The Little Tramp is touched by a blind flower seller (graceful Virginia Cherrill) and saves an eccentric millionaire from suicide. His gentle wooing of the girl and his determination to restore her sight propel him into a variety of jobs that go awrylike the memorable fixed boxing boutwhile his onoff relationship with the drunken, unpredictable tycoon provides a parallel string of zany situations. As ever in Chaplins silent films, there is a deftly choreographed comedic eating scenehere a party streamer entwined in the oblivious Charlies spaghettiand a slapstick misadventure with the law. Beautifully acted, this quite perfect balancing act between laughter and eloquent pathos culminates in a deeply moving finish. One of the real, landmark greats. AE
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1930s
THE PUBLIC ENEMY (1931)
U.S. (Warner Bros.) 83m BW
Director: William A. Wellman
Producer: Darryl F. Zanuck
Screenplay: Harvey F. Thew, from story by John Bright & Kubec Glasmon
Photography: Devereaux Jennings
Music: David Mendoza
Cast: James Cagney, Edward Woods, Jean Harlow, Joan Blondell, Beryl Mercer, Donald Cook, Mae Clarke, Mia Marvin, Leslie Fenton, Robert Emmett OConnor, Murray Kinnell, Snitz Edwards, Rita Flynn, Frank Coghlan Jr., Frankie Darro
Oscar nomination: John Bright, Kubec Glasmon (screenplay)
William Wellmans melodramatic chronicle of the rise and fall of gangster Tom Powers (James Cagney) is the greatest of the early 1930s gangster films. The genres sometime sympathetic portrayal of ruthless criminals eager for the American dream of success at the deliberate and unlawful cost of others prompted the institution of the Production Code Administration to supervise the dubious moral value in Hollywood films.
Raised in Chicago slums, Powers turns to crime at an early age, graduating as a young man to armed robbery and the murder of a policeman. Later, he becomes involved in bootlegging, making real money for the first time. Though his brother and mother plead with him to go straight, Tom rises in the gang, but after being badly wounded in a battle with rivals, he agrees to rejoin his family. He is taken from the hospital and
murdered, his body dumped on the doorstep of his family home.
With its simplistic moralism, the plot of The Public Enemy has dated poorly. But Cagney remains powerful and energetic as Powers, dominating the screen in every scene and setting the pattern for all gangster films to come, including The Godfather series. Wellman directs the film with a strong visual sense, designing memorable scenes such as one in which Powers, in a sudden fit of anger, shoves a grapefruit into girlfriend Kittys face. RBP
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1930s
M (1931)
Germany (Nero-Film AG) 117m BW
Language: German
Director: Fritz Lang
Producer: Seymour Nebenzal
Screenplay: Egon Jacobson, Fritz Lang
Photography: Fritz Arno Wagner
Music: Edvard Grieg
Cast: Peter Lorre, Ellen Widmann, Inge Landgut, Otto Wernicke, Theodor Loos, Gustaf Gründgens, Friedrich Gnaß, Fritz Odemar, Paul Kemp, Theo Lingen, Rudolf Blümner, Georg John, Franz Stein, Ernst Stahl-Nachbaur, Gerhard Bienert
In the early 1930s, MGMs production genius Irving Thalberg assembled all his writers and directors for a screening of Fritz Langs German thriller M, then criticized them en masse for not making films as innovative, exciting, profound, and commercial as this. Of course, Thalberg admitted, if anyone had pitched the studio a story about a serial killer of children who is ultimately a tragic victim and accuses all strata of society of a corruption deeper than his psychosis, they would have been kicked off the lot immediately.
Whereas Hollywood first saw sound pictures as best suited to all-singing musicals and all-talking drawing room theatrical adaptations, a generation of European filmmakers understood the new mediums potential for thrills and psychological effects. Inspired perhaps by the theme of Alfred Hitchcocks 1927 silent The Lodger and the techniques of his 1929 talkie Blackmail, Langwho had ended his silent film career with Metropolis (1927) and Woman in the Moon (1929), both considered costly flops before their achievements were recognizedset out to re-establish himself as a popular artist. Nevertheless, M is an unusual piece of storytelling, presenting a series of montage-like scenes (often with voice-over narration, a new device) that add up to a portrait of a German city in terror. The cause of the uproar is Franz Becker (Peter Lorre), a pudgy young man who compulsively whistles an air from Edvard Griegs Hall of the Mountain King as he approaches the children he murders (and, it is implied, molests). His crimes are conveyed by striking, pathetic images like a lost balloon floating against telephone wires or an abandoned ball. Establishing conventions still being used by serial-killer movies, Lang and scenarist Thea von Harbou intercut the pathetic life of the murderer with the frenzy of the police investigation into the outrageous crimes, and pay attention to such side issues as press coverage of the killings, vigilante action as an innocent asked the time by children is suddenly surrounded by an angry mob, and the political pressure that comes down from the politicians and hinders as much as encourages the police. In a cynical touch, the police crack down on all criminal activities in order to catch the killer, prompting the shadow society of professional crooks to track him down like an animal themselves.