#1: City Lights

In so many ways, the 1930s represented the most fundamental turning point in cinema, and that was the advent of sound. The sound film of course began earlier than that with "The Jazz Singer" in 1927, but the 30s decade was the time when motion pictures finally caught up with the invention. Sound wasn't just a gimmick anymore, it was the wave of the future and studios were following suit, the people demanded it. But not everyone welcomed it, and perhaps the most famous silent screen star was the most reluctant to change with the times, however because of his stubbornness, he was able to keep with his artistic vision, and show that cinema is first and foremost a visual artform.

"City Lights" was supposed to be Charlie Chaplin's first sound film, people would now be able to hear The Tramp speak. For Chaplin this proved to be a problem, The Tramp was the most recognized character in the history of movies up to that point, he was known throughout the world, and it was because he kept silent that he remained so universal, what would happen if he suddenly spoke? Everyone had their own idea of what The Tramp would sound like, so Chaplin made the conscious decision to keep "City Lights" the way he intended, a silent movie, however with a full musical score and a few sound effects.

"City Lights" is probably Chaplin's greatest film although there are many to choose from. With this film however he achieves his special blend of humour and pathos perhaps better than he ever did.

The story puts The Tramp in a big city where he befriends a blind flower girl. The first meeting between the two becomes a case of mistaken identity, when the tramp avoids a policeman by ducking into a limo, when he comes out the other side, the flower girl assumes he's a millionaire. The Tramp doesn't want to ruin the illusion because he becomes smitten with the girl and feels sorry for her, so he decides to play the role of a millionaire.

He receives help unexpectedly when he saves a real life drunken millionaire from suicide. He and The Tramp become good friends, however when the millionaire sobers up, he no longer remembers him and is thrown out on the street again. Things get complicated when the blind girl needs money for rent so The Tramp has to find a job, when he gets fired for being late, he then has to go into a boxing ring and fight for the money.

"City Lights" isn't really a 30s movie, it has the aesthetic of a silent film, and has the feeling it was made in another time. To think this film was released the same year you could hear the sound of James Cagney firing Tommy guns in "The Public Enemy" or Boris Karloff being brought to life in "Frankenstein". Cinema was still very new, but back then Chaplin's film could've been regarded as passe if it weren't for his special brand of humour and sentiment that was accepted world wide. To his credit, Chaplin was probably the only one who could've gotten away with a silent film, and because of his talent and instincts, "City Lights" holds up better than any of those early sound films which suffer sometimes by the unrefined technology.

The power and beauty of Chaplin's cinema comes from his talent to simplify his story, he never needed words and found it a great challenge to tell it in a silent way. Take the first meeting with The Tramp and the flower girl, Chaplin uses the power of suggestion by having the car door of the limo be the instigator of the mistaken identity plot. The scene was said to have over three hundred takes before Chaplin was satisfied with the finished product, that's how hard he worked in telling the story visually.

As the performer Chaplin was also a master thespian and one of the greatest actors in film. Like Keaton, (whom he's most commonly compared to) Chaplin had complete control of his body and could convey any level of emotion, and he could also perform physical comedy as if it were a dance. Take the most famous set piece in the film, the boxing fight, Chaplin isn't necessarily fighting as he is dancing around the ring avoiding the other fighter as much as possible. Watch him hide behind the referee as the three men in the ring perform a sort of boxing ballet in perfect unison.

Of course much has been said about the ending of this film, and many regard it to be the most perfect ending in all of cinema. The ending is looked at for its simplicity in that we are looking at the reactions of both The Tramp and the flower girl, who can finally see who he really is for the first time. There are a few dialogue cards at the end, but the image of the characters are so strong, I feel Chaplin didn't really need them, we knew what the scene means, we know the stakes, and we know what they are feeling at that moment, that is why this ending is so perfect.

"City Lights" would be considered Charlie Chaplin's last real silent film, his next one, "Modern Times" added even more sound effects and has speaking lines, however The Tramp is left silent save for a song he sings all in gibberish. When Chaplin finally went full sound in "The Great Dictator" it was really the end of an era. Silent comedy is probably the biggest loss we had with the advent of sound, most comedies today rely only on dialogue, but the great silent comedians had a grace to them and an elegance that was beautiful to watch. For many, Chaplin was cinema, he influenced many people of the french New Wave and is still well renowned throughout Europe. Chaplin's movies were magic, he never forgot the power of cinema which wasn't in what you heard, but what you saw.

#2: Mr. Smith goes to Washington

If I were to pick one director who encapsulated both the despair and the hope of America during the depression, it would be Frank Capra. Today Capra gets a bad reputation of being sentimental, which some would claim dates his films. Capra was indeed sentimental, but I never thought of that as a bad thing, John Ford was sentimental, even David Lynch could be from time to time as well. Sentimentality is a tricky thing and only the real good directors could pull it off without it becoming overly manipulative, Capra was probably the master of it. The thing often forgotten about Capra's work was how very dark they tended to be. The most famous being "it's a Wonderful Life", which is the ultimate Christmas movie, but is in fact about a man at the end of his rope and has chosen to commit suicide.

The bright light through this darkness was Capra's optimism, he had faith that in the end, people would do the right thing, they just needed to be pointed in the right direction. But apart from his high ideals, Capra was also a realist, he understood the world was a complicated place, and the real world was always the place where his heroes would rise up.

Now let's look at "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", Capra's last great film of the thirties. The story is set in the Washington of today, if you look at it, you will find nothing much has changed. The main villains or Goliaths in Capra's fables are the corrupt politicians and big businessmen, who control every aspect of public opinion. Also there are the newsmen who are either fast talking ambulance chasers who twist the truth to make it into a better story, or the ones controlled by the main villain James Taylor (Edward Arnold) who plays Washington like a puppet.

For the hero, Capra chooses a naive simpleton named Jefferson Smith (Jimmy Stewart) who quotes Lincoln and Washington, but has never been in politics in his life. Smith is chosen to fill the seat of a recent deceased senator. He's chosen because he is basically an innocent, and the villains think he would be easy to manipulate. However as Jeff comes to Washington what he uncovers is a wave of corruption that is orchestrated by Taylor. In the middle of this, Jeff also discovers his fellow Senator and the man who was once an idealist like him Joseph Paine (Claude Rains) has also compromised his ideals in order to further his political career.

The world of Washington that Capra depicts here isn't a fairy tale one, in fact upon its release in 1939, it received criticism from many political groups who didn't approve of it. Capra must've known he was on to something when it struck a nerve.

Today you can definitely see parallels with this film and politics as it is done today. It's no secret senators, congressmen, governors, and presidents have all been accused of corruption, and we now live in a world where even the media cannot be trusted, Capra knew this even in '39, and went further with it in his 1948 film "State of the Union".

But the real reason "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" should be celebrated as a classic is in its construction as a very well crafted, expertly acted, and emotional story. I first saw the film early in life on the television one Sunday afternnoon. I was taken right away by the fast pace of the film, it had a drive that got me interested in the story right away. The film is a testament to Capra's brilliance as a director at how he really brings us into the world of American politics. Being an outsider of the world himself, Jefferson Smith is the perfect character for the audience to follow, we learn as he learns, I remember watching it as a child never being confused and always understanding what is going on. It's really in Capra's simplicity of plot, and choosing more to foucus on emotion and character.

The film was the breakthrough performance of Jimmy Stewart, he became a star over night. He received an Oscar nomination for his performance and should've won. Jean Arthur plays Saunders, Smith's secretary and soon to be love interest. Arthur was always one of the smartest and funniest actresses around and along with Barbara Stanwyck was one of Capra's favorites, she was actually the first one asked to play Mary in "It's a Wonderful Life". Saunders is someone who's played the Washington game long enough, and has grown cynical but is reawakened by Smith's idealism. Arthur was one of those long underrated actresses, and it's hard to believe after watching this film she was not recognized, after all she has about as much screen time as Stewart.

The other interesting character is Senator Paine, played by Claude Rains in one of his greatest roles. We learn Paine had high ideals once before, he was a struggling lawyer who once worked with Smith's father who was a struggling newspaper editor. They fought for lost causes, but somewhere he lost his ideals. Paine is probably the most realistic character in this whole film, and perhaps the one Capra could sympathize with the most. The story of Paine is not unlike the story of many politicians who decided to compromise their own principles in favour of getting ahead, but Capra seems to point out, it doesn't just stop once you do it.

The centerpiece of the film is the final filibuster, where Smith takes over the Senate to prove himself innocent of corruption, Capra uses the senate has his stage and takes command, never has talking and arguing been so entertaining. Capra sustains the drama by keeping the pace rapid by the actor's dialogue and his impeccable editing technique. For his part, Stewart controls the screen with every speech he's given, and every close-up as we see him slowly coming apart as the filibuster takes his toll on his body. Stewart's performance is one of the cinematic greats, and it's no wonder this actor/director team are so closely associated with one another.

"Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" was the end of a great run of films for Frank Capra, it would be the last one he did for Columbia Pictures, a studio he pretty much single handidly saved from bankruptcy. In the 40s he would continue to make powerful films about the common man, but after too many flops and the failure of his independent company "Liberty Films" he had to resort to becoming a Producer's director. He could no longer pick his projects as freely as he once did, but films like "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" are testaments to a man who truly believed in what he was saying.

Many films today try to emulate Capra's style, but to me most of those films come off as phony and even cynical. The missing ingredient in those films that you could find in the best of Capra's is sincerity.

# 5: "Top Hat" and "Swing Time" (Tie)

"Of all the places the movies have created, one of the most magical and enduring is the universe of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers." (excerpt from Roger Ebert's Great Movies review of "Swing Time".)

"Heaven, I'm in Heaven..." (From the song "Cheek to Cheek" by Irving Berlin)

The two above quotes pretty much sum up my feelings about the films I chose in my number five position for the best movies of the 1930s. "Top Hat" and "Swing Time" are the two superior films from the greatest song and dance duo in film history. I was going back and forth between the two, until I finally realized I had to declare a tie, since there are things I admire in both films, but the feeling I have for them remain the same.

When I watch Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dance, I am transported to a different place, I'm elated with such joy and exuberance, I can only imagine what that initial audience felt in the 1930s going to these movies. Remember back then, people were in the midst of a depression, movies like these were designed as an escape. Astaire would always be in a tuxedo and Rogers would always be in some glamorous dress.

Both "Top Hat" (1935) and "Swing Time" (1936) follow a similar format, and end in very same ways, that is what the audiences wanted, but their films were never about plot, they were about music, dance, and humour. The dance between Astaire and Rogers was the story line, it was a wordless romance. There would never be a romantic kiss shown between the two until their eighth film "Carefree", their emotions were portrayed through their movement, after all every romance is like a some sort of a dance anyway.

For it's part, "Top Hat" represents the team at their most glamorous and refined, while "Swing Time" is the more witty and heartfelt. In "Top Hat" we are treated with the famous dance numbers "Isn't it a Lovely Day?" and "Cheek to Cheek", the latter perhaps the most well known of all the team's works. "Swing Time" we are treated with "Never Gonna Dance", which is their saddest and most poignant number, along with "Pick yourself up", which may be their lightest and humorous number.

"Top Hat" concerns a case of mistaken identity, which is one of those plots that could be concluded if someone just mentions that little piece of information that is missing. We don't seem to mind so much, since the performers always have something to do, whether it's supporting players Edward Everett Horton or Eric Blore getting into comic situations, or it's our two stars doing a number, we are always entertained.



"Swing Time" has Astaire playing a lower class hoofer/gambler (although they do manage to keep him in a tuxedo for the first third of the film), and Rogers is a lower class dance instructor. The two meet, and their is an almost instant rapport (Rogers has to dislike him at the beginning).

Each film is a fantasy picture, like all good musicals are really. In the second part of "Top Hat", we are transported to an embellished Italian resort that takes its cue from Hollywood movie making. In "Swing Time" we are taken into one building with at least 36 floor, and at least two extravagant nightclubs. We don't take these world as realism, but it is the world of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and no two other people could fit better in this world.

Fred Astaire is the epitome of 30s class, even today he is known for wearing the top hat, so much so that in his movie "The Bandwagon", the film opens with a shot of a top hat worn by Astaire's character, a former movie song and dance man from the 30s. No other movie star other than perhaps Chaplin could be recognized by just a piece of clothing. Astaire would also choreograph the numbers of all the Astaire/Rogers films along with his partner Hermes Pan.

Ginger Rogers is probably the most underrated of the duo, but that is probably due to the fact that she became more of a dramatic actress in her later years and left the dancing shoes behind, but to her credit Astaire would never have another partner that shared their chemistry.

What made Astaire and Rogers so memorable was that they were a team, as I was watching these films, I would switch back and forth. In Astaire's later musicals, it didn't matter who he was dancing with, I mostly saw him. Ginger was his equal, she demanded as much attention.

When I watch them together in my personal favorite number of theirs "Cheek to Cheek", I am no longer watching a film, I become a part of a world, and that is a world I will enjoy to go back to again and again.

"Top Hat" and "Swing Time" represent the epitome of 1930s escapism, perhaps the ultimate film escapism experience, and perhaps the closest the screen has come to in achieving heaven, thanks Fred and Ginger.

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.

The Most Important Movie Announcement You Will Hear This Season!

Starting in November (That's tomorrow) "Jeremy and the Movies" wiil embark on its most ambitious project to date.

With the winding down of this year, means we are finishing up the first decade of the new millinium. And of course that means lists among lists of the Best Films of the Decade, and "Jeremy and the Movies" has decided to ride on everyone elses coat tails. That's right, by the end of the year, you will indeed see "THE ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY NO DOUBT ABOUT IT BEST FILMS OF THE DECADE!!! My list will be revealed December 31st (A Date that is to be written in blood so I will keep my vow.)

However to celebrate THIS decade in movies, I have decided to turn back the clocks, and give you all of my top ten films starting with the 1930s. However I have restricted myself to one guideline.

Each director will be limited to one film per decade, I've decided to do this because that would give me the chance to focus on different kinds of films of said decade. So even if some directors were very prolific in one decade (ie. Frank Capra in the 30s or Jean-Luc Godard in the 60s), I would only focus on one of their movies.

So starting in November, each week will be dedicated to a different decade untill the unvailing of this decade's group of films. Each week, I will write a piece about each decade, and highlight three random movies from my lists. At the end of each week, the top ten lists will be revealed.

The fun thing about this is you guys can join in the fun by telling me what your top ten lists are, although they would of course be inferior to mine, since mine are Absolutely, Positively, no doubt about it the best.

To give you a run down of how each week will look, here is a schedule:

November 1st-7th The 30s
November 8th-14th The 40s
November 15th-21st the 50s
November 22nd-28th The 60s
November 29th-December 5th The 70s
December 6th-12th The 80s
December 13th-19th The 90s
December 20th-26th Christmas Holidays (Heightened anticipation this way!)
December 27th-31st The 2000s

Favorite Horror Movie Moments!

1. The Spinal Tap scene in "The Exorcist": Yes yes all that demon possession, head turning, cross masturbating stuff that goes on is in fact very scary, but remember when Reagan's mom was still trying to figure out what was wrong with her? She sent her to a doctor and had to undergo the painful ordeal of the spinal tap. For me this was one of the most horrific scenes in the film as director William Friedkin shows us the procedure in almost clear view. Anyone afraid of needles would probably put this scene above all the other supernatural stuff in the film, probably because it's something that is very real.

2. Quint gets his in "Jaws": Much is talked about the boo! factor in Spielberg's masterpiece horror, but the scene that I always couldn't take was the end when we see Robert Shaw's Captain Quint go to his watery grave. It's not just shocking in the fact that he dies at the hands or mouth of the monstrous fish, but that he is a character we have come to like and adore. Quint is the toughest man in the film, but once those mighty jaws have him in his clutches, even he screams in terror. Spielberg would never kill off another lead character again in any of his films in such a gruesome way.

3. The Bride screams at the sight of the monster in "Bride of Frankenstein": An outlandish moment of pathos in a horror movie isn't seen very often, but after Elsa Lanchester's famous bride is brought back to life, and rejects Karloff's monster, we can't help but feel for the poor guy. Just goes to prove, horror movies have feelings too.

4. The hand coming from the walls in "Repulsion": Roman Polanski times his horror classic so well to give the right effect. At times it's almost as if we're waiting to be scared. In this moment near the end of the film, Carol is looking at the wall, which soon turns into a giant hand that grabs at her. She is soon surrounded in a hallway of hands grabbing her from the wall. It's a terrific moment of horror, in a metaphysical sense, and also a "GOTCHA!" sense.

5. The "You Eat Like a Bird" line in "Psycho":The moment we see Norman Bates, we know something is just a little off about him. My favorite scene is with him a Marion Crane as he watches her eat dinner. There is something off putting about this line that still creeps me out. Norman on the outside looks so wholesome and innocent, but the way this line is delivers makes us wonder about what's on the inside.

6.Allan Gray is looking at the world through a coffin in "Vampyr": The most famous scene in Dreyer's horror experiment comes when our hero sees himself dead inside a coffin. As it is taken away to be buried by the film's villains, We get a point of view shot from inside the coffin. It's as if Dreyer is giving us a sneak peak at what's in store when we all die. The images are disturbing because it does look like indeed we are the ones in the coffin!

Unconventional Horror: Vampyr

One thing horror can do very well in genre is mess with our perceptions. One thing the films I've focused on this past week have in common other than having a link to horror is how they distort our reality of how we actually see things. Things are exaggerated or reinterrpreted as if we are watching a dream. What we expect from reality is undermined. Film has the power to distort our senses and boggle our minds better than any artform which is why horror is such a compelling genre for the cinema, yet how often we take it for granted.

In 1932, famed Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer made a different kind of horror, something that today would probably be scrutinized for not following the conventional patterns of the genre. "Vampyr" is less a comprehensive film, than it is a daring experiment, it stretches the boundries of horror and creates a complete though sometimes reckless film.

When I say reckless I do not mean to put the film down, on the contrary, Dreyer made bold and surprising choices with his film that put it in a class by itself.

The baffling plot of "Vampyr" is an exercise in subjective point of view. We follow a young man named Allan Grey, a student of the occult, as he encounters one fantastic event after another. One of the first images he sees is a shoreman who evokes the image of death. He lodges with a family who has an ailing daughter, we soon learn that a local aged woman is in fact a vampire and may be the cause of her sickness. What Allan is experiencing has been argued as sort of a heightened reality, or his own imagination since he is obssessed with this dark world.

You may judge for yourself when you see the film, much of the film is seen through Allan's point of view as he sees many shadow images on a white wall, all of which don't seem to have an owner. We do however follow one peg-legged shadow as it reconnects with its human form in one of the most memorable moments of the film. Dreyer refuses to explain what we are looking at and why such things are happening. It's almost like he uses the horror genre as a springboard in order to show these images.

Though Allan is our main protagonist, we are under the impression that this may all be his overactive imagination, but sometimes the film switches focus, and Allan is no longer in the picture. In a wonderful audio commentary that comes in the recent criterion release, film scholar Tony Rayns argues that the film may be all about subjectivity. After watching the film myself, my own theory is that Dreyer is trying to test our perceptions. "Vampyr" is the kind of film that challenges the audience in wondering what are we in fact looking at. This is not conventional horror by any means, it dares to go further than even innovative films such as "Nosferatu" even did. "Nosferatu" at least had a narrative structure, that followed a certain pattern, Dreyer instead moves around with narrative in a very playful and experimental way. In a lot of ways I would say "Vampyr" is the forerunner of filmmakers such as David Lynch who also stretched narrative structure in different ways. In that way "Vampyr" is in a class by itself among horror films, it cannot be categorized as anything else, yet it can also not be thought of as a standard.

Carl Theodore Dreyer is a director I am not much accustomed to as of yet. He was not a polific director, mainly due to financial problems with his films. "Vampyr" was not successful in its initial release, probably due in part by some of the reasons I mentioned above. Becomes of the film's failure, Dreyer would not go on to film another movie for ten more years, and he would only make a small handful more before his death in 1968. The power of his original voice can be seen all over "Vampyr", which is why it is remembered today as a truly innovative work.