Arrowsmith 1931 - An early sound version of a Pulitzer Prize winning novel

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 6,2

Director: John Ford
Main Cast: Ronald Colman, Helen Hayes, Richard Bennett, Myrna Loy

"One of the more prestigious films of its time, John Ford's film adaptation of Sinclair Lewis' Pulitzer Prize-winning novel has a sleek Art Deco look strangely out of tune with its tale of moral struggle. One of the director's most uncharacteristic projects, it was an enormous critical and commercial success, and although it remains an interesting film it's marred by an absence of clarity. In taking on the most complex protagonist he had attempted to date, Ford's film tries to balance a critique of the scientist's Faustian ambitions and hunger for glory with an awareness that the research he's doing is absolutely necessary. The film alternates uncertainly between condoning its protagonist's idealism and castigating his indifference to his wife, and the possible side effects of his work. Colman is also somewhat miscast, his characteristic suavity unable to accommodate the complexity of the driven, tormented physician. Helen Hayes easily handles the character of the long-suffering, possibly abused wife, and legendary stage actor Richard Bennett does the best work as the emphatic Sondelius. Particularly in the island sequence, Ford's stylized depth of focus work betrays the influence of Murnau, and his evocation of an undercurrent of paranoia in the face of the burgeoning disease is the film's most powerful effect." - www.allmovie.com

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If I were king 1938 - The mesmerizing screen team of Colman & Rathbone

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0030265/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 7,4

Director: Frank Lloyd
Main Cast: Ronald Colman, Basil Rathbone, Frances Dee, Ellen Drew, Henry Wilcoxon

"If I Were King is a delightful costume adventure tale set in 14th century France, during the reign of Louis XI, and inspired by the legend of the rebel poet François Villon, whose exploits were filmed earlier as The Beloved Rogue (1927) with John Barrymore, and later transformed into the musical The Vagabond King on Broadway and onscreen.
A rousing, thoroughly enjoyable adventure film, If I Were King plays fast and loose with historical fact and truth, but it's so entertaining that few people are likely to care. The basic premise - that Louis XI would appoint a rag-tag poet as king for a week - is pure fiction, but it's the kind of high concept that, when it works, pays off with big dividend, and it certainly works here. Credit for this must be spread around, starting with Preston Sturges and Brandon Fleming's delightful, quick-witted screenplay. Sparkling dialogue flows like French champagne, especially when Ronald Colman and Basil Rathbone have the chance to tear up the screen together, and the script contains plenty of action and drama, as well as ample opportunity for opulence. Director Frank Lloyd takes shrewd advantage of all these elements, never letting the opulence outweigh dramatic necessity, and balancing the humor with moments of genuine emotion. The cast is also first-rate, with top honors going to Colman and Rathbone. Colman is the anchor that holds the film together, and he delivers a captivating, immensely appealing performance that is invaluable. Yet Rathbone, almost unrecognizable beneath a heavy makeup job, still manages to upstage the star, creating one of the most delightfully evil villains the screen has ever known. King is a marvelous film, swashbuckling adventure at its best." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/if-i-were-king-v96239/

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The prisoner of Zenda 1937 - Romance and adventure to thrill you!

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029442/?ref_=nv_sr_1
IMDB rating: 7,8

Directors: John Cromwell, George Cukor, W. S. Van Dyke
Main Cast: Ronald Colman, Madeleine Carroll, C. Aubrey Smith, Raymond Massey, Mary Astor, David Niven, Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

"One of Hollywood's most entertaining adventure stories of any era is a triumph of swashbuckling swordplay, careful direction, and reliably professional acting. Ronald Colman and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. are at their best in this David O. Selznick production of Arthur Hope's classic novel about a British commoner on holiday in Ruritania who poses as his cousin, the king, in order to thwart a plot by rebels against the monarchy. Costuming, photography, and sword-fight choreography are all top-notch under the direction of John Cromwell. Hope's story had been filmed twice before during the silent era, in 1913 and 1922, and there would be two later versions; but critics agree that this is the best rendering." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-prisoner-of-zenda-v39281/

DVD links (with the 1952 version):

Lost horizon 1937 - A wonderful fantasy in the shadow of World War II

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029162/
IMDB rating: 7,9

Director: Frank Capra
Main Cast: Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt, Edward Everett Horton, John Howard, Thomas Mitchell, Margo

"It took British author James Hilton six weeks to write his visionary novel Lost horizon. It took director Frank Capra two years-and half of his home studio Columbia's annual budget-to bring it to the screen.
The movie belongs to a genre that reached its heyday in the 1930s: the philosophical drama. Usually based on plays, films such as Street scene, Death takes a holiday, On borrowed time and The petrified forest dealt with driving issues of the day and embraced weighty questions of life and death. Adapted from the novel by Hilton, Lost horizon proved more popular and enduring than any of them, principally because the filmmaker pulled out all the stops in translating the material to the screen. It was the grandest production ever attempted by Columbia Pictures, a studio which, for all of its renown and respect, was little more than a Poverty Row outfit when financing was concerned. Aided by Dimitri Tiomkin's outsized score, Capra created an utterly convincing screen portrayal of Shangri-La, and his audience's suspension of disbelief was such that no one even thought to ask how the inhabitants of Shangri-La could have gotten their grand piano over those mountain passes. The most compelling element of the film, however - proof of Capra's keen sense of public mood - was its message. At the time of the movie's release, it was clear that the First World War, still very much in peoples' minds, had been fought in vain; the world was preparing to tear itself apart anew. Lost horizon offered a notion of hope, based in fantasy, that it was essential for good men to keep themselves at the ready, to lead when the carnage ceased. In a sense, the movie was a not-so-distant cousin to a British production of the same era, Things to come, which presented a similar idea in science-fiction terms. Capra's choices in casting were uncanny, particularly Ronald Colman as disillusioned diplomat Robert Conway and John Howard as his brother - Howard had taken over the role of Bulldog Drummond from Colman in a series of films from the same period, and they looked enough alike that they might've been brothers.
When Lost horizon was shown to preview audiences, it ran nearly three hours and it was a disaster. In his autobiography, Capra claims to have rescued his pet project by merely burning the first two reels and opening the film with the evacuation scene; In fact, while Capra did remove the film's 'flashback' framework, he made most of his cuts in the body of the picture. The release length of Lost horizon was 132 minutes, pared down to 119 when it went into general distribution. When it was reissued in the 1940s and 1950s, it was rather clumsily pared down to anywhere from 95 to 100 minutes. Only in the mid-1980s was Lost horizon restored to its original length, with stills used to illustrate certain scenes for which only the soundtrack existed. While not the enormous hit Capra and Columbia had hoped it would be, Lost horizon was popular enough to allow the name 'Shangri-La' enter the household-word category." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/lost-horizon-v30150

DVD links:

A tale of two cities 1935 - A stepping stone for Selznick to Gone with the wind

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027075/
IMDB rating: 7,9

Director: Jack Conway
Main Cast: Ronald Colman, Elizabeth Allan, Edna May Oliver, Reginald Owen, Basil Rathbone

"A tale of two cities is well remembered for its rich production values and the charismatic performance of Ronald Colman as the dissipated lawyer drawn to a cause greater than his personal problems. Jack Conway's directing work is solid, but he was pretty much the hired hand of producer David O. Selznick, who was largely responsible for the film's artistic vision. Selznick had the best of MGM's production team, including composer Herbert Stothart, art director Cedric Gibbons, sound engineer Douglas Shearer, and film editor Conrad Nervig. The result is a first-rate example of the production quality typical of big-budget Hollywood studio films of the mid-1930s, particularly the ones from MGM. Surprisingly, the film received only two Academy Award nominations, for Best Picture and Best Film Editing, as MGM successfully focused its awards efforts for that year on The great Ziegfeld.
This adaptation of Charles Dickens' classic novel, set during the French Revolution, revolves around two men - English lawyer Sydney Carton and French aristocrat Charles Darnay - who share similar looks and a love for the same girl, Lucie Manette." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/a-tale-of-two-cities-v48478

DVD links:

Bulldog Drummond strikes back 1934 - Simply the best Bulldog Drummond movie

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024932/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB ratings: 7,4

Director: Roy Del Ruth
Main Cast: Ronald Colman, Loretta Young, Warner Oland, C. Aubrey Smith

"This second and final 'Bulldog Drummond' film to star Ronald Colman, finds the famed sleuth in the midst of a sinister plan orchestrated by Warner Oland. Damsel in distress Loretta Young reports that her wealthy and influential uncle is missing, but all those concerned insist that the uncle never existed, and that Young is out of her mind. Drummond suspects that she's telling the truth, and that the uncle's disappearance is tied into political intrigue of some sort or other. Before the rousing climax, Drummond, the heroine, and Drummond's pal Algy (Charles Butterworth) are repeatedly kidnapped, imprisoned, and threatened with certain death. Counterpointing the film's plot twists (a bit too convoluted to relate in full here) is a comic subplot involving the continually interrupted honeymoon of Algy and his frustrated bride (Una Merkel)." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/bulldog-drummond-strikes-back-v86218

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