Love affair 1939 - A wonderful, touching romance

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031593/?ref_=nv_sr_2
IMDB rating: 7,4

Director: Leo McCarey
Main Cast: Irene Dunne, Charles Boyer, Maria Ouspenskaya, Lee Bowman, Astrid Allwyn

"Love Affair is among the most influential romance films of its era, a smooth tale of a shipboard romance and the obstacles that love must overcome. At the core of the film are the performances of Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne as the lovers. They make the audience want their love to succeed and overcome the obstacles in its way. Leo McCarey was among Hollywood's top commercial directors of the 1930s and 1940s, and Love Affair, with its 87-minute running time and brisk pace, is a good example of his skills. In the 1950s, McCarey attempted to become a more serious director, but the public rejected his propagandist anti-Communist films. The one success he found in the 1950s was a direct remake of Love Affair - An Affair to Remember, which was the inspiration for the later hit Sleepless In Seattle." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/love-affair-v30272/

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Make way for tomorrow 1937 - Old people grow lonesome

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029192/?ref_=nv_sr_1
IMDB rating: 8,1

Director: Leo McCarey
Main Cast: Victor Moore, Beulah Bondi, Fay Bainter, Thomas Mitchell, Barbara Read

"While not a box-office success, this drama, directed by Leo McCarey, developed a potent reputation among film critics and movie buffs for its sensitive and perceptive treatment of the problems of the elderly. When McCarey won the Oscar for Best Director the same year for The Awful Truth, he remarked that the Academy gave him the award for the wrong movie. Barkley and Lucy Cooper (Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi) are a couple in their late 60s who have fallen on hard times and have been given the bad news that the bank is foreclosing on their house. Barkley and Lucy turn to their five children for help, but none are willing or able to do much for them; their son George (Thomas Mitchell) says that Lucy can stay with him and his wife Anita (Fay Bainter), while Nellie (Minna Gombell) and her husband Harvey (Porter Hall) can take in Barkley, but neither couple have the space or the means to house them both. Living with their children and their new families proves stressful for everyone involved, and Lucy decides to take up residence in a home for older women. She and Barkley realize that this will probably mean a permanent separation for the two of them, and they try to enjoy one last outing together before they part. Remarkably, Beulah Bondi was only 46 years old when this film was made, making her less then ten years older than several of her on-screen children; make-up wizard Wally Westmore used his bag of tricks to age her the appropriate two decades for the role." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/make-way-for-tomorrow-v101012

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The awful truth 1937 - One of the best screwball comedies of the 30's

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028597/
IMDB rating: 8,0

Director: Leo McCarey
Main Cast: Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, Ralph Bellamy, Joyce Compton, Molly Lamont

"One of the greatest screwball comedies of the thirties, The awful truth is arguably the archetypal example of this influential genre. The plot - in which a gorgeous, sophisticated couple (played by Cary Grant and Irene Dunne) divorce, dabble with various Mr. and Miss Wrongs, and get back together again - is the screwball formula distilled to its essence. Also exemplary are the film's opulent sets and costumes, and Grant's and Dunne's fabulously witty dialogue. Like the featured couple in most screwball comedies, Jerry and Lucy Warriner are made for each other, a fact reinforced mostly by their sublime bickering (and the supporting characters' futile attempts to keep up with them). Based on a stage play by Arthur Richman that had been filmed twice before, Vina Delmar's script ably supplies the two stars with choice barbs, and Leo McCarey's confident direction keeps the action moving from set piece to hilarious set piece. Grant and Dunne are, unsurprisingly, brilliant as the warring Warriners, though special mention must also be made of some of the actors playing their hapless suitors: Ralph Bellamy as the hayseed Dan Leeson (Bellamy would later play nearly the same role in Howard Hawks' His girl Friday); Alexander d'Arcy as the hilariously insipid Armand Duvalle; and Joyce Compton as the incomparable Dixie Belle Lee. Nominated for six Oscars in 1938, the film walked away with only one, for McCarey." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-awful-truth-v3472

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The milky way 1936 - A brilliant Harold Lloyd movie

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027969/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2
IMDB rating: 6,8

Director: Leo McCarey
Main Cast: Harold Lloyd, Adolphe Menjou, Verree Teasdale, Helen Mack, William Gargan

"One of the funniest, most sharply paced comedies of the 1930s, and perhaps the best of all of Harold Lloyd's talkies, The Milky Way was based on the Broadway play by Lynn Root and Harry Clork.
Directed by Leo McCarey and produced by and starring Harold Lloyd, The Milky Way is one of the most finely etched and precisely paced comedic romps ever to grace the screen, and a dazzling showcase not only for Lloyd, but also for the entire cast. Naturally, he is the star and the main spark plug for the film, but Veree Teasdale as Ann Westly, Gabby Sloan's smart, long-suffering fiancée, steals most of the scenes that she's in with a wisecracking gem of a performance, like Eve Arden with a sharper edge; Adolphe Menjou's Gabby Sloan is a manic whirlwind of neurotic tics and apoplexy-in-the-making; William Gargan and Lionel Stander as the middle-weight champion and his stooge make a boundlessly funny dumb-and-dumber duo (Stander was so good in the part of the stooge that he repeated it in the Danny Kaye remake The Kid From Brooklyn a decade later); finally, Helen Mack and Dorothy Wilson are refreshing and delightful as two young women who are smarter than most of the men around them and not afraid to show it. The screenplay, by Frank R. Butler, Richard Connell, and Grover Jones, is a marvel of verbal and physical humor in perfect balance, while McCarey pulls it all together seamlessly as a vehicle for Lloyd's eager-beaver, go-getter screen persona.
The Milky Way wasn't a huge success when it was originally released, but over the decades it has retained its comedic edge and its charm where many other celebrated comedies of the period have faded - and today, along with The Freshman, Safety Last, and Mad Wednesday, it's essential viewing for anyone who wants to appreciate Harold Lloyd's work, and for any fan of classic screen comedy." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-milky-way-v32684/

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Ruggles of red gap 1935 - McCarey's hilarious and heart-warming comedy

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026955/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: Leo McCarey
Main Cast: Charles Laughton, Mary Boland, Charles Ruggles, Zasu Pitts, Roland Young, Leila Hyams

"Previously filmed in 1918 and 1923, Harry Leon Wilson's novel achieved movie classic status when it was remade by Leo McCarey in 1935. Depression-era comedies don't get much better than this Leo McCarey effort , tailor-made to Charles Laughton's unique brand of deadpan, constipated charm. Ruggles of Red Gap sets up its central conceit at a leisurely pace, installing the title character in his Old West, nouveau riche setting with plenty of time for warm-hearted jabs at the recalcitrant socialite Egbert (played to perfection by the coincidentally named Charlie Ruggles) and his level-headed wife, Effie (Mary Boland). Even love interest ZaSu Pitts has a bumper crop of one-liners and turns of phrase (although her chemistry with the asexual Laughton is dubious at best). The movie gains momentum as the script fortifies Ruggles' backbone for the climactic, crowd-pleasing comeuppance of the picture's true snobs, shoehorns in a couple of high-spirited songs for good measure, and even manages to jerk some genuine tears along the way." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/ruggles-of-red-gap-v42286/

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Duck soup 1933 - The definitive Marx Brothers movie

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023969/
IMDB rating: 8,1

Director: Leo McCarey
Main Cast: Marx Brothers (Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Zeppo), Margaret Dumont, Raquel Torres

"Along with A Night at the Opera, Duck Soup is often regarded as the definitive Marx Brothers movie, the picture in which every shot, every line, and every gag worked. Modern audiences are often surprised to learn that it was a notorious flop that killed the Brothers' contract at Paramount Pictures in the mid-1930s. Audiences harried by the Great Depression seemed unable to connect with the Marx Brothers in their Paramount movies, at least not in the way that Broadway theatergoers and Paramount executives who'd seen them in The Cocoanuts or Animal Crackers did. Part of the problem may have been their piercing topicality and ethnic humor, whether Groucho's Jewish conniver or Chico's fake Italian. And no movie was more piercing in its topicality in 1933 than Duck Soup, a satire of nationalism, diplomacy, and international intrigue that seemed all too real as Hitler's rise to power in Germany dominated world news. When the Marxes then moved to MGM, the company's chief of production, Irving Thalberg, convinced them to tone down their image and give themselves sympathetic personae, and audiences then devoured their work. But Duck Soup, a failure in its time, remains the brothers' definitive film in their classic original style." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/duck-soup-v14904

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