Category: Culture

I want to mention one more film of the 1930s. It was a great era for film, and there are certainly dozens more films we could include, but here we have “Make Way For Tomorrow”.

It’s a 90 minute (or so) film directed by Leo McCarey (who also did films for Laurel and Hardy and The Marx Brothers) and it stars Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi. If you don’t recognise the names, you will the faces, though it is hard under the makeup.

The story is a simple one: Bark and Lucy are an elderly couple who come on hard times. They lose their home. Their adult children are reluctant to look after them, so they have to move to separate retirement homes. Before they do, they enjoy one carefree night together in the city. The random people they meet show more kindness to them than any of their children.

Orson Welles said it is the saddest film ever made. Others have said it is just a depressing tear jerker about old people. I have watched it with someone who said it was a happy film because they got a nice day together. To me, that just makes it even sadder.

That’s it’s probably true to life and happening all the time, even now in some way, just makes it even worse.

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One of my absolute favourite mad comedy films is the 1941 production “Hellzapoppin'”. If you want to watch it, it’s on home media I am sure and it does appear that there is a copy on YouTube.

The film stars comedy act Olsen and Johnson and was adapted from their Broadway show. By all accounts, the stage show was total madness and, while some of this madness is still here, the unpredictability aspect has gone somewhat.

It is basically a ‘putting on a show’ movie. There are many familiar faces, including Martha Raye, Elisha Cook Jnr, Hugh Herbert (who plays a crazy magician), Shemp Howard (of The Three Stooges as the projectionist) and many more.

The film never forgets it is a film, being shown to an audience (in a cinema). They break the fourth wall often, there are jokes at the expense of the projectionist and other films, strange leaps in format (for example, suddenly becoming a western), running gags and general madness. Oh, and a soppy love story and multiple musical interludes.

Sadly, it’s not a film that gets shown in cinemas any more, even at film clubs and you do need to watch it with an audience if you can. The love story is rather draggy at times, but when the stars are on screen it’s a hoot.

The 1930s moving into the 1940s was a golden time for film production. Many of the films we still love came from that era.

“Gone With The Wind” was 1939. So was “The Wizard of Oz”.

A film with amazing use of colour and a symphonic score is “The Adventures of Robin Hood”.

Hitchcock was still a great director at this time. Fritz Lang made “M” with Peter Lorre (1931).

We haven’t mentioned the Marx Brothers, Warner’s gangster movies, the ‘monster’ movies from Universal, such as “Frankenstein”. Or Andy Hardy. Even Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1937).

If I was going to pick out just one film that has not yet been mentioned as a must see, it’s “Goodbye, Mr Chips” (1939), if only for the performance of Robert Donat: