Cimarron (1931)

The first Western in our selection of movies, this one documented a 40 year period in family's life. From the Oklahoma Land Rush to the early 1900's. Based on a book, it was about starting again and looking for a better life.

Basically, it was about this selfish guy who dragged his wife and kid across America in a a horse and cart, who then tried to become the boss of the town, then left them to go on another exciting adventure, perhaps to find more land only to come back, defend the local prostitute in court, knock up his wife and leave again. Leaving her in charge (yes, people a WOMAN in charge) of their small pioneer town newspaper).  Cut to 40 years later and she becomes a Senator - or some kind of American parliamentary member.  And he dies in a mining accident. So yeah. I guess this is a nod to the feminist movement 40 years before it commenced, wrapped in disguised as a Western.

I doubt that is how it was reviewed at the time, but that's how we see it in 2012.

Oh and its racist.

The Broadway Melody (1929)

So, watching 2 movies a week has rapidly declined to 1 every 2 weeks!  Not good enough - we will never meet the challenge at this pace. 

So we decided to not let our sleep challenged toddler determine our success, we just watched it as a family, after official bedtime, but probably before she would have actually been asleep.

A brain dump of thoughts -The opening sequence is a flyover shot of New York, and although it is hardly an episode of Law and Order, its pretty cool.  We are 30 seconds in and I can already tell my husband is going to hate it. Laughing at the ridiculous sub-titles. 10 minutes in and I am predicting its the original Dream Girls. Gee, they show more leg in 1929 than I thought they would. Its making me appreciate how good the other 2 old movies we have watched  are. Am I ever going to get this 2 hours of my life back. Quote of the night "Id rather watch the Olsen twins - that's who they remind me of, terrible acting included".  When you take a break from watching a movie to voluntarily put on a load of washing you know something is wrong.  Oh look Eric Bana is on Top Gear, lets watch that for a minute. Back to it and husband makes me double check we are watching the right movie.  Did this win an Oscar or a Razzie?  I love musicals. 2 year old 'reading' the Very Hungry Caterpillar is not at all distracting.  Oh, its getting better now, hang on, I'm just getting excited we are near the end. Every scene is 10 times longer than it needs to be. Okay, its winding up, I guess that ending is nice.  Poor Hank.

Here is a link for those of you playing at home - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Broadway_Melody
It adequately describes the story line. 

That's about as much time as I'd like to dedicate to this movie.

Next movie - Cimarron.  I have no idea what it is, so stay tuned.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

This is a movie which is frequently mentioned in the Best Movies of all time lists and I must admit, I don't get it.  Another War movie (our second in a row thank to the Sabotage of the Broadway Melody, which by the way, is on its way from Ebay), it is also very long and drawn out.  This movie is not silent, however it is not exactly filmed in Dolby surround sound, and the snoring of our dachshund drowned out much of the dialog and I must admit I did wonder if it would have been better as a silent movie.

So, its a war movie, pretty slow to start, but quite different from Wings.  It really shows the brutalities of war and realistically depicts how scared the soldiers must have been. Unlike more recent glorification's of World War One, I guess this film had the potential audience of those who were there and this movie doesn't shy away from or gloss over facts. It isn't, however, particularly gory.

The story starts in a school in Germany with a teacher giving an passionate speech to the boys, encouraging them to sign up for the war. Being young and brave, many of the boys join up and we see them evolving into soldiers. We see their first day at the front and the fear they feel, and we see the boredom of the trenches. In cinematography straight from Notting Hill, we see the passing of time through a pair of boots, watching them be passed from soldier to soldier as they one by one die or become injured. We see the antagonist, Paul, become disillusioned with War, particularly when on convalescent leave back at home he realises that the things he has seen and done have made living in the real world difficult.
In particular, the scene showing men going crazy when under attack for 5 days of shelling in the trenches and one running out only to be shot by the enemy and a few others show the personal side of war and how it affected these young me. Remembering these were only school aged boys at the start of the movie, the film follows them through the whole war - those who survive until late 1917.

It was a different experience for me to watch a war film from the point of view of German Soldiers and the poignant scene about who started the war - it wasn't Germany?, it wasn't England? how can one country offend another? can a mountain in France offend a Valley in Germany, it was almost a kind of statement that this will never happen again. I particularly loved the analogy that War is a kind of fever - no one wants it then all at once here is is.

Although not a comedy by any stretch of the imagination, I cannot write this review without noting the funniest line of the movie.  During one of the "bonding as a unit" scenes one Soldier said "Kiss my Butt!" Hilarious, who knew that was said in 1930?

Without giving the ending away, it is obviously a sad movie, I usually cant watch war movies as I'm too emotional, but this movie wasn't too emotional for me. It was a good movie, but I didn't love it.

Have you seen it?  What did you think?

Sabotage!

Sabotaged by the cheap Vietnamese Box Set..........

So, turns out there are several movies called Broadway Melody and 10 minutes in to a musical romp through New York starring Fred Astaire a quick glimpse at wikipedia informed me that Fred Astaire was in the 1940 version NOT the 1929 version.

With thanks to Isohunt, we will resume the challenge tomorrow night

Wings, 1927

So, when Wikipedia describes a movie as "a silent film about World War 1 fighter pilots" I didn't exactly rush to watch it.  Indeed, it would have been the first skipped movie, if we were allowed to skip them. A War Epic, starring Clara Bow, the idea of the movie did not do alot to get me excited by the challenge so I set up to watch it with my laptop and a peach and prepared for boredom - more than 2 hours of boredom infact.

  

The Girl

We spent the first 5 minutes trying to get the Vietnamese subtitles off as they were covering the writing (remembering this was a silent film) to no avail. No harm, what's a bit of missing writing when the whole movie is silent anyway....

The storyline could have been written today - A girl in love with her neighbour, the neighbour and his rich boy rival in love with the same girl, the rivals joining the army and bunking together, becoming besties, the girl following them to France in a mad-cap sequence involving the most hilarious use of cartoon champagne bubbles, an epic war scene, an avenged death and finally requited love. Infact I would love to see a remake, I can totally imagine Zac Efron as David the rich rival and Taylor Lautner as Jack the neighbour and Zooey Deschanel as Mary, the girl.

The neighbour


Some scenes were waaaaaaaay too long, especially some of the flying/fighting scenes, although the live stunts were amazing and the planes looked super cool, it was easy to get distracted and then miss part of the story.  I think because the film was silent, there wasn't opportunity to set the story up quickly with the use of conversation or questions between characters, so the start of the movie was slow as we established the characters.  This fact is made up for by the end of the movie when I was totally attached to the characters and really cared about them.

This is the thing that surprised me was the way the storyline came alive to me without any talking - the over-acting was hilarious on one hand, but helped us pick up on feelings and innuendo that may have otherwise gone un-noticed. The other thing that gave the movie feeling was the music, I know this is obvious and all movies do this, but the highs and lows were higher and lower because of it. Talking was really not necessary in this movie. We still laughed, cried and became attached to characters. We were still disappointed with their actions, proud of them and happy for them in turn. We still connected. It was amazing and I couldn't believe it.

The rich boy rival

I never would have thought to watch a silent movie, but I am so glad we did.  I would recommend this to watch.  If you do watch it, let me know what you thought!

I loved starting our movie challenge with this movie, it has made me excited for the next one.

Next up - The Broadway Melody - 1929