1931-1940

Synopsis:
Few historical figures are as revered as Abraham Lincoln, and few director-star pairings embody classic American cinema as perfectly as do John Ford and Henry Fonda. In Young Mr. Lincoln, their first collaboration, Fonda gives one of the finest performances of his career as the young president-to-be struggling with an incendiary murder case as a novice lawyer. Compassionate and assured, this indelible piece of Americana marks the beginning of Ford and Fonda’s ascent to legendary status.Read More »

The fifth and last film of Nyrki Tapiovaara (1911–40), released posthumously after his tragically premature death during the last days of the Winter War, and finished by one of the film’s actors, Hugo Hytönen, with some help from Erik Blomberg and Mirjami Kuosmanen, future collaborators on The White Reindeer. As with Tapiovaara’s earlier films Stolen Death (1938) and Kaksi Vihtoria (“Two Henpecked Husbands”, 1939), Blomberg was the film’s producer and cinematographer, while Kuosmanen had one of her first major roles in the film. The film was an adaptation of recent Nobel laureate F. E. Sillanpää’s 1932 novel and, along with Teuvo Tulio’s rural melodramas of the late ’30s (including one Sillanpää adaptation, the now-lost Nuorena nukkunut), one of the crucial trope-setters for Finnish cinema in the years to come, with its depictions of breathtaking landscapes, love on the hayfield, and drunken brawls at country dances.Read More »

Synopsis:
Having been away for four months, Hildy Johnson walks into the offices of the New York City based The Morning Post, where she is a star reporter, to tell her boss, editor Walter Burns, that she is quitting. The reason for her absence was among other things to get a Reno divorce, from, of all people, Walter, who admits he was a bad husband. Hildy divorced Walter largely because she wanted more of a home life, whereas Walter saw her more as a driven hard-boiled reporter than subservient homemaker. Hildy has also come to tell Walter that she is taking the afternoon train to Albany, where she will be getting married tomorrow to staid straight-laced insurance agent, Bruce Baldwin, with whose mother they will live, at least for the first year. Read More »

Synopsis:
Free-thinking Johnny Case finds himself betrothed to a millionaire’s daughter. When her family, with the exception of black-sheep Linda and drunken Ned, want Johnny to settle down to big business, he rebels, wishing instead to spend the early years of his life on “holiday.” With the help of his friends Nick and Susan Potter, he makes up his mind as to which is the better course, and the better mate.Read More »

Quote:
In No Blood Relation, a gripping early example of Mikio Naruse’s cinematic boldness, featuring a screenplay by Ozu’s famed collaborator Kogo Noda, an actress returns to Tokyo after a successful stint in Hollywood to reclaim—with the help of her gangster brother—the daughter she abandoned years before.Read More »

Synopsis:
Jeffrey and Glenda are two lovers about to embark on a three-day cruise to nowhere. Their plan is to be married on board by the ship’s captain. As Glenda is packing to leave, she receives a threatening phone call from her obsessed, former lover Leo. Glenda confronts Leo and tells him that it’s over. Leo, a high-powered attorney calls a hit man to have Jeffrey eliminated. Glenda knocks Leo over the head before he can give the hit man a name. Leo is dead. Glenda sneaks back into her apartment, goes off on the cruise with Jeffrey and pretends that all is swell. Leo’s partner, Stephen Bessemer, suspects Glenda and follows her to the ship. Read More »

Synopsis:
Johnny Jones is an action reporter on a New York newspaper. The editor appoints him European correspondent because he is fed up with the dry, reports he currently gets. Jones’ first assignment is to get the inside story on a secret treaty agreed between two European countries by the famous diplomat, Mr. Van Meer. However things don’t go to plan and Jones enlists the help of a young woman to help track down a group of spies.Read More »

Synopsis:
Before their divorce becomes final, Jerry and Lucy Warriner both do their best to ruin each other’s plans for remarriage, Jerry to haughty socialite Barbara Vance, she to oil-rich bumpkin Daniel Leeson. Among their strategies: Jerry’s court-decreed visitation rights with Mr. Smith, their pet fox terrier, and Lucy doing her most flamboyant Dixie Belle Lee impersonation as Jerry’s brassy “sister” before his prospective bride’s scandalized family.Read More »

Quote:
A story of two sisters, the older being more traditional, the younger a “moga” (“modern girl”). Their widowed father runs the family sake shop — but is running into financial trouble (causing him to make some bad decisions). Meanwhile, his long-time mistress’s little business is also on the rocks. Amidst this, the older sister is introduced to a well-off suitor (a university boy who is much more intrigued by the less traditional “little sister”). Add a dotty grandfather, an officious uncle and busy body neighbors.Read More »