1930s

Quote:
Lye’s first direct film, which combines popular Cuban dance music with hand-painted abstract designs, amazed cinema audiences. Color was still a novelty, and Lye’s direct painting on celluloid creates exceptionally vibrant effects. The film won several major awards, though some festivals had to invent a special category for it, and in Venice, the Fascists disrupted screenings because they saw the film as ‘degenerate’ modern art. A Colour Box was funded and distributed by John Grierson’s GPO Film Unit on the condition that Lye include postal messages at the end.Read More »

One of the last bills signed by President Lincoln authorizes pushing the Union Pacific Railroad across the wilderness to California. But financial opportunist Asa Barrows hopes to profit from obstructing it. Chief troubleshooter Jeff Butler has his hands full fighting Barrows’ agent, gambler Sid Campeau; Campeau’s partner Dick Allen is Jeff’s war buddy and rival suitor for engineer’s daughter Molly Monahan. Who will survive the effort to push the railroad through at any cost?Read More »

Alain Resnais° wrote:
It remains, I think, the single overwhelming experience I’ve ever had in a cinema. When I first came out of the theater, I remember I just had to sit on the edge of the pavement. I sat there for about five minutes and then I walked the streets of Paris for a couple of hours. For me, every thing had been turned upside down. All my ideas about the cinema had been changed. While I was actually watching the film, my impressions were so strong physically that I thought that if this or that sequence would to go for one more shot, I would either burst into tears or scream or something. Since then, of course, I’ve seen it at least fifteen times like most filmmakers of my generation. I even recorded the whole soundtrack on my tape recorder and it’s amazing how well it stands up well on its own.Read More »

Quote:
A propaganda film produced by the French Communist Party (PCF) for the campaign for the May 1936 elections – which brought the Popular Front to power – “La vie est à nous”, by Jean Renoir, was shot by a team of militant filmmakers and technicians.Read More »

When a baroness is present during a robbery at a jewellers in Vienna, she finds the gang’s debonair leader more attractive than either her husband or her lover.Read More »

Synopsis
In this pulpy crime drama, a murder stirs up trouble at London’s Cotton Club, threatening the livelihood of its controlling owner. When Steve Marco (Jack LaRue) kills a club employee who was blackmailing him, he also steals a valuable string of pearls. Scotland Yard jumps on the case, and recruits club beauty Ruby Lane (Sandra Storme) to try to retrieve the pearls. Notable talent includes Jack LaRue and Bernard Lee (James Bond’s “M”).Read More »

During the Great War, Bosko and a fearsome beast are in a dogfight. Bosko loses, but that’s only the first battle.Read More »

Followed by Shindo: kohen Ryota no maki, available here:
The eldest daughter of a noble family is in love with an aviator while being courted by a fellow aristocrat she thinks is a dullard.Read More »

Quote:
It was directed by Sotoji Kimura, a completely obscure, yet fairly successful Shochiku director, who by account on his few films that are available today apparently was associated with the 1930’s jun-bungaku (“pure literature”) movement, an attempt to strengthen the reputation of Japanese cinema by translating reputable high-brow literature for the screen.Read More »