My 1931 Oscar Ballot

We have finished up the 1931-32 Oscars (links to all contests at the bottom of the page), and as we've done for every other season, we're going to finish up with a "My Ballot," where I say whom I would've voted for in all of the categories, including the nominees.  I will totally own, that while I have seen tons of movies for each of these seasons, none felt quite as challenging as this ballot.  When it comes to cinema, I think all time frames are able to create magical movies, and that's true here.  Some of these Best Picture nominees have given me great movie memories, and the top three medalists are truly incredible.  But if you're going to say that there are "favorite eras" of cinema (which for me is the 1940's into the early 1950's, the late 60's into the early 70's, and the early-to-mid aughts), there have to be less favorite eras, and the formative years of sound film are not my favorite.  You'll note on this list that there is still one holdout from the silent era, but we have otherwise worked our way into the sound time frame, and some of the seams in the films I watched of this era did show.  I essentially kept watching these movies until I was feeling genuinely bad about not including specific titles (as we discussed on our 4000th article, a nomination should feel like an achievement, and so if I'm not cutting a good nominee because they're in a very strong sixth place I don't feel like I'm doing right by the year), so I feel strong about what I'm giving you today, but like I said-it took a lot of work (and some research).

The research was necessary because of how we're going to approach this.  We haven't really hit this much, other than extending the Animated Feature race into the pre-2001 races (and keeping Sound Editing post-2020), but the 5th Oscars looked a lot different than what we think of the current Oscars as.  Categories like Best Costume, Score, Movie Song, Makeup, & Visual Effects weren't a thing yet, and they didn't yet have the supporting acting categories.  My thought process was that we keep most of these-film still had makeup, costumes, visual effects, & supporting actors in 1931, so why shouldn't we include them?  We did not include, however, Best Score or Movie Song-the reason for this is that in Silent Era films (and to a slightly lesser degree due to film preservation issues, early sound films) it's challenging to understand what scores were actually in the film when it was made.  Silent films have been remastered, and in many cases the music that is played with the most recent iterations of these pictures is not necessarily what would've played in theaters at the time (in many cases, those were accompanied by an organist or a piano player), so it's hard to judge.  We'll start to grade these in 1934 when Oscar introduces the category instead.  We will therefore end up with 15 categories today-the fifteen categories we will include in every My Ballot throughout this project.

We will also be doing this for just 1931.  I know that Oscar had these split into two calendar years, but I think (after confirming with my brother, who does this project with me), that this is silly, and we will just continue to do calendar years until 1927.  That means that in 1932-33 I'll have to somehow cover two years of this, which will be a logistical nightmare and which is probably why we won't hit that year for a while.  In doing this, though, I ran into two snags.  First, I had to hunt-I like the uniformity of having 10-wide for Best Picture and 5-wide for all of the remaining categories that we'll profile this year when we did them in the 21st Century, and I wanted to keep that.  But Oscar didn't go ten-wide (or 5-wide) in the remaining categories, which meant that, even if I kept all of Oscar's nominees (and I did not...in any category), I had to find additional ones.  Without precursors, with this being the first year where I didn't actually live through the ceremony OR the year (I'm old, I'm not that old), and honestly without a lot of classic films (real talk-aside from Frankenstein, City Lights, & Dracula, no American movies have stayed in collective cinema pop culture too long from 1931) I had to scavenge a bit.  What I came up with I'm proud of, but if your favorite film from 1931 is missing entirely, let me know as it might've gotten lost in the shuffle.

Lastly, the split years meant that I had a snag in my Oscar Viewing Project ethos.  One of the biggest rules of this project has been that I see all of the Oscar nominees in every narrative, feature-length category.  Otherwise it's not an accomplishment.  But since the 1930-31 Oscars (aka the 4th Academy Awards) had at least some 1931 films in them, I had to make a point of seeking out any OVP-eligible films from that year that were made in 1931.  And because I respect this project so much, I did do that even if it meant a bit of a delay in getting this done.  So films like Trader Horn, East Lynne, and Skippy that came out in 1931 are eligible here...they just didn't get nominated because, well, they're terrible.  The 4th Academy Awards, which thanks to this season I have a shockingly large head start upon, is going to be a chore.  But that's a problem for a different day-we are back into the 21st Century to complete the recently finished 96th Academy Awards in the upcoming week, and without further adieu-our oldest My Ballot to date!

Picture

The Champ

City Lights

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Frankenstein

M

Marius

The Miracle Woman

The Smiling Lieutenant

Tabu: A Story of the South Seas

Waterloo Bridge

Gold: Charlie Chaplin's magnum opus, City Lights is a romantic picture, one that shows the Tramp in all of his glory.  As he falls in love, we see why silent film was so special, and the loss that it's extinction represented to the artistry of film, even if sound opened up other doors.  The look on his face as he becomes enamored with Virginia Cherrill-no script could ever produce that.

Silver: Staggeringly modern, and incredibly creepy, Fritz Lang's M shows us the humanity of a murderer, giving us a look at how mob mentality, even toward the worst amongst us, can sometimes give us a slice of the demonic.  Totally original, and even today quite shocking.

Bronze: We have talked about the Frankenstein pictures on this blog (thanks to our October Horror Marathons) more than most, but if you don't know-I love them.  So much.  The way that this unfolds, Karloff's humanity in his terrible creature.  Few films can approach it, and it would be modeled by so many after.

Director

Charlie Chaplin (City Lights)

Alexander Korda (Marius)

Fritz Lang (M)

FW Murnau (Tabu: A Story of the South Seas)

James Whale (Frankenstein)

Gold: I'm going to double-down on City Lights here and give this one to Chaplin too.  I think that's partially because it's hard to argue with Chaplin's visionary approach to film, using less title cards, and just trusting that the audience will be so enthralled with your love story they don't need any guidance of how to feel (which works).

Silver: Close behind it (closer than Best Picture) is a silver medal for Fritz Lang.  I think Lang, similar to Chaplin, gets a lot of the strength from not spoon-feeding anything to the audience.  They understand how truly wicked Peter Lorre is, and they know further still that the mob is not right in their approach to his justice.  Lang's anti-Nazi views show pretty clearly here as we see the rise of Hitler in the film's many villains.

Bronze: We'll throw in a new name for the bronze though (as much as I do love James Whale).  Instead, we'll name Alexander Korda, whose French epic shows a remarkable aptitude for sound.  While other films (even sound films like Frankenstein and M) continued to get their strength more so through the visual, Marius is a story, one that has the guts to end ambiguously in an era where that simply wasn't done.

Actor

Charlie Chaplin (City Lights)

Pierre Fresnay (Marius)

Peter Lorre (M)

Fredric March (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde)

Raimu (Marius)

Gold: Peter Lorre would spend much of the 1940's & 50's playing some version of the comic relief henchman that he played in The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca, and he would do it well (he was marvelous in those movies).  But watching M, you get the sense that we were cheated out of a great screen star, he so perfectly encapsulates the scared monstrosity of his Hans Beckert.

Silver: Chaplin doesn't get a threepeat of gold, but know that I was considering it, and he gets a solid silver.  Comedy in the Silent Era was maybe its best form (that or horror), but you watch Chaplin's performances and they're just on another level.  The way that he combines both his trademark "tramp" slapstick with a more sophisticated amour is heavenly.

Bronze: Raimu's work in Marius is so fascinating, especially in the film's final moments.  He plays this part really well, a father who has an undying love for his son, but doesn't have an understanding of him.  The "parents just don't understand" message was 50 years away, but that doesn't mean that he couldn't capture that sentiment beautifully in pre-war France.

Actress

Mae Clarke (Waterloo Bridge)

Claudette Colbert (The Smiling Lieutenant)

Orane Demazis (Marius)

Barbara Stanwyck (The Miracle Woman)

Barbara Stanwyck (Night Nurse)

Gold: Even early on in her career, Barbara Stanwyck finds a way to impart her "smarter-than-the-men" style into her characters.  In The Miracle Woman, she plays an early televangelist, a phony who falls in love with one of the men she claims to have "saved."  Stanwyck's moral dilemmas, and the way that Capra gives her both the bitter & the sweet in the ending, is something only she'd be able to pull off.

Silver: Mae Clarke is playing one of my favorite Vivien Leigh parts, and so it was a tall ask to put her into those shoes, but she does so beautifully.  While Leigh finds the tragedy in the circumstances, Clarke does a better job of finding the morality of what happens-this is a woman gifted a better life, but isn't sure if she can take it knowing that she loves this man so much.  It's a really tender performance from an actress most famous for getting a grapefruit in her face or having to marry a monster.

Bronze: Orane Demazis gets maybe the most complicated role in Marius, as a woman torn between a better life for herself by marrying a man with money, or pursuing her true love Marius, whom she cannot count on to be there for her even if she goes after him.  She balances that really well, and honestly-I can't wait to see what's in store for her as I see the sequel next month.

Supporting Actor

Fernand Charpin (Marius)

Dwight Frye (Dracula)

Gustaf Grundgens (M)

Boris Karloff (Frankenstein)

Harry Myers (City Lights)

Gold: Boris Karloff would end up haunting the dreams of countless moviegoers for generations with his Monster, but it wasn't just that he's scary.  Karloff gives him a grand deal of humanity, someone who has been thrown into an impossible situation, and who shows as much joy in destroying as he does in celebrating the world around him.

Silver: Fernand Charpin plays the "other man" in the principle love triangle in Marius, but he does so to both great comedic & adversarial effect.  I loved the way that Honoré is not a true villain, but someone lonely, and being encouraged by Fanny's aunt to think that it's a viable match.  He steals most of the scenes he's in, even against some stiff acting competition.

Bronze: Gustaf Grundgens' personal life is questionable when giving out a statue, but these need to be won solely on performance, and his work in M is extraordinary.  A large part of Fritz Lang's story is that you will find a villainy in every character, not just the ones who are obvious, and Grundgens gives us maybe the film's scariest figure as the Safecracker and chief judge in Hans Beckert's court.

Supporting Actress

Joan Blondell (Night Nurse)

Virginia Cherrill (City Lights)

Miriam Hopkins (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde)

Miriam Hopkins (The Smiling Lieutenant)

Alida Rouffe (Marius)

Gold: Like Best Actress, our Supporting Actress is getting a gold with a double nomination year (I don't follow Oscar rules-actors can get nominated twice in the same category).  And you deserve two nominations if you're giving performances as good as Miriam Hopkins was in 1931.  For her win, I'm going to go with her tragic turn in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  She brings something beyond just screaming victim here, and gives us a true loss of innocence as she is brought into the world of the nasty Edward Hyde.

Silver: Joan Blondell is one of those actresses you know is famous, but is rarely name-checked as a great actress of her era.  But twenty years before her forgettable Oscar nomination, she totally earned one as the worldly best friend to Barbara Stanwyck in Night Nurse, giving us a counter to Stanwyck's noble heroine.

Bronze: Finishing off the acting contests is Virginia Cherrill's angelic Blind Girl in City Lights.  If you're going to pull off the most romantic scene (possibly) in film history, you need to find a way to have strength, tenderness, & a different kind of shyness than Chaplin is bringing, and Cherrill does that in her work here.

Adapted Screenplay

Frankenstein

Marius

The Miracle Woman

The Smiling Lieutenant

Waterloo Bridge

Gold: Bringing Mary Shelley's epistolary novel to life on the big-screen was no easy task.  It isn't entirely made for the movies (at least not the movies of 1931), and some of the choices (like making the monster unable to speak) are honestly really smart decisions by the screenwriters of Frankenstein-they'd set up nearly 100 years of lore around the creature we still see in the films today.

Silver: Close behind Frankenstein is Marius, which would've won if it wasn't competing with an icon.  After all, this is a shockingly sophisticated story of love, dreams, & money, told at the dawn of the sound era but you'd be forgiven for thinking this was coming a decade later the story feels so perfectly plotted.

Bronze: Our final medalist is The Smiling Lieutenant, which gets on this list not just for being the funniest film of 1931, but also for being the bawdiest.  Combined with some delicious musical arrangement (try not to grin during "Jazz Up Your Lingerie") the Lubitsch touch is in full effect as we get ribald humor between Maurice Chevalier, Claudette Colbert, & Miriam Hopkins.

Original Screenplay

The Champ

City Lights

M

Monkey Business

Smart Money

Gold: Few films of this era had such political insight and layered metaphors as Fritz Lang's M (which he also co-wrote).  Look at the way that he handles the police and the criminals similar approach to capturing Hans Beckert...Lang wants you to know in 1931 Germany, even the institutions are rotten (and boy was he right).

Silver: Silent films obviously don't have spoken screenplays, and so a lack of dialogue sometimes feels a bit of a cheat for competing for an award like this.  But Chaplin's City Lights is so wonderfully-plotted, giving us side adventures, but ones that always build back to the final moments of the film.  All of his pictures have this attention-to-detail, but this one in particular is the best-constructed.

Bronze: We're finishing off with our first film that also won the Oscar (I really abandoned the Academy's choices this year, especially deprived of their much better 1932 films) The Champ, which is a tearjerker, but one that balances a sense of masculinity and forgotten dreams into what easily could've just been a family boxing flick.  This became formative for a reason.

Sound

Dracula

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Frankenstein

M

The Miracle Woman

Gold: We're combining effects & mixing into one category (we'll split them starting in the 1960's when editing became more of a standard practice...and also something I could genuinely tell apart from the mixing), and we're giving this statue to a film that had both, Frankenstein, a movie that not only has angry mobs & a lumbering monster, but the staggering screams of "it's alive!" that ring as some of the most memorable in film history.

Silver: Following it, we're going to go to the other monster of 1931, always in Karloff's shadow: Dracula.  Here the sound work is more sophisticated, more subtle, but nonetheless just as effective, particularly the way it seems to drip on Lugosi's accent in the early scenes to make him as menacing as possible.

Bronze: A trio of horror medalists (a first for this blog), we'll conclude with the nasty transformations of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and the way that it uses silence and screams to instill terror in its audience.

Art Direction

Dracula

Frankenstein

M

A Nous la Liberte

Transatlantic

Gold: I am a sucker for world-building when it comes to this category (look how many nominations I gave the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter films in the 21st Century), and no film is world-building quite like Frankenstein does in 1931.  The castle, the moat, the village...it's all splendid.

Silver: The modernist designs of A Nous la Liberte are arguably more inventive than Frankenstein (which is more iconic...you decide which is more impressive but I lean toward the Monster).  I love the way that it feels like it's pulling you into a world of the future that's not entirely happy.  Capitalism has never looked so depressing (and that's a good thing).

Bronze: The thing about M is that the art direction feels like it's part of the film.  The city streets become more claustrophobic the further we get into the film, as Hans Beckert can feel the world collapsing on itself, and the courtroom in the final scenes feels truly underground, somewhere where no one is going to escape.

Cinematography

City Lights

Frankenstein

M

Marius

Tabu: A Story of the South Seas

Gold: Few men of his era knew quite how to lens a film in as horrifying of a manner as Frtiz Arno Wagner, who was the genius behind such pictures as Nosferatu and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse.  With M, though, he gives maybe his best work, giving us some early tracking shots and a type of visual storytelling that would make the film the classic that it is.

Silver: Tabu is not a well-remembered film, but it won an Oscar for Cinematography for a reason-it's gorgeous.  Floyd Crosby's camerawork here, particularly the swimming sequences, kind of have to be seen to be believed, they are so technically impressive & beautifully-captured.

Bronze: Frankenstein does better with lighting night scenes than most modern blockbusters do.  The way that it captures moments in a graveyard, at a castle's doorsteps, and of course in Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory are a play of light-and-shadow, all marvelously lit but with an ominous sense of dread.

Costume

Dishonored

Dracula

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Frankenstein

Mata Hari

Gold: Few women are as fashionable throughout all of their careers as Marlene Dietrich, and her dresses in Dishonored are about as delicious as you can get.  I particularly love the shiny black number with the silver cape and a chain necklace, looking like she's either been released from the Met Gala or the world's most expensive dominatrix club.

Silver: Sometimes you get in based solely on a dress into this category, sometimes it's a cavalcade of outfits strung together.  For Frankenstein, it's a pair of looks.  First you have Boris Karloff's lumbering corpse, in a stiff & slightly dated suit that looks like he was, well, buried in it, and then you have Mae Clarke's gorgeous bridal gown, a combination of elegant evening gown with a flapper headdress that, honestly, would still be in style.

Bronze: If you're going to unleash the most stylish monster in horror movie history, you need him to look good.  That's what the costume team in Dracula does for Bela Lugosi, putting him in smashing evening wear, to go along with the increasingly sexy evening wear worn by Helen Chandler's Mina as the film progresses.

Film Editing

City Lights

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Frankenstein

M

Marius

Gold: Once again we are going with M for the gold medal (its total is one short of Frankenstein), but can you blame me?  The building suspense in this picture, not just as we want to capture Hans Beckert, but the fear of what happens when we do, is gripping-your-seat sorts of horror, and the film's visual cues (particularly the use of the actual "M") are so well-considered.

Silver: Behind it we have Frankenstein, another film winning mostly because of its thrills, but that's not the only thing that makes it work.  Think of a scene like the resurrection sequence-this isn't necessarily meant to be scary, but the way that it's pieced together (including Colin Clive's shrieks) makes it that way...we are about to tempt the hand of god.

Bronze: We'll complete the trio with Marius, which doesn't have the crutch of a horror film to guide it, but instead a growing series of storylines that are being intertwined.  This was not something movies of this era did well.  Part of the reason supporting performances weren't recognized until the mid-1930's was they weren't really consequential to the plot (B Plots or Side Plots weren't really a thing), but Marius does it aptly, feeling at times like it's inventing this style of moviemaking it's so advanced.

Makeup & Hairstyling

Dishonored

Dracula

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Frankenstein

M

Gold: Horror movies rarely get honored for makeup, but they should, and 1931 is about as perfect of an example as you could find as to why.  Think of what Jack Pierce is doing in Frankenstein, giving us a monster that, quite honestly, we don't even see as green, but we can feel it in the way that he makes it decay, realistic but still clearly undead.  It's chilling.

Silver: Fast behind him is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  Wally Westmore (of the famed family) uses both visual trickery (we'll get into that in a second) and makeup effects to create the transformation, and when we get the actual Mr. Hyde, he's a brutal figure, one that cannot be denied (and you better not try).

Bronze: We are finishing off with Dracula.  This isn't as showy (the prosthetics aren't as necessary on either Bela Lugosi or his brides), but most doesn't always equal best, and the placid, nearly translucent looks shown by he and the women he's entombed in his castle are really defining stuff for the vampire genre.

Visual Effects

Dracula

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Frankenstein

Taris

Waterloo Bridge

Gold: We'll have a flip of the script and give this one to Dr. Jekyll.  The movie's most famous sequence is the transformation scene, with Fredric March staring straight into the camera, no cuts away, and watching as he slowly gets blotches on his face and darkness under his eyes...it's insane this was done without CGI, but instead color filters on the lens and extensive (and precise) makeup.  It's genius work.

Silver: Similar to Dr. Jekyll, the visual effects of Frankenstein in some capacity can be caught in the flashing lights, production design, and practical effects of the resurrection scene.  We see a fission of sound, art direction, & glowing lights all in one breathtaking moment.

Bronze: We'll keep the three horror films together for a final time, and again Dracula is a bit less showy, a bit more subtle.  But this one uses practical effects, including lighting tricks to highlight Lugosi's face and to have him vanish into a bat, to give us a complete ambience.

Also in 1931-32: Picture, Director, Actress, Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Story, Art Direction, Cinematography, Previously in 1931-32

Other My Oscar Ballots: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

The Big Trail (1930)

Film: The Big Trail (1930)

Stars: John Wayne, Marguerite Churchill, El Brendel, Tully Marshall, Tyrone Power, Sr.

Director: Raoul Walsh

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on John Wayne: click here to learn more about Mr. Wayne (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

John Wayne, as I mentioned in our kickoff, is one of the most storied actors in Classical Hollywood.  His career literally spans the gamut, starting in the early 1930's with our movie today, going through the end of the studio system into New Hollywood (lest we forget, he'd win his Oscar the same night that Midnight Cowboy was beating more classical fare like Hello, Dolly! and Anne of the Thousand Days in a moment that heralded a new era at the most traditional of Tinseltown bastions, the Academy Awards) and into the 1970's.  There are too many chapters in Wayne's career, and so we're going to focus on five key aspects of his stardom throughout July.  Today, we'll talk about how Wayne almost wasn't a movie star, and that was because of a film that in 1930, would've been considered something of a swear word in Hollywood.  The Big Trail was an extremely expensive movie shot for William Fox (eventually the namesake of 20th Century Fox), made in widescreen, and testing the limits of the early Sound Era, and what audiences were looking for.  Shot in 70 mm, the film was ahead-of-its-time, and nearly ruined Wayne's career when it failed to connect with audiences.  It would've been easy to assume at the time that Wayne was destined to be a big name in pictures, but he'd spend nine years following this working in supporting roles in studio films and making ends meet between those parts in Poverty Row westerns.  It wasn't until John Ford basically put his career on the line in 1939 to put Wayne in Stagecoach (his producing partner wanted the more bankable Gary Cooper) that Wayne would become an established presence in Hollywood films, but before we get into the full-phase of Wayne's career, I want to look at what might've been.

(Spoilers Ahead) Plot is kind of incidental to The Big Trail, but it essentially follows Breck Coleman (Wayne) a young fur trapper who is also bent on revenge, as his trapping partner was killed for his furs on the Santa Fe Trail.  Coleman suspects that a man named Red Flack (Power, and yes, he's the father of the more famous Tyrone Power) did it, but before he can confirm Flack and his men are hired to go on the Oregon Trail, and so Coleman agrees to join the same camp, trying to figure out if Flack is guilty or not.  Along the way, he falls in love with a woman named Ruth Cameron (Churchill), who is clearly smitten with him, but is flighty and when she thinks he isn't good enough for her, continues to flirt with one of Flack's men.  In the end, Ruth & Breck end up in each other's arms, and Flack & his cronies end up getting killed in a variety of showdowns.

On its surface, this isn't a particularly good movie.  Wayne has a natural charisma (and has never looked handsomer-perhaps the first & only movie I've ever found myself attracted to John Wayne, one of the more sexless figures in Classical Hollywood), but the rest of the cast is filled with duds, particularly Churchill, who plays Ruth as a whiny brat.  The plot itself is boring, and I understand why audiences didn't get behind this movie initially as it's not well-constructed and the revenge storyline isn't sharp enough.

But if you go just for the "film is a visual medium" angle, you'll find that the movie is marvelous.  As I said above, this was a massively expensive movie, and it shows in every angle.  The art direction is grand, with the background cast of hundreds aiding in making these pop-up villages feel like actual cities, and the cinematography in 70mm is beautiful, wide shots and making sure we get every bit of nature on display.  Even the effects, particularly the scene where they ford the river, are really impressive.  As a result, I'd recommend this one solely on a curiosity basis (and to understand why Wayne was once a heavily-courted romantic lead) because it looks that good.

The Blue Angel (1930)

Film: The Blue Angel (1930)

Stars: Emil Jannings, Marlene Dietrich

Director: Josef von Sternberg

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Marlene Dietrich: click here to learn more about Ms. Dietrich (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Marlene Dietrich is purposefully getting five Saturday's this month both because she's one of my favorite onscreen performers (I've yet to see a bad performance from her, though double check back with me when the month is done) and because her career was very, very long.  We could honestly do a year on Dietrich and not get to everything.  So we're going to start at the very beginning, with a film that launched her career, and the first feature-length sound film to be shot in German.  The movie was directed by Josef von Sternberg, who would become the "Svengali" to Dietrich early in her career (more on him next week), making seven films together, almost all of which are regarded today as classics.  Dietrich was cast in this film from relative obscurity (she had been doing musicals in Berlin and Vienna at the time in increasingly larger roles), and it made enough money for Paramount (the US distributor of the film) for them to sign Dietrich to a long-term star contract, primarily in hopes that she could do for their studio what Greta Garbo was doing for MGM (the two two stars have had so much gossip written about their relationship it's impossible to tell truth-from-fiction...they were either one-time lovers or rivals that claimed they'd never met).  She would come to equal Garbo, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.  Let's discuss this week the one film this month we'll talk about where Dietrich is speaking her native language of German, The Blue Angel.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses primarily not on Dietrich, but on Oscar-winner (and the bigger star at the time) Emil Jannings, playing a stuffy professor named Immanuel Rath, who one night goes to the club the Blue Angel, which allegedly his male students (who mock him mercilessly but also fear him) have been sneaking off to and are obsessed with a headliner there named Lola Lola (Dietrich).  Rath becomes infatuated with Lola, slowly-but-steadily making rasher decisions (including spending the night with her), which his students find out about, and stage a huge rebellion against him, now basically blackmailing him collectively, which causes him to have his job threatened.  Rather than leave Lola, he marries her and quits his job, but they cannot remain happy.  Lola is not interested in monogamy, and he is consumed by jealousy as he sees her lusted at every night by adoring men, including other men in the troupe who try to bed her.  Humiliated, and dependent on a woman who doesn't respect him for money, he takes a job as a clown in the club, eventually being seen by his former students & fellow professors as a fallen man, all the while his wife is cheating right in front of him (literally, she's kissing another man) while he's trying to make money onstage.  He leaves the club, sneaks back to his classroom, and dies.

The story of The Blue Angel, a fallen man who gives up everything for the love of a woman he doesn't understand, has been told countless times in film history, and I suspect even in 1930 wasn't "new."  The first 45 minutes of this movie, to be honest, is kind of a snore, with Jannings' professor a giant killjoy and the movie not really sure whether to make him truly absurd or just bemused (they fail in the balance there).  The back half is much better, and the tragedy works because Jannings plays his gruff teacher not as someone that automatically invites sympathy (he is, in the beginning, too stuffy & self-righteous), but instead as someone who tried to see the world, but couldn't understand it.  From a modern lens, he is very much a fool, and one who tries to tame a woman who has no interest in being tamed (a look we don't really celebrate in men anymore, and for good reason), but it's hard not to pity him in the final moments, not because of his jealousy, but because he has no concept of what love is, and that is his downfall.

Dietrich has a smaller role here than you'd assume, and were this released today, we'd have a serious argument about whether this is "supporting or lead" in terms of category fraud.  She's good though.  Dietrich was not yet on solid ground with her onscreen persona (that'd take a few more years), but you can see the shock & awe of her here.  Sexy, perfect bone structure, and that sultry baritone already prepackaged, she steals pretty much every scene she's in (and Jannings is good in this movie, so that's not an easy task), playing her character not as someone who is intentionally cruel, but who has such a different worldview than Jannings, she can't comprehend how much more serious he is about her than she is about him.  It's a tough part to play, making Lola not be a true villain (which I think the script wants her to be), but Dietrich is capable in her first major role.

The Skin Game (1931)

Film: The Skin Game (1931)

Stars: CV France, Helen Haye, Jill Esmond, Edmund Gwenn, John Longden, Phyllis Konstam

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

(Throughout the year, in connection with our 'Saturdays with the Stars' series, I am watching every gap I have in Alfred Hitchcock's filmography in what we're calling 'Sunday Leftovers.'  Every Sunday, I'll be watching a Hitchcock film that I've never seen before as I spend 2021 completing his filmography)

I love the films of Alfred Hitchcock, but I am learning as we're going along with this Sunday Leftovers series that watching a man's full filmography, particularly when he has a robust early filmography, can be a bit demanding (which is why we are consistently running late on this series).  Hitchcock's filmography makes this demanding in a strange way for me because so many of his films take place in the early Sound Era, which is my least favorite time frame for film.  While there are great sound movies during this period (King Kong, Dinner at Eight, Duck Soup), from 1927-33 I am generally wishing that the movies had just shut up (particularly considering how the best Silent Era movies took place in the late-1920's).  This is personified with The Skin Game, a movie with an intriguing plot, but one that gets totally glossed by in the early sound technology.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about two feuding families: the Hillcrists, Jack (France) and Ivy (Haye, and it's Helen Haye-not Oscar-winner Helen Hayes, though their remarkably similar names had me thrown off as well), who are a longtime upper class family in the English countryside, and the nouveau riche Hornblowers, including their patriarch Mr. Hornblower (Gwenn), his son Charles (Longden), and his pregnant daughter-in-law Chloe (Konstam).  The Hornblowers are buying up much of the land around the Hillcrists, obstructing their view by putting up factories.  When one last parcel of land is up-for-sale, they get into a bidding war that leads to the Hornblowers winning the land, but before they can do anything with the property, Ivy has a catch-she knows that Chloe used to be a prostitute, and as a result she blackmails Hornblower into causing a scandal for his family (and incoming grandchild) if they put up factories.  They swear an oath not to say anything in exchange for the land remaining untouched, but Chloe's guilt & the gossip this stirs up is too much for her, and she kills herself.  Angered by the Hillcrists' blackmail killing his future grandchild, Hornblower goes back on the deal, destroying the last views of the Hillcrist estate.

There's something fascinating in this movie, I'm not going to lie, as it's a good plot.  I love stories about the minutia of rich people, and how you can use seemingly silly things (like a parcel of land & the view it provides) and turn it into a much more dire set of circumstances (i.e. the reputation & life of a young woman).  Hitchcock even tries to preserve the majesty this had in previous iterations by hiring Gwenn & Haye, both of whom were in the 1921 silent version of this picture.  The late scenes where Gwenn, a fine actor then as well as later (he'd eventually win an Oscar for Miracle on 34th Street) tells off the Hillcrists & promises revenge, are solid stage work.

But this isn't a play, and huge stretches of the film are exceedingly dull.  The auction scene goes on at a glacial pace, and doesn't have the excitement it would have if this film was made a decade later, and the dialogue becomes interchangeable between, say, Chloe and the Hillcrists' daughter Jill.  Combine in that Chloe's prostitution isn't actually mentioned (though it's heavily implied for anyone who can remotely read between the lines), and there feels like 30% of the film just having shocked people trying not to say Chloe's "sin."  As a result, what might have been a great film gets bogged down as Hitchcock (like nearly all directors of this era) trying to capture what sound-in-film would feel like.  As a result, The Skin Game becomes like many Hitchcock movies of this era-only necessary if you're a completionist.

Holiday (1930)

Film: Holiday (1930)

Stars: Ann Harding, Mary Astor, Edward Everett Horton, Robert Ames, Hedda Hopper, William Holden

Director: Edward H. Griffith

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Actress-Ann Harding, Adapted Screenplay)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

All week long we've been doing reviews from the films of 2021, getting the final touches on the year before Monday's Oscar nominations.  In a more logical world, I would have made an effort to see one more 2021 film that's on Oscar's radar, as there are certainly movies that I could have done that with...but what is a week on this blog that doesn't have at least one truly random old Oscar nominee, and so we are going to bid you into the weekend with Holiday, a pre-Code romance that won two Academy Award nominations, though it's best remembered for the 1938 remake it inspired starring Katharine Hepburn & Cary Grant.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about two sisters, Linda (Harding) and Julia (Astor), posh & living the lives of wealthy heiresses in the 1920's.  Julia falls for a working man, handsome Johnny Case (Ames), who has different ideas about what he wants to do with his life.  While Julia initially seems supportive of the bohemian lifestyle that Johnny embraces, she more wants him to conform to the wishes of her father, not straying from the comfortable surroundings in which she's become accustomed.  Instead it is Linda who truly loves Johnny & his dreams, and wants to go off with him to see the world & live among the people, even if that gives up material pleasures, and in the end it is she who ends up with him, giving up the decadence & safety of her home life in favor of the free spirit, uninhibited world that Johnny aspires for himself.

I have seen the Cary Grant & Katharine Hepburn remake, though it'd been many years.  Overall this story is really quite remarkable, and sort of ahead-of-its-time in the sense that it shows two people who know they want to live a nonconformist lifestyle, and won't let their current situation change that.  Movies like Nomadland live in the shadow of this glittery pre-Code movie, and as a result it's a terrific story regardless of how you feel about how it compares to the landmark 1938 Holiday, a movie that has grown in my estimation through the years, and is considered a masterwork by cinephiles.

Harding's charming & lovely in this role, even if she's not Kate Hepburn (who is?).  Playing a character who is indecisive & dreams above themselves (in ways they can't explain) is super challenging, and I loved her rapid fire pace with the girlish dreams of someone who thought things she couldn't say out loud because of her station, and always lived in her sister's shadow (even if she's the impressive one).  Mary Astor & William Holden (not the one you're thinking of) is also good as her siblings, the former increasingly plain (even though she is the whole time), the latter increasingly interesting (you just know he'd be gay in a remake of this).  Overall Holiday is a really smart movie, one ahead of its time both in 1930 & 1938, and is worth your time regardless of which version you partake.

Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931)

Film: Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931)

Stars: Matahi, Anne Chevalier, Bill Bambridge, Hitu

Director: FW Murnau

Oscar History: 1 nomination/1 win (Best Cinematography*)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

We will be doing another week of reviews that blend the old (we'll have some of the latest OVP viewings I've been doing, including one today) and the new, though with the latter we're going to be moving into 2021, as while there are still a handful of 2020 films that I might see in connection with next week's Oscar nominations, for the most part I'm done, and am now just getting situated with the remaining 2021 contenders as we finally hit the last leg of this extended awards season.  Today we'll be going back to the beginning of the Oscars with Tabu, the final movie made by celebrated film director FW Murnau, whose movies Nosferatu and Sunrise are generally considered to be among the greatest movies of the 1920's.  Tabu is a movie without a lot of peers (it is unique to films of this era in its gorgeous artistry & avant-garde approach), and one that I knew little about, which is odd as it feels like the sort of movie that cinephiles are rediscovering.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie centers around three figures.  The first is Hitu (Hitu), who has come to one of the islands in the South Pacific (Bora Bora) to deliver a message-a maiden sacred to the Gods has died, and therefore Reri (Chevalier), a virginal beauty of the city, must replace her.  As a result, she is "tabu" (forbidden), and no man must look upon her with desire.  This is a problem for Matahi (Matahi) who is desperately in love with her (and she with him).  The two decide to run away together, and live briefly in a French colony, but there they realize that not everyone who seems to help them has good intentions, and in fact they are taken advantage of due to their not knowing about customs of the French (specifically they have no concept of buying things on credit, and as a result amass an enormous debt), and people want to take the valuable pearls that Matahi has dove for.  In the end, their love story becomes a tragedy, as Hitu finds Reri and kidnaps her, and in his pursuit after her, Matahi drowns, with Reri doomed to spend her life alone & beyond love.

A two-part drama, it is billed as a docufiction film, though it seems almost completely to be filmed as an acted drama, though one with non-professional actors, so I'm not entirely sure where the "docu" part comes in here.  The film itself is basically Romeo & Juliet motif, with a young man in love with a woman whom he cannot be with, and must endure tragedy to actually see each other.  It's interesting, and some scenes are truly moving, but it's not always spectacular...though again this is a case where we might be seeing formative work so I'm judging on a curve & giving it four stars because the scenes that are great are really incredible.

One of those scenes is late in the film, when Matahi is trying to reach Reri by boat.  The entire film is amazing, particularly in the way it uses underwater cinematography (likely one of the reasons that it won the deserved Oscar), but it's the last scene that really gets me.  As Matahi is swimming to try & be with his beloved Reri, Hitu cuts the rope, and we see Matahi get further away from both shore & boat, inevitably going to drown or have to abandon her forever.  Instead of abandoning her, saving her life, he continues reaching out to her.  Just minutes after literally fighting a shark (there was definitely a real shark filmed in these scenes) to be with her, he dies, floating into the ocean along with any chance she has at escape.  It's a powerful, heartbreaking tragedy on top of a film that has given us a damning indictment on the male patriarchy & capitalism already.

OVP: The Public Enemy (1931)

Film: The Public Enemy (1931)
Stars: James Cagney, Jean Harlow, Edward Woods, Joan Blondell, Donald Cook
Director: William A. Wellman
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Story)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Jean Harlow-click here to learn more about Ms. Harlow (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

After the success of Hell's Angels, Jean Harlow would have been put in pretty much any high profile picture at another studio.  Warner, Fox, they would have quickly found roles for a woman that had been in such favor with the public.  Howard Hughes, though, was not a producer with a great sense for what to do with his contract players, and instead sent Harlow on publicity tours rather than capitalizing on her fame.  Thankfully for Harlow, in 1931 he began sending her out to other studios since he didn't have material for her, and one of the scripts that came across her desk was The Public Enemy.  The film would be a huge success, and would soon get Harlow into the sights of the most important star-making factory of the 1930's, MGM.  But we'll get to that next week-first, The Public Enemy.

(Spoilers Ahead) While Harlow secured top billing on the film, this is a James Cagney picture through-and-through.  The actor plays Tom Powers in the movie, a lowlife hood who is trying to make his way up the ladder in the Chicago crime world.  The film shows him in constant conflict with his brother Mike (Cook), an upstanding war veteran who is trying to find a way to provide for his mother reputably, even though his brother enjoys more success financially than Tom.  The film shows that Tom eventually becomes too big for his britches, and gets involved in a mob war that ends up taking his life.  Along the way, he meets a number of women, including Gwen (Harlow), a woman who "always falls for the bad guy," giving up more reputable options like Kitty (Mae Clarke).

The film is tough to judge in hindsight, because The Public Enemy is one of those movies that helped build a genre.  The gangster picture is in its shadow, and there are scenes of horror & violence that would become quintessential to the mobster pictures of everyone from Scorsese to Coppola in the decades that followed.  By far the most famous scene in the movie is when Tom & Kitty are having breakfast, and annoyed with a comment from her about him not having another woman who could take care of him, Tom shoves a grapefruit into Kitty's face.  Nearly 90 years later, it's still a shocking scene, considering Cagney's nasty twist of the grapefruit and the genuine look of surprise on Clarke's face.  Urban legend differs on whether that was genuine shock.  Clarke would claim in her memoir she knew it was coming, but reputable film figures still claim that it wasn't in the script.  Either way, it's an iconic moment in pre-Code cinema, and by-far what this film is most famous for.  The movie received an Oscar nomination for Best Story, and probably earned it, though there aren't as many inspired, memorable sequences like the grapefruit scene as the picture becomes somewhat repetitive in the back half.

Harlow gets a throwaway part as Gwen, basically just playing the "tart" to the other character's (like Kitty's) more reputable women for Tom to romance.  Unlike Hell's Angels, she doesn't make the most of some of the later, saucier scenes, instead playing them with dryness, as if she doesn't understand the character she's playing.  One wonders if the filmmakers, so obsessed with the impressive feat that Cagney was pulling off as Tom, simply didn't care to push Harlow in this role.  Her final two features for us, though, she's the main event in the movie, and are considered two of her best parts (one of which is in one of her best movies), so hopefully we'll get some of the promise we saw last week with a character that is worthy of her.

Dracula (1931)

Film: Dracula (1931)
Stars: Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners, Dwight Frye, Edward van Sloan
Director: Tod Browning
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

At this point in my film-viewing education, there aren't a lot of out-and-out classic films that I haven't seen.  I've completed the AFI List, I've seen a cursory amount of classic foreign films, most of the requisite highlights of Bergman, Fellini, and Kurosawa, and have watched 84% of the Oscar Best Picture winners.  As a result, I was thinking the other day "what is the most important film classic that I've never seen?" and while I pondered everything from Fight Club to Airplane! to The Band Wagon (don't worry, I'll get to all three at some point), my mind settled upon Dracula as the movie that I admittedly had never seen.  It in fact dawned on me that not only had I never seen Dracula, I'd also never seen a number of the original Universal Movie monster classics (with three exceptions seen here and here and here).

That all changes this October as we endeavor on our first theme month in a long while.  Starting today with Dracula, and until Halloween, I'm going to be filling all of the major gaps in my horror movie classics list, watching the remaining titles of the "Big 8" horror films of the Universal Era that I have yet to see, as well as seeing some of the other major pre-1970 horror films that I've never caught on the big (or small) screen.  There are classics of the horror genre post-1970 that I haven't caught yet, and maybe we'll do that next year, but this month I want to focus more on the campier and humbler pictures that began the horror genre in a major way, and hopefully by the end of the month we'll have roughly a dozen new horror screenings/reviews for your perusal.  If you're so interested, play along and fill in the gaps of movies you also need to see, and if you're already an expert, join me in the comments and list out the lesser-known pictures of the era I should check out.  In the meantime, let's get to Tod Browning's classic that started an empire at Universal, Dracula.

(Spoilers Ahead) Weirdly enough, I've never read Bram Stoker's Dracula, and while I'm familiar with the myth in terms of ways that it has permeated pop culture, I genuinely don't think I've seen a big-screen telling of this story before now.  This was exciting for me as I found the film more original than I had initially anticipated for a tale that is so entrenched in movie lore.  The film, of course, centers around Count Dracula himself (Lugosi), a creepy, ridiculous sort of man whose title and charm bring him in contact with London elites after largely being a recluse in his home country (implied to be Transylvania, but I don't believe it's ever mentioned by name unless I missed that clarification).  He takes a young solicitor named Renfield (Frye) as his captive, making him into a blood-crazed lunatic, and then slowly starts killing the young women of London, eventually settling on Mina (Chandler), a young woman who is recently engaged.  After killing Mina's friend and turning her into a vampire, Dracula bites Mina, and she starts to exhibit the traits of a vampire.  Thankfully, Professor Van Helsing (van Sloan) is an expert in vampires and able to find tricks to stop Dracula, and kills him in the end to save Mina from completely turning into a vampire, ending up happily-ever-after.

The movie surprised me in a few ways.  For starters, it's better-acted than I expected.  Helen Chandler's Mina is eerie when she's possessed, and Frye's Renfield is a campy delight, in many ways the equal of Igor, his Frankenstein counterpart.  Lugosi has caught lots of flack from film historians when compared to someone like Boris Karloff, who was a considerably better actor (and far smarter with his money/script choices, which is why he had a far more traditional career with more opportunity than Lugosi...plus, English was his first language & Lugosi never shed the accent).  Still, Lugosi lands this part very well, and has an eeriness that is undeniable.  He never blinks in the picture, and while the hamminess of his thick accent, melodramatic line readings, and of course that menacing glare have been done to death by virtually every actor who has taken on the role since, it works and has a calming horror in the movie; there's a reason he created the Dracula prototype.  He's better than I expected, far stronger than the few other films I've seen of his, and I'm excited to see a couple other major pictures of his before this month is done (I've got at least two more on the schedule for our theme marathon), to see if this was the only trick in his acting arsenal, or if he was an under-appreciated actor of his day.

It has to be said, though, that it's the sets that were truly the star for me on this picture.  Dracula's castle and later Carfax Abbey are stupendously designed, with high vault ceilings that add to the drama of the movie.  I read afterwards that the sets were used in multiple other pictures, as they cost too much to just use in Dracula, and I'd believe it-the climactic scene where Dracula, feeling betrayed by Renfield, murders him on a winding staircase is the closest the film comes to real chills for a modern movie audience, and a lot of that has to do with the genuine fear of such a clearly dangerous, terrifying drop for the actors below.  It's usually an insult to call the sets the best part of a movie, but here it aids the story so splendidly it's impossible not to be impressed.  Like Dracula itself, it's extra and overdone, but is filled with enough awe and shockingly big touches you don't really care.

OVP: The Doorway to Hell (1930)

Film: The Doorway to Hell (1930)
Stars: Lew Ayres, Dorothy Mathews, James Cagney, Leon Janney
Director: Archie Mayo
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Story)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Frequently when reviewing older movies you run into an issue that's quite hard to get around that I call "The Stagecoach Paradox."  Stagecoach, a classic John Ford western from 1939, is a wonderfully-constructed film starring John Wayne, Claire Trevor, and Thomas Mitchell that would essentially make all of them major stars, particularly Wayne.  Looking back on the film, though, you realize that you've seen this movie before even if you haven't.  This is because Ford's original film, so beloved in its day, has been ripped off countless times, frequently even by Ford himself.  As a result you develop a respect for it rather than a love for it since you've already had the treat of your first classic western and this is just a retread of that, even if it came first.  This is part of the problem with Archie Mayo's mafia drama The Doorway to Hell-it inspired so many Public Enemies and Scarfaces that were to come (and were improvements on the original format), that while you have deep respect for the innovation, you can't quite love it because you know something coming later will be so much better.

(Spoilers Ahead) Perhaps the central problem that comes out of Doorway to Hell is that it has the wrong man headlining the picture.  Lew Ayres was coming off a leading role in Greta Garbo's The Kiss and had landed the role of his career in All Quiet on the Western Front (which also came out in 1930), so it made sense that when he was loaned to Warner Brothers that he take the lead over a contract player at the studio named James Cagney.  Cagney, of course, would go on to be one of the greatest stars of the 1930's and 40's, and would film one of the most famous scenes in all of cinema the next year in a movie very similar to Doorway to Hell (for those who are wondering what I'm talking about, google Mae Clarke, Public Enemy, and grapefruit and you'll get the gist).

Cagney totally steals the film from Ayres, who is too much of a choir boy and too naive (his girlfriend is cheating on him with Cagney) to be believable as a man that could control a city.  Cagney, on the other hand, has nuance and subtlety in his corner, and plays every scene with the knowledge that people are going to focus on him.  In a film where almost all of the other actors had limited or no careers (leading lady Dorothy Mathews made almost no other films and eventually moved to be a TV producer when stardom never happened), it's Cagney that steals the picture.

This is no fault on the screenplay, though, which is actually pretty strong and occasionally quite good, especially when we see Lew Ayres' Louie return to his haunt, realizing that there's no escaping his past misdeeds, well aware that he can't have his cake and eat it too, no matter how noble his intentions are for his bride.  But Ayres is too broad in the role, even by the acting standards of the day (sound was still really new to actors and many were still reliant on using facial expressions and body language to convey emotion), and Cagney isn't in enough of the film to save it.

It's also worth noting that the side characters, so critical to the film's success, don't have enough differentiation so we don't know whom to actually trust.  One of the neater things about the screenplay is that it leaves certain things unresolved (we don't know precisely what happens to either Dorothy Mathews or James Cagney, for example), but that also means that the deceptive characters are difficult to keep track of, particularly toward the end when we can't tell who is gloating and who is feeling empathy for Louie.  Still, this is that rare film where the acting sucks down the screenplay, which is the finest attribute of the film, which thankfully Oscar was smart enough to notice.

Those are my thoughts on this film-what are yours?  Do you also find yourself wishing Cagney was the lead rather than Ayres?  Do you also find movies frequently suffer from "The Stagecoach Paradox?"  And what's your favorite 1930's gangster film?  Share in the comments!

OVP: Min and Bill (1930)

Film: Min and Bill (1931)
Stars: Marie Dressler, Wallace Beery, Dorothy Jordan, Marjorie Rambeau
Director: George W. Hill
Oscar History: 1 win (Best Actress-Marie Dressler*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

So, as part of the Comcast eviction, I will also be losing my beloved TiVo (it makes zilch sense not to go with the Genie, and so my friend and I must part).  In the process, I'm going to be cleaning out all of my TiVo films in the next week or so before I cancel (I stock up films that I can't find on Netflix that are part of the OVP to view and peruse), so we're going to A) be getting a slew of reviews in the next couple of weeks and B) they're going to seem very, very sporadic.  We're talking almost every decade imaginable, every category imaginable.

The first of these, though, is a Best Actress winner from near the Academy's infancy, Min and Bill.  It's fun to imagine that once upon a time, Marie Dressler, a woman who made her name in Vaudeville became a star in the era of Jean Harlow and Norma Shearer and Greta Garbo, despite being in her early sixties and overweight, and regularly beat them in popularity polls.  One of the key launching pads for her late career blitz was with this film, opposite Wallace Beery, which was a huge hit and won her an Academy Award.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about a woman, a cranky, no-nonsense type with a heart of gold (this was Dressler's raison d'etre) who has raised a young girl (Jordan) as her own and has a flirtatious relationship with one of her tenants, a fisherman named Bill (Beery).  The film, made in the early 1930's, follows a fairly straight-forward pattern: Dressler at first is frosty to the idea of Jordan's Nancy growing up, and being forced to go to school, but eventually warms to the idea.  This warming is aided by the reappearance of Nancy's morally loose mother Bella (Rambeau), who is clearly bad for Nancy, and whom Nancy has been told by Min is dead.

The film continues on at this rate at a stunningly short 66 minute clock time, with Dressler occasionally indulging in comic touches-a boat ride with Nancy that goes horribly wrong, a number of fights with both Beery and Rambeau, but the film is far more dramatic than the casting and pictures from the film would allow you to believe.  The film takes a dark note later in the film as Min refuses to see Nancy, even though she throws her life savings at trying to keep Nancy and her birth mother apart, and eventually kills Bella to keep her from ruining Nancy's happiness (eventually Nancy marries a handsome and successful young man).  The movie ends not on a happy note, but a bittersweet one at best-Nancy will get her happily ever after, but Min will be arrested for murder as a result.

When you're grading acting of this era, you may find yourself grading slightly on a preconceived curve.  The acting of the film doesn't have the method naturalism that has been expected of the likes of Brando and de Niro and Streep in later years.  Instead, you have a woman that does what she does best-perform to the rafters, as she's trained in the theater.

That's not to say that she's not good in the movie, and I liked Dressler considerably better here than in Emma, one of her followups to this film.  Her best moments are when she looks like she's about to lose everything, particularly the great scene where she shoots Bella.  You can see the determination in her eyes, seeing her think through the consequences of what she's about to do, repeating empty threats to Bella before you find the gravitas in her voice and you realize they've no longer become empty.  The film loses some of its spark when Rambeau and Dressler aren't at the helm-Beery, charming in his own way, is a bit too much of a camera-mugger to really earn his top billing on the title and Jordan's Nancy is completely interchangeable with the dozens of performances of women trying their best to be Mary Pickford.

Those are my thoughts on a very short movie, but what are yours?  Have you seen Min and Bill, and if so, are you a fan of Dressler's work?  Whom do you think should have taken the Best Actress Oscar?  And what Dressler film should I check out next?