The Marx Brothers' Duck Soup (1933)

Essay not available at this time.

Howard Hawks' Bringing Up Baby (1938)

No essay available at this time.

Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (1934)

No essay available at this time.

Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel (1930)

The Blue Angel, directed by Josef von Sternberg in 1930, is an adaptation of Heinrich Mann’s novel Professor Unrat. It stars the iconic Marlene Dietrich as Lola Lola, a cabaret singer, and Emil Jannings, as Immanuel Rath, a teacher at a boy’s Gymnasium.

This film is known for marking the start of the historical Dietrich-Sternberg collaboration, and also being one of the first German films to employ sound. But, this film provides more than just these two milestones.

Lola and Rath are two drastically different characters. Rath embodies austerity while Lola epitomizes liberation. The narration follows the authoritative Rath down his path of self-destruction. The film begins with Rath catching his students looking at risqué photos of Lola Lola, the headliner at the local cabaret The Blue Angel. Rath then goes to the club, in attempt to stop them in the act. Much to his demise, there he meets Lola, the infatuation begins, and his integrity crumbles.

Many look at this film as an allegory for the state of Germany before the first World War – Rath symbolizing Germany’s peremptory disposition and Lola representing the countering force. Rath’s downfall, then, would represent Germany’s ruin. Whether or not this was Sternberg’s intention, The Blue Angel captures the sentiment of the time and the downtroddeness that defeat yields.

Cinematically the dark shadows render a sinister effect, and the characters always seem at the edge of danger. Lola personifies this mood. She embodies a dark exoticism not seen in prior films, an unbridled sexuality not present prior in the cinematic world. Her sexuality, however, is not what makes Lola a compelling character; it is her inaccessibility. She possesses both masculine and feminine traits, passivity and muscle, and her fluctuation between these traits give her power and depth. This energy inspired the femme fatales of the later film noir movement.

Looming danger, sexuality, cultural revival, and the emancipation of women were prevalent in the Weimar Republic, and this film provides a window into the condition of the German state.

This film’s significance, however, does not solely lie in its historical context. It is also an examination of the human psyche. Stemberg uses the relationship between Rath and Lola, and their fluctuating dependence on themselves and society, to question man’s self-reliance. Ultimately he questions whether or not satisfaction can be derived from others, and from the self.

Although this film possesses many cinematographic conventions of the time it still holds poignancy. Stemberg’s use of imagery, jest, and character interplay provide a palpable gateway to the past and a connection to the current cinema

Ella Coon
Film Club Co-President

James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931)

For years and years, the image of Frankenstein as a square-headed, stiff-limbed, heavy-lidded, electrocuted monster has been the prevailing image for Halloween costumes and decorations. Almost solely because of the 1931 film Frankenstein, directed by James Whale and starring Boris Karloff as the monster, the first image that tends to come to mind when someone mentions Frankenstein tends to be this goofy-looking creature, which is interesting because Frankenstein is the scientist, not the creation.

That’s the power Whale’s film has had over our impression of Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, written in 1818. The book and the movie may share a name, but further than that, few similarities are to be found between them. Shelley’s version is a Romantic novel that raises questions about the meaning of life, how we can maintain our humanity after the groundbreaking discoveries of the Industrial Revolution, and our responsibilities for the world we create, while Whale’s film is an early horror movie that plays on our fears of the unknown, unchecked science, and human hubris with shock value and a brain-dead monster. In the novel, it is important that the monster has human, if not super-human, characteristics because Shelley sought to explore questions of Man’s place in the universe. In the movie, the (un)jolly green giant bears no similarity to a real man; it is a despicable monster, a sub-human, that needs to be destroyed.

The reason that the movie took such a different direction than the novel is that contemplation and discussion about whether or not scientific advancements will benefit mankind doesn’t sell. Horror movies with a clear villain (the mad scientist), a dumb assistant (the hunchback), and a disgusting monster does, especially in a time, the onset of the Depression, when film was growing as a source of entertainment. People simply found it more fun to see a movie, with exciting costumes and special effects, and no thinking involved.

Certainly, Shelley’s novel has, and probably would have without Whale’s film, stood the test of time. Since the original movie, Frankenstein has been both seriously remade and parodied over and over again, whether in films like Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 feature, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or Mel Brooks’ 1974 parody, Young Frankenstein, or Frank Henelotter’s 1990 black comedy, Frankenhooker, or Tim Burton’s 1984 short, Frankenweenie (the movie that got Burton fired from Disney, which we’re showing this evening), suggesting the staying power of Shelley’s vision.

But it is Whale’s movie that inaugurated the visual interpretations of Shelley’s book, and subsequent film versions, many closer to the novel’s intent and depictions, have not displaced Whale’s imagery from the popular consciousness. Little kids think the creature is named Frankenstein, has bolts in his neck, wears really big shoes, and that you could balance a stack of books easily on his head because it is flat. And every mad scientist who, upon viewing the result of his work, cried out to the heavens “IT’S ALIVE!” owes a debt to Whale’s lasting and iconic vision.

Sam Rock
Film Club

Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times (1936)

Screened with:
Dave Fleischer's "Mechanical Monsters" (1941)
Max Gold's "La Lengua de Pandora (2004)

So you’re sitting in a dark theater, watching Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times. Something strikes you as very odd. First, someone must have left the print out in the sun; it’s faded to the point where there’s no color. It’s all, like, gray. And what’s more it’s got a soundtrack but you can’t hear what anyone says – instead you have to read what they say. Whassup with that?

You check the date on the movie: 1936. Didn’t they have color yet? (Yes.) Hadn’t “talkies” been invented? (Yes, in 1927 with The Jazz Singer.) Oh, man, is this, like, one of those OLD movies?
Yes it is. Your Humble Commentator has a soft spot for two things considered shockingly primitive and barely museum-worthy by modern movie-goers: silent film and black and white cinematography. Whoa.

There are so many reasons to see this movie. For one, it’s funny. Here again (and for the last time) is the Chaplin’s Little Tramp, stuck in Depression-era America, wandering into one pitfall after the next, always happily going wherever he's kicked, always bearing with guileless dignity each humiliation that comes his way. For another, the Little Tramp has become an internationally recognized figure, with his bowler hat, cane and splayed feet in over-sized shoes. We here at the Classic Film Series feel it is always worth seeing the original of something that has been ripped off by countless others, to see the originator of a particular style before one yaks about the comic genius of Roberto Benigni. Third, this is a film with a conscience. Modern Times is a critique of capitalism that is as scathing as it is sentimental, and – as Chaplin’s final silent film (with title cards but also with sound and some spoken dialogue) – it's also a fond farewell to an era of cinema. In short, Modern Times has a grace and quality to it not necessarily absent from but different from the modern film-going experience. Watch enough movies like this one, and you’ll come to miss it.

Speaking of the qualities of yesteryear, seeing Disney’s recent Home on the Range, purported to be their last animated film using traditional hand animation, we thought it might be worth honoring one of the great, but unheralded, cartoon studios. Y’all know about Warner Bros. (Chuck Jones et. al.) and MGM (Tex Avery w/ Tom and Jerry), but in the 1930s and ‘40s there was also Fleischer studios (originally famous for their Popeye cartoons). Today we bring you Dave Fleischer’s 1941 Superman cartoon “The Mechanical Monsters.” Note the warmth and depth of the animation, the sense of style, the radical perspectives, and dynamic use of illustrated lighting effects. We’re not knocking computer animation, and we acknowledge the difficulty and astronomical expense of hand animation in a bottom-line world. But it will be a shame when cartoons like this one are completely a thing of the past. Fleischer only made 17 of these Superman toons, but each is a six-minute masterpiece. Enjoy.

R. Findlay
Film Club Adviser