Limite has shown me my seemingly limitless capabilities of procrastination. The prospect of reviewing this visual puzzle unnerved me. Compounded, no doubt, by its praise as the Un Chien Andalou of Latino Cinema. Buñuel’s short is purposefully and immediately surreal. An eye sliced by a straight razor. Hands crawling with ants. Impossible geography. Limite is a […]
Read more "Limite (1931)"SPOILERS Jean Renoir is a name you either know from his films or have almost certainly encountered from current directors discussing inspirations. La Chienne or The Bitch is the first inclusion of Renoir’s work, his second sound feature, and an indispensable glimpse at a blossoming French perspective. In his own words ‘A director only makes […]
Read more "The Bitch (1931)"The lively Parisian district of Les Halles impressed upon young Rene Clair a picturesque image of Paris he would equally impress upon celluloid. Equipped with a degree in philosophy and the horrors of the front line of World War I, Clair harboured an disparate understanding of man’s capabilities. The far left of proud found thought […]
Read more "The Million (1931)"F. W. Murnau’s innovation and experimentation with ‘dramatic angles’ as he called them liberated cinema from static confines to new methods of expressing emotion and narrative, and led the director become one of the most respected artists of his time. Tabu: A Story of the South Seas was his first foray firmly in the sound era […]
Read more "Tabu: A Story Of The South Seas (1931)"The word Frankenstein is as synonymous to fog choked graveyards, lightening scorched corpses, bolts protruding sickly green skin and burning windmills as bees to honey. In equally gloomy surroundings, Mary Shelley devised an ultimate mythology of Man playing God. The 1931 adaption by Universal is one of the earliest but far from a simple page […]
Read more "Frankenstein (1931)"Film is a format of possibility able to represent reality starkly as the Lumiere brothers originally intended, or distort the world into Méliès magic. I remember first setting my eyes on the fabulous destiny of Amelie unfolding in a Paris of impossibility on an Earth that doesn’t exist. Jean-Pierre Jeunet recreated life on his terms. […]
Read more "Freedom For Us (1931)"A World War shaped a generation, a tyrant was rising in Germany, the Wall Street Crash ushered in a Great Depression, and prohibition gave rise to wider organised crime. The progressive touch of the twentieth century reached across the globe and altered everything in its path… except for the Little Tramp who waddled back in […]
Read more "City Lights (1931)"In 1931, Al Capone, America’a most notorious gangster, was sentenced to eleven years in the inescapable island jail of Alcatraz. The newly introduced inmate swaggered through his new abode and bypassed a long and hungry lunch line. A waiting convict grabbed the Chicago mob boss by the lapels, Capone sneered ‘Don’t you know who I […]
Read more "The Public Enemy (1931)"Vampires just won’t stay dead. The lore of bloodsuckers prove irresistible meat for filmmakers to sink their teeth into, but the juiciest specimen has always been Bram Stoker’s landmark – Dracula. The tale of Dracula has become so ubiquitously known that it has become like Alice In Wonderland; fascinating for interpretation rather than narrative surprises. […]
Read more "Dracula (1931)"Emil Jannings had a gift for ruin. At his most refined, Jannings demands an air of respect in the sway of his portly stature and commands with a set of impressive whiskers. It is a form he has slipped into effortlessly many times from Generals to Mephisto, Kings and Czars. And then an event sets […]
Read more "The Blue Angel (1931)"
1001: A Film Odyssey 