Jewel robbery 1932 - A pre-code little comedy gem

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IMDB rating: 7,6

Director: William Dieterle
Main Cast: William Powell, Kay Francis, Helen Vinson

"A bored Baroness discovers love and excitement when she becomes caught up in a thrilling jewel robbery.
Scintillating, light as air and slightly naughty, this pre-Code charmer will delight discriminating viewers looking for a sophisticated comedy, a little trifle with which to while away an idle hour. Thievery, marijuana and infidelity - while very serious subjects - are here satirized almost to the point of insignificance. The whole purpose of this forgotten film - which compares nicely with the best of Lubitsch - is to provide the audience with a good time, and in that it succeeds quite admirably.
Beautiful Kay Francis is enchanting, her cool demeanor barely concealing the mischievous passions just below her elegant surface. Very bored with her wealthy but unattractive husband (Henry Kolker), she yearns for a more exciting life. Gentlemanly thief William Powell provides that opportunity. Suave and debonair, he instantly makes the viewer forgive his regrettable vocation. As a twosome, the stars bring just the right frisson of pleasure to their scenes to please all but the most jaded viewer.
The supporting cast further adds to the film's fine distillation. Hardie Albright as Francis' admirer and Helen Vinson as her friend both portray willing partakers of Old Vienna's hedonistic lifestyle. Spencer Charters is very humorous as a completely incompetent night watchman. Sour Clarence Wilson plays a police official, while Alan Mowbray shines in his few minutes as a no-nonsense detective.
 Jewel Robbery was based on a play by Ladislas Fodor, previously filmed in an Austrian version."

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What price Hollywood? 1932 - The familiar 'A Star Is Born' story with Cukor in the director's chair

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IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: George Cukor
Main Cast: Constance Bennett, Lowell Sherman, Neil Hamilton, Gregory Ratoff

"What Price Hollywood is often referred to as the 'first' version of the oft-filmed A Star is Born. While there are strong resemblances between the two properties, Hollywood is in many respects a wholly separate entity.
Constance Bennett plays a star-struck waitress who manages to make a good impression on prominent film director Lowell Sherman. With Sherman's patronage, Bennett rises to film stardom as 'America's Pal'. Sherman is gratified, but he keeps his distance; a chronic alcoholic, he is certain that his inevitable fall from grace will adversely affect Bennett's stardom. Impulsively, Bennett marries wealthy playboy Neil Hamilton, who genuinely loves his wife but is jealous of the demands made on her by her career. Hamilton walks out, but not before Bennett has been impregnated. Turning her attentions to her mentor Sherman, Bennett does everything she can to halt his career downslide, but it is too late. In a startlingly conceived sequence (utilizing slow motion and rapid-fire montage cutting), Sherman kills himself in Bennett's bedroom. When his body is found, the ensuing scandal destroys Bennett's career (represented visually by a life-sized cutout of 'America's Pal' shrinking into nothingness). Hoping to heal her emotional wounds, she flees to Paris with her child, where she is reunited with a contrite Hamilton.
What Price Hollywood? producer David O. Selznick later claimed that most of the dialogue and situations in the film were drawn from life; he'd make the same claim upon producing the similar (but not identical) A Star is Born five years later. Somewhat perversely, Lowell Sherman based his performance-especially the inebriation scenes-on his then brother-in-law John Barrymore." - www.allmovie.com

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Downstairs 1932 - John Gilbert's best performance of the sound era

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IMDB rating: 8,0

Director: Monta Bell
Main Cast: John Gilbert, Virginia Bruce, Paul Lukas, Hedda Hopper, Reginald Owen, Olga Baclanova

"Anyone who believes that the career of silent screen idol John Gilbert ended because his voice has too high for the talkies hasn't seen this marvelously black comedy. In perhaps his best performance of the sound era (with his supporting role in 1934's The Captain Hates the Sea running a close second), Gilbert plays a rogue who can get away with just about anything because of his charisma and charm -- and his voice suits his character perfectly. Karl (Gilbert) is a chauffeur who goes to work for a Viennese Baron and Baroness (Reginald Owen and Olga Baclanova) on the day that two of their servants - head butler Albert (Paul Lukas) and maid Anna (an astonishingly lovely Virginia Bruce) - are being wed. Almost immediately Karl creates havoc in the household - he flirts with the innocent, susceptible Anna, blackmails the Baroness, who is having an affair, and seduces the middle-aged head cook, Sophie (Bodil Rosing), only so he can get his hands on her life savings. In spite of his wickedness, there is something magnetic about Karl, and Anna - who is vaguely dissatisfied with her loving but dogmatic husband - finally succumbs. But all of his schemes inevitably backfire on him and after Albert gets Sophie's money back, he gladly tosses Karl out of the Baron's mansion. The next we see of him, he is charming his way into yet another chauffeur position (hinting at a potential sequel that, unfortunately, never came).
Gilbert, who wrote the story four years earlier, originally had an appropriately macabre ending - after a brutal fight, Albert drowns Karl in a vat of wine. When he first came up with the idea, Gilbert had wanted Erich Von Stroheim to direct. By 1932, this was out of the question (MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer had little use for Stroheim). Instead, the highly capable Monta Bell was given the job - sadly, it was one his last directing assignments. During the shoot, Gilbert and Virginia Bruce fell in love and they were married in August, 1932, the month that the film was released." - www.allmovie.com

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Suicide fleet 1931 - Fighting sailing ships

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IMDB rating: 5,8

Director: Albert S. Rogell
Main Cast: William Boyd, Robert Armstrong, James Gleason, Ginger Rogers

"Coney island vendors Baltimore Clark (Bill Boyd), Dutch Herman (Robert Armstrong) and Skeets O'Reilly (James Gleason) spend their off-hours (and some of their on-hours) carrying on a friendly rivalry for the affections of the pert Sally (Ginger Rogers). But when America enters WW1, our three heroes leave Sally behind and join the Navy. Before long, Baltimore, Dutch and Skeets find themselves smack in the middle of an ongoing conflict between the German U-boat fleet and a shadowy 'mystery' ship. Naturally, the boys are crewmen on the aforementioned mystery vessel, which is used as a decoy to bring the enemy out into the open. Despite this tense situation, the film spends a goodly amount of time showing the three protagonists cheerfully cheating on Sally with fetching foreign damsels in other ports of call." - www.allmovie.com

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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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Illicit 1931 - Stanwyck exudes raw sensuality

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IMDB rating: 6,2

Director: Archie Mayo
Main Caast: Barbara Stanwyck, James Rennie, Ricardo Cortez, Natalie Moorhead, Charles Butterworth, Joan Blondell

"'Nearly every girl I know is either unhappily married or unhappily divorced' -  a no-nonsense Barbara Stanwyck tells prospective father-in-law Claude Gillingwater in an early scene in this frank society drama from Warner Bros. Despite rumors of an illicit affair with handsome James Rennie, Gillingwater's son, Stanwyck remains doubtful of whether marriage is for her. And amazingly to viewers accustomed to post Production Code films, there is indeed an illicit affair going on here, what with Miss Stanwyck and her prospective groom lounging about at all hours in their night attire. They do of course get married but almost immediately lose that special spark that comes with a new romance. Rennie begins to dally with mature femme fatale Natalie Moorhead and Stanwyck, despairing at being turned into the shrewish wife, demands that they start afresh, and in separate apartments. Needless to say, the couple come to their senses before the obligatory happy ending, but that didn't pacify scores of local censorship boards, some of whom refused to permit even the film's title. Borrowed from Columbia and suffering a slight case of miscasting, Barbara Stanwyck nevertheless gives yet another of her patented standout performances, adding a bit of street smarts to her Long Island debutante. She is matched in most scenes by the unfairly forgotten James Rennie, a stage actor from Canada, who is best remembered today as the husband of Dorothy Gish. Based on a risqué 1930 play by Edith Fitzgerald and Robert Riskin, Illicit was remade by Warners in 1933 as Ex-Lady, this time starring Bette Davis." - www.allmovie.com

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(Double feature with Girl Missing 1933)