 version with Ricardo Cortez, the 1936 "Satan Met A Lady" version with Warren William, and the Bogart. Of the three, Cortez actually looks the most like the Spade described in the book, and he gives the part an interpretation very different from the more familiar one. The 1931 is also much more open about the homosexual elements present in the novel.

 

[AmateisGal]

The Two Mrs. Carrolls, a noir film with Humphrey Bogart and Barbara Stanwyck. It was decent, not great, but it's weird watching Bogey be the bad guy - and in this instance, the insane bad guy.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

An usual double-feature night - Justice League off of Amazon followed by The Petrified Forest (1936) via TCM.
JL was okay, the first half with the characters meeting and learning to trust each other. The second half was non-stop action. Entertaining, but not one we would re-watch.
The Petrified Forest, on the other hand, was, within the bounds of a filmed stage play, strong fare, moving us along despite lulls of talkiness. Director Archie Mayo keeps the camera focused the characters' exchanges, with prudent close-ups. Humphrey Bogart, billed fourth in the cast, after Dick Foran, seems to be in a different movie. Terse, wound up really tight, somber, with gazes that drill holes though you.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Ah, Dick Foran. Warner's very own B-picture singing cowboy. I've always been a bit baffled by his being cast in a prestige picture like "Forest" when there were plenty of better actors hanging around the lot, but maybe they wanted a real blank-faced innocent to make Bogart look even more intense. Pity that Grady Sutton was under contract elsewhere.

 

[2jakes]

Was really hoping amongst those clips would be the "Tutsi Fruitsi Ice Cream" but, alas because I always think of Craig Ferguson.

Hey Mae...dat’sa gonna cost ya $1

 

[Fading Fast]

"Front Page Woman" 1935 with Bette Davis and George Brent

• Decent early battle-of-the-sexes newspaper-reporter story where rival reporters flirt and compete for headlines

• Davis outshines Brent, as she does in all the movies they made together, but to be fair, Brent's usual somnolence shows some spark and energy in this one, but not enough to keep up with Davis' still-young verve, pinball eyes and, well, stronger acting talent

• It's hard to watch this one after having just seen the best of the Golden Era's battle-of-the-sexes-in-the-newspaper-game movies, "His Gal Friday," but not held to that standard, this one entertains

• As with "His Gal Friday," women get a much better and fairer treatment here than in most women-as-ornament code-period roles

• Away from the story, the window into the newspaper business in the '30s - and the period details of the newsroom - alone are worth the watch

 

[Edward]

Spent the last week in Aberdeen at a conference, but was able to it in an extra few days (our first proper break since last August), during which we fitted in a trip to the cinema, to see Ghost Stories.

I was lucky enough to have seen the original stage production in its initial and West End runs, plus the subsequent touring production. Although lacking the immediacy of the stage, this cinematic take really captures its essence, and works beautifully. It has been nicely adapted for the screen, holding to the original story and not going overboard with all the screen tricks. Less is definitely more. If your taste for horror runs to the more cerebral, this is one to check out.

 

[ton312]

The Greatest Showman. I loved it!

 

[3fingers]

The Greatest Showman. I loved it!

Thanks for the reminder and recommendation. I've been meaning to see this one.

 

[ton312]

Thanks for the reminder and recommendation. I've been meaning to see this one.

It's a fantastic movie, really shows how great a showman Hugh Jackman actually is. I watched Logan right after it. LOL. Talk about range!

 

[Fading Fast]

"Suddenly" 1954 with Frank Sinatra and Sterling Hayden

• Without Sinatra and Hayden, you have a good B movie

• With Sinatra and Hayden, it's a more interesting good B movie

• For its time, the plot (spoiler alert) - attempt to assassinate the president by sniper - had to seem reasonably dramatic, but it still felt like a low-budget, get-it-done effort

• Some plot flaws and clunky pacing show, but there's enough tension, strong dialogue and solid acting to make it decent Sunday morning entertainment (which is when I saw it on TCM's "Noir Alley")

 

[3fingers]

^^ Agreed. We watched it a while back on YouTube. I've sat through worse, but once was enough.