I am a fugitive from a chain gang 1932 - A film experience that is hard to forget

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IMDB rating: 8,0

Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Main Cast: Paul Muni, Glenda Farrell, Helen Vinson, Noel Francis, Preston Foster, Allen Jenkins

"Warner Bros.' hard-hitting chain-gang movie was a faithful adaptation of the similarly titled autobiography of Robert Elliot Burns (the publication of Burns' book led to the abolishment of that system and an erasure of Burns' sentence). A movie as grim as I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang was hardly a sure bet at the box office, then or now: based on the memoirs of a man who was still a wanted fugitive from a Georgia work gang, it represented a brave and potentially dangerous attack on a corrupt penal system that created more criminals than it cured. Director Mervyn LeRoy made his work camps (conveniently located in an unnamed state) as dirty, back-breaking, and soul-destroying as the screen would permit in 1932, and many prison films made later under more lenient circumstances were not nearly as brutally effective. Just as significant, Le Roy and screenwriters Howard J. Green, Brown Holmes, and Sheridan Gibney indicted the shabby treatment of America's returning veterans after World War I and damned a society that would put an innocent man behind bars and turn him into a criminal. LeRoy had an ideal leading man in Paul Muni, who made James Allen decent but flawed, making clear that, but for fortune, this story could happen to anyone." - www.allmovie.com

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Juarez 1939 - Entertaining historical epic with some flaws

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031516/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 7,3

Director: William Dieterle
Main Cast: Paul Muni, Bette Davis, Brian Aherne, Claude Rains, John Garfield, Donald Crisp, Gale Sondergaard, Gilbert Roland

"Juarez manages to be a very entertaining and effective historical epic, despite some enormous flaws. Part of its success lies in the fact that - unlike so many Hollywood attempts to film history - a great deal of what ends up on the screen is accurate. It helps also, of course, that the historical situation being explored is one that is in and of itself exciting and intriguing. The screenplay doesn't always succeed in capturing this excitement and intrigue totally, due in no small part to the fact that too many people had a hand in writing and shaping it, but individual sequences are excellent and director William Dieterle does a fine job of pulling together its disparate parts and camouflaging the gaps and faults. He is helped greatly by Brian Aherne's excellent performance, which makes Maximilian into a sympathetic and complicated character, as well as by Bette Davis, who sinks her teeth into her juicy mad scene and plays it for all she is worth. Gale Sondergaard and Claude Rains are also effective, both smoothly villainous, but John Garfield is quite miscast. More damaging, however, is Paul Muni whose decision to underplay his role in order to contrast with Davis' histrionics renders Juarez distant, remote, uninvolving, and quite dull. This leaden anchor at its center weakens Juarez, but the film fortunately has enough assets to mitigate the damage." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/juarez-v26648/

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The life of Emile Zola 1937 - One of the best Hollywood biopics

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029146/?ref_=nv_sr_1
IMDB rating: 7,4

Director: William Dieterle
Main Cast: Paul Muni, Gale Sondergaard, Joseph Schildkraut, Gloria Holden, Donald Crisp, John Litel, Louis Calhern

The first quarter of The Life of Emile Zola is a paint-by-numbers movie biography of the famed writer, condensing his early years into a few scenes while simultaneously providing little insight into Emile Zola the individual or explaining why we should care about him in the first place. It is only later that it becomes clear why these awkward early scenes were included; they may not have been presented in the most original fashion, but they provided necessary information to understand Zola's evolution. Once the film arrives at its true purpose, Zola's role in the historic Alfred Dreyfus affair, the film comes alive dramatically if not cinematically. The story of the Dreyfus affair is inherently compelling, and this is a solid (if not entirely factual) dramatization. From the beginning, the story leaves no doubt as to Dreyfus' innocence, and does not shy away from depicting the ruling officers as more concerned with preserving their power than with serving in the interest of France. The filmmakers do, however, shy away from pointing the finger at anti-Semitism, and that is the film's biggest failing. Still, if the film is not an indictment of anti-Semitism, it is an indictment of mob mentality, as the easily manipulated nature of public opinion is ridiculed time and again. Paul Muni, acting under heavy makeup, is good as Zola, even if one never loses sight of the fact that one is watching a performance, and Joseph Schildkraut won an Oscar for playing Dreyfus. - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-life-of-emile-zola-v29244/

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The good Earth 1937 - Luise Rainer's second consecutive Oscar

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028944/
IMDB rating: 7,9

Directors: Victor Fleming, Sidney Franklin
Main Cast: Paul Muni, Luise Rainer, Walter Connolly

"Based on Donald Davis and Owen Davis' stage-adaptation of Pearl S. Bucks's sprawling novel, Sidney Franklin's The good Earth is the story of a Chinese farming couple whose lives are torn apart by poverty, greed, and nature.
An epic tale of love, duty, greed, and revolution, MGM's The good Earth was an artistic and commercial success. It was the last film of legendary producer Irving Thalberg, and the only one to carry his name. The story's scope, following the fall and rise of a peasant family in pre-revolutionary China, was matched by a large scale production (costing an at-the-time astounding 3 million dollars) that included (literally) a cast of thousands, a 500-acre set, thousands of pieces of costume, equipment, and tools, and even buildings imported from China. The massive production, directed first by Victor Fleming, then by Sidney Franklin, includes a couple of classic scenes of epic grandeur: the mob rebellion scene in which the Imperial Palace is sacked, and the locust scene, a marvelous technical achievement in its own right. Despite the grand scale, the human drama is never dwarfed. Stars Paul Muni and Luise Rainer, as the hardworking farmer and his long-suffering wife, offer sincere performances. Although neither was of Chinese descent, both found the right notes for these parts. Rainer won her second consecutive Academy Award, and soon thereafter dropped from sight in a prolonged feud with Hollywood executives. Cinematographer Karl Freund, famous for his work in German Expressionist films of the 1920s, took home an Oscar as well, and the film was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Editing." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-good-earth-v20287

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The story of Louis Pasteur 1936 - More fiction than fact

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028313/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 7,4

Director: William Dieterle
Main Cast: Paul Muni, Josephine Hutchinson, Anita Louise, Donald Woods

"Although there's a bit of fiction in The Story of Louis Pasteur, on the whole this is one of the more factually based of Hollywood's legendary biopics. Some incidents have been altered, others invented, and of course a great deal of telescoping of time has been employed, but Pasteur is still a valuable history lesson. Of much more importance, it's a thoroughly engaging dramatic experience, with a solid script that is filled with excitement, power, and suspense. True, some of the moments are a bit contrived, but one is more than willing to buy them for the payoff they bring. One of the more interesting aspects of the screenplay is that it doesn't spend much time bothering with Pasteur's early days. By the time we meet him, he has already created the process of pasteurization (which, ironically, he is probably most famous for among members of modern audiences), and the film concerns itself with his campaign for proper sterilization of medical equipment and for cures for anthrax and rabies. It sounds dry, but it's presented in a fascinating and involving manner by director William Dieterle, who also keeps things going at a rapid clip and doesn't let the film ever get bogged down. Pasteur's biggest asset, however, is its Academy Award-winning performance by the magnificent Paul Muni. It's a wonderful achievement, a flashy yet nuanced turn that brings life and vitality to the film while finding plenty of time for quiet, reflective moments. Muni finds a great foil in Fritz Leiber's perfectly played antagonist and gets beautiful support from Josephine Hutchinson." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-story-of-louis-pasteur-v47092/

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Scarface 1932 - A gold standard among classic gangster pictures

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023427/?ref_=nv_sr_2
IMDB rating: 7,8

Directors: Howard Hawks, Richard Rosson
Main Cast: Paul Muni, Ann Dvorak, Karen Morley, George Raft, Boris Karloff

"Scarface, based on Armitage Trail's novel of the same name is a potent, uncompromising portrait of the gangster life. While journalists often romanticized them, and many in the public made mobsters into folk heroes, director Howard Hawks' portrayal of the brutish and ambitious Capone-inspired titular character, played with terrific ferocity by Paul Muni (this movie made him a star, and it is easy to see why) is brutal and stark. The pre-noir gangster genre was in many ways defined by the innovative approaches taken by Hawks in Scarface. Tracking and dolly shots, relatively unknown at the time, contribute to the film's kinetic energy and excellent pacing. The expressionistic black-and-white cinematography by Lee Garmes is married to a screenplay (written by a team led by Ben Hecht) packed with symbolism as well as a rare combination of humor, sex, and violence. Paul Muni's portrayal of Al Capone surrogate Tony Camonte etched a screen original: a merciless assassin who's not only reflexively criminal but pre-civilised, almost pre-evolutionary, a simian shadow ready to rub out the world if he can't have it for his own. This extremely violent film (28 murders are recorded onscreen) also grafts a racy incest theme (Muni's character has Caligula-like feelings for his sister, played with remarkable sexual confidence by Ann Dvorak) onto the story line, resulting in considerable pressure from censors (the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America) coming to bear on the filmmakers (in this pre-Hays Production Code era).
Producer Howard R. Hughes couldn't release Scarface until he toned down some of the violence, reshot certain scenes to avoid libel suits, added the subtitle 'The Shame of the Nation' to the opening credits, and shoehorned in new scenes showing upright Italian-Americans banding together to wipe out gangsterism. This is still one of the greatest, darkest, most deeply exciting films American cinema has produced."

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