The 30s

I often ask myself what decade would I want to live in if I based it on its cinema, I'll probably always give different answers depending which decade I decided to dive into, but I would say the 30s holds a special place for me because it was probably the first classic decade I really came to a love.

The 30s was a turbulent time for most thanks to the Great Depression, audiences turned to the cinema for escape, to forget their worries for a few hours in the day, and enjoy being part of the movie world. Remember back then, people weren't just treated to a feature film when they went to the movies, but also a cartoon, a newsreel, a trailer and a two reel. If you get some of those classic DVDs with Leonard Maltin hosting "Warner's Night at the Movies", you'll get a better understanding what the experience was like.

The 30s can be separated into to categories of films: The pre-code(1930-34) and post-code. This was the production code which was written in 1930, but was enforced later on to cut down on any explicit sexuality, violence, or any other kind of raunch put into films. Those early films really showed a Hollywood with no boundaries and when you look at them, they are even more explicit than some of today's films which come off as less cutting edge. For people who thought old movies didn't have nudity, or blood, should watch these films.

The early 30s brought rise to many genres which have become benchmarks in American film, most notably the gangster movie. This was the film genre best remember in "The Public Enemy" with James Cagney's starring role (A film Martin Scorsese has mentioned as one of his favorites) and also Howard Hawks "Scarface" (Remade memorably by Brian DePalma).

Women were also at the forefront pushing sexual boundaries, and sometimes giving the men the brush off. Barbara Stanwyck and Jean Harlow were the reigning jewels of this time, and comediennes like Mae West were using sex as something that could be provocative and also something that could be laughed at.

The 30s were also the beginning of sound coming in full force. People were now talking on screen for the first time all the time. Some silent stars were given the brush off because it was found out, they didn't have the voice for sound (something that was parodied well with Jean Hagen's character in "Singin in the Rain"). Comedians like Buster Keaton found mild success at the beginning, but his real talents were squandered as he lost creative control. Chaplin on the other hand made two masterpieces "City Lights" and "Modern Times" both with full musical scores and some sound effects, but the tramp himself would never talk.

Many directors who came from silent films suddenly found a new sense of freedom with the talking pictures. Suddenly filmmakers like Ford, Hitchcock, and Lubitcsch made more fuller films. Howard Hawks in particular experimented with sound very innovative by testing how fast actors could talk in the medium without losing the dialogue. His experiments pulled off especially with his famous comedies like "Bringing up Baby" and later perfected with the fastest comedy of all time "His Girl Friday".

Perhaps the most successful directors of the 30s and certainly one of the most prolific was Frank Capra, who made a wonderful string of films for Columbia Pictures, adding Prestige to the failing studio. Capra's films mostly commented on the state of America during the depression, and they would mostly be filled with a balance of social commentary as well as sentimentality, making his films highly successful with audiences.

Foreign cinema came into play, particularly in 1937 when Jean Renoir's "Grand Illusion" became the first foreign film to ever be nominated for the Academy Award. Renoir was a humanist and his memorable film put faces on both sides of the war for the first time. His later film "Rules of the Game" would be equally just as innovative but for different reasons, that film would become a box office failure as people thought it to be too critical of the lifestyle it depicts which hurt many since it was on the eve of World War 2.

1939 has long been given the title of best year ever in Hollywood film, which can no doubt be argued. In that year you would get Ford's "Stagecoach", Hawks' "Only Angels Have Wings", Capra's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", and Lubitsch's "Ninotchka". Add to that you had the film that is most often cited as the most watched movie of all time "The Wizard of Oz", and then of course the granddaddy of them all "Gone with the Wind". Produced by David O' Selznick, "Gone With the Wind" became the most successful film in the history of movies, and if you add inflation, it would still hold the record today. For many, "Gone with the Wind" is the epitome of Hollywood production.

The Top Ten List

How could one even start making a top ten list of this decade? My lists remain extremely personal as they evoke my own tastes, however I fear some films I will forgetting and to those I must apologize. This was one of the reasons why I would only choose one film per director as I could simply have just a top ten list of all Frank Capra movies, or Lubitsch, or Hawks. But still I hope some of you will be pleasantly surprised at my choices, and I would love to hear the films I forgot or missed all together so please let me know.