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Some of My Favorite Films:
01. Sunrise (1927, F.W. Murnau)
02. Children of Paradise (1945, Marcel Carne)
03. Earth (1930, Aleksandr Dovzhenko)
04. Ordet (1955, Carl Theodor Dreyer)
05. La Roue (1923, Abel Gance)
06. Solaris (1972, Andrei Tarkovsky)
07. L'Argent (1928, Marcel L'Herbier)
08. Les Bonnes femmes (1960, Claude Chabrol)
09. Shadows (1959, John Cassavetes)
10. White Nights (1957, Luchino Visconti)
11. Portrait of Jennie (1948, William Dieterle)
12. The Love of Zero (1927, Robert Florey)
13. M�nilmontant (1926, Dimitri Kirsanoff)
14. Fox and His Friends (1975, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
15. Shoot the Piano Player (1960, Francois Truffaut)
16. Le Plaisir (1952, Max Oph�ls)
17. Heaven Can Wait (1943, Ernst Lubitsch)
18. Testament of Orpheus (1960, Jean Cocteau)
[Honorable Mentions: Hypocrites (1916, Lois Weber), La Terre (1921, Andr� Antoine), Manhatta (1921), Coeur fid�le (1923, Jean Epstein), He Who Gets Slapped (1924, Victor Sj�str�m), Kino-Eye (1924, Dziga Vertov), Variety (1925, E.A. Dupont), The Unknown (1927, Tod Browning), Show People (1928, King Vidor), Applause (1929, Rouben Mamoulian), City Girl (1930, F.W. Murnau), I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932, Mervyn LeRoy), L'Atalante (1934, Jean Vigo), Les Mis�rables (1934, Raymond Bernard), Port of Shadows (1938, Marcel Carne), Meshes of the Afternoon (1943, Maya Deren), Body and Soul (1947, Robert Rossen), Bellissima (1951, Luchino Visconti), Venom and Eternity (1951, Isidore Isou), Howlings in Favour of de Sade (1952, Guy Debord), Crazed Fruit (1956, K� Nakahira), Ballada o soldate (1959, Grigori Chukhrai), Jazz on a Summer`s Day (1960, Aram Avakian/Bert Stern), Billy Liar (1963, John Schlesinger), Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964, Jacques Demy), Soy Cuba (1964, Mikhail Kalatozov), Masculin f�minin (1966, Jean-Luc Godard), Funeral Parade of Roses (1969, Toshio Matsumoto), Hitler: A Film from Germany (1977, Hans-J�rgen Syberberg)]
Favorite Directors:
01. F.W. Murnau
02. Max Oph�ls
03. Ingmar Bergman
04. Carl Theodor Dreyer
05. Fritz Lang
06. Abel Gance
07. Ernst Lubitsch
08. Dziga Vertov
09. Michael Powell
10. Rainer Werner Fassbinder
11. Victor Sj�str�m
12. Andrei Tarkovsky
13. Jules Dassin
14. Jean-Luc Godard
15. Marcel L'Herbier
[Honorable Mentions: Akira Kurosawa, Alain Resnais, Aleksandr Dovzhenko, Alfred Hitchcock, Bob Fosse, Carol Reed, Charles Chaplin, Chris Marker, Claude Chabrol, D.W. Griffith, Federico Fellini, Fran�ois Truffaut, Georges Franju, Germaine Dulac, Jacques Becker, Jacques Demy, Jacques Feyder, Jacques Tati, Jean Cocteau, Jean Epstein, Jean-Pierre Melville, Jean Renoir, Jean Vigo, John Cassavetes, Josef Von Sternberg, Julien Duvivier, Kaneto Shind�, King Vidor, Larisa Shepitko, Luchino Visconti, Luis Bu�uel, Marcel Carn�, Marcel Pagnol, Maurice Pialat, Maya Deren, Maysles Brothers, Michelangelo Antonioni, Mikio Naruse, Orson Welles, Preston Sturges, Raymond Bernard, Ren� Clair, Ren� Cl�ment, Robert Bresson, Roberto Rossellini, Sam Fuller, Satyajit Ray, Sergei M. Eisenstein, Shirley Clarke, Tod Browning, V�ctor Erice, Vittorio De Sica, Yasujiro Ozu]
Favorite Actresses:
01. Marion Davies
02. Anna Karina
03. Joan Fontaine
04. Louise Brooks
05. Corinne Griffith
06. Leila Hyams
07. Olivia De Havilland
08. Dolores Costello
08. Ann Dvorak
10. Bernadette Lafont
11. Ingrid Thulin
12. Maureen O'Sullivan
13. Delphine Seyrig
14. Carole Lombard
15. Eleanor Parker
[Honorable Mentions: Adrienne Ames, Andrea Leeds, Anne Shirley, Anouk Aim�e, Audrey Hepburn, Audrey Totter, Betty Amann, Cyd Charisse, Dorothy Burgess, Dorothy Mackaill, Ella Raines, Fay Wray, Gene Tierney, Ginger Rogers, Irene Dunne, Jane Greer, Jean Simmons, Jeanette MacDonald, Jeanne Moreau, Joan Peers, Joyce Compton, Karen Morley, Madeleine Carroll, Marceline Day, Martha Vickers, Mary Nolan, Monica Vitti, Peggy Dow, Ren�e Ador�e, Rita Hayworth, St�phane Audran]
Favorite Actors:
01. Lon Chaney Sr.
02. John Garfield
03. James Cagney
04. Jean-Louis Barrault
05. Francis Lederer
06. Alain Delon
07. Jimmy Stewart
08. Jean-Pierre L�aud
08. Joseph Cotton
10. Don Ameche
[Honorable Mentions: Alan Ladd, Alec Guinness, Charles Chaplin, Charles Ruggles, Dick Powell, Donald O'Connor, Fred Astaire, Fredric March, Gene Kelly, Glenn Ford, Harold Lloyd, Henry Fonda, Jack Buchanan, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Joe E. Brown, John Barrymore, Laurence Olivier, Maurice Chevalier, Max von Sydow, Michael Redgrave, Nikolai Cherkasov, Paul Muni, Robert Donat, Robert Ryan, Ronald Coleman, Tom Courtenay, Zbigniew Cybulski]
"Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary." Cecil Beaton
Reviews
Undertow (1930)
Highly Melodramatic Talkie With Beauteous Blonde Mary Nolan
Undertow is a 1930 film directed by Harry A. Pollard and it stars Johnny Mack Brown (Paul), Mary Nolan (Sally) and Robert Ellis (Jim) in a story about a girl named Sally who quickly falls in love with life guard Paul during a joyous and pleasurable day on the beach, leaving her incredibly jealous male companion in the process who isn't exactly hurried to let his girl relinquish their already third engagement. Therefore, Paul eventually talks Sally into sharing his life as a lighthouse keeper and in result the film leaps forward in time to an unhappily married Sally who is now a mother and seemingly confined from the exuberant life of lavish parties and dancing that she once knew. From here the film is exceedingly gloomy and filled with a plentiful of turn of events.
As for the quality of this low budget early talkie, the print I viewed was in relatively decent condition, though one must make mention that the films running time clocks in at a mere sixty minutes and in consequence of that short running time the story fails to ever truly develop. The jump forward in time from the beach to the lighthouse happens very rapidly, which assumably was the outcome of bad editing. Therefore, when the film is appearing to it's climax and abrupt ending, one is apparently just getting into the film. With that being said, the direction is expectedly flat for an early talkie, as well as the acting being horribly stilted and melodramatic, especially from Johnny Mack Brown who is hardly convincing during the times of heroic lifeguard or lighthouse keeper in sorrow.
Therefore, despite it's enormous flaws, Undertow most certainly has the ability to hold it's viewers attention and entertain quite pleasantly. However, this is hardly of any interest to anyone who isn't a fan of the films two biggest stars, Mary Nolan and Johnny Mack Brown. The fans of especially Mary Nolan will be greatly overjoyed in simply seeing the blonde beauty in something rather than Tod Browning's West of Zanzibar (1928) or Desert Nights (1929) with John Gilbert and her performance in all actuality is tolerable when compared to the vast majority of performances during the early talkie era, she displays an innumerable amount of range and diversity within the hour and in greater distance proves she could've been a huge star.
Affairs of a Gentleman (1934)
"B" Murder Mystery With a Plenteous of Identifable Names
Affairs of a Gentleman is a mystery/romance, whodunnit style film about the mysterious death of a notoriously candid author from Universal Pictures starring a gargantuan amount of recognizable names from the '30s such as Paul Lukas, Leila Hyams, Patricia Ellis, Phillip Reed, Onslow Stevens, Lilian Bond, Joyce Compton and Dorothy Burgess. The film is told in flashback style and for the vast majority appears in the high-rise apartment building of our murder victim, the suave Victor Gresham (Paul Lukas), who has written a scandalous autobiography detailing his numerous affairs, with no regard to the feelings of the women involved. The police begin investigating these women and it all sets about during a publisher's party for the author. Therefore, several of Victor's ex-girl friends appear at the party and he smoothly entertains them.
For the most part, Edwin L. Marin's Affairs of a Gentleman is that of a b-grade murder mystery that possesses a somewhat stagey, artificial quality, though a plentiful of twist and turns to keep our curiosity engaged, as well as the characters being generated quite effectively, which in result the film is leisurely paced. Beautiful blonde Leila Hyams gets top female billing and is most certainly playing a far more edgy and boldly assertive character then one might be use to seeing her play. However, her screen time is rather limited and is quite possibly outshined by two other strikingly beautiful ladies in Patricia Ellis and Dorothy Burgess. With that being said, Affairs of a Gentleman is the probability of interest to fans of the films leading stars, particularly that of the women, and shouldn't garner much attention or interest to anyone unknowing of the films leading stars.
Red-Headed Woman (1932)
Red-Headed Woman
Red-Headed Woman is a 1932 film of the Pre-Code era based on a novel by Katherine Brush. Though originally developed as a project for Greta Garbo, the film stars Jean Harlow as Lil "Red" Andrews, an unapologetic homewrecker who lacks "moral" sensibility. The sexually promiscuous Lil is determined to rise up the business ladder even if it means sleeping her way to the top. Chester Morris stars as Lil's boss 'Bill'/'Willie' Legendre Jr. and is successfully seduced, manipulated with sex and persuaded by the disobedient Lil to divorce his lovely wife, Irene, who's played by the sparkling green-eyed blonde ingenue Leila Hyams. Hyams, an attractive and always likable actress, implies a noticeable beauty but in a warm and endearing way as the innocent wife. Lil soon grows bored of Bill and plunges into an affair with a well-heeled businessman played by Henry Stephenson.
With marital infidelity; lots of implicit sex, violence, sadism and a plentiful of bare female flesh, Red-Headed Woman conforms absolutely to the description of the type of film that simply couldn't be made a few years later. Though far and wide from a great actress, Jean Harlow's overtly sexual portrayal and stubbornly persistent in wrongdoing is amongst one of her finest performances. Also here is Una Merkel in her trademark wisecracking best friend of the heroine and in one of his earliest Hollywood roles, Charles Boyer as the French chauffeur. Red-Headed Woman is a fast-paced, vulgar, humorous and excitingly appealing film that exemplifies the entertainment Hollywood could offer before the angry and offended moralists and the Production Code dropped a net of censorship over the studios.