Patterns 1956 - Superb drama about a power struggle within a large company

IMDB Link
IMDB Rating: 7,9

Director: Fielder Cook
Main Cast: Van Heflin, Everett Sloane, Ed Begley, Beatrice Straight, Elizabeth Wilson

"Rod Serling's incisive 'gray flannel suit' TV drama created such a sensation when Kraft Television Theatre first aired it live on January 11, 1955 that, in an unprecedented move, it was repeated four weeks later, on February 9, again live. The film version of the television play that garnered writer Rod Serling his initial acclaim, it's a forceful drama of office politics with a somewhat ambiguous ending. Although Serling's portrait of Machiavellian behavior in corporate suites can hardly have the impact it did in the '50s, when the uglier aspects of capitalism rarely made an appearance in popular media, his insights into the painful dynamics of a common dilemma remain compelling. Perhaps more about the anxieties of ambition and success than the inevitability of waning power, the film evinces Serling's particular brand of liberalism, as the rising young executive (Van Heflin) agonizes about the fate of the older man (Ed Begley) he must displace. The coldly efficient CEO, (Everett Sloane) a composite of Serling's wartime commanding officer and CBS president William Paley among others, has verbally hammered Begley so relentlessly in an effort to force his retirement, that the dazed and battered man conjures the punch-drunk fighter of Serling's Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962). Despite the all-consuming nature of a job that's damaged his family life, he's still unable to let go. When Heflin challenges Sloane's repellent inhumanity, the magnate makes an apologia for capitalist ruthlessness worthy of Milton Friedman. Whether or not the equivocal and somewhat surprising ending can be interpreted as a victory or defeat for Heflin is very much in the eye of the beholder. Sloane gives the best performance of his career as the driven CEO and Heflin and Begley are also superb. Boris Kaufman, the legendary cinematographer of films such as Zero de Conduite and On the Waterfront makes the dark, tunnel-like office corridors look like something from Kafka." - www.allmovie.com

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Chikamatsu monogatari (The crucified lovers) 1954 - An essential tale of tragic romance

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IMDB Rating: 8,2

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Main Cast: Kazuo Hasegawa, Kyoko Kagawa, Eitaro Shindo, Eitaro Ozawa

"In the 1950s, Kenji Mizoguchi was on a roll. He won two successive Golden Lions at the Venice Film Festival - an unprecedented feat - and produced three unqualified masterpieces: Life of Oharu, Ugetsu, and Sansho Dayu. The Crucified Lovers, made the same year as Sansho, stands as Mizoguchi's last great film. For this film - about star-crossed lovers, based on a puppet play by Monzaemon Chikamatsu - he returns to familiar themes: avaricious, duplicitous men; pious, long-suffering women; and the cruel vagaries of fate. Unlike his previous postwar films, the lead male character, Mohei, does not seem consumed by greed, vengeance, or vanity. Yet compared to the purity and devotion of lead female - a near constant in Mizoguchi's oeuvre - Mohei still seems weak in comparison. The film unfolds with marvelous fluidity, gathering momentum until the lovers' gruesome end. The blissful smiles on the faces of Osan and Mohei as they are led to crucifixion is one of the most striking images in Mizoguchi's long catalogue. Technically, Mizoguchi fills this film with striking photography and elegant camera movement. Though perhaps lacking the lyricism of Ugetsu and the grandeur of Sansho Dayu, The Crucified Lovers is a breathtaking work." - www.allmovie.com

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Sansho dayu (Sansho the bailiff) 1954 - An unforgettably sad story of social injustice, family love, and personal sacrifice

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IMDB Rating: 8,3

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Main Cast: Kinuyo Tanaka, Yoshiaki Hanayagi, Kyoko Kagawa, Eitaro Shindo

"On its French release in 1960, Sansho the Bailiff was ranked by Cahiers du cinéma as the best film of the year, topping such classics as Breathless, L'avventura, and Psycho. Critics were struck by the film's gorgeous photography, elegant camerawork, and exotic settings and by Kenji Mizoguchi's signature use of imagery that quietly evokes a spiritual transcendence above the suffering of the material world. Unlike Akira Kurosawa's frequent use of close-ups and fast-paced editing, Mizoguchi, here as elsewhere, keeps his camera distant and his takes long, resulting in a contemplative style in which the characters' suffering and pain seem vivid, yet small compared with the immutability of the landscape. The result is a film that is thoroughly engaging up to its devastating finale. Though it was initially more popular in the West than in Japan, this masterpiece has since been widely recognized as one of Mizoguchi's most beautiful works.
The subjugated plight of women in Japanese society was always a subject close to Mizoguchi's heart--never more so than in Sansho Dayu, one of the towering late masterpieces of his final years. Its intensity, compassion, dramatic sweep and breathtaking formal beauty place it among his greatest films. The story is set in the harsh feudal world of 11th-century Japan. A provincial governor is demoted and exiled for showing too much clemency to those he rules; travelling to join him, his wife is kidnapped and forced to become a courtesan and her children are sold into slavery. They grow up under the harsh regime of the bailiff Sansho while their mother (the great actress Kinuyo Tanaka, in a performance of heartbreaking desolation) yearns hopelessly for them. Working with his favourite cameraman, Kazuo Miyagawa, Mizoguchi films this tragic story in long, intricate takes, rarely resorting to close-ups. The visual elegance and formal restraint of his style make the film all the more emotionally harrowing, and the final scene, on a desolate and windswept island, must be one of the most unbearably moving endings in all cinema."

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Vredens dag (Day of wrath) 1943 - Dreyer's second sound film after a decade of silence

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IMDB rating: 7,7

Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer
Main Caast: Albert Hoeberg, Lisbeth Movin, Preben Neergaard

"Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer's Day of Wrath (Vredens Dag) is set in 1623 Denmark, where Anne Pedersdotter (Lisbeth Movin), the second wife of a Danish pastor, grows to loathe her husband for his self-asceticism and instead falls in love with the minister's son - with whom she spends an inordinate amount of time. Locals overhear her wishing aloud for her husband's death; when he dies of a stroke not long after, she is accused of witchcraft, a charge taken seriously enough to be punishable by death. Eventually, the poor woman is tortured and traumatized to such a point that she actually believes she is a witch - and she gives in to being burned at the stake. Yet Dreyer then shifts the perspective from internalized - illustrating the woman's paralyzing fear - to externalized, a point of view that enables the director to depict his subject's spiritual purification. Even allowing for the aura of raw terror, Dreyer never loses sight of the eroticism inherent in the concept of witchcraft. All of Dreyer's stylistic trademarks are in place: an extreme austerity in the compositions, an emphasis on the contrast between black and white, an abundance of slow tracking shots, and a judicious use of extreme close-ups. The film moves with Dreyer's customary deliberate pace, but nevertheless it's one of his most accessible films. Lead actress Lisbeth Movin's spectacular final moments, as she accepts her fate, bring to mind the legendary Maria Falconetti in Dreyer's early masterpiece, La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc. Based on a play by Wiers Jensen, Day of Wrath was filmed during the Nazi occupation of Denmark and not released abroad until after the war, and the director reportedly had to flee his native country when he angered the government with the film's political content." - www.allmovie.com

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(with English subtitles):

Historia de un gran amor (Story of a great love) 1942 - Tragic love story Mexican style

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IMDB rating: 7,3

Director: Julio Bracho
Main Cast: Jorge Negrete, Domingo Solar, Gloria Marin, Julio Villareal

"Historia de un Gran Amor was one of the most successful Mexican productions of 1942, a hit with audiences and critics alike. Jorge Negrete plays Manuel, a poor boy of indeterminate lineage who falls in love with a wealthy senorita (Gloria Marin). Told by the girl's father (Julio Villareal) that he isn't a worthy suitor, Manuel vows to make something of himself and return for his love. Years later, a much-richer Manuel rides back into town, only to discover that his sweetheart has married another. But their love is too strong to be impeded by matrimonial bonds, and hero and heroine declare undying devotion to one another. Alas, their romance is foredoomed, thanks to the girl's jealous, short-tempered husband. Historia de un Gran Amor was based on El Nino de la Bola, a novel by Antonio De Alarcon." - www.allmovie.com

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Meet John Doe 1941 - Capra's dark and powerful comedy about the power of the press

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IMDB rating: 7,7

Director: Frank Capra
Main Cast: Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward Arnold, Walter Brennan, Spring Byington, James Gleason, Gene Lockhart, Rod La Rocque

"Meet John Doe is the Frank Capra movie that spoke most directly to the mood of the United States at the time that it was made. It's a fundamentally pessimistic film, without a positive resolution, and also an astonishingly mature movie - virtually groundbreaking as a 'message' movie aimed at a mainstream audience. Appearing in 1940, it closed out a decade that had been dominated by despair, disillusionment, dislocation (economic and personal), and desperation, a period characterized by a reliance on often inept government officials or duplicitous would-be leaders. All of these elements are present in Meet John Doe from its opening scene (a mass layoff at a newspaper), and they get addressed over and over again as the plot unfolds. The movie also had the courage to put some very attractive stars - Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck - in some very unattractive roles, as two people putting over a huge fraud on a public that trusts them. It wasn't considered a very successful film in its own time, being a little too dark and mature amid the ominous reality of the European war being waged at the time, but it is probably the best of Capra's 'message' pictures and his best slice-of-life drama other than It Happened One Night." - www.allmovie.com

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https://archive.org/download/meet_john_doe/meet_john_doe_512kb.mp4

His girl Friday 1940 - One of the fastest talking movies ever made

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IMDB rating: 8,1

Director: Howard Hawks
Main Cast: Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Lockhart

"The second screen version of the Ben Hecht/Charles MacArthur play The Front Page, His Girl Friday changed hard-driving newspaper reporter Hildy Johnson from a man to a woman, transforming the story into a scintillating battle of the sexes. It's doubtful that one could find a movie as fast-paced as Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday, and next-to-impossible to find a film of the period more laced with sexual electricity. Decades after its release, the comedy-thriller adapted from Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's play The Front Page holds up as a masterpiece of pacing and performance, and even manages a few healthy swipes at some of officialdom's sacred cows. At the time, His Girl Friday was also a piece of groundbreaking cinema for the rules it broke: Hawks' version added an element of sexual tension that was about the only thing missing from the original play and the 1931 film version, in which main characters Walter Burns and Hildy Johnson are men engaged in a symbiotic/exploitative professional relationship. Hawks transmuted Hildy Johnson into the persona of Rosalind Russell, who was entering her prime as an archetype of the ambitious, energetic woman. Coupled with Cary Grant's cheerful nonchalance as the manipulative editor Walter Burns, the material - which was fairly scintillating on its own terms - took on a fierce sexual edge that made the resulting film a 92-minute exercise in eroticism masquerading as a comic thriller. Russell may never have had a better role than Hildy Johnson; she became a screen symbol for the intelligent, aggressive female reporter, decades before Candice Bergen's star turn as television's Murphy Brown. Amid all of the jockeying for superiority, and the sparring between Grant and Russell - which, in many ways, anticipates the jousting between Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in Hawks' own The Big Sleep, made four years later - His Girl Friday found room to enhance some of the issues from the original play, including cynicism about government, the justice system and freedom of the press.
His Girl Friday may well be the fastest comedy of the 1930s, with kaleidoscope action, instantaneous plot twists, and overlapping dialogue. And if you listen closely, you'll hear a couple of 'in' jokes, one concerning Cary Grant's real name (Archie Leach), and another poking fun at Ralph Bellamy's patented 'poor sap' screen image. Subsequent versions of The Front Page included Billy Wilder's 1974 adaptation, which restored Hildy Johnson's manhood in the form of Jack Lemmon, and 1988's Switching Channels, which cast Burt Reynolds in the Walter Burns role and Kathleen Turner as the Hildy Johnson counterpart." - www.allmovie.com

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The front page 1931 - The first version of the Ben Hecht/Charles MacArthur Broadway hit

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IMDB rating: 7,0

Director: Lewis Milestone
Main Cast: Adolphe Menjou, Pat O'Brien, Mary Brian, Edward Everett Horton, Walter Catlett, George E. Stone, Mae Clarke

"The original screen version of Ben Hecht's and Charles MacArthur's 1928 Broadway hit remains perhaps the most faithful to its theatrical origins - although, as an inside joke, several character names were altered to reflect the change in medium, e.g. 'George Kid Cukor' and 'Judge Mankiewicz'. But Walter Burns (Adolphe Menjou) is still attempting to keep star reporter Hildy Johnson (Pat O'Brien) from leaving his place at the paper in favor of marrying the upwardly mobile Peggy Grant (Mary Brian). And poor Earl Williams (George E. Stone's), whose upcoming hanging drives the plot, is still more or less ignored while the tough reporters crack wise. The overlapping lines are much in evidence here and obviously not the invention of Howard Hawks, whose gender-switch remake His Girl Friday (1941) may be faster but not nearly as gritty. Menjou, who actually fits his bombastic role better than perhaps expected, was actually a last minute replacement when the original choice, Louis Wolheim, suddenly died. Menjou went on to win an Academy Award nomination for his efforts. Producer Howard Hughes drew mightily from the Warner Bros. stock company and every role, no matter how small, is filled with such notorious scene stealers as Edward Everett Horton as the prissy Bensinger; Clarence H. Wilson as the inane sheriff, and Mae Clarke as the self-sacrificing streetwalker Molly Malloy. In fact; Miss Clarke conveys the character's desperation skillfully. According to Mary Brian, The Front Page was this charming actress' favorite film." - www.allmovie.com

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https://archive.org/download/TheFrontPage1931AdolpheMenjouPatOBrienLewismiles/TheFrontPage1931AdolpheMenjouPatOBrienLewismiles.avi

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Laughter 1930 - A sophisticated romantic comedy

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IMDB rating: 7,0

Director: Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast
Main Cast: Nancy Carroll, Fredric March, Frank Morgan

"Laughter is a sophisticated romantic comedy belying the 'fact' that most early talkies were stiff and dull. Nancy Carroll plays a Follies dancer who meets her goal of marrying a millionaire (Frank Morgan). Alas, her husband is a well-meaning bore, and soon Nancy begins seeking entertainment elsewhere. She reunites with her former boyfriend (Fredric March), a composer who seems to have a funny quip for every occasion. This adult affair is paralleled by the romance between Nancy's stepdaughter and a devil-may-care sculptor. Though the plot mechanics slow down towards the climax, Laughter manages to sustain the promise of its title for nearly 80 minutes." - www.allmovie.com

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Holiday 1930 - The first film version of the classic Philip Barry comedy

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IMDB rating: 7,0

Director: Edward H. Griffith
Main Cast: Ann Harding, Mary Astor, Edward Everett Horton, Robert Ames, Hedda Hopper

"Ann Harding and Robert Ames starred in the first screen adaptation of Philip Barry's play -- remade eight years later in a much more famous version with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, directed by George Cukor. This version is a little closer to the source, in terms of the nature of some of the characters, and has a charm all of its own, especially in the Oscar-nominated performance by Harding, an actress who deserves to be better remembered than she is. The supporting characters, especially Edward Everett Horton (who was also in the remake) as Nick Potter, are a little less 'housebroken' than they were in the 1938 version, and the result is some edges and sparks that didn't show up in the Cukor version, for all of its virtues. On the down side, the movie was done in 1930, early in the sound era, and at times displays the somewhat static visual nature of most talkies from that period." - www.allmovie.com

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Secret of the blue room 1933 - Atmospheric mystery with good performances

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IMDB rating: 6,6

Director: Kurt Neumann
Main Cast: Lionel Atwill, Gloria Stuart, Paul Lukas, Edward Arnold

"This tight little melodrama opens with a group of wealthy people staying at a luxurious European mansion. According to legend, the mansion's 'blue room' is cursed - everyone who has ever spent the night in that room has met with an untimely end. The fact that Universal made it has awarded this tight little whodunit status as a horror film. There are indeed some horror elements (spooky rooms, secret panels, etc.) but the mysterious goings-on are subsequently explained to everyone's satisfaction, except perhaps the viewer who is forced to grabble with a couple of loose ends. The Secret of the Blue Room was indeed one of Universal's cheapest releases of 1933 - a Depression year that did not call for extravagance anywhere - but good utilization of standing sets, including the mansion from James Whale's far superior The Old Dark House (1932), adds production values not matched by its Poverty Row competitors, of which there were many. Also leftover from The Old Dark House, so to speak, is Gloria Stuart, who makes the perfect foil for Lionel Atwill's troubled estate owner. Remade twice by Universal, Secret of the Blue Room was based on the German Geheimnis des Blauen Zimmers, produced by Engels & Schmidt Tonfilm in 1932." - www.allmovie.com

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The story of Temple Drake 1933 - One of the films most responsible for the creation of the Production Code

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IMDB rating: 7,3

Director: Stephen R. Roberts
Main Cast: Miriam Hopkins, William Gargan, Jack La Rue, Florence Eldridge, Guy Standing, Irving Pichel

"William Faulkner's novel Sanctuary was a notorious bestseller upon its publication in 1931, and while it was successful enough that Paramount Pictures quickly snapped up the film rights, they were forced to change enough of the story to make it fit for the screen (even in the pre-code era) that by the time it reached theaters the title had been changed to The Story of Temple Drake. It's a welcome surprise to discover that it's actually an engrossing little drama, even if its melodramatic overtones do get to be a bit on the heavy side in some places. Still, the fact is that Drake's story is more about southern power, class and hypocrisy than it is about sex, and it makes for an effective piece of filmmaking. Although Oliver P. Garrett's screenplay of necessity has to take some liberties with the William Faulkner novel that is its source, it comes across as one of the most successful screen adaptations of a Faulkner work. Things have been toned down a bit, and of necessity shortened, and the ending resolves too quickly, but there's still force and power and heat and drama in what Garrett has written for the screen. Stephen R. Roberts directs well, although with perhaps less 'oomph' than one might wish on occasion. But the film's biggest asset is it terrific star performance from Miriam Hopkins. Sexy, sensual, forthright and a force of nature in her own right, Hopkins' Temple lights up the screen. Her bravura performance is a delight from start to finish, and she is the bedrock that makes Drake a film to watch.
While the most sordid aspects of Sanctuary were excised by screenwriter Oliver H.P. Garrett and director Stephen Roberts, The Story of Temple Drake was still quite controversial on its initial release, and within a few months of its release, Will Hayes and Joseph Breen overhauled the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America's production code and strengthened enforcement of its guidelines on content, making it virtually impossible for a major studio to make a film like it again until the 1960s." - www.allmovie.com

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Secrets 1933 - The last film of America's Sweetheart

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IMDB rating: 7,7

Director: Frank Borzage
Main Cast: Mary Pickford, Leslie Howard, C. Aubrey Smith, Blanche Friderici, Doris Lloyd, Ned Sparks

"Silent screen legend Mary Pickford makes her final movie appearance in Secrets, adapted from the play by Rudolph Besier and Mary Edgerton. Secrets is a curious misfire, meaning that it doesn't really work as a film but has more than enough interesting things about it to make it worth watching. For one thing, it's Mary Pickford's last film and one of the few talkies that the vibrant silent star made. Pickford never really made the transition from silent to sound, although a number of her talking pictures were popular. She was capable of being a fine talkie actress; the talent was clearly there, but she needed to put a great deal of effort into re-learning how to act in front of a camera with a microphone, and she apparently didn't want to do so. As a result, some of her scenes come across as stilted or disjointed; others, however, are magical and demonstrate what could have been. Indeed, her scene following the death of her child is pure gold. Leslie Howard was more at ease with dialogue, and his performance is a big help to Secrets, but there's also a problem here: Howard is very convincing as the lover, not quite as convincing as a rough Western hero type. Frank Borzage works some magic of his own in his direction; despite some credibility problems in the script, Borzage directs as if he believes in every wild moment, every truth-stretching bit turn of events." - www.allmovie.com

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The animal kingdom 1932 - Good mistress vs. bad wife

Ann Harding, Leslie Howard & Myrna Loy in The Animal Kingdom (1932)

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IMDB rating: 6,6

Director: George Cukor, Edward H. Griffith
Main Cast: Ann Harding, Leslie Howard, Myrna Loy, William Gargan, Neil Hamilton, Ilka Chase

"The first film version of Philip Barry's Broadway play The Animal Kingdom stars Ann Harding, Leslie Howard and Myrna Loy. Howard plays a wealthy publisher who decides to marry the socially prominent Loy, leaving his mistress Harding in the lurch. In comically convoluted fashion, Loy behaves like a callous libertine, while Harding is the soul of love and fidelity. The frustrated Howard declares at the end that he is going back to his 'wife' - meaning, of course, the faithful Harding. Animal Kingdom was long withdrawn from public view due to the 1946 remake One More Tomorrow; a pristine 35-millimeter print was discovered in the Warner Bros. vaults in the mid-1980s.
Philip Barry as a playwright was able to find an audience in two distinct eras of American history, the carefree Roaring Twenties and the poorer socially significant Thirties. He did with a clever mixture of social commentary while writing about the privileged classes enjoying their privileges.
The Animal Kingdom had a 183 performance run on Broadway the previous year and its star Leslie Howard was a movie name already on two continents. So Howard, Bill Gargan, and Ilka Chase repeat their Broadway roles here.
Harding was an interesting leading woman - she was attractive but not beautiful and had a very low, distinctive speaking voice. She came from the Broadway stage, and her heyday in films was through the mid-thirties, though she worked consistently in films and television until the mid-60s. As was the case back then, at 31 years of age, her time as a leading lady was drawing to a close, and soon would be turned over to people like the younger Loy. Her performance in The Animal Kingdom is a very honest one. Loy is absolutely ravishing as she essays the part of the glamorous wife beautifully, reminiscent of Gene Tierney later on with the ultra-feminine facade hiding the steel underneath. Howard is handsome and thoughtful in the lead, and one can see it slowly occurring to him that he made a mistake."

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A bill of divorcement 1932 - Katharine Hepburn's auspicious film debut

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IMDB rating: 6,6

Director: George Cukor
Main Cast: John Barrymore, Katharine Hepburn, Billie Burke, David Manners

"Katharine Hepburn made her auspicious film debut in the otherwise undistinguished A Bill of Divorcement, based on a play by Clemence Dane. Even now, many decades later, there's still a raw freshness and energy to Hepburn's performance that is hard to resist. It's true that her work here is not particularly polished; there are moments when she clearly pushes too hard, and others when she sacrifices truth for effect. But there's a spirit and energy radiating from the actress that make the viewer forgive her these and other little sins, and she is so spot on in most of the sequences that there's no need to make excuses for this early performance. What's surprising is John Barrymore's performance, which was lauded at the time but has been overshadowed by Hepburn's through the years. The celebrated but uneven actor gives an exceptional performance, informed with telling detail and carefully nuanced, and there is a rare and essential rapport between him and Hepburn which goes a long way to smoothing over many of the rough patches of the dated and sometimes melodramatic screenplay. Also a surprise is Billie Burke, who gives her character an underlying melancholy and guilt, and who handles her dramatic scenes quite well. Divorcement doesn't stand up well as drama, and George Cukor's direction is often rudimentary, but it's a great showcase for its stars." - www.allmovie.com

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The most dangerous game 1932 - The night of the mad hunter

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IMDB rating: 7,3

Directors: Irving Pichel, Ernest B. Schoedsack
Main Cast: Joel McCrea, Fay Wray, Leslie Banks, Robert Armstrong

"This classic horror film stars Leslie Banks in a tour-de-force of pure evil as the sadistic Count Zaroff, who waylays shipwrecked boats on his foggy island then unleashes his vicious dogs and hunts humans in the jungles for sport. Robert Armstrong and Fay Wray are among the prey and would be reunited the following year for co-director Ernest B. Schoedsack's wonderful King Kong, (actually filmed on the Kong sets during a lull in the production of that classic film, utilizing most of the Kong personnel - actors Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Noble Johnson, Steve Clemente and Dutch Hendrian; producer O'Brien; director Schoedsack; composer Max Steiner), while the other co-director, Irving Pichel, would go on to act in Dracula's Daughter. The timeless adventure story has been copied many times, decades later by John Woo in Hard Target (1995), but few of the remakes compare to the somewhat tatty but effective original." - www.allmovie.com

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(720p BluRay, rar, no password):

http://uploaded.net/file/bjdysy5p/The_Most_Dangerous_Game_1932_720p_BluRay_x264_x0r.part1.rar 
http://uploaded.net/file/uwm6vrne/The_Most_Dangerous_Game_1932_720p_BluRay_x264_x0r.part2.rar

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Seas beneath 1931 - Visually interesting sea adventure

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IMDB rating: 5,7

Director: John Ford
Main Cast: George O'Brien, Marion Lessing, Mona Maris

"Seas Beneath is a rousing sea adventure from John Ford that takes place in the closing months of World War I. Largely unavailable for decades, Seas Beneath remains a solid and gritty war picture that is also guilty - like much of Ford's work - of idealizing history. About half of the film takes place in a Spanish port town, where German spies abound. These scenes suffer from a stasis probably dictated by the technical restrictions of the early sound era, but Ford injects them with a seediness and mysteriousness that makes them compelling nonetheless. When Seas Beneath really comes alive, however, is when Captain Kingsley and company leave port and embark on their cat-and-mouse game with the German U-boat. With the invaluable aid of some remarkable location camerawork (as well as the assistance of the U.S. Navy), Ford places the viewer into the center of the action, creating a sense of authenticity that makes these scenes all the more dramatic, and leading up to a stunning climactic sea battle. The battle scenes are the highlight of the picture, and some credit must go to the sound crew for capturing the intensity of the action as the U-boat bombards the schooner over and again while Kingsley waits for his chance to strike. Another valuable element to the film is Ford's wise decision to actually have the Germans speak German, with only a minimal use of intertitles to translate the more important dialogue. The cast is solid, especially Mona Maris as the seductive spy Lolita. Seas Beneath is not a classic, but it deserves to be far better known and more widely seen." - www.allmovie.com

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Border law 1931 - A well paced early sound Western

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IMDB rating: 6,2

Director: Louis King
Main Cast: Buck Jones, Lupita Tovar, Jim Mason

"Border Law, directed by Henry King's less remembered brother Louis, remains a fine B-Western typical of its stalwart leading man Buck Jones. Although Columbia Pictures had only begun its slow climb out of Gower Gulch in 1931, the Jones westerns were better-than-average, and awarded more care than most of their rivals. With old-timer Frank Rice as a not too annoying comic relief and Lupita Tovar as a very fetching saloon belle, Border Law makes a pleasant hour of so of juvenile sagebrush action, Columbia style. The film is also a welcome chance to see the other, American, James Mason in action. His credits always confused with the later British star of the same name, Mason was the typical suave B-Western 'Boss Villain', complete with pencil-thin mustache and supercilious airs. In films since the 1910s, Mason enjoyed his best years in the early sound era, when his villainy often added an air of true menace to an otherwise lethargic B-Western." - www.allmovie.com

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The range feud 1931 - Jones and Wayne: two generations of cowboys

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IMDB rating: 5,8

Director: D. Ross Lederman
Main Cast: Buck Jones, John Wayne, Susan Fleming

"Buck Jones is supported by a very young John Wayne in this fine Western from his early years at Columbia Pictures.
They play stepbrothers involved in a feud between the Turners and the Waltons. Clint Turner (Wayne) is forbidden to visit Judy Walton (Susan Fleming) by her father, John (Edward J. LeSaint). He does so anyway and is conveniently blamed for old man Walton's murder. Forced to arrest his stepbrother, Sheriff Buck Gordon (Jones) decides to investigate the real reason for the feud. After being shot and wounded by a mysterious figure, Buck discovers that a cattle rustler, Vandall (Harry Woods), is stirring up the bad blood between the families for his own nefarious purposes. When Vandall is proven guilty of Walton's murder, the feud comes to a peaceful end and Clint and Judy are reunited.
While Wayne disliked working with Tim McCoy, another Columbia Western star, he came to admire the amiable Jones, a friendship that lasted until Jones' death. Wayne, as befitted his low status in Hollywood in 1931, is playing little more than a supporting character, but he still managed to have a quarrel with the powers at be, and, despite his friendship with Jones, vowed never to work for Columbia again, a promise he kept. Range Feud was unofficially remade by Jones as The Red Rider (1934), a 15-chapter Universal serial featuring Grant Withers as the stepbrother falsely accused of murder." - www.allmovie.com

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Murder at midnight 1931 - Standard 30's murder mystery

Publicity picture of Alice White circa 1931

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IMDB rating: 5,7

Director: Frank R. Strayer
Main Cast: Aileen Pringle, Alice White, Hale Hamilton, Robert Elliott

"A sophisticated, expensively-dressed group of people gather in a spooky old mansion to watch the first performance of a play. The highlight of the production is a realistic on-stage murder, wherein the victim is shot point-blank, right through the heart, as the clock strikes 12. The audience applauds enthusiastically as the 'victim' falls dead, but the applause subsides and gives way to screams of terror when it turns out that the murder is for real! With everyone in the mansion under suspicion - including, naturally, the butler - the cops are baffled, and even more so when the primary suspect ends up as victim number two. 'This isn't a murder case, it's an epidemic!' moans one of the detectives. Intricately plotted, and with a genuinely surprising solution, Murder at Midnight is far and away superior to your average low-budget mystery. Poor 'blonde dumbbell' Alice White was often given short shrift by bluenosed reviewers who found her coarse, but she is really quite amusing in this above-average whodunit from Tiffany Productions, which came with surprisingly sturdy production values and a good screenplay by W. Scott Darling and director Frank R. Strayer. So good, in fact, that Darling used it again in 1939 as Mr. Wong in Chinatown and for the 1947 Charlie Chan mystery The Chinese Ring. Neither of the remakes, however, employed White, whose starring career fizzled in the early '30s." - www.allmovie.com

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