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Celebrate the Golden Age of the Silver Screen!
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SEPTEMBER 4
THE GRAPES OF WRATH
John Ford's powerful view of Depression farmers escaping the Oklahoma dust bowl focuses on family and justice, hunger and work and dignity. Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, and John Carradine head a stunning cast. Based on the John Steinbeck novel. "Acting, photography, direction combine to make this an unforgettable experience, a poem of a film."--Leslie Halliwell. 1940
"I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look -- wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build -- I'll be there, too."--Henry Fonda telling his mother goodbye
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Tom Joad will be all around us in the dark
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FYI
A journalist once asked Orson Welles which directors appealed to him the most. "The old masters," Welles said. "By which I mean John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford."
This movie won Ford the second of his four Oscars for Best Director. He won next year, too, for How Green Was My Valley.
"A lean, stringy, dark-faced piece of electricity walked out on the screen and he had me. I believed my own story again."--John Steinbeck watching Henry Fonda as Tom Joad
The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940; John Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.
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OCTOBER 2
STEAMBOAT BILL, JR.
The brawny steamboat captain is appalled by his milquetoast son: wimpy Buster Keaton is useless as a riverman. But when a windstorm threatens the town, Keaton shows what he's made of. Silent, with live piano music. "His funniest work... breathtakingly uproarious... the comedy climax of his career."--Peter Bogdanovich. 1928
"I haven't seen my son since he was a baby. I'll bet he's bigger than me."-- Steamboat Bill, about to be unpleasantly surprised when his son appears
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Buster Keaton has to sit someplace to get his father out of jail
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FYI
In 1960, 33 years after sound came in, Keaton received an honorary Academy Award "for his unique talents which brought immortal comedies to the screen." In show business from three years old, he honed his comedy chops in Vaudeville until joining Mack Sennett in Hollywood in 1920.
"[Keaton] carried a face as still and sad as a daguerreotype through some of the most preposterously ingenious and visually satisfying physical comedy ever invented," said critic James Agee. "Keaton's face ranked almost with Lincoln's as an early American archetype; it was haunting, handsome, almost beautiful, yet it was irreducibly funny."
He did not direct this movie, but he directed his own stunts, many of which horrified the crew.
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NOVEMBER 6
THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME
Hypocrisy and heroism in medieval Paris. Charles Laughton's Quasimodo rescues Gypsy dancer Maureen O'Hara, falsely accused of witchcraft, and offers her sanctuary in the ancient cathedral. But too many want her -- in their arms, or dead, or both -- and storm the cathedral. "Haunting and unforgettable... magnificently atmospheric."--Leonard Maltin. 1939
"Why was I not made of stone, like thee?"--Heartbroken Quasimodo asking an impossible question of a gargoyle
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Charles Laughton breaks our hearts
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FYI
Although the 1939 version is the sixth attempt at filming the story, at the time this movie came out most people remembered Lon Chaney's Quasimodo from 1923. Laughton had to compete with their memories of the horrific makeup of "the man with a thousand faces."
"With only one eye and a hump so big his head seems to be in the middle of his chest," says Pauline Kael, "this Quasimodo is so distorted and misshapen that little of the human being, much less of the actor, survives."
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DECEMBER 4
SHOW BOAT
Against the backdrop of Old Man River, Irene Dunne falls in love with the stage and the wrong man on her parents' Mississippi showboat. And the Old South teaches her about heartbreak in this Kern-Hammerstein musical. "Wonderful... leaves no doubt about why the stage show prospered or why the work has become a classic."--David Thomson. 1936
"I get weary, and sick of trying
I'm tired of living and scared of dying
But Ol' Man River, he just keeps rollin' along!"--Paul Robeson considering life on the Mississippi
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Helen Morgan sings with Hattie McDaniel and Irene Dunne
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FYI
In its first incarnation, this musical based on the novel by Edna Ferber ran for 572 performances from December, 1927 to May, 1929. It has been revived on Broadway seven times. Helen Morgan created the role of Julie on stage; she appeared in the 1929 movie and also stars as Julie in this version as well.
According to Wikipedia.com, musical theatre historian Miles Kreuger lauded the 1927 Broadway production as "the greatest single step forward in American musical theatre, enabling composers, lyricists, and librettists to introduce more mature subject matter into their shows."
Expect to see racist behavior you may find offensive, including blackface on white actors.
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