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

Download links:

The lost patrol 1934 - Ford's epic story of boiling passions

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025423/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2
IMDB ratings: 7,0

Director: John Ford
Main Cast: Victor McLaglen, Boris Karloff, Wallace Ford, Reginald Denny

"Previously filmed in 1929, Philip MacDonald's novel Patrol was lensed by director John Ford as The Lost Patrol in 1934. This is a minor entry in the pantheon of John Ford classics, though it had a substantial influence on subsequent films. The film has a dated look and feel, even if Ford's stylistic touches are still occasionally evident. What works is Ford's ability to develop a sense of helplessness among the characters. The scene with the rescue pilot is exceptional, and Max Steiner's score is among the best of his prolific career. The film also features one of the few bad performances by Boris Karloff, whose overwritten fanatical character is too blatantly symbolic. The film's best parts convey the bleak futility of warfare. At other times, the story tries too hard to create an anti-religious counterpoint. Nonetheless, its good parts are very good, and the story of survival in combat against overwhelming odds has been imitiated to the point of becoming an action-film sub-genre.
Max Steiner's relentless musical theme for The Lost Patrol would later be adapted into his score for Warner Bros' Casablanca. Lost Patrol would itself be adapted as the 1939 western Bad Lands." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-lost-patrol-v30160

DVD links:

The Barretts of Wimpole Street 1934 - An appealing costume drama of Hollywood's golden age

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024865/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB ratings: 7,1

Director: Sidney Franklin
Main Cast: Norma Shearer, Fredric March, Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Sullivan

"No studio other than MGM would have dared to mount such a sumptuous production of Rudolph Besier's highly flowery and romanticized 1930 play about the clandestine courtship and eventual marriage of poets Elizabeth Barrett (Norma Shearer) and Robert Browning (Fredric March). And only MGM employed a producer with enough taste, patience and eye for details like Irving Thalberg, who quite fortuitously substituted his exquisite wife, Shearer, for the studio's original choice to play Elizabeth, the highly unsuitable Marion Davies. The result is a surprisingly entertaining and quite cinematic version of a rather static play, teeming with the kind of supporting performances that became the trademark of Thalberg's brief reign as Hollywood's wunderkind. Here is a very young Maureen O'Sullivan as Henrietta Browning, bubbling with teenaged enthusiasm in spite of her dreary existence; stage actress Marion Clayton as the fluttery, lisping cousin Bella; Ian Wolfe as Bella's foppish intended ('Come, come, dear pet!'); and the amazing Una O'Connor as Elizabeth's maid and confidante Wilson, all but levitating across a room in humble servility. And towering above them all is Charles Laughton's manipulative, nearly incestuous Edward Moulton-Barrett. Borrowed for the occasion from Paramount, Laughton is never allowed to indulge in his usual scenery-chewing and Barrett remains among the very best of his early Hollywood performances.
Director Sidney A. Franklin also helmed a remake of The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1957); it was his last film." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-barretts-of-wimpole-street-v3998

DVD links:

Of human bondage 1934 - A tragic tale of love and rejection

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025586/?ref_=nv_sr_1
IMDB ratings: 7,3

Director: John Cromwell
Main Cast: Bette Davis, Leslie Howard, Frances Dee, Reginald Denny

"Based upon the W. Somerset Maugham's novel of the same name, this is one of the most acclaimed dramas of its period, the RKO-produced film put Bette Davis on the map and also added to Leslie Howard's formidable reputation. When Warner Bros. made its version of the story in 1946, however, the studio is reputed to have ordered the destruction of the original master elements of the RKO version; ironically, neither that remake, nor a later 1964 version came up to the standard achieved by the director or cast in the original, dramatically or cinematically.
As to this version, it flows better dramatically than just about any dramatic film of its era, the director moving us effortlessly into the tormented psyche of Leslie Howard's Philip Carey, a sensitive and highly cerebral medical student who is all-but-destroyed by his obsession with the slutty waitress Mildred (Bette Davis) - the camera conducts us through what amount to internal visual dialogues within Carey, without ever breaking the forward momentum of the plot or the rhythm and intensity of the performances; it does drag a bit in the middle, but overall Cromwell's use of close-ups, dissolves, montage, and sound edits was about as good as movies got in 1934, and it all holds up remarkably well 60 years later - certainly better than either of the later versions. By contrast, Davis' performance now seems mostly rooted in her mannerisms and Cockney accent, though she does undergo a hideous physical transformation in the course of the story, and when viewed in the context of the movie and the era, definitely represented a minor milestone in her career.
The industry buzz in 1934 indicated that Bette Davis was a shoe-in for an Academy Award for her savage portrayal of Mildred, but her home studio Warner Bros. failed to mount an adequate publicity campaign on Davis' behalf, allegedly because she'd made the film on loan-out to RKO and Warners wasn't about to heap praise upon a rival. It is now generally conceded that Davis' Oscar win for 1935's Dangerous was consolation for her losing the statuette in 1934." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/of-human-bondage-v35970

Download links:

The black cat 1934 - A horror masterpiece from Edgar G. Ulmer

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024894/?ref_=nv_sr_1
IMDB rating: 7,2

Director: Edgar G. Ulmer
Main Cast: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, David Manners, Julie Bishop

"The first cinematic teaming of horror greats Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi is a bizarre, haunting, and relentlessly eerie film that was surprisingly morbid and perverse for its time. The story operates on multiple levels, most deeply as a parable for post-WWI Europe. Unlike such anti-war films as All Quiet on the Western Front, which seem to have all the answers worked out before the first scene, The Black Cat presents a series of morally ambiguous metaphors that undermine the story's conventional ending. At its most basic level, The Black Cat works as a great horror film. The Bauhaus-inspired set design is uncomfortably disquieting, and Boris Karloff's performance creates one of the screen's most distinct and credible villains. The monsters in The Black Cat are human, unlike in other horror films of the era, where viewers could leave the theater and be quite sure that they would never be terrorized by a mummy or a werewolf. And while the audience understands that Bela Lugosi is the de facto representation of good, there are uncomfortable shortcomings in his character that hinder the audience's comfort. Regrettably, Ulmer felt the commercial need to include various elements of comic relief, and the stiff, uninteresting performance of David Manners as Peter Allison is a major liability. Nonetheless, in its best moments, The Black Cat is as powerful as any film of its era, and it represents the creative direction in which horror films of the 1930s were headed until censorship and other pressures forced them back into the mainstream.
Corpses preserved in glass cases, frightening Satanic rituals, and a climactic confrontation in which one of the characters is skinned alive add to the film's pervasive sense of evil and doom, along with the stark black-and-white photography by John Mescall that makes Poelzig's futuristic mountaintop mansion even more disturbing. Karloff and Lugosi are both excellent, with Lugosi doing a rare turn as a good guy, albeit one who has gone off the rails. Having little to do with the Edgar Allan Poe story of the same name, The Black Cat has grown in stature over the years and is now widely regarded as the masterpiece of director Edgar G. Ulmer and one of the finest horror films ever made." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-black-cat-v5835

DVD links:

El compadre Mendoza 1934 - A lyrical lament for human values

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023902/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 7,8

Directors: Juan Bustillo Oro, Fernando de Fuentes
Main Cast: Alfredo del Diestro, Carmen Guerrero, Antonio R. Frausto

"El Compadre Mendoza is a story of the effect of the Mexican revolution on the privileged class. What at first might seem to be a simple story of betrayal becomes a lament for human values abandoned in the tension of wartime, where revolutionary ideals always lose.
Director Fernando de Fuentes' simple shooting style cleverly sets up the complex contradictions within Rosalío Mendoza, superbly played by Alfredo del Diestro. The outwardly confident landowner must sleep with a six-gun hanging on the bedpost. He never knows if a knock at the door will be a visit by midnight executioners, so he's certainly not a coward. The acting and staging is natural and unforced.
Lolita is played by the quietly sensual Carmen Guerrero, best known in America as 'Lucia' in the Spanish-language version of Dracula.
Fernando de Fuentes and writer Juan Bustillo de Oro made a number of classic Mexican films of the 1930s, including some little-seen horror tales of high repute, El fantasma del convento (The Phantom of the Convent) and Dos Monjes (Two Monks)."

Download links (Youtube with English subtitles):

The merry widow 1934 - The musical that set all the standards

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025493/?ref_=nv_sr_1
IMDB rating: 7,6

Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Main Cast: Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Edward Everett Horton, Una Merkel

"Ernst Lubitsch directs the 1934 musical comedy The Merry Widow, based on the 1905 operetta by Franz Lehar. The apparent goal of MGM in adapting The Merry Widow as a vehicle for Jeanette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier was to emulate movies such as Love Me Tonight, which they'd made at Paramount - they even got Lorenz Hart, who'd co-authored the music from that film, to adapt the score for this production. And in the main it works as one of the best of the early MGM musicals, with memorably charming numbers amid a glittering setting, spiced with engaging moments of romantic comedy and misunderstanding (this is, after all, an adaptation of an operetta). The only reservation may be that there's nothing here as clever in design or execution as what Rouben Mamoulian achieved in Love Me Tonight. Not that it's the fault of director Ernst Lubitsch - it's more a matter of MGM weighing the proceedings down a bit in sheer opulence and sheer scope of the production, as though the studio never quite wants you to forget that this is an MGM picture. As a result, it's just a little clunkier and less light on its feet, in the execution (including the editing) than Mamoulian's earlier effort. Which doesn't mean that The Merry Widow isn't filled with brilliant moments, musical, comedic and otherwise, and have lots of inspiration - even the supporting cast, forget the two stats, have great moments, and the Franz Lehar music speaks for itself.
The Merry Widow was filmed several other times, including the 1925 silent version directed by Erich Von Stroheim and the1952 version starring Fernando Lamas as Danilo. - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-merry-widow-v32288

DVD links:

Tarzan and his mate 1934 - The best of any Tarzan movies

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025862/?ref_=nv_sr_1
IMDB rating: 7,7

Director: Jack Conway, Cedric Gibbons
Main Cast: Johnny Weissmuller, Maureen O'Sullivan, Neil Hamilton, Paul Cavanagh

"Considered by many the best of the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films, and arguably the best of any Tarzan movies, Tarzan and His Mate is also amazingly adult. Certainly it is the sexiest and it's not just because of the famous nude swimming scene, several other near-nude moments, and Jane's rather scanty wardrobe. It also has to do with the manner in which Tarzan and Jane relate to each other. Their words don't necessarily tell us anything, but the way they look at and handle each other indicates that theirs is a healthily erotic relationship. Mate also has a much better script than is usual for the series, with some very compelling moments involving Jane's commitment to Tarzan and their way of life. There's also plenty of action and adventure. Modern audiences may find some of the special effects quite dated, but if one can look past that, the sequences themselves are quite exciting. Director Jack Conway (who took over from credited Cedric Gibbons) does a sterling job, creating a tremendous amount of tension and suspense throughout, but finding time to concentrate on character development as well. Weissmuller, though somewhat limited as an actor, is in his element here and turns in one of his finest performances. But it's Maureen O'Sullivan who walks away with the acting honors; her work here is wonderful, much more detailed and nuanced than one expects in a 'jungle flick'. Tarzan and His Mate would be worth seeing even with a lesser actress, but with O'Sullivan it becomes required viewing. - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/tarzan-and-his-mate-v48678

Download links:

(DVDrip, 1 GB):

http://rapidgator.net/file/72854435/

Or:

http://www.filefactory.com/file/qjnyln4bz8h/

You're telling me 1934 - A kindhearted Fields in a surprisingly sweet fairy tale

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026017/?ref_=fn_al_tt_3
IMDB rating: 7,7

Director: Erle C. Kenton
Main Cast: W. C. Fields, Joan Marsh, Buster Crabbe, Adrienne Ames

"One of W.C. Fields' best features, You're Telling Me (a remake of his silent comedy So's Your Old Man) is a comic gem from one of the screen's finest comic performers. It's to be expected that a Fields flick will be funny - or at the very least that Fields himself will be funny. What's surprising and rewarding about Telling is that it provides the cynical master with one of his most likeable roles. Don't worry - he's still an oily curmudgeon who's never met a person about whom he can't find something to insult. But there's a slightly softer side to Fields here, both in his dealings with and feelings for his daughter and in the manner in which he 'rescues' the Princess from what he misinterprets as a suicidal impulse. This latter scene is especially rewarding; it's still amusing, but there's a vulnerability and tenderness underneath Fields that is not often given this much rein. Like many Fields vehicles, this one is more a series of gags and routines tied around a more or less loose plot; but the vignettes are choice, including a version of his celebrated golf routine, as well as an ostrich sequence that is first class. Fields alone is more than enough reason to watch Telling, but there's also fine support from Adrienne Ames, Kathleen Howard, and Louise Carter, among others, that more than makes up from the rather perfunctory performances of Joan Marsh and Larry 'Buster' Crabbe. Thought lost for many years, You're Telling Me's rediscovery in the 1970s gave quite a boost to Fields aficionados hungry for something 'new'." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/youre-telling-me-v118033

DVD links:

The count of Monte Cristo 1934 - The Hollywood debut of Donat

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025004/?ref_=nv_sr_3
IMDB rating: 7,7

Directors: Rowland V. Lee, Wilfred Lucas
Main Cast: Robert Donat, Elissa Landi, Louis Calhern, Sidney Blackmer

"Few famous novels have been filmed as often as Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo--and few versions are as enjoyable as this 1934 adaptation starring Robert Donat which faithfully  retells the story of the betrayed and wrongfully imprisoned Edmond Dantes. Though the film's tacked-on happy ending may seem a little weak by today's standards, Count provides ample reasons why Dumas and his timeless themes of faith, love and vengeance continue to spawn popular adaptations, such as 1998's Man in the Iron Mask. Directors Rowland V. Lee and Wilfred Lucas do an excellent job of visualizing Dumas' imaginative settings; no expenses were spared on the lavish sets. In the title role, Robert Donat heads up a perfect cast; the role made the Englishman a Hollywood star, and he was offered several other high-profile, swashbuckling roles before his debilitating asthma forced him back home." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-count-of-monte-cristo-v11131

Download links:

(avi, 826 MB):

http://filenuke.com/nlcj2wajickm

Ukigusa monogatari (A story of floating weeds) 1934 - Joy and sadness in everyday life

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025929/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: Yasujiro Ozu
Main Cast: Takeshi Sakamoto, Choko Iida, Koji Mitsui, Rieko Yagumo

"Ozu's silent film, inspired by the now-obscure 1928 carnival-troupe drama The Barker, a much inferior American film on a similar theme, might seem to inevitably be swamped by sentimentality, given the plot outline. But the director's genius adroitly avoids any hint of mawkishness by grounding the film in the most mundane details of daily life as he fashions one of the most powerfully moving works of his early career. The pleasure taken by the actor in a moment of peace for a cigarette, water dropping through the roof of the rickety theater into bowls, the horny supporting actors of the troupe always on the make -- these and dozens of other carefully observed fragments of the ebb and flow of the quotidian, shot in the director's characteristically understated visual style, emphasize his belief that everything his eye falls upon has value and meaning.
Ozu was justifiably proud of this meticulous character study, in which his celebrated low-angle style began to assert itself. A quarter-century later, he remade the film as Floating Weeds, retaining the same story and characters, switching the setting to a seaside town." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/ukigusa-monogatari-v111851/

Download links (with various subtitles):

The scarlet empress 1934 - Dietrich, the reigning beauty of the screen!

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025746/?ref_=nv_sr_6
IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: Josef von Sternberg
Main Cast: Marlene Dietrich, John Lodge, Sam Jaffe, Louise Dresser

"Of the two 1934 film versions of the life of Russia's Catherine the Great, Josef von Sternberg's The Scarlet Empress was the most opulent and exotic. This movie is a largely fictional account of the life of Catherine the Great, but that doesn't stop it from being one of the best and most adult biopics of the 1930s. Directed in grand style by Josef von Sternberg, the film is a visual feast, though it is Marlene Dietrich's performance in the title role that has given the film its enduring appeal. A truer account of the life of Catherine the Great probably could not have been made in the U.S. in the 1930s. Nonetheless, The Scarlet Empress is unusually frank and occasionally suggestive.
This version has even less to do with accuracy than Paul Czinner's Catherine the Great of the same year, which starred Elizabeth Bergner. Watch for Dietrich's real-life daughter Maria Sieber (aka Maria Riva) as the 7-year-old Catherine in the early scenes.
A self-proclaimed 'relentless excursion into style', the pair's sixth collaboration (which was the last between von Sternberg and Dietrich) follows the exploits of Princess Sophia (Dietrich) as she evolves from trembling innocent to cunning sexual libertine Catherine the Great. With operatic melodrama, flamboyant visuals, and a cast of thousands, this ornate spectacle represents the apex of cinematic pageantry by Hollywood's master of artifice. After this Dietrich would go on to make well-remembered films for other directors, while von Sternberg's later career would be less successful." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-scarlet-empress-v43090

DVD links:

The Scarlet Pimpernel 1934 - Who was he? What was his strange power?

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025748/
IMDB rating: 7,6

Director: Harold Young
Main Cast: Leslie Howard, Merle Oberon, Raymond Massey, Nigel Bruce

"This film from director Harold Young is the second big-screen adaptation of Baroness Emmuska Orczy's 1905 novel The Scarlet Pimpernel and is among the screen's most enduring and frequently filmed action/adventure stories, but it is the 1934 version with Leslie Howard in the title role that stands out for most fully re-creating the setting of the French Revolution. Were it not for his role as Ashley Wilkes in Gone With the Wind this would likely be the performance for which Howard is best remembered. He dominates the film, though not so much that there is not space for several of the supporting actors to shine, most notably Merle Oberon and Raymond Massey. Most of the credit for the film should be given to British producer Alexander Korda, who produced low-budget films with a look and feel that approached the best Hollywood efforts of the 1930s. Of particular note is the cinematography of Harold Rosson and the fast-paced editing of William Hornbeck." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-scarlet-pimpernel-v43093

Download links:

The gay divorcee 1934 - The king and queen of Carioca at their best!

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025164/
IMDB rating: 7,6

Director: Mark Sandrich
Main Cast: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Alice Brady, Edward Everett Horton

"The Gay Divorcee (Based on Dwight Taylor and Cole Porter's play of the same name) is a good example of Depression-era escapism at its best. The glamorous Ginger Rogers was already a big star and the debonair Fred Astaire was on his way to becoming one. The viewer is treated to a feast of opulence free from the cares of the world - except the ones necessary to provide the film with a plot. The film's happy ending is welcomingly contrived in a way that protects the morality of the primary characters, providing the audience with a guilt-free, feel-good conclusion. The music and the dancing of Astaire and Rogers are the primary reasons why current-day audiences continue to enjoy The Gay Divorcee. Among the musical highlights are 'Night and Day', the only song from the original Broadway musical included in the film, and 'The Continental", a witty and sophisticated exercise in flirting that brought the first-ever Best Song Academy Award to Con Conrad and Herb Magidson.
Directed by Mark Sandrich, the film features supporting performances by Alice Brady and Edward Everett Horton." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-gay-divorcee-v19311

DVD links:

It's a gift 1934 - A classic comedy by any standards

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025318/
IMDB rating: 7,5

Director: Norman Z. McLeod
Main Cast: W. C. Fields, Kathleen Howard, Jean Rouverol

"Anyone seeking to understand W.C. Fields's humor and screen persona need look no further than Norman Z. McLeod's It's A Gift. The 1934 movie, which was successful but not highly regarded at the time, has become the defining film in the comic's screen career. It's also a very telling comedy about men who are downtrodden in spirit and put-upon by everyone around them, particularly women and children. It's misogynist humor, which is one reason why Fields' comedy, like that of the 1990s television series Married... with Children, is almost entirely a male phenomenon. In It's A Gift, Fields' performance as the common man and hen-pecked husband achieved a level of sympathy that he would seldom find in his other, more aggressive, assertive roles. Fields' Harold Bissonette is, or rather, once was, an essentially kind man - he wants nothing more than peace and quiet to enjoy his meals, family, and home, and wouldn't even mind earning the respect of his wife, if that's what it takes - but his patience is tried at every turn by some of the most obnoxious supporting players ever to grace a feature film. It's significant that the one and only completely sympathetic character in It's A Gift is Harold's new neighbor, a complete stranger (former filmmaker Dell Henderson) who does Bissonette a good turn without even knowing anything about him. The gesture is an element of the script that suggests, subtly yet profoundly, that there is hope for Harold and the men in Fields' audience like him. Fields never did another movie that was as cleanly executed, neatly constructed, or pleasing - indeed, by the end of his career, with Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, his barbed humor spun in too many directions at once, evoking a spirit of anarchy but not much sympathy or warmth. It's A Gift is Fields at his most affecting and funny and, along with his performance as Micawber in George Cukor's David Copperfield, his best work on screen." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/its-a-gift-v25529

DVD links: 

Twentieth century 1934 - The movie which invented screwball comedy

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025919/
IMDB rating: 7,9

Director: Howard Hawks
Main Cast: John Barrymore, Carole Lombard, Walter Connolly, Roscoe Karns

"Based on the Broadway play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, Twentieth Century is 'screwball comedy' at its screwiest. Director Howard Hawks once claimed that he was the first to treat his romantic leads like comedians: whether he was or not, it is true than Barrymore and Lombard deliver two of the funniest performances of the 1930s.
Poking fun at his master thespian image, Barrymore's hammy Broadway impresario Oscar alternately threatens to shut 'the Iron Door' on his associates or kill himself to get his way, but ultra-spirited Lombard as shopgirl-Mildred-turned-diva-Lily proves his equal in acting chops and screen strength. With most of the action confined to the eponymous train, Oscar's machinations to get the estranged Lily to star in his next show rise in hysterical pitch as the quarters get increasingly close, culminating in another Oscar death spectacle for an audience of passengers. Swiftly paced by Hawks, the rapid-fire jokes and arguments never let up, setting the standard for the genre's speed and humor. With equally superb supporting performances from Walter Connolly and Roscoe Karns, Twentieth Century became a box office hit, turning Lombard into a star comedienne and joining It Happened One Night (1934) as the prototype for the screwball genre." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/twentieth-century-v51294

DVD links:

L'Atalante 1934 - Widely regarded as one of cinema's finest achievements

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024844/
IMDB rating: 7,9

Director: Jean Vigo
Main Cast: Dita Parlo, Jean Daste, Michel Simon

"In his only full-length feature, released shortly before he died at age 29, Jean Vigo led the way for the French poetic realist style, deriving poignant beauty from the drab reality of a couple's marital problems while they live on a river barge. Beginning with their on-shore wedding and near-surreal, low-angle walk to the barge across barren fields, Vigo turns the ups and downs of the couple's mundane existence into rapturously dreamlike visual interludes interspersed with moments of humor and grotesquerie from the barge's other two inhabitants. Expressively shot by Boris Kaufman, the cramped quarters, the river's fog, and the industrial riverfront wastelands complement the struggle between Dita Parlo's bride and Jean Dasté's skipper/husband as they adapt to married life; underwater shots and superimpositions lyrically evoke their anguish after a separation. The catalogue of the cat-loving first mate (Michel Simon)'s eccentric international souvenirs underlines the freedom afforded by barge life.
Unmoved by Vigo's artistic bravery, the producers mutilated L'Atalante in 1934; censors banned it anyway. Finally restored to its original form in 1989, L'Atalante was voted one of the ten best films of the 20th century in a 1999 Village Voice critics' poll." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/latalante-v27800

DVD links: