| Dancing Lady (1933) |
[Jan. 26th, 2012|02:41 pm] |
MGM’s 1933 musical Dancing Lady can be seen as an attempt by the studio to do something in the style of Warner Brothers’ 1932 hit 42nd Street. MGM couldn’t capture the hardboiled atmosphere that made 42nd Street so distinctive and they didn’t have Busby Berkeley but they did have plenty of money and they did have two great stars in Joan Crawford and Clark Gable. The result is lightweight but a lot of fun.
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x-posted to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif?v=88.8) movie_greats |
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| Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise) |
[Jan. 3rd, 2012|07:07 pm] |
Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise) is a movie that does not seem to be highly regarded today either by Greta Garbo’s fans or by Clark Gable’s. In fact this 1931 MGM movie doesn’t seem to be highly regarded by anyone which is a pity. Perhaps the problem is that it’s pure melodrama and we live in an age that finds melodrama unsettling without a hefty dose of irony.
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x-posted to movie_greats |
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| Flying Down to Rio (1933) |
[Nov. 22nd, 2011|11:12 am] |
Flying Down to Rio was the first of the RKO Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movies, although in fact it’s not really a true Astaire-Rogers picture since they’re strictly supporting players. But it did bring together the most famous dance team in movie history and it’s a thoroughly enjoyable slice of nonsense.
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x-posted to movie_greats |
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| Dance, Fools, Dance (1931) |
[Nov. 2nd, 2011|05:42 pm] |
You could be forgiven for assuming that the 1931 MGM release Dance, Fools, Dance is another of Joan Crawford’s early flapper comedies, something along the lines of Our Modern Maidens. In fact it’s a gangster movie.
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x-posted to movie_greats |
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| Lonely Wives (1931) |
[Nov. 1st, 2011|12:07 pm] |
Lonely Wives is a movie that I discovered in one of those Mill Creek sets of public domain movies but don’t be put off by that. It’s actually a rather outrageous little pre-code sex farce.
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x-posted to movie_greats |
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| Hell’s Angels (1930) |
[Oct. 24th, 2011|04:56 pm] |
Any movies that Howard Hughes was involved with tended to have troubled production histories, and such was the case with his 1930 First World War aerial epic Hell’s Angels.
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x-posted to movie_greats |
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| upcoming pre-code DVD releases |
[Jul. 3rd, 2011|08:53 pm] |
Are there any upcoming DVD releases of pre-code movies that I should know about? Or Blu-Ray releases? Are there in fact any pre-code movies at all available on Blu-Ray?
What pre-code movies are on your shopping list at the moment? |
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| Born To Be Bad (1934) |
[Jun. 16th, 2011|09:11 pm] |
When one thinks of pre-code bad girls Loretta Young might not be the first name that springs to mind, especially given her later squeaky clean image, but she demonstrated in Born To Be Bad that she could be a convincing (if rather sympathetic) bad girl. In Born To Be Bad she’s just all bad, and delightfully so.
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x-posted to movie_greats |
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| Unashamed (1932) |
[Jun. 15th, 2011|08:43 am] |
MGM’s Unashamed is a pre-code movie that is on one level very very dated indeed, but if you go beyond the obvious it does still have some interesting things to say about the difficult of putting morality into practice.
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x-posted to movie_greats |
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