The Story of Film 1929 - 1938 : Sound
From Mark Cousins' book "The Story of Film" with some additional movies that changed the way I look at movies or really moved me.
Thank you Mr. Cousins for opening my eyes to see a whole new world of movies and the path it took to get where it is today. Your book is an inspiration!
A quotation for the intro from Mark Cousins' book that explains these lists and the Story of Film:
"This book tells the story of the art of cinema. It narrates the history of a medium which began as a photographic, largely silent, shadowy novelty and became a digital, multi-billion dollar global business.
Although the business elements of film are important, you will find few details in my book of what films cost and how the industry organises itself and markets its wares. I wanted to write a purer book than that, one more focused on the medium than the industry. As you read, therefore, you will come across works that you may not have seen and may never see. I make no apology for this because I do not want to tell a history of cinema that is distorted by the vagaries of the market place. There are mainstream films described in what follows, but mostly I have focused on what I consider to be the most innovative films from any country at any period."
All quotations in quotation marks are from The Story of Film, unless otherwise indicated.
Thank you Mr. Cousins for opening my eyes to see a whole new world of movies and the path it took to get where it is today. Your book is an inspiration!
A quotation for the intro from Mark Cousins' book that explains these lists and the Story of Film:
"This book tells the story of the art of cinema. It narrates the history of a medium which began as a photographic, largely silent, shadowy novelty and became a digital, multi-billion dollar global business.
Although the business elements of film are important, you will find few details in my book of what films cost and how the industry organises itself and markets its wares. I wanted to write a purer book than that, one more focused on the medium than the industry. As you read, therefore, you will come across works that you may not have seen and may never see. I make no apology for this because I do not want to tell a history of cinema that is distorted by the vagaries of the market place. There are mainstream films described in what follows, but mostly I have focused on what I consider to be the most innovative films from any country at any period."
All quotations in quotation marks are from The Story of Film, unless otherwise indicated.
List activity
44 views
• 0 this weekCreate a new list
List your movie, TV & celebrity picks.
63 titles
- DirectorRouben MamoulianStarsHelen MorganJoan PeersFuller Mellish Jr.A burlesque star seeks to keep her convent-raised daughter away from her low-down life and abusive lover/stage manager.“A wide shot, which encompasses shows the mother trying to calm her child’s frayed nerves. The camera dollies into a two-shot, which frames the mother and child and remains there for a minute, before moving into a closer two-shot, followed by two medium close-ups and then into a single close-up of the praying daughter. Finally, the camera tracks out again and the father’s shadow falls across the scene.
Mamoulian’s sound crew told him the prayer and the lullaby could not be done simultaneously; Mamoulian suggested that they use two microphones, one for each actress, run separate wires from them and then combine them in the printing process. The sound men said this would not work. Mamoulian was furious and stormed off the set. Studio boss, Adolph Zukor, ordered the technicians to try Mamoulian’s way, and it worked. A single scene in Applause proved simultaneous sound possible in cinema.” - DirectorLuis BuñuelStarsGaston ModotLya LysCaridad de LaberdesqueA surrealist tale of a man and a woman who are passionately in love with each other, but their attempts to consummate that passion are constantly thwarted by their families, the Church, and bourgeois society.Written by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí.
Beren's review on IMDB: Dream-like, funny, and compelling, Luis Buñuel's surrealist masterpiece is required viewing for anyone who claims to have a grasp of the history of cinema.
Too thought-provoking to be called hallucinogenic, L'Age D'Or nevertheless has the disjointed narrative of a dream. It makes sense on its own terms the same way a dream does. - DirectorJean CocteauStarsEnrique RiveroElizabeth Lee MillerPauline CartonTold in four episodes - an unnamed artist is transported through a mirror into another dimension, where he travels through various bizarre scenarios.“...treated film as if it was a bunch of magic tricks, in the spirit of Méliès. Using reversed motion, upended sets, overlays of imagery and mythological references, it told its story of a poet who is inspired by a personified statue to go through a mirror into the underworld. The scene in which this happens is particularly effective. The shirtless poet stands over the mirror which, in a single cut, turns into a rectangular pool of water into which he splashes as a chorus of men roar ”
- DirectorFlorián ReyStarsCarmen ViancePedro LarrañagaAmelia MuñozIn an impoverished Castilian village live Juan, his wife Acacia, their son and Juan's blind father. The harsh weather conditions force the peasants to emigrate to a better land. Acacia goes to the city instead. Time goes by and they will meet again."The film’s rural scenes are shot in a simple, painterly style, but the pace of its editing increases in the second half which is set in the city. However, it is only in a few sequences that Rey stares at the real world with more intensity than was usually permitted by mainstream cinema."
- DirectorBoris KaufmanJean VigoWhat starts off as a conventional travelogue turns into a satirical portrait of the town of Nice on the French Cote d'Azur, especially its wealthy inhabitants.Aka: About Nice. Jean Vigo's first of only four films.
Ben Chesire:Disguised as a travelogue of Nice (in only images, without a single narration or title card), Vigo presents us with some of the most extraordinairy images you'll ever see.
On top of what was inspired observation (just pointing his camera at everyday things and making them look new... Vigo was boundlessly inventive. Through simple slow motion, or fast motion, certain sequences are made magical (a procession, a bunch of girls dancing), through editing Vigo makes things disappear and appear, and change shape and appearance. His real magic, though, was in camera angles. - DirectorMario PeixotoStarsOlga BrenoTatiana ReyRaul SchnoorThree people (Raul Schnoor, Olga Breno and Tatiana Rey) sail aimlessly while remembering their past.“The Brazilian director made not only that country’s first avant-garde film but also one of the first significant films made in Latin America”
- DirectorRené ClairStarsAnnabellaRené LefèvreJean-Louis AllibertAn impoverished painter and his rival engage in a race across Paris to recover a jacket concealing a winning lottery ticket."Rene Clair ensured that all the actors sing in the film except the lottery winner, which makes it a clear forerunner of Love Me Tonight’s musicality.”
- DirectorRené ClairStarsRaymond CordyHenri MarchandRolla FranceSeeking better life, two convicts escape from prison.“In A Nous La Liberté, a close-up shot of a quivering bell-shaped flower is combined with the sound of singing voice, as if the flower is literally in song. Such metaphorical use of sound freed directors from sonic literalness”
- DirectorArdeshir IraniStarsMaster VithalZubeidaJilloA period fantasy that told of the ageing king of Kamarpur, and his two rival queens, Navbahar and Dilbahar, and their rivalry when a fakir predicts that Navbahar will bear the king's heir. Dilbahar unsuccessfully tries to seduce the army chief Adil (Vithal) and vengefully destroys his family, leaving his daughter Alam Ara (Zubeida) to be raised by nomads. Eventually, Alam Ara's nomad friends invade the palace, expose Dilbahar's schemes, release Adil from the dungeon and she marries the prince of the realm.“Alam Ara contained seven songs recorded simultaneously with the photography. It was a massive commercial success and, astonishing though it seems to Westerners, only two of the many thousands of films made in India between 1931 and 1950s would not have musical interludes. The whole of Indian cinema became one big musical genre. The most popular of these, the so-called “All India” films, were made in the federal language, Hindi, and mostly shot in Bombay (Mumbai).”
- DirectorWancang BuStarsLingyu RuanYan JinLili ZhouThe daughter of a peasant family that works on a landowner's property is in love with the owner's son but the parents force them to separate.She lands up having a child out of wedlock.Aka: The Peach Girl (Chinese)
“Its story is a parallel one, of a girl and a peach tree, each being a metaphor for the other. The film is chiefly remembered today because of its astonishing lead actress, Ruan Lingyu (93), often called the Chinese Greta Garbo, whose dramatic life eclipsed her Swedish counterpart’s” - DirectorMervyn LeRoyStarsEdward G. RobinsonDouglas Fairbanks Jr.Glenda FarrellA small-time criminal moves to a big city to seek bigger fortune.“Gangster pictures were a purely American genre: the manufacture and sale of alcohol were illegal in the US between 1920 and 1933 and gangs of entrepreneurial lawbreakers, or gangsters, ran alcohol between country still and city speakeasy. Often of Italian or Irish descent, they structured their empires like families and became famous figures. This mixture of fame, crime, family drama and ethnicity proved to be irresistible to Hollywood. The first film which integrated these elements fully was Little Caesar”
- DirectorWilliam A. WellmanStarsJames CagneyJean HarlowEdward WoodsAn Irish-American street punk tries to make it big in the world of organized crime.“...more violent than Little Caesar and, controversially for the time, less damning of its main character. James Cagney, an ex-dancer, moves gracefully throughout the film and spits out his lines with relish. He had charm and many organizations in America denounced the film for indulging his seductive qualities. This was to be the start of the moral debate about gangster films that continues to this day.”
- DirectorFritz LangStarsPeter LorreEllen WidmannInge LandgutWhen the police in a German city are unable to catch a child-murderer, other criminals join in the manhunt.
- DirectorJames WhaleStarsColin CliveMae ClarkeBoris KarloffDr Henry Frankenstein is obsessed with assembling a living being from parts of several exhumed corpses.“The film’s English director, Whale, a gay former actor, cartoonist and set designer realized, that German Expressionism would lend a striking style and mood to Hollywood horror. Whale and his writers combined elements of The Golem and Caligari with the theatrical imagery and elevated the story of a scientist creating a monster out of body parts into a mature tale of a mute outsider, shunned by society because he is visually repulsive. Boris Karloff’s tender performance added depth to this theme of ostracism. It is early cinema’s greatest essay in prejudice and illustrates how apparently commercial studio genre material could be meaningful”
- DirectorTod BrowningKarl FreundStarsBela LugosiHelen ChandlerDavid MannersTransylvanian vampire Count Dracula bends a naive real estate agent to his will, then takes up residence at a London estate where he sleeps in his coffin by day and searches for potential victims by night.“...full of silent, almost static appearances by Bela Lugosi as the vampire is cinema literally holding its breath. It shocked audiences on its first release, but today has little of the unsettling power of Nosferatu”
- DirectorJean RenoirStarsMichel SimonJanie MarèseGeorges FlamantMaurice Legrand, a meek cashier married to a nagging wife, has a secret passion: he's a Sunday painter. He falls in love with Lulu, a young woman dominated by Dédé, the pimp who she works for. Dédé pushes Lulu into a relationship with him.“...a realist story set in an artists’ district of Paris. Both this and Boudu Sauvé des eaux/Boudu saved from Drowning (1932) featured the extraordinary actor Michel Simon in leading roles. Simon was a big, working-class, untheatrical actor and Renoir understood how to capture his gruff personality. Renoir said, “the idea of arti-ficially attracting the audiences’ attention to certain elements, to a star, for example, is a purely romantic idea. Classicism contains an idea of evenness that no longer exists in romanticism.”
- DirectorKarl FreundStarsBoris KarloffZita JohannDavid MannersA resurrected Egyptian mummy searches Cairo for the girl he believes to be his long-lost princess.“German and American cinematic horror continued to intersect when Karloff played the title role in The Mummy, directed by Karl Freund, who had shot The Golem, Variety and Metropolis in Germany. Horror became Universal Studios’ trademark and to this day its back-lot tours display Frankenstein sets which are still standing. The success of Frankenstein and Dracula established the thrill of fear as commercial cinema’s newest attraction.”
- DirectorTod BrowningStarsWallace FordLeila HyamsOlga BaclanovaA circus' beautiful trapeze artist Cleopatra agrees to marry Hans the leader of side-show performers, but Hans' deformed friends discover that she is only marrying him for his inheritance. So they seek revenge.
- DirectorCarl Theodor DreyerStarsJulian WestMaurice SchutzRena MandelA drifter obsessed with the supernatural stumbles upon an inn where a severely ill adolescent girl is slowly becoming a vampire.
- DirectorRouben MamoulianStarsMaurice ChevalierJeanette MacDonaldCharles RugglesA Parisian tailor finds himself posing as a baron in order to collect a sizeable bill from an aristocrat, only to fall in love with an aloof young princess.“Mamoulian had the musical and percussive score recorded before the shoot started. Although it was commonplace in opera to have the entire score written before the staging began, this was unprecedented in cinema. This allowed Mamoulian to choreograph Chevalier’s movements in time to the music during his first visit to the chateau, which was played during the takes. Though walking, Chevalier seems to dance and dart around the huge rooms ”
- DirectorHoward HawksRichard RossonStarsPaul MuniAnn DvorakKaren MorleyAn ambitious and nearly insane violent gangster climbs the ladder of success in the mob, but his weaknesses prove to be his downfall.“was the most significant gangster film of its era. It was stylistically more daring than others, using Expressionist lighting and symbols. It was more interested in detail, recreating real-life incidents such as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in journalistic detail.
Scarface was remade and updated, with cold brilliance, by Brian De Palma in 1983” - DirectorJean RenoirStarsMichel SimonMarcelle HainiaSévérine LerczinskaA bookseller saves a tramp from drowning and shelters him, but the tramp's odd behavior starts to wear everyone down."...featured the extraordinary actor Michel Simon in leading roles. Simon was a big, working-class, untheatrical actor and Renoir understood how to capture his gruff personality. Renoir said, “the idea of arti-ficially attracting the audiences’ attention to certain elements, to a star, for example, is a purely romantic idea. Classicism contains an idea of evenness that no longer exists in romanticism.”
- DirectorSlatan DudowStarsHertha ThieleErnst BuschMartha WolterDuring Great Depression, a family is evicted from their apartment and with no other option they move to a tent camp called Kuhle Wampe.“A rare example of a 1930s film which did have its actors look straight at the audience, written by playwright Bertolt Brecht. After a character’s death an actress turns to the camera and says “One fewer unemployed”. ”
- DirectorFranciszka ThemersonStefan ThemersonBased on Anatol Stern's eponymous modernist poem and a startlingly prescient outcry against the rise of fascism in Europe, Europa utilises an incredible array of techniques to articulate the horror and moral decline that the artists witnessed in Poland during the build-up to the Second World War.“Europa was the country’s first significant production. Europa is a vivid collage of film styles and a bold and successful adaptation of a poem by Anatol Stern. Roman Polanski was influenced by it.”
- DirectorMerian C. CooperErnest B. SchoedsackStarsFay WrayRobert ArmstrongBruce CabotA film crew goes to a tropical island for a location shoot, where they capture a colossal ape who takes a shine to their blonde starlet, and bring him back to New York City.“King Kong (Merian C. Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack, USA, 1933), Eyes Without a Face (Georges Franju, France, 1959), Psycho (Afred Hitchcock, USA, 1960), Onibaba (Kaneto Shindo, Japan, 1964), The Exorcist (William Friedkin, USA, 1973) and The Blair Witch Project (Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sanchez USA, 1998) not only tested the audience’s appetite for horror, but also became aesthetic and technical landmarks in film history”