What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Fading Fast]

Wasn't it Groucho in "Horsefeathers" who as Dean of a University said and I quote loosely:

"I'm going downtown to buy a couple of Football Players!"

Worf

Good one. It's pretty amazing, but the 1930s are chockablock with movies about how corrupted and corrupting college football was.

 

[EngProf]

Good one. It's pretty amazing, but the 1930s are chockablock with movies about how corrupted and corrupting college football was.

That has some great university and anti-university ideas in it.
The faculty meeting where Groucho sings a song "Whatever it is, I'm against it!" fits some faculty perfe

Good one. It's pretty amazing, but the 1930s are chockablock with movies about how corrupted and corrupting college football was.

That has some great pro-university and anti-university ideas in it.
The faculty meeting where Groucho sings a song, "Whatever it is, I'm against it!" fits some faculty perfectly.
So much so that our Dean of Engineering, who had a great sense of humor, devoted a regularly-scheduled faculty meeting to showing "Horse Feathers" in its entirety. No other business, just the movie... He was making a point.

 

[Fading Fast]

Son of India from 1931 with Raman Navarro and Madge Evans


This short precode packs a powerful interracial-relationship punch inside a smartly constructed story that reveals people were thinking hard about race relations and prejudices in the 1930s.

There are two ways to try to understand Son of India. You can think about it in the context of its day and the views and beliefs that were held about race then, or you can simply feel smug and superior by considering it in a modern-day context only.

Ramon Navarro plays the son of a precious jewels merchant. His life is selflessly saved by an Indian holy man who hid Navarro when bandits came to steal his father's jewels.

Later, an American tourist saves Navarro from a trumped-up charge of thievery. Navarro's father raised the boy to believe that gratitude is "the highest command of God and that no God will ever forgive a man who breaks the command of gratitude." The die is cast.

Years later, Navarro is himself a wealthy merchant of precious jewels when he meets a pretty American tourist, played by pretty Madge Evans. Soon the two begin a very tentative and cautious affair.

Both recognize the race prejudices of the time "forbid" their affair. The Indian community would not accept her any more than the white community would accept him, so their affair risks ostracism for both.

As in almost every inter-racial love-affair movie ever, the one thing we the audience see and care about is that the two lovers are sincere in their love - our sympathies are rightfully with them. Yet in 1930 it was not easy to say "it doesn't matter."

The water everyone swam in then was water where the races didn't intermarry. It's the game theory "everybody knows that everybody knows you don't do that" tenet, which controls behavior more than any written law ever could.

Evans and Navarro are ready to chuck their communities for love, but great pressure, in the form of outstanding debts of gratitude, comes down hard on Navarro. Evans is steadfast, but will Navarro crack under the emotional blackmail being put upon him?

As an actor, Navarro hasn't yet dropped all his silent film mannerisms, but here he creates an honorable and likable character who tries to do the right thing when there is no easy, or even clear, right thing to do. He's an appealing leading man.

Evans had already adjusted her acting style to talking pictures, making her portrayal of a woman who cares about love not race sincere and natural. She also delivers one of the money lines of the movie with powerful conviction:

"I'm a woman in love, that's what I am for the first time in my life, and I'll not allow any stupid prejudices to rob me of my happiness."

Son of India has an early talkie clunkiness to it, plus it is in need of a restoration, yet director Jacques Feyder told his risky-for-the-time story of an inter-racial couple with inspiring confidence.

Today, most of our "risky" movies are not risky at all as they align to the prevailing views and only fight prejudices of the past that are roundly denounced anyway by most people today. Feyder, conversely, was punching at the prevailing views of his time.

Son of India shows that race prejudice wasn't as "locked down" in the past as it is often argued today or a major studio, MGM, wouldn't have produced a picture challenging the accepted ideas on inter-racial couples.

Maybe it didn't go far enough, but that's easy to say today. The movie's existence alone is its value, as major social change doesn't come about in a flash of new thinking; the ideas behind radical change always have a long gestation period.

 

[GHT]

View attachment 647364
Son of India from 1931 with Raman Navarro and Madge Evans


This short precode packs a powerful interracial-relationship punch inside a smartly constructed story that reveals people were thinking hard about race relations and prejudices in the 1930s.

There are two ways to try to understand Son of India. You can think about it in the context of its day and the views and beliefs that were held about race then, or you can simply feel smug and superior by considering it in a modern-day context only.

Ramon Navarro plays the son of a precious jewels merchant. His life is selflessly saved by an Indian holy man who hid Navarro when bandits came to steal his father's jewels.

Later, an American tourist saves Navarro from a trumped-up charge of thievery. Navarro's father raised the boy to believe that gratitude is "the highest command of God and that no God will ever forgive a man who breaks the command of gratitude." The die is cast.

Years later, Navarro is himself a wealthy merchant of precious jewels when he meets a pretty American tourist, played by pretty Madge Evans. Soon the two begin a very tentative and cautious affair.

Both recognize the race prejudices of the time "forbid" their affair. The Indian community would not accept her any more than the white community would accept him, so their affair risks ostracism for both.

As in almost every inter-racial love-affair movie ever, the one thing we the audience see and care about is that the two lovers are sincere in their love - our sympathies are rightfully with them. Yet in 1930 it was not easy to say "it doesn't matter."

The water everyone swam in then was water where the races didn't intermarry. It's the game theory "everybody knows that everybody knows you don't do that" tenet, which controls behavior more than any written law ever could.

Evans and Navarro are ready to chuck their communities for love, but great pressure, in the form of outstanding debts of gratitude, comes down hard on Navarro. Evans is steadfast, but will Navarro crack under the emotional blackmail being put upon him?

As an actor, Navarro hasn't yet dropped all his silent film mannerisms, but here he creates an honorable and likable character who tries to do the right thing when there is no easy, or even clear, right thing to do. He's an appealing leading man.

Evans had already adjusted her acting style to talking pictures, making her portrayal of a woman who cares about love not race sincere and natural. She also delivers one of the money lines of the movie with powerful conviction:

"I'm a woman in love, that's what I am for the first time in my life, and I'll not allow any stupid prejudices to rob me of my happiness."

Son of India has an early talkie clunkiness to it, plus it is in need of a restoration, yet director Jacques Feyder told his risky-for-the-time story of an inter-racial couple with inspiring confidence.

Today, most of our "risky" movies are not risky at all as they align to the prevailing views and only fight prejudices of the past that are roundly denounced anyway by most people today. Feyder, conversely, was punching at the prevailing views of his time.

Son of India shows that race prejudice wasn't as "locked down" in the past as it is often argued today or a major studio, MGM, wouldn't have produced a picture challenging the accepted ideas on inter-racial couples.

Maybe it didn't go far enough, but that's easy to say today. The movie's existence alone is its value, as major social change doesn't come about in a flash of new thinking; the ideas behind radical change always have a long gestation period.

As reviews go, they don't get much better than that. Fair, carefully considered, tolerant and informative. I enjoyed reading your assessment.